231: Welcome Stiff Competition and Keep Your Ego in Check. Top Gun Fighting Tactics. With Dave Berke

0:00:00 - Opening 0:06:01 - Top Gun fighting tactics. 2:27:27 - Final thoughts and take-aways. 2:40:51 - How to stay on THE PATH 3:01:55 - Closing Gratitude. Support this podcast at — https://redcircle.com/jocko-podcast/exclusive-content

Speaker names marked ? are inferred from speaking time and the show’s known hosts — they are not voice-verified.

• 0:00Jocko Willink?

  This is Jocko Podcast number 231 with Echo Charles and me Jocko Willink. Good evening, Echo.

• 0:06Speaker 01

  Good evening.

• 0:08Jocko Willink?

  Also joining us tonight, once again, is Dave Berke. Good evening, Dave. Good evening. So last podcast was with Dan Pedersen. If you haven't listened to that, he was the first officer in charge of the Top Gun Weapons School in the Navy.

• 0:30Jocko Willink?

  It's a great podcast. It was awesome to have him on there.

• 0:34Jocko Willink?

  And as I heard him talking the entire time, as I read his book, which is also called Top Gun, an American story, the thing about Top Gun is that it's not just a school for fighter jet pilots to go to.

• 0:56Jocko Willink?

  There is a thought pattern. There is a mentality. There is an attitude and this is not the attitude of, you know, that, and it really, we, you know, we barely even talked about the movie Top Gun on the podcast with him. And that's because in my mind, I could barely connect the two. I could barely connect the reality of that original Top Gun school with the attitudes. Look, there's some on the Venn diagram, there's some, there's some overlap, of course, but we're not talking about the arrogant jet jockey. We're talking about the attitude of trying to improve, trying to learn and trying to win.

• 1:42Jocko Willink?

  And there is a giant overlap. The biggest overlap that I found, the largest overlap in the Venn diagrams in my brain is, well, it's, it's my kind of fundamental core thought pattern, which is.

• 2:05Jocko Willink?

  Extreme ownership. That's what it boils down to is this attitude that when you lose a dogfight, and this was very interesting, when you lose a dogfight, you don't blame the plane, you don't blame the other pilot, you blame yourself, you say, okay, this is my fault. Why did I lose? And how can I win? And I, that's something that has possessed my life. And I see all kinds of comparison in there. And I see the same, look, that same mentality, that ownership mentality. It's in good seals, it's in, it's in a good jujitsu school.

• 2:49Jocko Willink?

  It's in a good business, it's in a good team, and it's in good leaders. And as, as, as it relates to the SEAL teams, part of this is when we started using simunition, and we'll get into it, when we started using paintball, whatever you want to call it, simunition slash paintball, laser tag, this multimillion dollar laser tag system that we have. When you add that in here and you can start dogfighting, you figure out, if you're smart, if you take ownership, you figure out how to win. UFC, jujitsu. Look, no one really knew who was going to win a fight between a karate guy and a wrestler,

• 3:33Jocko Willink?

  or a, or a kempo guy and a jujitsu guy. No one really knew who was going to win until the UFC, until people started fighting, whatever, valet two dough in Brazil, whatever you, wherever you want to go. When people start to go at it, when people, when you actually engage in combat, and then you ask yourself, why did I lose?

• 3:57Jocko Willink?

  Why did I lose? And, and when you ask yourself why you lost and you don't blame it on the guy was big. Think of how easy that would be in jujitsu. Hey, the guy was bigger than me, the guy was stronger than me, the guy was faster than me. Those are the reasons why my system didn't work.

• 4:11Jocko Willink?

  It's this excuse, it's that excuse, it's another excuse. Instead of saying, you know what? I didn't win. Let's figure out why I didn't win. And then let's make some adaptations. And so the more I thought about this, and I, and I said it, you know, as soon as he left, as soon as Dan left, I was like, oh, we're, we're gonna have to go deep on this stuff, Dave, because the better, you know, the better I can understand what it looked like from your perspective, I think it just opens up a better understanding of this whole mentality. So let's talk, um, Top Gun and let's talk fighter tactics and let's talk winning and owning and making mistakes and learning from mistakes.

• 4:55Jocko Willink?

  Like this is how, this is what the winning teams do.

• 5:01Jocko Willink?

  There were some really interesting points. When he was talking about Boyd and he's saying, Boyd is saying this aircraft beats that aircraft, which if you think about it, just like we talk about with extreme ownership. If, if I say, oh, that aircraft is faster, tighter turn or whatever than mine, that it's not my fault that I lost. Instead of saying, hmm, what can I do to win? How can I win? And to me, that right there, that's the difference. That's the Top Gun attitude. That's the extreme ownership attitude. It's not my plane's fault. It's my fault.

• 5:39Jocko Willink?

  And by the way, if you deliver me a plane, uh, uh, military industry, if you deliver me a plane that doesn't function correctly, what do I need to do? Take ownership of that and say, let me give you guys some feedback. Here's where this is, here's where this fails. Here's where this doesn't work. Here's where the shortfalls are. If you don't have that attitude, you go up, you know what? We don't have a good enough plane. Oh, well, they, they, they didn't, they didn't get it right. Oh, well, we're gonna lose now. Oh, well, that's the attitude of blaming others and you never get better.

• 6:18Dave Berke?

  Yeah.

• 6:21Dave Berke?

  I could talk all day, so this is a cool subject for me. I'm in.

• 6:26Dave Berke?

  Just, first things first with the mentality of Top Gun is I learned more humility at Top Gun as an instructor than anywhere else. That's where I really started to learn humility, which is somewhat, if you think about it from the outside, kind of counterintuitive. It's also connected to what you talked about with the movie. Is the closer you get to Top Gun, the farther you get away from the movie? And to the point that there's literally zero connection, because of course it's a movie, but when you're a kid, you see it and it sort of represents some idyllic thing that looks really cool. And it puts you on a path to want to go do that. And the more you learn about it, the more you realize it's just a movie. Top Gun breeds more humility because of what is going on at Top Gun.

• 7:10Dave Berke?

  The charter for Top Gun is even more daunting than the charter for being in a fighter squadron. So when you're in a fighter squadron, you're supposed to be ready to go to war. You're in an operational fleet squadron. It's probably no different than being in a team. Your job is to be ready to go to war. The charter for Top Gun is to train every single fighter squadron's leaders to lead their most junior pilots into combat. And that's a, that is a big, big deal. So when you talk about, am I doing this right or doing this wrong? It isn't just how good am I, or it isn't even really just how good the people around me are. Is if what I'm doing impacts the entire, the entire friendly US and allied air forces across the entire globe.

• 7:53Dave Berke?

  And that's a, that's a huge charter. And that generates a lot of humility because you recognize what is you're doing. And it's really hard to understand that until you're on the inside. When I got on the inside of Top Gun, I realized what it really meant to be an instructor. You have a lot of weight on your shoulders and you have to deliver.

• 8:08Jocko Willink?

  Did you feel the same attitude of being the people that were responsible for preserving the capability of aerial combat? Did you feel that, was there, was there a sense that, hey, this is on me?

• 8:24Dave Berke?

  Yeah. You, you are part of a legacy. And you are, you are one of the people in the line that's currently working in that line and you have three years. That's what you're going to get. The obligation that you feel to preserve the legacy and then make it better, which is also pretty daunting because you look back in the history of Top Gun and think, "Man, how am I going to contribute to this and not just sustain it, but actually improve it?" You feel that from day one. There is a lot of history there and it's not just history to feel good about it. It's history to give you a sense of what you were a part of and what they expect from you. It's also, "I've never worked so hard. I've never put in so many hours and I've never

• 9:03Dave Berke?

  been more solely focused on one thing than I did in those three years." Even in the fleet, there was a little bit of a balance. When I was at Top Gun, the balance was skewed so far towards, and I'll just say work, just to be, to make it simple, but the balance was so far skewed towards Top Gun that I honestly didn't do, I don't think I ever did anything from Monday morning at 5 o'clock in the morning till Friday night at probably 6:30, 7 o'clock on a Friday night. Those are the short days. Friday afternoon was a short day. Everything I did was completely connected to work. Everything.

• 9:41Jocko Willink?

  And I imagine when you compare that to being out in the fleet, out in the fleet, you've got other things going on, right? You've got manpower, you've got administrative things that are happening, you've got whatever, deployment cycle and schedule and all this other kind of administrative stuff that just is totally gone when you're at the Top Gun.

• 9:56Dave Berke?

  The fleet is cyclical. So you have a workup phase and you have focus on this workup and you prep and you have deployment phase and that's a huge amount of focus. And you come back and you kind of have, you know, a bit of a letdown phase. You lose some people, they go elsewhere, you get some new people on board and it cycles and the pay cycles up and down, the responsibilities cycle up and down, what you're trying to do changes all the time. Top Gun is a bullet train. It has been since 1969. You get on that train and there's no cycles. There's no downtime. There's no post-deployment. None of those things happen. So you are just on that train all the time and that train is just moving and it never really slows down where, when you're in a fleet squadron, I did my first four years in a fleet squadron, it cycles all the time depending on what you're doing. And that, those cycles don't exist at Top Gun.

• 10:40Jocko Willink?

  So when you went to Top Gun for the first time as a student,

• 10:44Dave Berke?

  Yeah.

• 10:44Jocko Willink?

  how long had you been flying an F-18 for?

• 10:48Dave Berke?

  I started flying F-18s, if I can get this right, in...

• 10:54Dave Berke?

  Early 1998 and I got to Top Gun in 2001.

• 11:00Jocko Willink?

  So you were kind of a new meat.

• 11:02Dave Berke?

  I was on the, the, the younger side in both time and, and flight time. So time and, time and flying, total time, and then time in an airplane. So I was a more junior guy. There are certain qualifications you have to get, and one of them is called a division qual, which is leading four airplanes or more. That's a requirement to be there. I got that qual, I think like the week before I showed up to Top Gun. So I was really junior to be going, uh, you know, not unprecedented, but I was much more on the junior side and more on the inexperienced side when I got selected to go to the course.

• 11:33Jocko Willink?

  And how did you get the nod and not someone else?

• 11:37Dave Berke?

  You know, I mean, some of it's a bit of a numbers game. Every fleet squadron roughly has about 18 pilots. And it varies, but the math is typically one person a year is going to go. So in your three years that you're in a squadron, you know, maybe four, three or four guys are going to go. Now, sometimes you get two in one year and none the next because you're deployed, but it kind of works out to, to one a year. But there's also a, you know, a, a kind of a window of, of where, where you can go. And I probably was competing with maybe 10 guys. It was not all 18. You know, some of the squadron commanders, some are guys that are, they're not really in the window to go. So over those 10, you know, peers that you have, you're going to probably see one or two of those in your peer group go during your time in the fleet. And it's based on, you know, your performance.

• 12:21Dave Berke?

  It's based on how well you've done up to that point. There's a bunch of qualifications you gotta

• 12:24Jocko Willink?

  Would you have done one deployment at that point?

• 12:26Dave Berke?

  I had done one deployment.

• 12:28Jocko Willink?

  And they log every landing that you do on the carrier? And it's all graded?

• 12:32Dave Berke?

  Everything.

• 12:33Jocko Willink?

  And so you had whatever, a bunch of 10s and some 9s and some other guy had a bunch of 10s, but had an eight. They add it all up.

• 12:41Dave Berke?

  There's a little more subjectivity to it. Um, probably the biggest event is, the big culminating event in the fleet and the Navy and the Marine Corps do it very similarly, similarly, is when you get what's called a, you know, an ACT, air combat tactics instructor qual. It's like the big workup to kind of fully qualify you as a combat flight lead. And it's a huge process and it culminates with. This kind of week-long evaluation where an instructor from the weapon school comes out and you fly with this person for a whole week and he puts you through from beginning to end, he puts you through the whole thing. At the end, he kind of determines A, if you're a qual, and then he goes to your squadron commander and basically says, this is how this kid did compared to the dozens and dozens and dozens that I've done personally as an instructor and the hundreds

• 13:24Dave Berke?

  and hundreds that we've done as a weapon school. And they kind of tell the squadron commander where they think you are in their experience. And the feedback that my ACT instructor gave my squadron commander was enough for my squadron commander to look at all the other things he had and then get this external feedback to say, hey, I'm gonna send Dave to Top Gun.

• 13:42Jocko Willink?

  Do you guys dogfight in like your regular squadron?

• 13:46Dave Berke?

  Yes.

• 13:47Jocko Willink?

  You're going against each other?

• 13:48Dave Berke?

  Yes.

• 13:48Jocko Willink?

  You're, and how many guys in the regular squadron have been to Top Gun before?

• 13:53Dave Berke?

  I think when I was there the first time, there were two patch wearers in my squadron. So of 18 guys, I think two had, were Top Gun graduates.

• 14:00Jocko Willink?

  And they can kick everyone's ass?

• 14:02Dave Berke?

  Pretty much. Yep, they're pretty much.

• 14:05Jocko Willink?

  So you get the nod, you go, when you, when you show up there, do you have any inkling in your head that you're gonna do well, that you're gonna be able to hang, you're just like, you know 100% that you're getting in with the black, in with the sharks, in with the black belts?

• 14:16Dave Berke?

  Yeah. So I don't have a feeling that I'm not gonna succeed, but I have, to be totally honest, I don't have a sense that I'm gonna go, that I'm gonna dominate. I don't walk in there on day one thinking I'm gonna crush this place. I wasn't afraid of failing. And you know, I've had that feeling in different places. I remember going to OCS the first time thinking, oh man, I might be in over my head here, but I had no sense of-

• 14:37Jocko Willink?

  How long into OCS?

• 14:39Dave Berke?

  Probably a week. Took me about a week to figure it out at OCS. First week was just kind of a state of paranoia, like, I'm not supposed to be here. I think I made a mistake. I'm in over my head.

• 14:49Jocko Willink?

  Did you not know what you were getting into?

• 14:52Dave Berke?

  Um, I didn't. I did kind of, sort of, but I didn't quite get it until I got there. All the things leading up to OCS were just a whole bunch of administrative things that get you there. It's like paperwork and interviews and applications and GPA and all, just a bunch of stuff. All it is is on, you know, you have to run physical fitness tests and show that you're qualified, but nobody had ever, I never replicated that experience at all.

• 15:17Jocko Willink?

  Complete and utter loss of freedom of any kind?

• 15:20Dave Berke?

  Complete and utter loss of freedom. And then- But what kind of shocked me for me at OCS, and this is a little bit of a detour. When I got to OCS, I looked around and everybody looked, the way they looked, they all looked bigger and stronger than me. And it kind of made me think like, oh, man, I'm supposed to look and be, I'm supposed to be six foot one and, and 210 pounds. That's what I'm supposed to look like, and I didn't. I was 18 at OCS. I mean, I was small and, and I kind of told myself that what I was on paper wasn't who I was in real life. I'd never really been tested. I'd never been put in a situation I didn't think I could handle. And I get to OCS and 36 hours after you get there,

• 16:02Dave Berke?

  you're on the first platoon run. And I'm like, I, I can't run this fast. I've never run this fast in my life. How is everybody running this fast? And I remember looking around thinking, this is nuts. I had enough fortitude in my mind to not quit. And the thing that helped me the most about OCS is the first time somebody else quit. And the first time I saw somebody else quit, when I got over the, how weird it looked to see somebody quit, that actually was a little, little fuel, a little, little help for me. And in the first week, people are quitting left and right. And every one of those times was help me go, hey, hang on a second. I can do this until I got to a point I'm like, this is no factor. And the latter half of OCS was almost fun. I'm not going to say fun, but it got pretty close.

• 16:45Dave Berke?

  And by the end of OCS, I, I thought I was 10 feet tall, but I, that was the only real time in my life that I went somewhere in the Marine Corps. I'm like, I don't think I should, I, I might've made a mistake here. And I proved myself, you know, it was a good test for me. So I didn't feel like that at Top Gun. I didn't feel like I was in over my head, but I felt like I was in a big, big, big ocean. And I was a pretty small fish and I would have to work really hard to get by.

• 17:10Jocko Willink?

  So how long is the Top Gun school?

• 17:14Dave Berke?

  10 weeks, a little bit over 10 weeks, but it's basically a 10 week school.

• 17:17Jocko Willink?

  Okay. So how many flights are you doing a day?

• 17:23Dave Berke?

  In the beginning, you kind of plan on two and then about after the first third of the program, it's typically typically one a day.

• 17:32Jocko Willink?

  One flight is an hour, hour and a half?

• 17:35Dave Berke?

  Flights themselves are about an hour. A one, 1.1 is what you're going to log for flight time for at Top Gun.

• 17:41Jocko Willink?

  One flight a day for five weeks. First, first, first couple of weeks, you said is two, two flights a day?

• 17:48Dave Berke?

  Yeah. So first week is academics, then you do about two weeks of kind of two a day. Then you got another academic kind of thing in there and then you're typically for the last half of one flight a day.

• 17:56Jocko Willink?

  How many, how many air combat duels do you get in an hour?

• 18:04Dave Berke?

  So when you're fighting one against one, you're going to get probably four sets, we call them.

• 18:09Jocko Willink?

  A set is one?

• 18:10Dave Berke?

  Engagement from start to finish, you could get four, sometimes five. And then, you know, depending on how it goes, maybe three, four is about right.

• 18:17Jocko Willink?

  Okay.

• 18:20Jocko Willink?

  When you, when you, you, you start off, you just said one on one. That's where you start is one on one.

• 18:26Dave Berke?

  Yeah.

• 18:26Jocko Willink?

  Me against you. That's where it starts.

• 18:28Dave Berke?

  That's right.

• 18:29Jocko Willink?

  And I, I would think that, because then the next thing you do is two against one, right? Is that right?

• 18:34Dave Berke?

  That's right.

• 18:35Jocko Willink?

  Who's the other, who's the other? There's one bad guy and there's two good guys. The other good guy is a Top Gun pilot.

• 18:42Dave Berke?

  Correct.

• 18:42Jocko Willink?

  Or sorry, a, a, a student.

• 18:46Dave Berke?

  Yeah. So when you go out two against one, it's you with an instructor.

• 18:49Jocko Willink?

  Oh.

• 18:50Dave Berke?

  Against an adversary.

• 18:51Jocko Willink?

  Got it.

• 18:52Dave Berke?

  Also an instructor.

• 18:54Jocko Willink?

  Okay.

• 18:54Dave Berke?

  Yeah. Most of the fights you do up until the end, really heavy phase, the one against one and the two against one is you are by yourself or you are with an instructor as your wingman.

• 19:04Jocko Willink?

  Okay. Well, that's the, I, I assumed it would be you and me as students against Echo, the instructor, and we would go out there and, and beat him up.

• 19:14Dave Berke?

  There are a couple of flights like that, but most of the flights, your wingman is your IP, your instructor.

• 19:20Jocko Willink?

  And that's because if it was two knuckleheads out there, we just wouldn't, we just wouldn't get anything right?

• 19:27Dave Berke?

  It's not that he wouldn't get anything right. It's that the closer the instructor is to what you're doing, the more he can help evaluate your performance and give you the feedback that you need.

• 19:35Jocko Willink?

  Okay. So you go out, or let's say I go out, I'm the student, you're the instructor. We go out, we dogfight against Echo. Uh, we do three dogfights, four dogfights. It takes an hour. We come back. And, and look, I've heard you talk about these freaking debriefs, right? Wha- what are you telling me as my instructor in these debriefs? What are you telling me? And how are you telling me the, the things that I'm doing wrong? Is it just cold blooded because look, we all know that you know more than me and I just fully accept it. And I'm like all ears. Is that pretty much where people are at?

• 20:15Dave Berke?

  Yeah, for the most part. Look, I mean, I do not want to under, understate that their ego, the ego's out there and it's, it's a top gun. It's there as a student. The ego is usually connected to kind of the fear of being exposed as not as good as you are as opposed to the ego of, I think I'm better than you. And so the ego reveals itself in different ways, but for the most part, most people get there pretty early on. And the disparity between the students instructors is so great that people aren't really that afraid to just be brutally honest. Now, people aren't jerks about it, but they're, they are brutally honest. And you figure out very early as a student, the two things you figure out is it's in your best interest to identify all of your own mistakes and your instructor's mistakes, you know, if you can identify those two.

• 21:00Dave Berke?

  Because it reveals that you actually know what's going on. The other side of it is if you don't, the instructors pretty much don't miss anything. So if you have a thought like, man, this was really minor. I'm just going to kind of not talk about this. It's going to get brought up and it's always better for you to bring up your errors than have somebody else bring them up for you. And that gets, that gets in your head pretty quick.

• 21:24Jocko Willink?

  So when we get back from this thing, I'm going to go through the debrief first. I get to kick it off because I'm the student.

• 21:29Dave Berke?

  Yep.

• 21:29Jocko Willink?

  And I go, hey, I turned too tight there. I didn't use enough gas there. I, I, I didn't know where I was for a second over here. I lost track of you, my, my wingman here. This, so this is the same thing at, when I was running trade at. We would let the platoons debrief first like, okay, guys, you tell us how it went. And usually the platoon chief will kick it off and he's gonna hit a lot of stuff. The good ones will, the bad ones, same thing, they'll either cover it up or even worse, they don't even know what just happened. They don't even know what mistakes got made. And, and you know, so the platoon chief goes, then maybe the, the platoon lieutenant goes and he doesn't see as much usually as the chief. But then the, the task unit senior chief might go and he's gonna see more. And then the task unit commander, you should get pretty close.

• 22:12Jocko Willink?

  And my goal, every single, when I was going through training with my task unit, my goal was like the instructor cadre will be silent. Because there will be nothing left, we are gonna rip ourselves apart so hard that the instructor cadre is gonna go.

• 22:27Jocko Willink?

  Actually, guys, it wasn't that bad. That was always my goal. So, so that's where we're going.

• 22:31Dave Berke?

  Yeah.

• 22:32Jocko Willink?

  And are you having to teach me? Okay, so if you were coming to our desert warfare training and you're a new lieutenant, the first thing I'm gonna do is, okay, I'm gonna say, okay, here's maneuver number one, here's maneuver number two, here's maneuver number three, here's maneuver number four. You got those basic four moves, right? You got four moves that you're gonna do. So what a contact front, you know, the enemy's out front, here's what you're gonna do, you're in closed terrain. Oh, the enemy's out front, you're in open terrain, it's a different move, but there's, there's, there's a, a basic number of moves that you're gonna go through. That's where we're gonna start. Is this what's happening or do you already know these moves?

• 23:08Dave Berke?

  Yeah, when you show up to Top Gun as a student, you know all the moves. You, you have to have demonstrated some proficiency in all the moves to even get there.

• 23:16Jocko Willink?

  Give me an example of, let's go, let's just teach me a couple moves right now. So. And you know what? At this point, I'm gonna call this, if you're not watching this on YouTube, I'm imagining you might start moving your hands around a little bit, which is, which is, you know, cool with me, but I'm, I don't wanna keep saying the whole time, trying to describe what you're doing. If you start talking with your hands, which you might, maybe you won't, but teach me a couple moves right now.

• 23:39Dave Berke?

  Yeah, so when you start in the, we start in the one against one phase. So it's pretty straightforward. It's your airplane and my airplane, same exact airplane. You're flying it as a student. I'm flying it as an instructor. And like you said before, each phase, the instructor will demo a brief, but after that, the flight lead and the person running it is the student. He runs the brief, he runs the flight, and he runs the debrief. And obviously, the instructor's there to support through it. But the first set of moves would be when we, what we call offensive BFM, which means I start behind you.

• 24:09Jocko Willink?

  What's BFM?

• 24:10Dave Berke?

  Sorry, good question. Basic Fighter Maneuvers. So offensive BFM is the first flight you do, which is one against one. And I am being set up by design in an offensive position to fight, to dogfight you. So we're gonna do a dogfight, and we're gonna set it up on purpose that I start behind you. And so I'm gonna put you in a defensive position, and I'm gonna put me in an offensive position. And the only real objective, there's kind of three objectives, is the first thing I need to do is I can prove that I can stay behind you, which is gonna require me to do-

• 24:38Jocko Willink?

  This is you're the instructor.

• 24:41Dave Berke?

  I'm the student.

• 24:42Jocko Willink?

  Okay.

• 24:43Dave Berke?

  As the, as the lead. You wanna do it? Yeah, yeah.

• 24:45Jocko Willink?

  Let's make me the student, because I'm gonna have more dumb questions.

• 24:48Dave Berke?

  Perfect.

• 24:48Jocko Willink?

  So I'm the student, you're the instructor.

• 24:50Dave Berke?

  Yes.

• 24:51Jocko Willink?

  The first thing we do is I'm gonna start behind you. Is that right?

• 24:56Dave Berke?

  No, so I got it backwards. So if we're gonna do offensive BFM, you're the student, you're gonna lead the flight, you will be offensive, starting all day. So when we start the flight, and we do those, we do those four sets, all four sets, you will be behind me, I'll be the instructor, and your job is to, is to maintain that offensive position.

• 25:16Jocko Willink?

  Got it.

• 25:16Dave Berke?

  And the moves that you're gonna do during that, there's only like three moves. The first is called an offensive break turn, which means that when I react to you as a defender, and I don't like this because you're over my shoulder, and I'm gonna try to shake you, you have to show the timing and the sight picture to maneuver your airplane to stay behind me. And then the next move might be is that you have to be able to do a maneuver to avoid flying into the ground. And we have a simulated ground, so we say 5,000 feet to the ground. You have to do another maneuver that you can show me that you can transition down to the bottom of the, of the, of the, of the fight, of the, of the fight and the deck correctly. And then the last move that you might be trying to do is that you can put yourself in a position to employ a weapon. Now, you know how to do all those things. You know how to do a break turn.

• 25:59Jocko Willink?

  So, a break turn.

• 26:02Jocko Willink?

  Is I'm turning my aircraft.

• 26:03Dave Berke?

  That's it.

• 26:04Jocko Willink?

  You turned yours. Are you doing like a, a, a, a shuck and jive here where you go a little bit in one way and then you break the other way? Is there anything like that that's happening?

• 26:13Dave Berke?

  There's not. So there, there's.

• 26:14Jocko Willink?

  Is that because we're keeping it basic?

• 26:16Dave Berke?

  No, it's because there's actually kind of a science behind it and there's, in each situation, especially in this rudimentary phase of one against one, there's essentially one optimal way to maneuver your aircraft. And it's different if you're defensive than if you're offensive. But as a, as an offensive, so I'm offensive as the student or you're offensive as a student. You don't have like 14 different things you can do. As a matter of fact, you kind of have one and what you need to be able to do is do it exactly right. Because if you're one second too late, 10 knots too slow, or any number of other variables off, you're giving away chance for me to get away from you.

• 26:57Dave Berke?

  So for you to stay offensive and keep that offensive position that I've given you, you have to perform that maneuver correctly.

• 27:03Jocko Willink?

  Does the defensive guy shuck and jive a little bit?

• 27:06Dave Berke?

  No, to be quite honest, what the defensive guy does is pulls directly at the offensive airplane, pulls right at them, closes the space as much as he can, tries to create some spa, uh, uh, uh, limit the space. And then I'm going to maneuver away from you based on how well that you do your turn. And if you do it right all day, eventually you're going to end up in the same place that you started. I will not respond by, like you said, shucking your driving or maneuvering until I see what you've done.

• 27:33Jocko Willink?

  Okay, so you're just being nice.

• 27:39Dave Berke?

  I am flying my airplane the best way that I can until I see how you respond to that. And if you do it correctly, then I'll have to start doing other maneuvers. But if I just break into you and just pull my airplane right into yours, really hard turn, we call it a brake turn. And you as the offender are really late or screw up the timing or go too fast or miss the cues to do it. There's not much for me to do. I don't have to do much because you've given away that offensive advantage.

• 28:07Jocko Willink?

  So you're flying flat, dumb and happy. I come in behind you.

• 28:10Dave Berke?

  Yep.

• 28:10Jocko Willink?

  And you're just gonna, at some moment, boom, you're gonna turn left, right, whatever, and I just have to track you and stay behind.

• 28:17Dave Berke?

  That's exactly right. It seems very simple.

• 28:19Jocko Willink?

  It seems very simple. Do you even head fake?

• 28:22Dave Berke?

  No.

• 28:22Jocko Willink?

  Right? Because I, can I see, can I see your head and your canopy?

• 28:26Dave Berke?

  So the way that the ranges that we start are typically a half a mile, a mile, and a mile and a half. Those are kind of just the predetermined ranges. So you're way, way, way out there. You're actually, for most of those, you know, at least the start, you're using the radar as a cue to determine that range. You kind of have some eyeball calibration. But the head fake, against someone who knows what's going on, all it does is just give away more advantage. The head fake doesn't help you.

• 28:50Jocko Willink?

  The best thing you can do is just break hard.

• 28:53Dave Berke?

  Max performance.

• 28:54Jocko Willink?

  What if I was a MiG, you know, and I was going after you? What's the best thing? I'm on your tail. What's the best thing you can do? Same thing?

• 29:00Dave Berke?

  Exact same thing. The tactics that we apply are the ones that we use in the real world.

• 29:04Jocko Willink?

  How is it not good to give a little shock and then go the other direction?

• 29:07Dave Berke?

  Because what that does is that creates separation between our aircraft. And if I'm offensive and I'm the guy attacking, I'm behind you, I want separation to be able to maneuver, employ my weapons, saddle in the way that I want, and adjust the situation the way that I'm looking to have it be offensive for me. If you minimize that separation and create a bunch of closure, meaning we're now closing the distance, I have a whole bunch of maneuvering I have to do to manage that closure, which I don't want to do.

• 29:36Jocko Willink?

  So when I'm on defense, I want you closer to me?

• 29:40Dave Berke?

  Yes.

• 29:40Jocko Willink?

  When I'm on defense, I want you closer to me?

• 29:42Dave Berke?

  That's correct.

• 29:46Jocko Willink?

  Okay. Interesting. Interesting.

• 29:51Jocko Willink?

  Just like jujitsu, your optimal position on offense is to have their back. Because they can't see properly. They don't have any weapons that shoot backwards, right?

• 30:00Dave Berke?

  No, you're right.

• 30:01Jocko Willink?

  So you, so just like jujitsu, you want to, you want to get the person's back?

• 30:05Dave Berke?

  Yes.

• 30:06Jocko Willink?

  So that's where we're at. So, so this is, this is day one. We're doing this. All we're doing, so that's one move. You just taught me one move. I'm sorry it took so long.

• 30:15Dave Berke?

  No.

• 30:15Jocko Willink?

  I'm not the smartest guy in the world. The first thing you teach me is, hey, I'm just gonna break. And well, now it's, I'm. I'm gonna break and, and you're gonna follow me. Okay, what's the next move? Move two. So you're gonna teach me three moves?

• 30:33Dave Berke?

  Yeah, I'll teach you three moves. So, so remember, you're the student, you're offensive.

• 30:36Jocko Willink?

  Cause right now, this, this is easy. I'm ready to be a top. All I gotta do is break. Are you kidding me? Let's do this. I got this.

• 30:42Dave Berke?

  Well, the interesting thing about the offensive break turn that I just taught you, the percentage of students that get that right in the beginning is zero. Zero. And the percentage of the time that you get it exactly right, meaning you've hit all your parameters, is even by the end is still really low. Now, you've narrowed your error window pretty, pretty, uh, pretty small. But even just the simple, when do I do my turn? And when do I identify all the cues and know exactly what to do and exactly how to make it happen? Just doing that very first move is almost impossible for a student to do correctly the first time.

• 31:16Jocko Willink?

  So, uh, let's say, I, I said, oh, what about a head fake, right? If I'm in the offensive position behind you, I can see the very first indicator. As soon as I see your flaps do whatever, they move a little bit and I'm on it.

• 31:34Dave Berke?

  Yes.

• 31:34Jocko Willink?

  The quicker I react, the better I stay with you.

• 31:37Dave Berke?

  Yeah, the, the more you can observe and, and there's multiple cues out there. It's the angle of your airplane. It's whether or not your afterburners have opened up. It's your, uh, angle over the horizon. It's how quickly you're moving. It's whether you're rotating or transitioning through the sky. There's a, a whole bunch of cues out there that you have to be able to identify in real time. As you're moving typically 400 and something knots. So the closure is happening really fast. You have seconds to get this right.

• 32:04Jocko Willink?

  You call it closure, but we're both moving in the same direction, right?

• 32:08Dave Berke?

  Not when I break back into you. So if I've got this guy behind, you know, I'm behind you and you break, you're breaking into me. You're turning into me, creating even more closure.

• 32:18Dave Berke?

  So picture me, picture you flying around and you look over your shoulder and you think, and you don't realize this, now all of a sudden you see somebody's there. They're behind you and they're in a really good position to shoot. The only place for you to go to keep him from shooting you is towards him. Cause if you continue straight ahead or just kind of maneuver around left and right, I just stay back there. So you have to get, you have to turn back into me to close that distance.

• 32:42Jocko Willink?

  Guess what that's exactly like?

• 32:45Dave Berke?

  For sure, man.

• 32:46Jocko Willink?

  Exactly like jujitsu, right? You, you, you, as long as you're looking away, as long as they have your back, you're doomed. So your goal, you have to turn back towards them.

• 32:55Dave Berke?

  That's right.

• 32:55Jocko Willink?

  It's weird for me, I think, conceptually, because this is taking place over a long distance, right? Like when I'm trying to turn back into you, it takes, how long does it take to turn back into him? A minute? 30 seconds?

• 33:07Dave Berke?

  No, seconds.

• 33:08Jocko Willink?

  Seconds?

• 33:09Dave Berke?

  Yeah. So you will go from the time that you say, "Fights on", which you would, which, which you would say, and then I would start to turn into you. If you did nothing and just flew straight ahead, I would be past you in four seconds.

• 33:25Jocko Willink?

  I did a dogfight in an F-18. I did a bunch. I did a backseat ride up in Fallon. And I did a dogfight, I did a bomb run. It was really cool. But one thing, and I saw and did with the pilot guy, was you can fishtail. Is this right? Am I perceiving this correctly? Like we turned, like our, our wingman or whatever turned so hard, you could see them fishtailing through the sky.

• 33:53Dave Berke?

  Yes.

• 33:54Jocko Willink?

  So I guess that cuts down your amount of time that it takes to turn.

• 33:58Dave Berke?

  Yeah, and that's a cue. You have to be able to see that and perceive that. And if he's doing that maneuver, that indicates how fast he's going. It indicates his angle of attack. It gives you a whole bunch of information about what he's doing. You need to be able to perceive that that's happening. You can have, in your own mind, you can figure, is he turning a small circle, a big circle? You can calculate all those things in your brain as that's happening. That is a cue that you need to know in that other airplane as he's doing it.

• 34:20Jocko Willink?

  Are you getting taught these cues specifically?

• 34:23Dave Berke?

  Yeah. You know the cues. You know the moves. The planes are being flown in such a precise and aggressive way that they that they are hard to see and that's really what the debrief is about is dissecting the cues that you need to figure out in order to maneuver your airplane optimally. It's probably no different than jujitsu. If you were to give me your back, say, we're gonna start, Dave, I'm gonna give you my back and all I want you to do is maintain that that position. How long do you think it would take you before I couldn't keep your back? It would probably a matter of seconds.

• 34:54Jocko Willink?

  Yeah, pretty quick.

• 34:54Dave Berke?

  Yeah, but if you said, hey, as I start to lower my shoulder and I put my, I want you to kind of bring your hip towards me and you show me that. Now, there's probably 20 other things going on, but now I got that, it's gonna add another two seconds before you before you outmaneuver me. Now eventually you will and then you show me something else and now, so the goal is for me to incorporate all of those little individual things together and the eventual goal is that I've started in this offensive position and I never give it up.

• 35:22Jocko Willink?

  So that's one move.

• 35:24Dave Berke?

  That's one move.

• 35:25Jocko Willink?

  One move. What was it? What's the name of this?

• 35:28Dave Berke?

  Offensive break turn.

• 35:29Jocko Willink?

  Offensive break turn, turn. What's the next move?

• 35:31Dave Berke?

  So the next move is when me as the instructor figure out, hey, you're doing a good job. My defensive turn here isn't gonna work for me. He's just gonna stay behind me, he's gonna shoot me. I gotta do something else. You kind of called that, I'm gonna shuck and jive. I'm as a defender, gonna maneuver my airplane in a different plane of motion. That first move didn't work. You followed me and if I keep going, you're gonna shoot me. So I have to do what's called a ditch, which I'm gonna now point towards the ground and change this two dimensional fight into a three dimensional fight. Complicates the problem for you, gives you a different thing you gotta deal with and now you have to figure out how to chase me not just two dimensionally, but three dimensionally and you're gonna have to follow my ditch. And we just call that simply a ditch follow.

• 36:13Dave Berke?

  There's different terms for it, but it's can you now take this two dimensional flat fight and be as effective in a three dimensional fight, which introduces a whole nother level of complexity. Now we're going downhill.

• 36:24Jocko Willink?

  And this was the big thing that Dan kept talking about, depending on the aircraft that you have and the power that you have, we're gonna go from horizontal plane

• 36:31Dave Berke?

  To vertical.

• 36:32Jocko Willink?

  To vertical plane. And so this ditch move is the first, the first movement into three dimensional, out of the horizontal plane into this other plane.

• 36:43Dave Berke?

  That's exactly right. That's exactly right.

• 36:45Jocko Willink?

  And that seems pretty straightforward.

• 36:46Dave Berke?

  It does seem straightforward. All of these maneuvers are straightforward.

• 36:50Jocko Willink?

  How, what altitude are you at when you, what's the, what's the minimum altitude above ground that you can start this maneuver at, this ditch?

• 36:58Dave Berke?

  Uh, depending on the airplane, a good rough number is between three and four thousand feet before you think, hey, if I go much, if I'm much lower than that to the ground and I do it, I have a pretty good chance of hitting the ground. You need several thousand feet to do it.

• 37:10Jocko Willink?

  Okay. Third move.

• 37:13Dave Berke?

  Uh, the third move is that when I get down to the, to the ground, the floor, you know, we call it the deck, but you're down towards the earth, we now have to do a deck transition, which means that now I can't maneuver in vertically anymore, because if I keep going downhill, I'll hit the ground. So now I have to transition back into a two dimensional fight and preserve my position in a two dimensional fight with the ground as a, as a component of this fight now, which was not a, not a factor up at altitude.

• 37:41Jocko Willink?

  This means you're, you're having to just gain altitude again? Is that what we're doing?

• 37:47Dave Berke?

  The, the goal is to do one of two things. Either I now can gain altitude above him, or I can push him out in front of me and stay behind him. Either one of those work for me, but I need to have some separation from, from the person I'm fighting, so I can employ my weapon. I can't shoot the guy at zero feet away from him. I have to have some distance between us. I can either have that distance above him or behind him.

• 38:11Jocko Willink?

  Just like jujitsu, just like this more moves into MMA, where if you're trying to hit me, I want to close the distance, get close to you, where your strikes won't really make a difference.

• 38:21Dave Berke?

  Yeah. The, the parallels are, are, I mean, there might be some differences in terms of like the physical locations of, of the machines against, with the people, but the parallels are, they're exactly the same. As in a, as a, as a person who's offensive, if you think about finishing somebody, and the way I'm, I'm going to finish is through a strike, which is kind of simulating what these weapons are, I need to have some distance between you and me to make that strike effective. Now there's a distance that if I get too close, those strikes just don't work. There's also a way that if I get so far away, the strikes are ineffective, or it actually allows you to strike as well. And so I'm constantly managing, managing those, those separations and distances. And if I'm defensive and I look over and I see that person's in a great place to just

• 39:04Dave Berke?

  throw a punch at me, I can either try to get away from him, which almost never works at that distance. Although there is a separation that you might try to avoid, but at that, we started off was like, "Hey, you're starting in a place that we know running away won't work." So that range of a half a mile, a mile, it's designed to say, "The escape option is not available to you." So the only other option is, is I gotta close that distance to you. I can't let your strike be effective and I'm gonna wrap you up as best I can to do that. That's the defender's job.

• 39:32Jocko Willink?

  So what's this third move called?

• 39:33Dave Berke?

  The deck transition.

• 39:35Jocko Willink?

  Deck transition, but it sounds like there's multiple options on how you transition from the deck.

• 39:40Dave Berke?

  There are, and all those options are all accumulating, they're all an accumulation of how things have played out the entire way from the beginning of the fight down to the end of the fight. So remember, I started that fight 6,000 feet behind you, I'm a mile behind you. If you do everything right and I do everything right, guess where I'm gonna be at the deck transition?

• 40:00Jocko Willink?

  A mile behind.

• 40:00Dave Berke?

  6,000 feet behind you, I'm gonna be a mile behind you and I'm gonna, I'm gonna be good to go. But if you've done a better job than I have, I've missed some cues, I'm a little bit late, I'll lose 500 feet here. I'll lose 75 feet here. I'll lose 1,000 feet over here. I'll lose another 50 feet here. And each one of those moves that I'm doing down to the floor, you've chipped away. By the time we get down to the floor, you know where the fights against top gun instructors usually end up? Either zero or worse, the defender has become the attacker, which happens sometimes. So that 6,000 feet, it's pretty uncommon to be able to preserve that distance against a top gun instructor from beginning to end.

• 40:40Dave Berke?

  And each part of the fight and each maneuver that's being executed, you're gathering, you're, you're fighting for that distance.

• 40:46Jocko Willink?

  Again, apologize, I'm the student, you're the instructor, I start off 6,000 feet behind you. You break, turn, you do it successfully, you're now closer to me?

• 40:59Dave Berke?

  Yes.

• 41:01Jocko Willink?

  And then you break, turn again, and you're even closer to me?

• 41:04Dave Berke?

  Yep.

• 41:05Jocko Willink?

  And you break, turn again, and you're even closer, then you ditch and you get even closer. And then finally, you either are so close to me that you're behind me.

• 41:15Dave Berke?

  That happens.

• 41:16Jocko Willink?

  What, what's the other thing? If you don't get behind me, what if we're just now, we're really close?

• 41:21Dave Berke?

  So just realize, obviously, we're not going to get so close that we're going to hit. And so that distance of going from 6,000 feet a mile to being something less than that, if we were zero feet apart, we'd be parallel right beside each other. We wouldn't be zero feet. Obviously, the airplanes have a safety bubble between them. But when we transition down to the ground, I'd look across and instead of being directly behind you, I'd be directly beside you. And I'd have no way to shoot you just looking at you side by side. We'd be in a completely neutral position where nobody can shoot the other person. And I've given away an entire mile of advantage that you gave me, or that I, that I gave you at the start as a student.

• 42:02Jocko Willink?

  Okay.

• 42:03Dave Berke?

  How we doing?

• 42:03Jocko Willink?

  We're doing good. I mean, it's, there's, there's something still a little bit hard for me to understand at this point. You two, you two echo Charles?

• 42:09Speaker 01

  Little bit, but I guess so, because I, you keep got to, or you got to keep remembering that the distances are way far away. Like, you know, when you watch Top Gun, it's like, they're like right there and they're shooting each other and, you know, but they're like super far away.

• 42:24Jocko Willink?

  But they're also kind of not, because it's only a, it's a second, or it's two seconds or whatever, to travel that mile.

• 42:31Dave Berke?

  Well, the best thing I could do, other than explain this better, would be to erase from everybody's memory, the movie Top Gun. Because if that's where your head's going, this isn't going to work.

• 42:41Speaker 01

  Well, yeah, because you're like, hey, close the distance. So I'm like, okay, close the distance. But then, yes, you got to remember as well, that there is no, because essentially, like, okay, like in jujitsu or MMA, where it's like, green zone, meaning save his own if you're too far away from the guy, he can't punch or kick you, whatever. Green zone, when you're close, he can't punch and kick you. But there's the red zone, which is that distance, right? So in, if, and correct me if I'm wrong, if I'm trying to understand this too, where that initial green zone, the out of range green zone, that's not an option in this particular drill.

• 43:14Jocko Willink?

  Well, what is it? What is the, is it like 10 miles, 12 miles?

• 43:18Dave Berke?

  The separation in terms

• 43:21Jocko Willink?

  If I'm on your tail, how far away are you from me that I bet you're not in danger?

• 43:25Dave Berke?

  Miles.

• 43:26Jocko Willink?

  Yeah.

• 43:27Dave Berke?

  Several miles.

• 43:28Speaker 01

  Yeah, and that's not an option for this particular drill, right?

• 43:30Dave Berke?

  It's by design, this one oh and one phase, we build it where you running away at the start, you can't do it. You can't just go faster than me.

• 43:38Jocko Willink?

  So you start, we start, I'm behind you, you're in the red zone.

• 43:42Dave Berke?

  Yep.

• 43:43Jocko Willink?

  And you want to close the distance, get close enough to me that I can't fire my weapon.

• 43:47Speaker 01

  That's exactly. Other green zone, right? The close green zone.

• 43:49Dave Berke?

  Yeah, well, he's behind me. My goal is to take, take that 6,000 feet separation and make it zero.

• 43:56Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 43:56Dave Berke?

  Or as close to it as I can get.

• 43:57Speaker 01

  Yeah, it's like closing the distance in jujitsu, basically.

• 44:00Jocko Willink?

  Don't you, okay, don't you, when you hit a brake turn,

• 44:06Jocko Willink?

  and I'm slow, doesn't that make me further away from you?

• 44:11Dave Berke?

  No, because I'm turning back towards you. You're behind me, I'm rolling my plane and pulling it directly into your plane. And I'm literally going to point right at you as hard as I can and take whatever that I can get, whatever that 6,000 feet is, and close as much distance as I can as fast as I can.

• 44:30Dave Berke?

  And I'm not going to get much, but I'm going to get something.

• 44:32Jocko Willink?

  What's the turning radius of an F-18?

• 44:35Dave Berke?

  It's totally airspeed dependent, but at the speeds that, that we're talking about, the turning radius is probably 3,000, 4,000 feet.

• 44:45Jocko Willink?

  Dang. That's tight.

• 44:49Dave Berke?

  Yeah, well, when you're slower, it's much tighter. The slower you get, the shorter your radius is.

• 44:55Jocko Willink?

  Okay.

• 44:56Dave Berke?

  And so even that point that you made about the turning radius, that's a massive calculation. You're getting to Boyd right there. I have to know what your airplane is capable of doing at 18,000 feet, at 400 knots, in full afterburner. Because it's different than what your airplane can do at 10,000 feet, at 250 knots. And it varies in every three dimensional plane, it varies. And I have to figure out, I have to be able to determine what your airplane is capable of doing and base my maneuver, part of my maneuver, based on that.

• 45:28Dave Berke?

  That's why these simple moves are so complex in terms of implementation, getting it right. Because there's so many things going on, because even your physical ability in your aircraft changes based on your altitude and your airspeed. It's constantly a variable. It isn't, your F-18 just does this. Every single altitude, every single airspeed, every single throttle position has a different output capability that you're able to generate.

• 45:52Jocko Willink?

  Dramatic differences?

• 45:53Dave Berke?

  Yeah, it's very dramatic. What an airplane can do at 15,000 feet versus what an airplane can do at 5,000 feet is dramatic. Big differences.

• 46:00Jocko Willink?

  Percentage wise, just rough percentage wise?

• 46:03Dave Berke?

  You probably have, your turn radius is probably a third the size at low altitude than it would be up at altitude. So instead of you're talking 3,000 to 4,000 feet, you're talking closer to, and I'll just keep it generic, but you know, 1,000 to 1,500 window. Much, much, much smaller.

• 46:20Jocko Willink?

  Okay, so we get done with our first three engagements. On my first flight, I did, I did whatever job, you know, I did a pretty crappy job because no one does it the first time.

• 46:33Dave Berke?

  That's right.

• 46:33Jocko Willink?

  Okay, so now we come back in for the debrief. And what do we look, are we looking at a dry erase board? Are we picking up the little planes with the sticks on them?

• 46:43Dave Berke?

  Both. You're looking at a straight up dry erase board with colored pens?

• 46:47Jocko Willink?

  Do we have video?

• 46:48Dave Berke?

  Yep, and we got video. We've got the, what's called the HUD view, essentially the first person view of the pilot's view of both aircraft.

• 46:56Jocko Willink?

  Do you replay like the radar as well, or not really?

• 47:00Dave Berke?

  Not in the one-on-one phase?

• 47:01Jocko Willink?

  Because it's two dimensional?

• 47:02Dave Berke?

  Yeah, well, it's not that it's two dimensional, it's that, you know, there's only one aircraft. So in terms of how you're managing that system is not that important. When you account for how well you shot your weapons, you might look at that. But 95% of what you're looking at is just the altitude and the airspeed and the angle of attack of each airplane through that pilot's view.

• 47:21Jocko Willink?

  Okay, so now you're debriefing me. How much do I, as the student? What percentage, you go, okay, Jaco, what'd you see up there? You've got, how many points do you have on your checklist?

• 47:34Dave Berke?

  Me and the mistakes that I made? Instructor.

• 47:37Dave Berke?

  Twenty.

• 47:38Jocko Willink?

  Okay, how many do I get? How many do you say? You tell me to debrief. How many do I? And I'm a humble guy and I have a good attitude and I'm trying to give you a good percentage. Do I get? Do I get seven? Do I get 10?

• 47:49Dave Berke?

  I was gonna say five or six on day one. You're gonna get five or six. You're gonna get the big ones. You're gonna get the big ones. Like again, you know these maneuvers. You've been flying F-18s for three years. You've been through a training course. You're gonna get all the big ones for the most part, you know, here and there we we some folks kind of get overwhelmed. But for the most part, you've got the big ones.

• 48:07Jocko Willink?

  You're now doing an assessment of me like this is just in your own head. Cause are we paired up for the whole time? We're at Top Gun. Is it you and me?

• 48:15Dave Berke?

  No.

• 48:15Jocko Willink?

  No, but you're gonna see me.

• 48:17Dave Berke?

  Yep.

• 48:17Jocko Willink?

  Five more times, eight more times, whatever the numbers. You're looking at me and you're going eh. Or you're going hmm, guy's got some potential. He's not bad. Is that based on my experience? Is that based on uh uh the time I've gotten the aircraft? Is it based on hey, this guy's got a little natural ability? Is it all the above?

• 48:40Dave Berke?

  I think it's all the above, man. It is. I've listened to you talk about this when you first lock up.

• 48:46Jocko Willink?

  In jujitsu.

• 48:47Dave Berke?

  In jujitsu and you you don't know 100% of this other guy, but you know a lot right away, like right away. It's the exact same thing almost on that first turn when I'm the instructor. And I'm looking over my shoulder on your very first break turn. I'll get about 75% of what I need to know about you in that turn. And sometimes it's like, oh, man, okay.

• 49:10Jocko Willink?

  This is gonna be lots of learning.

• 49:12Dave Berke?

  Yeah, and that sounds like damn, that was that was pretty good. And you can feel that in a very same way in an airplane. It does not tell the whole story, but it gives you a really good cue and a really good indicator of who that person is in terms of flying the airplane and that's a big part of it. But I am much less concerned about how well you flew your machine. I am about how well you could explain what happened. And so the debrief is still a huge part of what my assessment is about you and I won't really know what that debrief is gonna be like until we get in there. But if you show me, if we lock up and I feel like you're in the game and you fly a really good airplane. I bet you the debrief is gonna be really solid.

• 49:53Dave Berke?

  If I'm out there with a kid who's all over the place, he can barely keep his plane where it needs to be. It's very likely his debrief is gonna be just as bad.

• 50:02Jocko Willink?

  You know what's interesting is this, I'm thinking about this idea of when you lock up with someone on the jujitsu mats of justice.

• 50:07Dave Berke?

  Yes, sir.

• 50:08Jocko Willink?

  You could lock up with nine different types of people.

• 50:15Jocko Willink?

  And they all feel totally different. But the indicators that you're getting are providing you with messaging that you have to have a high depth of knowledge to understand. My clear examples, you get the guy that's just super strong, right? And he's super strong, so you feel all this tension, but you know, as soon as you lock up with him, you go, oh, he's strong, he doesn't know what he's doing, right? Like, that's crazy that you can sense, he's really strong, but he doesn't have jujitsu.

• 50:54Jocko Willink?

  You lock up with someone that's all lanky and skinny and pale and just, and you lock up and they're weak, they're weak, and you lock up with them and you go, uh-oh, this guy's got some skills. You can tell that when you lock up, even though the messaging that you're getting to your brain is totally opposite, they're totally opposite. And then occasionally you get someone that you lock up and you're like, oh, this person's strong and they know jujitsu, this is gonna be fun, this is gonna be a challenge. But it's interesting that you can gather all that from, we just, you know, what that lock up and maybe a little bit of a, you know, a little bit of movement, I mean, I'm

• 51:36Jocko Willink?

  talking two seconds of movement, three seconds of movement, you're like, okay, this is gonna suck, this is gonna be hard, or, okay, I'm gonna weather the storm here, this guy's strong, but he's know what he's doing. That's a, I don't know if that's completely unique to jujitsu and maybe you're getting guys that, did you, do you notice, do you notice that level of understanding based on this guy's, you know, initial reactions?

• 52:00Dave Berke?

  You get a, you get a good read. The way you described it, I think is exactly how I would describe it, you get a good read. It's, it doesn't determine the outcome, you don't know everything, but in those, in, in, I'll, I'll call it the, you said first three, four seconds? It's really the first one or two turns. You watch a couple of turns out of a guy, you know what you're dealing with for the most part, and you know what a good turn looks like, and you know what a weak turn looks like. And if a guy gives you two weak turns. You kind of know how it's gonna play out.

• 52:28Jocko Willink?

  What does a good turn look like? What does a bad turn look like?

• 52:31Dave Berke?

  A good turn versus a bad turn is, a good turn is his,

• 52:38Dave Berke?

  his angle towards you is exactly where it's supposed to be. There's no too high or no too low. It's exactly on the plane that it's supposed to be, down to the degree. And you're like, wow, like he gave me, he gave away nothing in that turn.

• 52:49Jocko Willink?

  Because I can oversteer?

• 52:51Dave Berke?

  You can, you can oversteer.

• 52:52Jocko Willink?

  I can understeer.

• 52:53Dave Berke?

  That's right. You can do both. You can pull not enough, you can pull too much, you can overturn, you can underturn. You could be a little late on your after burger. You could be a little early on your after burger and get going a little too fast and it opens up your circle even bigger, which gives me even more room. And so the margin of that, of the four or five things that you're in control of, you gotta get them.

• 53:14Jocko Willink?

  Wait, now, hold on.

• 53:15Dave Berke?

  Yeah, yeah, yeah.

• 53:15Jocko Willink?

  You just said it gives you more room. It gives you more room, cuz I had, I thought you, I thought you wanted to have more room. Oh, no, you want to close. Okay, I got it. I got it. Nope. It's definitely confusing to me.

• 53:29Dave Berke?

  Yeah, and, and I, I need to kind of, maybe as we keep talking, I'll try to,

• 53:36Dave Berke?

  there's a lot of what we're talking about here in this one against one, that's, that's really cool and, and reveals a lot of things. But it's a really small part of what we're asking folks to do at Top Gun and what you're really trying to train to. And I need to just explain it a little bit more simply and, and, and more rudimentary in a way that, hey, what the objectives are. So that as we talk more about what Top Gun is, it'll make more sense. It's just, it's not quite as simple as I want to close the gap and you want to close the gap. What I'm really trying to maneuver to is a place where I can employ a weapon. And now there's like, this weapon has this minimum max range. This weapon has this minimum max range. And I might try to start for a gunshot, but like, ugh, that's gonna be hard. So maybe I'll maneuver to a missile shot.

• 54:18Dave Berke?

  Well, this missile has this envelope. Well, I'm outside of that, but this missile has another envelope. So there's a lot of overlapping things. I think the biggest takeaway is, is that in order for me as the defender, or you as the attacker, the offensive airplane, for either of us to succeed in our role, the margin of error at Top Gun is really small.

• 54:41Dave Berke?

  The capacity to identify your mistakes and those errors is what the real test is. And that happens in the debrief, but you can fly a plane against another aircraft and look over the horizon and watch you fly. I could fly against you and I can tell from the way you move your plane through the sky, how good you are. And I can see it and I can feel it and I can watch it and I can calculate it. And I can, most of the time, in the first two turns, tell you exactly how the fight's gonna play out. Now, if you show up and you give me, those first two turns are every bit as good as mine, now it's like, man, I don't know how this is gonna, now you're in a real fight. Student against instructor, it just doesn't happen.

• 55:22Jocko Willink?

  Yes.

• 55:22Dave Berke?

  They just can't bring that level of capability and that performance. You're never contemplating the outcome. You're mostly contemplating how well they minimize their errors and how well they optimize their performance to give away as little as possible.

• 55:36Jocko Willink?

  Okay, so in the debrief, you're like, hey, uh, you know, you, you pulled too hard. Here's what happened. Look right here, here, you see, you see this? You pulled too hard. That's why I'm drifting out of the screen or whatever, because you pulled too hard.

• 55:50Dave Berke?

  Yeah.

• 55:52Jocko Willink?

  Is this something, I go, okay, cool, got it. Is it, is it a relatively easy thing for me to note and I'm learning it? It's like, oh, I mean, in jiu jitsu, I'd say, hey, Echo, you know, you're, uh, you need to get, you need to squeeze your knees together, right? On an arm lock, hey, you, you, you could have done better, but you, you, your knees were loose. Squeeze your knees next time. And that's something he can factually start doing, like at that next arm lock. He, he tries it again and boom, he tightens the knees and he gets it. So this is a similar level of correction and ability to, to make those corrections.

• 56:23Dave Berke?

  Yeah, it's almost immediate, because everything I'm telling you, you understand. I'm not teaching you a concept and I'm not showing you a move that you don't know. I'm revealing a little bit of an error that, you know, hey, what you did here was just like, hey, you need it, you need to have your hips here and you need to have your arm here. But you, you get that, you're like, oh, man, I can actually recall that my hips weren't where you said. That makes sense now that I'm seeing this. And typically, the way you would have that work is, hey, do you think you're early or late on this entry here? And I go, I'm super late. I'm like, yeah, why do you think you're late? Well, first I saw your airplane kind of move, which tells me I'm late. But I also look up and you're doing this airspeed 470. Hey, you know, if you're doing 470, you should have turned already, right?

• 57:06Dave Berke?

  So what's the, hey, I need to start this turn sooner. And I need to look for different things. And he can go out in the very next flight and almost immediately make that correction.

• 57:15Jocko Willink?

  So that's good. So where we're at right there is I liked, I caught this.

• 57:21Jocko Willink?

  I saw your airplane move, so I knew I was late. I've said this about jujitsu. If you have to think about the move, you're too late. If I take a second, if I go, oh, Echo's arm is available right now. I think I'm going to go for it. He already defended it.

• 57:39Dave Berke?

  Yeah.

• 57:40Jocko Willink?

  I had to have felt it and acted on it. Same thing?

• 57:44Dave Berke?

  That's exactly the same thing.

• 57:45Jocko Willink?

  What do you see?

• 57:46Dave Berke?

  Yeah.

• 57:47Jocko Willink?

  What do you see? What's a little indicator?

• 57:48Dave Berke?

  So the indicator is if I'm far enough away, as you're turning, so you're offensive. If I'm far enough away and you're watching me and you're looking for a cue on when you should start your turn. If I'm far enough away, I kind of just, I appear to just be rotating in the sky. Cause I'm so far, you don't see it, you don't see the lateral movie. You don't see my airplane moving across the sky, almost appear to be stationary. But the closer I get, and you can picture this, like seeing something far away doesn't have a high crossing rate and something like a car. You look at a car a couple of miles away, you don't see it moving back and forth. And as it gets close, you see this movement back and forth and it's a lot easier to see. What we tell people is you look for the cue that when he stops being stationary in the sky and starts to move across the sky, you're at the range at which you should start to turn your airplane.

• 58:33Dave Berke?

  The problem is, is I'm sitting there staring at you going, okay, I'm waiting for him to move. I'm waiting for him, okay, I see him starting to move and then you're late. And so it's that visual cue of rotating to translating through the sky, which occurs at an exact range. It's, it's a mathematical range at which you can see that. You have about a second to be on time. And if you're a second early or a second late, you've missed that window. And if you're looking for it, it's too late.

• 59:05Jocko Willink?

  You're looking for the attitude. Is that the right word, the attitude of the aircraft?

• 59:12Dave Berke?

  No, you're looking for the way the aircraft moves. I would call it the crossing rate. So if I'm five miles away from you and I'm staring at you, you could be moving pretty aggressively, but I don't have to move my head to keep up with you. You're so far away, you're just a little dot, you're just moving. The closer I get, the more it's obvious, oh, he's actually moving back and forth. You know, these really small turns, actually, the closer you get, are huge turns. And so at some point, the turn of you rotating through the sky actually appears to be moving across the sky.

• 59:41Jocko Willink?

  Got it.

• 59:42Dave Berke?

  That range, I'll say it, roughly a mile, just keep it simple. That's the point at which you can, that transition from rotating to moving, that's about at that mile, you have to know where that is. As soon as that happens, you have to start turning. And I'm teaching you to look for that. Now, you already know, you already know what that is. You can explain it, you can teach it. But it's the ability to do it against an aircraft moving as dynamically and as aggressively as I'm going to be when you're fighting me, is where the challenge comes from. And to prepare for this, to come to school, a lot of the guys you've been flying with don't show you the optimal maneuvers.

• 1:00:26Dave Berke?

  They show you a pretty good maneuver, but not an ideal maneuver.

• 1:00:29Jocko Willink?

  And that's just because they're lack of ability?

• 1:00:30Dave Berke?

  They're just not as good. And, you know, you've talked about when guys like Dean train to go fight in the UFC, they don't just have one training partner. They have one guy who's exceptionally good at maybe this one thing, he's really good at grappling. Maybe this guy's really good at striking, maybe this guy's really good at jiu-jitsu, and he's going to train to be really good in all those things as opposed to just, his training partner, well, he's a little weak in this, but he's my training partner. Hey, if my training partner has some strengths here, but he's not great here, you're going to show up to Top Gun and we're talking about this one particular skill, you're going to get overwhelmed.

• 1:01:04Jocko Willink?

  All right. So how many flights do we do like this where we're just one on one?

• 1:01:10Dave Berke?

  Five, six.

• 1:01:12Jocko Willink?

  Do you ever go, as the instructor, do you ever go on offense? Or is that just too easy? Or is that part of it?

• 1:01:19Dave Berke?

  That's part of it. That's, that's the next flight.

• 1:01:21Jocko Willink?

  The next flight?

• 1:01:22Dave Berke?

  Yep. Once you-

• 1:01:23Jocko Willink?

  You don't let me get another crack at the title?

• 1:01:26Dave Berke?

  Well, if you, if your flight is so bad that you couldn't even stay behind me, we're gonna go do it again. But as soon as you prove to me, hey, you've demonstrated that you're good enough, you understand what's happening, that you can maintain this offensive position, we're moving on.

• 1:01:38Jocko Willink?

  Didn't you say zero people execute a good turn?

• 1:01:40Dave Berke?

  Zero.

• 1:01:41Jocko Willink?

  But the, so a marginal turn still keeps me in the game?

• 1:01:45Dave Berke?

  You're gonna have four different sets. So I'm hoping that each one gets a little bit better. Uh, if you have one of those three ranges that wasn't good, I'm gonna have you do it again. Hey, let's do that nine thousand foot one real quick. Let's do it again. Show, show me one more. And if you're in the window and then in the debrief, you can really explain to me what your errors were. And I truly think that you understand what those were. I don't need you to go do it again. If I finish the debrief and I can tell you're lost, I can tell you don't really know what happened and you didn't really execute and can't explain why, we're gonna go re-fly that until you do it again.

• 1:02:19Jocko Willink?

  How many out of 10, how many would you have to reload? Out of 10 pilots, how many do you have to reload and say, you know what?

• 1:02:26Dave Berke?

  Eight. Oh, maybe nine.

• 1:02:29Jocko Willink?

  Nine out of 10?

• 1:02:30Dave Berke?

  My, my, my class-

• 1:02:31Jocko Willink?

  Why'd you say is the next flight? We're already doing something else then. It sounds like we need to do this shit again.

• 1:02:36Dave Berke?

  Well, what we skipped is something I've mentioned to you once before. Um, most of those reloads, you don't even get to the debrief. We do what's called an immediate re-fly. We land, we go back and I say, Jaco, don't take off your flight gear. Sign for this airplane. We're going right back out and doing it again.

• 1:02:54Jocko Willink?

  Don't you want to tell me what I did wrong?

• 1:02:56Dave Berke?

  I'm gonna. And in, in the time that it takes to walk from the airplane to maintenance, to sign for the airplane and go back to the airplane in that 15 minutes, you're not gonna talk for the entire 15 minutes. Hey, I want you to start looking for this. You're consistently late. Look for this cue. Pay attention to this. Hey, I need you to slow down, relax. You're going too fast here. You're going too slow here. Take, and I'm gonna give you three or four things to think about and we're gonna go do it again. And that's usually enough to get you to kind of get back to your composure and get back to doing it again. In my first, when I went through as a student, only one student in my class got past the first flight on the first try. One guy.

• 1:03:32Jocko Willink?

  Was his name Dave?

• 1:03:33Dave Berke?

  It was not.

• 1:03:35Jocko Willink?

  That would have been pretty epic if it would have been.

• 1:03:37Dave Berke?

  It was pretty epic. It was not me. I was lucky enough that I had one re-fly. And it was that very first flight. I re-flew that first flight on immediate re-fly and I never re-flew a flight again, which was, which was kinda crazy.

• 1:03:51Jocko Willink?

  Did you kinda wanna get more re-flying so you get more time flying?

• 1:03:55Dave Berke?

  No, I didn't. I wanted to pass the flight on the first try. They, we could tell this story some of the time, but I got plenty of flight time. But I wanted to pass. I wanted to do well enough on my first flight to pass. That's what I wanted to do when I was there.

• 1:04:10Jocko Willink?

  Okay, so now we finished with this one-on-one.

• 1:04:13Dave Berke?

  Yep.

• 1:04:13Jocko Willink?

  What, what's... Well, we finished with the first flight. Now, so I was on offense. Now you're gonna go on offense and I'm trying to shake you.

• 1:04:23Dave Berke?

  Yeah, you're gonna be on defense. We're just gonna swap roles.

• 1:04:27Jocko Willink?

  And all I'm doing is doing a freaking tight turn. That's it. There's no shock. There's no drive, jive. There's no, it seems, why does it seem like that just, like I could do something a little bit better?

• 1:04:40Jocko Willink?

  Like, how come you guys couldn't think like me?

• 1:04:43Dave Berke?

  Yeah, I mean, I, I think the Jiu-Jitsu parallel is probably pretty good. If you and I are going out there and I'm like just gonna, and I just start getting wild with you and just turn some of these crazy things and, and I'm trying to throw these crazy moves your way to try to shake you. Is it really gonna be a problem for you?

• 1:04:57Jocko Willink?

  No.

• 1:04:57Dave Berke?

  It's, is it gonna make it easier for you?

• 1:04:59Jocko Willink?

  Yeah.

• 1:04:59Dave Berke?

  Yeah, it's gonna make it easier than if I just do like exactly what I'm supposed to do. And there's sort of one or two things that I really have to do. I have to put my body in this place. I have to put my weight in this place for this to work. And if I don't have those two, all the other stuff that I'm doing for you is just like, what are you doing, man? Like, it's just almost like, it's just, it, it does, it does nothing but make it easier for you to attack my position.

• 1:05:23Jocko Willink?

  That being said, if you're on defense as the instructor, you can do a, a break, a ditch, a deck, a deck transition and then another break and then another, like you can pile these moves on top of one another, right?

• 1:05:37Dave Berke?

  Oh yeah, I mean, this happens multiple times in a flight. Yeah, you're doing ditch and ditch and ditch and the, you're, that's happening several times. It's not just three moves. That, those moves might happen several times.

• 1:05:47Jocko Willink?

  So those are the moves then?

• 1:05:49Dave Berke?

  Yes.

• 1:05:49Jocko Willink?

  The moves are?

• 1:05:50Dave Berke?

  Those are the moves.

• 1:05:50Jocko Willink?

  So, in Jiu-Jitsu...

• 1:05:55Jocko Willink?

  There's a really easy way to explain this escaping them out, right? When you escape them out, you can either, basically, you can either oppa the guy over your left shoulder, over your right shoulder, you can knee escape, or you can elbow escape their right leg or their left leg, right? You can go in any one of those four spots. And, you know, this is actually Dean Lister material. You can go, so you have to try A first. When it doesn't work, you can try B. When that doesn't work, you can try C. When that doesn't work, you can try D. When that doesn't work, you go back to A. But the way you actually escape is A, D, B, C, D, B, C, B, D, D, B, A, C, B, D, boom, you're out. So this is the same thing?

• 1:06:38Dave Berke?

  Yeah, when you said, hey, teach me the moves. I'm making it simple, there's basically three moves. Now, you are going to apply them throughout that flight. But you're not going to come up with like, oh, man, I'm going to come up with some crazy thing that he's never seen before. It doesn't work, and it actually makes it worse for you. So if you're mounted and I'm trying to get you off, and I just am flailing, or I roll over on my stomach, or do some, as the offender, you're just like, dude, you're not helping. Just do A.

• 1:07:10Jocko Willink?

  Because truly, the best thing you can do is just do a break.

• 1:07:14Dave Berke?

  That's right.

• 1:07:14Jocko Willink?

  Best thing you can do.

• 1:07:15Dave Berke?

  That's the best thing you can do.

• 1:07:16Jocko Willink?

  The best thing you do is do a break, and then do a ditch.

• 1:07:18Dave Berke?

  Yeah.

• 1:07:18Jocko Willink?

  And then do another break.

• 1:07:19Dave Berke?

  Yep.

• 1:07:19Jocko Willink?

  And then do another ditch.

• 1:07:20Dave Berke?

  Yep.

• 1:07:20Jocko Willink?

  And then do another break.

• 1:07:22Dave Berke?

  Yeah.

• 1:07:22Jocko Willink?

  You only- And you're out of moves, by the way, the three moves.

• 1:07:25Dave Berke?

  Yeah, and listen, sometimes you can't do a ditch. If you're too close to the ground, the ditch isn't an option. It's not available to you. If you do it, you will die, period. So it is not in your repertoire.

• 1:07:36Jocko Willink?

  How much do you use a change of pace? Like, in basketball, you know, when you're dribbling down the court, you change pace, you go, you're going fast, then you slow down for a second, then you go fast again? Is there any of that?

• 1:07:46Dave Berke?

  Yeah, not really.

• 1:07:48Jocko Willink?

  Is that because it's too hard to control the rate of speed of the aircraft in a short enough time that it will make them react in a proper way?

• 1:07:55Dave Berke?

  Yeah, I think that's a big part of it. And so getting from fast to slow is pretty easy. Getting from slow to fast is harder. And so the change of pace to me is more about I'm gonna, I'm gonna try to get some airspeed back. Let's say I'm going 200 knots and I'd love to be 400 knots. I can't just go from 200 to 400. So I'm gonna gotta go to 220. And that may take a second and I'm gonna steal that 20 knots. And then we're gonna swirl around a little bit and then I'm gonna see an opportunity to go, oh, oh, oh, Jaco gave me a little bit of room here. I'm gonna go from 220 to 250 and that'll be three seconds. Boom, I got it. And I'm gonna steal that and I'm gonna get to 250 and I'm gonna, so that change of pace is me trying to steal.

• 1:08:37Dave Berke?

  But if you ever apply so much pressure to me effectively that I can't do that, I don't get that speed back. And you can actually fly an aggressive enough airplane to keep me from doing that. That I don't get to just steal that, to dictate the pace. So the pace of that of changing airspeeds, it comes at a pretty big cost. And so you have to do it really intelligently when you do that and steal it every chance you get.

• 1:09:02Jocko Willink?

  What about when Dan was talking about going vertical?

• 1:09:05Dave Berke?

  Yeah. So there's a really unique thing that they discovered at Top Gun, they talked about the egg, about this vertical fight, is the way your airplane maneuvers vertically, going from pointed up, so pointed high to low, is A, your airplane is typically very slow at the top of a loop, which makes sense. You lose that energy to get up there. So the slower you are, the smaller your radius is, so the tighter you can turn. But you also have something we call God's G. So it is pulling you back towards the ground. So the radius of your turn at the top of a loop is way smaller than your radius at the bottom of a loop. Because you're fighting against G going from low to high. G is helping you going from high to low.

• 1:09:46Dave Berke?

  So if there's ever a place where you're above someone and they're below you and all the other factors are relatively even. Your turn at the top is better than his turn at the bottom and it's typically a more advantageous place to be. And so the key would be is how can I maneuver to a place where I can climb above you without putting myself at risk to your weapons and then maneuver above you and take advantage of that free G-force that's available to me going from high to low, where you're fighting against that and you're losing it going from low to high. And that's kind of the goal of that vertical fight that he described.

• 1:10:21Jocko Willink?

  So is that something that you would do?

• 1:10:23Dave Berke?

  Yeah, I mean, that's something you could do. So he brought up an interesting thing and you mentioned this with Boyd. I think the way you said it was exactly right, man. So F-18, F-16, F-15, MiG-29, SC-27, all these airplanes in this generational world that I was in at Top Gun during that time, they're all pretty good. And you know what? The F-16 is a little bit faster than an F-18. But the F-15's got a little bit better turn rates. And it's no different than, hey, maybe you're stronger than Echo. But Echo's got, you know, a little better flexibility. And maybe you've got some capacity that he doesn't. But none of that

• 1:11:07Dave Berke?

  is exclusive, meaning you don't get to just beat him because you're stronger. Because he could counter that strength that you have with something that maybe you don't have. So on paper, all these airplanes have different strengths and weaknesses, but none of them are so absolute that you get to just beat me because your machine is better than me. It's always, always, always comes down to the pilot. Depending on what type of plane I'm flying against, that vertical move is an awesome move. Some airplanes, it's the last thing I want to do, so I won't go up there at all.

• 1:11:36Jocko Willink?

  When Boyd comes to his conclusion, wasn't our aircraft in Korea worse than the other aircraft?

• 1:11:45Dave Berke?

  In most ways, yes. Most of the ways.

• 1:11:47Jocko Willink?

  Then how was that not just a red flag that, hey, actually, it depends on what the pilot does?

• 1:11:53Dave Berke?

  Well, in Boyd's defense, Boyd kinda understood that. Boyd had, the way Boyd explained it when he talked about EM theory that Dan was talking about, he explained it in somewhat of a different way. He also evolved into a different airplane, the Phantom. But Boyd, make no mistake, Boyd understood that just because your machine turned faster, climbed higher, didn't mean you're gonna win. Boyd understood that, without a doubt.

• 1:12:19Jocko Willink?

  Because we know that there's other areas that we're stronger in.

• 1:12:22Dave Berke?

  Other areas that we're stronger in, and I can actually assess in real time, how well you're performing your aircraft. So, I can observe and go, "Hey, your airplane can actually do this, but you're not making it do that." So guess what? You're essentially giving that to me. So the strength on paper that says, you know, you can jump this high, well, in theory, you should have that extra three, that three or four inches that you can jump, but I can't. But you're not jumping that high. And I can see that and assess that, and I'm gonna take that from you, and I make that your advantage, is no longer your advantage.

• 1:12:58Jocko Willink?

  So how does Boyd then get to, "Hey, don't fight a MiG with a F4 Phantom?"

• 1:13:04Dave Berke?

  I mean, the way I perceive that is a failure to recognize, A, how much training matters. How much, how critical it is to be able to observe all these tiny little nuanced things that by themselves may not appear to be a big deal. But if I find 20 of them in a fight and I put them all together, it's a massive advantage. And what they, what, what science says an airplane can do, isn't the limiting factor. Now, there are some limits, but when you build an EM diagram, you don't account for Dan Pedersen's tail slide. It's not in the EM diagram. It's not in the science, because the science says the airplane is no longer flying.

• 1:13:47Dave Berke?

  And these guys are like, "Yeah, that may be true, but watch this. I can go pure vertical to my tail, the airplane slides back down. I can pitch it around with my rudder. None of that is in the diagram. And I can make my airplane do something the paper says it can't. And when I do it to you, you will not know how to react, and I'm gonna kill you." So that combination of the mentality and the mindset, with the recognition that a fight is 20 things pieced together, and all of them together is how you get to the outcome, is why Top Gun is what Top Gun is.

• 1:14:19Jocko Willink?

  If I'm, if I'm looking at that, like I just don't understand how I don't figure out that I can beat a MiG with an F4 if I know, well, let me take it one step further. How do the engineers not know this? How do the engineers not say, hey, here's, here's what you can do with one of these aircraft?

• 1:14:41Dave Berke?

  In that era, um, I think the way Dan Yank describes it is

• 1:14:50Dave Berke?

  they didn't, they didn't have the right mentality. These airplanes were not even designed to be dogfighters. There was a, they were convinced that that era was over. That's kind of why guys like in the air force, guys like Robin Olds are such legends because in the face of an entire industry and in the face of an entire era of, of the military mindset. He recognized that the value, you know, the, the thing that makes us better is how well we train and how, how aggressive we are with our machines. Not what you tell me the machine can do. And that's why guys like Yank and the dudes that started Top Gun and guys like the Robin Olds of the world. That's why those guys are legendary because they

• 1:15:31Dave Berke?

  fought against a trend that said, this is a machine that's not designed to turn. If you turn with a MiG, you're going to lose. It's like, well, we're turning with MiGs and I'm not going to lose, so I'm going to figure this thing out. And some guys did, and that was the origin of Top Gun. Is when everybody else saying you can't do this, he said, not only can we, we have to. And that's pretty cool.

• 1:15:50Jocko Willink?

  The, the other, I'm just thinking of, of the test pilots, right? Cause, cause those guys are taking these birds and the, the engineers are saying it can do XYZ and they're taking it way beyond those limitations.

• 1:16:05Dave Berke?

  Especially in that era.

• 1:16:07Jocko Willink?

  That's what I'm saying. Because nowadays, maybe with commute, computer modeling and AI, you can maybe get a little closer, but back then it was like, okay, here's the bird. Here's what we think it can do. What do you got?

• 1:16:18Dave Berke?

  Dude, those guys back then, the Jaeger era, those guys would get in the airplanes and even know if they were going to fly. I mean, what they knew on paper versus what was gonna happen, there was a big gap there. Those test pilots of that generation, you know, that right stuff generation. I mean, they were doing crazy things and having the discoveries they made and what they were able to do. Now, there is so much more modeling, so much more science behind it that, look, there's still a community out there, they're doing incredible things. But typically, when you strap on an airplane, you have a pretty good idea of how it's gonna perform and how it's gonna behave, nowhere near like what they were dealing with in that era.

• 1:16:54Jocko Willink?

  How did you feel when you, when you were flying the F-22 and the F-35? How, how much were you saying, hey, you guys told me X, Y, Z, let me give you the real numbers over here from, from Good Deal?

• 1:17:04Dave Berke?

  Yeah, well, that, that was kind of my life in the Raptor. I was an operational test pilot, so not a developmental guy. That's the, you know, there's developmental tests, which is literally they build it and they want to just go see if this thing works. Our job is once they've figured out the machine worked, which is the Raptor, operational test pilots go out there and figure out how to use this thing. And operationally test it in operationally relevant environments. So not the science, but the operational piece of it. And you, look, you had to know the science, you had to know what the airplane could do mechanically. But the coolest thing about being an operational pilot was taking an airplane like a Raptor and then finding everything you didn't like about it, everything you thought was wrong about it, everything that the science said was good, but you knew wouldn't work in combat. And we got to identify and fix those things.

• 1:17:47Dave Berke?

  And that was awesome, because you took this awesome machine and put it in, in relevant operational scenarios and you beat the crap out of it to see how it would do.

• 1:17:56Jocko Willink?

  Give me an example, unclassified, of like, hey, you took your Raptor out and you said, you know what? You need to make some adjustments over here. And, I mean, I know the acquisition systems in the military is like crazy. Would you get real time fixes on these birds?

• 1:18:13Dave Berke?

  Yeah, some would get pretty quick. You know, we had to do a lot of prioritize and execute back when we were doing operational tests. So we'd get this airplane, it'd have, we'd have this list of 30 or 40 things on this tracker of all the things wrong with it. And oftentimes, what we thought was the number one problem would take the longest and cost the most money. But problem five, six, and seven combined were less than problem one and they could fix it in a matter of days. And so we hit problem five, six, and seven and got really quick turnarounds and made a ton of incremental changes that over time, over a two, three year period, completely changed the capability of the airplane. We didn't always get everything we wanted. We didn't always get all the money we needed and we'd always have time to make all the fixes.

• 1:18:57Dave Berke?

  But we had a really cool feedback loop with the engineers to fix the things that we said were important and they could fix it really fast.

• 1:19:05Jocko Willink?

  Okay, I'll run you back to Top Gun.

• 1:19:07Dave Berke?

  Alright.

• 1:19:09Jocko Willink?

  You're putting me through training.

• 1:19:10Dave Berke?

  Yep.

• 1:19:11Jocko Willink?

  And you're judging Echo and me.

• 1:19:15Dave Berke?

  Okay.

• 1:19:16Jocko Willink?

  And you get your first lockup with both of us. You do your little assessment. What prioritize and execute, what's the number one differentiator between Echo's? Top line capability. So you're going to get Echo. Your new goal is just to train Echo and train me to be as good as we possibly can get. What is the, what's the quality that you're like, oh, Echo's good at this. He's going to be able to excel in this. And he's going to do a little bit better than Jaco because I can see Jaco's kind of lagging in his ability to X.

• 1:19:52Dave Berke?

  Yeah. I would say recall. Because remember, I'm teaching an instructor. I'm teaching a teacher here. My job is to make you and Echo teachers in this, not just how to fly the airplane, but how to teach flying the airplane, is recall. Can you tell me what happened? All the things that happened. And recall is connected very closely to something we call situational awareness. So do you really know all the things that are going out there in three dimensional space with all the airplanes in real time? The more you can process what's happening, the more you can recall what's happening, the better you are going to be able to teach this and understand what actually is going on. You could be really

• 1:20:34Dave Berke?

  good in an airplane and maybe a little bit better than him, just pure moving that machine around. But if you don't really know what's happening around you the way that he does, eventually he's going to outperform you.

• 1:20:44Jocko Willink?

  So it sounds like I need to have the ability to detach.

• 1:20:49Dave Berke?

  I would agree with that.

• 1:20:50Jocko Willink?

  Did you identify that while you were in the, in Top Gun in the Marine Corps? Did you ever identify like, hey, oh, I can see this guy gets all wrapped up, doesn't know what's happening, but this guy over here, he's, you know, he separates his brain from his body and what's happening and he can see the big picture.

• 1:21:08Dave Berke?

  Yeah.

• 1:21:09Jocko Willink?

  I mean, we use- What did you call it?

• 1:21:10Dave Berke?

  We used-

• 1:21:11Jocko Willink?

  Situational awareness?

• 1:21:12Dave Berke?

  Well, the, the term of situational awareness, when people lost situational awareness or no longer did what you just described, we just call it, we'd say, looking through the soda straw. I mean, which is very similar to, you know, we, I think you guys use the phrase, front sight.

• 1:21:25Jocko Willink?

  Well, front sight focus isn't the best because front sight focus is, is a positive thing because you're doing it in order to aim your gun. We say, you're, you're target fixated, but then we say, you know, you're staring down the scope of your weapon, which that is exactly what you're talking about. You're looking at it through a straw.

• 1:21:41Dave Berke?

  Same thing, yeah. And I think it's just, just same, different phrase, same exact meaning. What that typically meant is that Echo or you, whoever's looking through the soda straw, would just start to stare at one piece of information. And in an airplane, you got a whole bunch of things going on inside and outside of the airplane, plus you're hearing things. So you've got all these different inputs and I could tell when you are, or Echo's looking through the soda straw, without even seeing you, because I'll say something to you and you either won't respond, you know, you'll respond really late, you'll do something wrong.

• 1:22:12Jocko Willink?

  You know, really- I hate this. I hate this. You know why I hate this? Because I know it's on video, right? It's on video, like, you're like, oh, here's me calling you, you know, here's me calling you again, here's me calling you again, and I'm going, oh.

• 1:22:25Dave Berke?

  Yeah.

• 1:22:25Jocko Willink?

  I know I was not detached.

• 1:22:27Dave Berke?

  It's crazy.

• 1:22:28Jocko Willink?

  What do you tell me? So we get back, I was staring through the soda straw, what do you tell me? A, what, what's your debrief, and then what's your, what's your corrective measures that you're going to give me?

• 1:22:37Dave Berke?

  When you're looking through the soda straw?

• 1:22:38Jocko Willink?

  Yep.

• 1:22:39Dave Berke?

  So the-

• 1:22:39Jocko Willink?

  We get done with the flight, I'm looking through the soda straw, I didn't respond to your calls, I missed a bunch of stuff, what do you tell me?

• 1:22:44Dave Berke?

  So the way, I, I'm going to have a pretty good idea in the, while we're flying around that you're doing that, and I'm going to know because you're missing calls, you're not going the way you're supposed, you're not hearing things, you're not doing things. But when we get back, the first thing I'm going to do is say, hey, tell me what happened on that flight. Why don't you just draw it out for me? Just run me through what you saw. And that is the standard debrief. The first thing we do is recreate the flight and you get a marker, you get up in front of the flight, you get red pens and blue pens, you get good guys and bad guys, and you just need to draw it. We started here, we went here, you started here and, and that may be two airplanes, that may be 16 airplanes, but I'm gonna need you to just show me your recall. And that's gonna be my first real indicator, other than me watching in real time, that you've, you've missed some things.

• 1:23:27Dave Berke?

  And so after you draw it up and just say, this is what happened, then we're gonna put up the tapes. So before I get into your, and say, hey, you missed this and missed that, what I really am gonna do is give you a little bit of a chance to now watch the tape and go, ooh, hang on, stop tape for a second. I drew that we went off to the north and turned here with this group, but I'm watching the tape. Hey, that didn't happen. Now, I as an instructor own, okay, that's a really good sign. Jaco maybe wasn't all together there, but Jaco can self-assess, he's detached in the debrief and he's, he's self-aware. The likelihood that you're gonna go out and get better on the next flight is actually really high. And I don't need to give you a ton of debrief and I might reinforce and go, hey, that's a good catch, man. Listen for the audio on the next call, did you hear the call that there was a maneuver into the north?

• 1:24:11Dave Berke?

  And he's like, no, man, Jaco says he missed it. Okay, these are all good things. If you draw it up, clearly you're missing things, you run through the entire tape and don't make the connection, now you and I need to start back over. Then I need to draw what's up there and, and I'm gonna put some, some big circles on the board and go, hey, we're gonna really analyze this engagement here and I'm gonna play the tape and go, okay, stop, what do you see? Where's this airplane? Where'd you depict it? And I'm gonna show you that you missed something. And I'm gonna have to kinda run through that whole thing in detail with all this data to show what happened, to try to get you to realize that you're missing things. And then what I'm gonna tell you moving forward is, you are more likely to start to lose situational awareness after we get past to this phase.

• 1:24:54Dave Berke?

  So once the first turn happens, you tend to get too connected or too engaged or too boresighted on this thing. And I can start to figure out what triggers you to get emotional, what triggers you to get boresighted, what triggers you to look through the soda straw, and to start to call those out for you and get you to think about it before we go do it. And then see how well you can adapt to that. How well can you actually pull yourself out of that, detach, and we'll go do that again and see what you do in the next one.

• 1:25:20Jocko Willink?

  So I, you know, because you're not in an airplane, because you're, you know, in a fake urban environment, or you're out in the desert. Like this is a conversation I had more times than I can count with a young leader. Hey, man, you're you're all caught up in this. Here's what you need to do. You need to put your weapon in high port. You need to take a step back off the line. You need to turn your head and look around.

• 1:25:44Dave Berke?

  Yeah.

• 1:25:44Jocko Willink?

  So it seems like that is a clearer form of instruction. It's an actual thing that you can do because it's a different environment. Is there anything that you could give them more directly to get them to take a step back? Put their head on a swivel, look around, detach. Is there anything better that you could tell them? You're I see what you're doing with, hey, here's all the things you missed. And I did that, too. I would do it with my little pocket recorder. And the other thing we had, we had these laser gun, we had these laser tag system. And they had little GPSs on them and those little GPSs would track where you are. And then we could replay the whole thing on Google Earth.

• 1:26:27Jocko Willink?

  And these guys would have no idea. I didn't know my element was over there. I didn't know this guy. And so so that's the same thing. That's the same technique of, listen, man. You didn't know this element was over here. You didn't know that the assaulters already left the building and you didn't see where you didn't know this stuff was going on. And they go, yeah, I need to I need to pull back. But then I'd say, listen, man. You need to get off your gun. You need to go to high port. You need to start looking around. You need to start paying attention to what's going on, big picture. Is there any instruction you can give like that while I'm flying an F-18?

• 1:27:01Dave Berke?

  It's pretty uncommon that in the middle of a training flight, that I as an instructor, I'm going to give you cues to do the things that you're supposed to do.

• 1:27:12Dave Berke?

  There are a few exceptions.

• 1:27:13Jocko Willink?

  But I mean, I could do it after the after the op. I mean, this isn't always this isn't always like, hey, I'm right there. I'm after the op. I'm going, bro. Oh, you can't let this happen. Here's what you need to do.

• 1:27:23Dave Berke?

  All the time, all the time. And that's sort of the beauty of the tapes. You know, one of the crazy things is the way that the tape machines used to run before is the cameras would be kind of connected to the canopy and record the screen. And then the reflection of the screen, you could see the pilot's head, literally see his head. And I go, hey, listen, every time we're approaching a merge within 10 miles, I can see you staring at this display. At 10 miles. So what I want you to think on this, but every time you get and and the reason 10 miles is important is that we had a radio call that would come in and say, somebody would say 10 miles. And he wouldn't be hearing that call. 10 miles is the call that's telling everybody, start looking outside. Start literally looking up and out so you can stop looking at your screen

• 1:28:06Dave Berke?

  and start finding the actual airplane itself. Hey, I want you, I want you to give the 10 mile call. You're going to be the 10 mile call today and get that guy to, and I would say this is a way to get you out of the cockpit and up and out. And we would, it probably had 100 different tricks and 100 different ways to give a guy something to think about, hey, this is where you get wrapped up and this is a tool and a technique that you can use to take yourself out of being too attached and to detach. 10 mile call is an awesome way to do that. An engage call is an awesome way to do that. Anything that you could help with that guy and, and the debrief, because these are good guys. These are guys you built really strong. 10 weeks is a long time to share a lot of space, share a little space with somebody. You got to know these students really,

• 1:28:48Dave Berke?

  really well. You could have really honest, straightforward conversations. You could build really good relationships. They would come over on Saturdays. You'd barbecue and you'd just talk flying and you could tell them all the things and you wanted them to succeed and you would give them everything you could, you could to help them get better.

• 1:29:03Jocko Willink?

  And what did you call this? Recall?

• 1:29:05Dave Berke?

  Recall. Can you tell me what happened?

• 1:29:08Jocko Willink?

  Yeah. Which is the massive indicator for I'm detached and I'm actually paying attention to everything that's going on.

• 1:29:16Dave Berke?

  100%. If you are not detached, you will not, you won't know what's happening other than maybe what's happening inside your cockpit. But Top Gun isn't about just you and your airplane. It's you leading a formation of 16 planes. And you need to know what's going on with all those 16 planes. No diff, and, and I'm not saying that you have to know every step that they're taking, every turn that they're, you know, there are times that you were detached from your task unit and they're maneuvering, but you know what's happening. These guys are shifting to this building. These guys are heading up to the roof. These guys are bogged down. There's a problem over here. Hey, I need to now pull some resource over here because there's no resistance over here. And these guys are kind of doing nothing and shift them up. And that you can manage your task unit in real time and have a really good idea of what's going on with all of them without

• 1:30:01Dave Berke?

  being with any of them. And in the exact same way, that's completely trainable.

• 1:30:07Jocko Willink?

  Does, um, does athlete, how much does athletic ability play a role?

• 1:30:13Dave Berke?

  You know, I don't, I don't know if anybody has ever, that I've ever seen like the connection between that specifically, but

• 1:30:23Dave Berke?

  If you're a good athlete, you were probably a good pilot. And if you, you were a good pilot, you were probably a good athlete. And we used to say all the time, the, the joke would be when people were asking, should this guy come to Top Gun? The joke would be, hey, can you throw a football? That's the question we'd ask. And it was a little bit tongue in cheek because I don't really care if you can throw a football. But it was the connection between those, those two things. And it doesn't mean you had to be a superstar athlete. But you had to be athletic.

• 1:30:47Jocko Willink?

  It's physical.

• 1:30:48Dave Berke?

  It's physical. You had to be athletic. You had to be physical. You had to be, you, you had to not be afraid of conflict. And did I care if you were the captain of your football team in high, nobody cared about that stuff. But there was an absolute connection between being athletic and liking athletic competition and being good in the airplane.

• 1:31:06Jocko Willink?

  How about, um, how about eyesight, which I know back in the day was like the component Chuck Yeager, you know, could like P I D.

• 1:31:14Dave Berke?

  Yeah, yeah, yeah.

• 1:31:14Jocko Willink?

  Bogies. So before anyone was even close to seeing them. Same thing. I know you, I know you have really good eyesight.

• 1:31:22Dave Berke?

  I, I did at the time. I had, I had really uniquely good eyesight. I mean, I was picking off. I could see things in the eye chart that were really good. Back and certainly back in the day, that was everything because the only resource they had to find the enemy was their eyeballs. But I would tell you that it's, it's still really important. Eyesight was really important. Now, one of the major discoveries that the military came up with in recent decades was that they would let you wear glasses. So, you know, if you did have good eyesight, they would let you fix it. But eyesight was really critical because there's a phase in every fight that transitions from the systems to the visual.

• 1:32:00Dave Berke?

  And that transition was really hard. It's really hard to look at your screen and then look up and try to account for where that person is in space. Clouds and all sorts of different things. And so the sooner you could see that with your eyes, the better. You know, technology has helped without a bunch. There's queues now, little boxes and you, you can do that. Eyesight's still important. It's not as important as it was before. But it was something that if you, if you had, if you had good eyes and could determine what's going on at farther ranges, you'd have an advantage.

• 1:32:30Jocko Willink?

  How much does luck play a role?

• 1:32:35Dave Berke?

  Luck plays a role. It does. Um, I'm a beneficiary of a ton of good luck, you know, all through my entire life. You know, and there's a bunch of cliches and catchphrases about what luck really is.

• 1:32:49Dave Berke?

  Luck by itself would never, would never be enough. Just getting lucky and, and you know, you'd come back and been, man, we got lucky on that one. But typically the lucky things that worked out, you can almost always connect it to a whole bunch of things you did right to get to the point where some things just worked out in your favor. So yeah, do guys get lucky? Did I get lucky? Yeah, I got lucky all the time. But rarely was that by itself an attribute or a circumstance that was very reliable.

• 1:33:18Jocko Willink?

  Can you utilize, okay, so in jujitsu and really in any endeavor, you can, you can wear someone out. Like in jujitsu, you call it gassing them. I, I would imagine that that is a strategy that you would have, hey, I've got a bigger gas tank than you, or I can make you do maneuvers that are going to burn more gas. Is that a thing?

• 1:33:40Dave Berke?

  Yeah, dude, no, it's totally, the MiG 29 was notoriously bad on gas, notoriously. You know what the next worst airplane for gas is?

• 1:33:48Jocko Willink?

  F-18.

• 1:33:48Dave Berke?

  The F-18. So we knew going into our fights that we were always at a disadvantage. And when bigger planes showed up, like we talked about the SU-27, that thing had a ton of gas. It's 100% a consideration, 100%. And you think, you would think about it all the time. Not to mention, in naval aviation, you gotta go back to the ship. You're always managing your gas. You had enough, you had enough gas to go back and get back aboard the ship, not some giant airport with, you know, 18,000 feet of runway. You had to go back and land aboard the carrier. And that was a gas critical endeavor.

• 1:34:21Jocko Willink?

  How many, how many carrier landings do you have?

• 1:34:24Dave Berke?

  Maybe 450.

• 1:34:28Dave Berke?

  It seems like a lot. It's not that much, you know, there are carrier guys out there with eight, nine hundred landings, some, some close to a thousand. So it seems like a lot, but there's plenty of guys with a lot more than me.

• 1:34:39Jocko Willink?

  Did you ever, were you ever comfortable with it?

• 1:34:44Dave Berke?

  I, I got comfortable during the day for sure. To be totally honest, I never got comfortable with the night landings. Never got to, got that comfortable. When I did Afghanistan right after nine eleven, we were on that, we were the night carrier. So all of our operations for about six months were at night. Just by pure, just doing it every single day, it got a lot better. But the night landing was always in the back of your mind. It was always something to kind of contend with psychologically that you knew it was out there.

• 1:35:18Jocko Willink?

  This is the first time reading, reading Dan's book was, look, I've been told a thousand time, a postage stamp and all these other things. And, you know, it's so hard. It's the hardest thing and blah, blah, blah. This book was the first time I really said to myself, yeah, it has gotta be a gut check every single time.

• 1:35:40Dave Berke?

  Yeah. Look, I've done a decent amount of flying. I've flown a bunch of different airplanes. I got to fly with all the services. A night carrier landing, there's really nothing else like it. And it is a gut check. And it was a gut check every single time, no matter how many you've done. I got well over a hundred night landings, which on a ratio of day to night, like that's a lot of night landings because I happen to be on a night carrier, which most deployments, you don't spend the entire deployment at night. And I just happened to be on one of those. It is, it's a gut check for everybody. The pilot, the flight deck, the LSO, the ship, the night page on a ship, on an aircraft carrier in the sea, there is nothing in aviation like it. And it is a gut check for everybody.

• 1:36:23Dave Berke?

  And it never gets better. It never gets easier.

• 1:36:26Jocko Willink?

  So talk, talk me through a little night carrier landing.

• 1:36:29Dave Berke?

  I will. Yeah. Night carrier landing is, is kind of the great equalizer in, in naval aviation. That's a thing that's out there that every fighter pilot is going to have to do. And no matter what has gone on in your mission, whether it's just a straight up, just super simple training mission, you could have been by yourself just flying around, or you just did six hours in Iraq or Afghanistan or somewhere else, you're going to come back and you're going to land aboard the ship. And no matter what you've got going on, that, that always sits in the back of your mind. You've got to plan for it. You've got to account for it. You've got to manage your fuel for it. And you've got to recognize that more than likely, the hardest part of your flight, no matter what you're doing, more often than not, it's going

• 1:37:13Dave Berke?

  to be the last thing you do. When, when you're coming back to the field and you know you're coming back to Marine Corps Station Miramar or wherever, you're not even thinking about the landing.

• 1:37:22Jocko Willink?

  That's just a no brainer.

• 1:37:23Dave Berke?

  It's just a no brainer. Landing a regular plane on a regular runway, most of the time is just, it's just not hard. It's just, and it's certainly not something you're going to sweat like, man, I hope I can, I hope I can land this time. Like, it's just not something you think about. So, once you figure out how to land an airplane like a, like an F-18 on a regular runway, you just don't really think about it too much. Carrier is totally different. And so, it's something you have to think about. You've got to compartmentalize. You've got to detach from it, but you can't ignore that it's out there either. So, you've got to think about your fuel. You've got to think about your wingman. You've got to think about the other 20 airplanes that are going to be landing on the ship at the same time as you and the coordination that goes along with that. And this is a huge choreography

• 1:38:04Dave Berke?

  that you, the ship, and the other airplanes have to manage and coordinate. And typically, typically, the goal is to do it either NOCOM or MINCOM. There's very little talking going on in this coordination. You might get to sign an altitude, and you might get to sign what's called a push time, when you commence your approach. And that may be all the talking you get up until the time that you're about to land. So, you're kind of alone, you're self-contained, and you've got to manage all these things. So, night landings are...

• 1:38:39Dave Berke?

  Look, man, they're legit and they never get easy. They never get comfortable.

• 1:38:43Jocko Willink?

  The, the idea, I've said this before, right? When people say, hey, what makes the seals good? Well, I think the thing that makes the seals good is that we have to work in the water. And the water is the same thing. It's an equalizer. Every, every time you're in the water, you don't need an enemy to kill you when you're in the water. You, you can, the water itself can kill you. When you have to do a mission over the beach, swim in, you know, it's your weapons covered in sand, your radios get flooded. There's all, there's just all these things that happen. Doing a, doing a direct action mission from Humvees compared to doing a direct action mission that you swam over the beach.

• 1:39:23Jocko Willink?

  It's not even comparable. You could train, you know, you could take a, a high school, a, a, a football team. And you could train those guys in three or four days to do a pretty decent job doing a direct action mission.

• 1:39:41Jocko Willink?

  And they'd be able to pull it off. To get them to be able to come over, to, to launch from a, a, a ship. And take Zodiacs over the beach and get on the beach and change out into their new gear. And you, you, you'd need months. You'd need months. If not longer, you need, you need six months and you'd have a washout rate. You'd have people that are not capable. Cause look, on a football team, how many people on a football team? The whole team?

• 1:40:13Dave Berke?

  What, high school?

• 1:40:14Jocko Willink?

  Yeah. Let's go college.

• 1:40:16Dave Berke?

  Hundred, hundred five.

• 1:40:18Jocko Willink?

  A hundred five.

• 1:40:19Dave Berke?

  Total, yeah.

• 1:40:19Jocko Willink?

  Okay. So a hundred five that are going to train to do a land direct action mission. You're going to have five or six that can't do it. You know, they're, they're, they're, they got some issue. They're not safe. They're just not with it, whatever, whatever the case may be. You put them in the water and you start swimming over the beach, you're looking at, you're, you're losing 50% of those guys. Maybe 70% of those guys that are just, they can't, they're not good enough swimmers. They're not good enough, you know, in the water. They're not comfortable. They're, they're cold. There's so many things. That right there is the difference. And when I start thinking about landing on aircraft carriers. It's gotta be somewhat similar. Because the weather, you're landing on a thing that is moving.

• 1:41:08Dave Berke?

  Dude, that's so true, man. I mean, I think the thing about the water is when you're operating around the water, you can never, you can't take a timeout. You can't pause. You can't just stop for a minute. Look, if I'm coming back to Miramar and there's a problem in Miramar, I got 10 other airports within 30 minutes that I can go to. I can go back over to Yuma where the weather's always perfect. I can go to North Island. I could go to LA. I've got so many different options and

• 1:41:40Dave Berke?

  the, the water never lets you pause. You cannot pause. You can't just wait. You can't just decide not to do it. There's no divert that's just down the road.

• 1:41:52Jocko Willink?

  This, this awesome SEAL captain who is a prior Marine and a, and a, and a little bit of a rebellious guy. He gave a speech that I was at and I don't even want to give any details about where I was at or what was it about. But he, he was making a dig at some of the other personnel that, that he was working with at the time. And he, he said, it was a great speech. He was saying, look, we're in the Navy. And what's different about the Navy is we come from ships. And on a ship, you don't have any choice but to fight. There is no retreat on a ship.

• 1:42:33Jocko Willink?

  Those are our roots. Now, look, he took the most absolutely romantic view that, that, the most heroic view that a human could ever take about tying, you know, the modern Navy and, and especially the SEAL teams to rooting our character in the fact that on a ship, there is no retreat. There is no surrender. If the ship goes down, we all die. That's our attitude. I mean, you want to talk about a young Jaco getting pumped up. But that's, that's what I'm thinking right now is when you're at sea, you can either land on this carrier.

• 1:43:07Dave Berke?

  Or you can land on this carrier. That's it. I mean, that's it. There is no other options. Yeah. And if you've got a problem or you're running low on gas, or you've got a mechanical issue that's going to create some problems for you, you're going back to the ship. I mean, if you, if you take your seals and you load them up into, into boats and you, you jump off the bigger ship to go do some sort of insertion and the weather's so bad and the environment's so bad and then everything like, hey, we can't do this training exercise. It's not safe. The training exercise is canceled. What do you have to do? Yeah. Where you gotta go drive those boats into the well deck of a ship in 12 foot seas, which is a complete nightmare. You're not in a parking lot thinking this was a bad idea. We can't do this and, and you know, the, the weather is not going to allow this, this training mission to happen. Believe me, we are, we, we would say, you know what?

• 1:43:51Dave Berke?

  Let's just go. It's easier than trying to get back on that ship. Yeah. And so the thing about carrier landings is there's really, there's no, there's no training and there's no real life. It's just real life all the time. And there's another thing, there's a psychological component about the ship that kind of, it, it reminds you what it is every time. So you get, you're coming back, you may be over the beach and you know, you've done a long mission or it doesn't matter what you're doing. At some point you end up what's called the stack. And all the stack is, is about 15, 20 miles from the boat at every altitude, you know, 5,000, 6,000, 7,000. There's an airplane at every altitude and they just stack them up from five up to however many there are,

• 1:44:36Dave Berke?

  up to 20,000 feet, if there's 15 airplanes, something like that. And you just sit in the stack and you've got your gas and somebody will come up on the radar and go, hey, you know, aircraft 204, your push time is time 10:15. Roger that. That's the only call you're going to get. So I'm at 9,000 feet. I look at my watch or I look at the clock and I am now, wait until 10:15 for me to push. And then there's a very particular route and a particular heading and turns and out. And there's a whole sequence that we all memorize how to do it. And it's not that complicated, but you gotta do it. But the entire time, the entire time, as you're looking out, you can't see anything. It's just dark. It's just pitch black. Every now and then there's like a nice moon. The water has a little white reflection of the moon, which looks kind of cool, but you can't see

• 1:45:21Dave Berke?

  the ship. When you're 20 miles from an airport, you see the airport. You see the runway lights. You see the lights that line you up. You see the white lights. You see the control tower. You can see your buildings. When you're 20 miles from the ship, you can't see anything. And then when you're 10 miles from the ship, you still can't see anything. And then you descend down and you do this, the last bit of this approach at night is at like 600 feet over the water. And it's pitch black and you're just going towards the ship. Are you on 100% instruments? 100% instruments. And you're, and look, modern airplanes have great instruments. The Hornet is a beautiful instrumented, instrumented, uh, instrumented machine. I'm sure, you know, when, when Yank was talking about back in the Vietnam era is, is more challenging, but you're just flying your instruments.

• 1:46:05Dave Berke?

  More challenging because homeboy's up there with a red lens flashlight, trying to figure out where he's at. Dude, I had that same. Or he's telling that story. 40 yards above the, looking for the wake of the ship. Crazy. You, you chuckled because you were asking, you're like, hey, I think I know that flashlight. It's the same flashlight I had in my flight. It's the same green elbow shaped flashlight we all have. I mean, it's one thing that hasn't changed much in naval aviation. It's the gear. It's all the same stuff. But as you're coming back, you're, you're on instruments. You're waiting for your turn for the final approach. You know, the last mile of descent where you go from, from 600 feet and then you start to descend down onto the boat itself. And that's when you start picking up the visual cues, the meatball,

• 1:46:48Dave Berke?

  they call it, kind of the lineup of, of the runway. But a lot of times, you still can't see the ship if there's cloudy or foggy or, or low or rain or snow and all these things. And all these elements are just there and you have no choice. You have no alternative. And the psychological component of knowing that every single time you're going to sort of duel with that.

• 1:47:09Dave Berke?

  It's in some ways, it's it's kind of terrifying. But in other ways, it means that every single there's there's a challenge in every single flight. And I think one of the cool things about being around the ship and one of the things that makes naval aviation unique, what these guys in the Navy and the Marines that did it, is that every single flight, there was this risk, there was this this fight that you were going to get the duel against this machine, this boat, this thing that's out there that's sort of geared and designed. In every way, shape or form, it's a really bad airport. It's not it's not designed to be an airport. It's got this tiny and the margin of error is miniscule. I think in the Hornet, the margin of error from coming across, they call it the ramp.

• 1:47:55Dave Berke?

  That's the very first piece of of steel that you get over the top of the ship to land. If you were eight feet off, you're either going to miss and go around. Or if you're eight feet low, you are going to hit the ship. So the margin of error is tiny.

• 1:48:09Jocko Willink?

  Uh, hold on a second. What what happens when you're in a 12-foot sea state?

• 1:48:15Dave Berke?

  Yeah. Well, when you're in a 12-foot sea state and that thing's moving around, the the visual sin indications on the ship, this visual thing, we call it the meatball, which is a light system that reflects where you are. So if the light is high above, there's like a green light that goes back and forth. There's a round yellow light in the middle. It's round, it's yellow, so they call it the meatball, looks like a circle. If that ball is above the green lights, you're high. And if that ball is below the green lights, you're low. And you're kind of flying it around to try to move that white or that yellow ball in between the green lights. That system keeps up with ship's movement up to some degree. I don't remember exactly what it was. The ship will kind of list back and forth, it'll raise up and down. And as long as it's not moving too fast or too much, that light system is accurate.

• 1:49:00Jocko Willink?

  Oh, so you're you're. You're accommodating the movement of the ship?

• 1:49:04Dave Berke?

  Absolutely. Yeah, 100%. And you're moving your throttle, let, you know, forward and backwards, you know, 10, 15 times every second to accommodate for that. And the good thing is, is that it's, it's good information. It's trustworthy. So if the ball is high, you're high. If the ball is low, you're low. If the ball gets too low, it turns red. You're good. You are dangerously low, and that gives you a very good cue. If the ship starts moving too fast or too much, that system is no longer reliable. It doesn't keep up with the movement of the ship fast enough, so you cannot rely on that. And then your landing signals officers, your LSOs, your people that have radios on the flight deck, they have to start talking to you. And they'll say things like,

• 1:49:44Dave Berke?

  ignore the information that you're seeing. You're low. And now you're in this challenge of seeing this visual cue that you've relied on hundreds of times, and you have someone saying, ignore that information. I'm telling you, you need to add power, even though that's showing you high. And look, those things don't happen all the time.

• 1:50:04Jocko Willink?

  How can they give you the micro-adjustments fast enough in that situation?

• 1:50:09Dave Berke?

  Uh, the LSOs, and look, I, one of the cool things-

• 1:50:12Jocko Willink?

  Or is he like, uh, power, power, power, power, brake, brake, brake, brake, left, left, left? Is he doing that?

• 1:50:17Dave Berke?

  Not, not, it's quite as fast as you, but that is what he's, that's what we were saying. So I was an LSO. One of the cool things in my career, when I was on the ship, is I got to lead an LSO team. So I was a, a landing signals officer. So every fifth day on a cruise, I'd just help airplanes land. I sat out there with a team on radios. And usually, usually, if Jaco's coming in and he's low, I can just say, little power. That's all you need. Just a little cool, smooth call. And you, oh, okay, I'm behind, and you'll add some power. Sometimes they, power. And you're like, dang. And you'll hear it, and you'll, and that's-

• 1:50:48Jocko Willink?

  A little more heat.

• 1:50:48Dave Berke?

  A little heat, little, little, little big, more of a hitter than you might normally need. There are a few times, and every LSO that's listening to this, and every student that's out there in flight school probably knows this, there are times in my career that I've had to scream, power, power, power, power.

• 1:51:06Dave Berke?

  And barely, barely got these airplanes over the ramp. To the point that after they landed, we'd go investigate and we'd see divots on the very edge of the carrier called the round down, divots from the hook smashing the edge of the boat, which means that their, their, their wheels may have missed it by, no joke, two feet, something like that. So what you described doesn't happen very often, but it absolutely does happen. And then other times say, hey, you're, you're lined up a little left. And it was like, right for lineup, right for lineup. And you're talking to them and the, and the, the tone of your voice and the rate at which you say it, hopefully solaces the response. Now, the interesting thing about that is what do you think the mental state is of

• 1:51:51Dave Berke?

  a pilot who's so low and can't assess that on his own to respond to your cues? You're typically dealing with the guys who are so, they were struggling behind the airplane. So they didn't always necessarily respond to your calls.

• 1:52:04Jocko Willink?

  They didn't detach.

• 1:52:05Dave Berke?

  And it's, that's the challenge of the night carrier landing is can you detach from what is, can be by itself, under the best circumstances, a terrifying experience? Under, under the best nights. And when you have engine problems, fuel leaks, hydraulic issues, low on fuel, no diverts, two in the morning in a snowstorm, you have no choice but to get aboard that ship. And it is, that is, that is why the carrier landing, especially the night landing, that is the great equalizer in aviation. And hearing Yank talk about it and reading about it, there is, there's nothing else in the world like it.

• 1:52:48Dave Berke?

  There's nothing I've ever done that I can compare that experience to.

• 1:52:52Jocko Willink?

  And you did, you said you did a hundred night carrier landings?

• 1:52:55Dave Berke?

  Yeah, I'm a-

• 1:52:56Jocko Willink?

  Sketchiest one.

• 1:52:57Dave Berke?

  Dude, so I mean, I have, I have landed in what we call zero zero. I have landed where there is

• 1:53:04Jocko Willink?

  Zero visibility?

• 1:53:05Dave Berke?

  Zero visibility, yep.

• 1:53:06Jocko Willink?

  And what's the other zero?

• 1:53:07Dave Berke?

  Um, so the two measures is, is, um, the height of the clouds and the depth which you can see them. So, you know, a hundred and a half would be clouds are at a hundred feet, visibility is a half a mile. So zero zero is the clouds are at zero feet and your visibility is zero feet. So you can kind of picture being in fog. It may be on the ground, it may be at zero feet, but it's thin fog. So you kind of maybe see a mile in front of you. You know, driving a car and if you've ever been in a car where like dang, I can't see, I can't see 10 feet in front of me. That's zero zero.

• 1:53:35Jocko Willink?

  So you landed in zero zero?

• 1:53:37Dave Berke?

  Zero zero. So here's how, here's how that works. And here's how much fun the night zero zero landing is.

• 1:53:45Dave Berke?

  You can fly your instruments.

• 1:53:46Jocko Willink?

  You can't see the meatball?

• 1:53:47Dave Berke?

  You can't see anything.

• 1:53:48Jocko Willink?

  Zero.

• 1:53:48Dave Berke?

  Zero. You see nothing.

• 1:53:50Jocko Willink?

  Get some.

• 1:53:51Dave Berke?

  Yeah. These are good times. Um, so you've got your instruments though and your instruments.

• 1:53:56Jocko Willink?

  Everyone that was thinking they wanted to be a fighter pilot just during the air force, bro. They don't want none of this.

• 1:54:00Dave Berke?

  If you, if you're going to fly fighters in the Navy, you need to know what you're getting yourself into. Cause you're going to have your night in the barrel. There's not a pilot, there's not a naval aviator in the world that hasn't had that night. Whatever that night is for you, you're going to have that night. And I'll bet you the exact same thing in the teams, like you're going to have an experience. You're going to have something that happens to you. You cannot avoid it. It's going to be your night or your day or your experience. You're going to have that. There's no getting around it. And we call everybody in naval aviation calls it the night in the barrel. That's your night and you know, you don't know what's going to happen. It's just your night to deal with whatever you got to deal with. That zero zero landing, your instruments will get you to about maybe a quarter mile at best, maybe a half a mile. So probably the last eight seconds.

• 1:54:45Dave Berke?

  Once you're inside that last eight seconds, your instruments just aren't, they don't keep up with what's going on fast enough for you to fly off them. You have to transition to a visual landing. You have to. And the only way for that to work when you can't see is for you to turn on your taxi light, which is this giant, really high-powered light in your nose gear. And the LSO, and this is a call, you want to have your stomach drop when you're out in the stack with nothing else to do but thinking about your landing. And you hear all these calls. He says, he says, he comes over the radio, 99, which means, when you say 99, that's a call for everybody. 99 taxi lights on. Now, every pilot in the stack is like, oh, God, it's so bad that I now know that at the end of this landing, I will not be able to see

• 1:55:29Dave Berke?

  the carrier. And the LSO is going to have to talk me down. And you talk about trust and relationships and putting your life in somebody else's hand. You're going to fly this machine doing 140 knots, this 35,000 pound machine, to a half a mile from the carrier, and you'll never see the ship until you hit it. And the guy on the ground is going to talk you through the last eight seconds of that. And he's only going to do it through his eyeballs, literally through his eyeballs, and the faint, through the fog, that faint little glow of the white light coming from your nose gear. And that is a,

• 1:56:11Dave Berke?

  I'm recalling that as we speak, that is a, that's a life-changing event right there. I mean, that's a, that's a no joke experience. So, so he's giving you the same things he's, eyeball? Eyeball. He's eyeball calibrated. Who the hell trains this guy? How does he know to do this? Well, Ellis, the LSO qualification at the Navy is typically reserved for the best guys in the squadron, typically, not always, but it's a, it's a, it's a very highly thought of qual, it's a, it's a well-respected qualification that I'm going to tell you, Jaco, we're going on cruise, you've demonstrated as a young guy, as a nugget, you're good around the ship, you're reliable, I'm going to task you with learning to be an LSO, I'm going to put my

• 1:56:55Dave Berke?

  pilot's life in your, your hands, I would do that as squadron commander, I'm going to send you to school. To be an LSO, you'll go LSO training and then you'll go through kind of an apprenticeship where you sit and watch other LSOs. And after about three or four months of that, I'm going to give you the radio and on a perfectly clear gorgeous blue day, I'm going to let you start to see what it looks like. And you know, you're, you're doing it hundreds of times a day, every five days, cruise after cruise after cruise. And eventually you build this capability through your own experience to be able to do that.

• 1:57:26Jocko Willink?

  Do they ever have to call in like the, the cooler? Like that they're like, hey, man, it's zero zero. Go get the Iceman over there or whatever. Bring him up here.

• 1:57:35Dave Berke?

  Dude, that's no joke. We, we call him the CAG LSO. So on the ship, the air group is known as the CAG. So that's, you know, the, the ship is the ship and they've got all their people, but then the air wing is all the planes. There are two guys that are the two senior landing signals officers on the ship. 90% of the time, all they're doing is training us and letting us run the show. Well, when it's zero zero, the cooler is the CAG LSO and he's going to be supported or backed up by the team lead. And so that guy on those nights, he's going to be the primary controlling LSO. He's going to be the one doing the talking and his backup is going to be the team leader of that LSO teams. There's five team leads, you know, five teams, one for each day. You rotate every five days. Those two guys, the CAG LSO, the cooler and the team

• 1:58:20Dave Berke?

  lead are going to recover every airplane on the ship when it's, when it's required.

• 1:58:25Jocko Willink?

  Are you answering, so you're coming in zero zero and I tell you power. What do you say, Roger?

• 1:58:30Dave Berke?

  Nope. You don't talk at all. You just do what he says. And so

• 1:58:34Jocko Willink?

  And I can tell by watching your aircraft.

• 1:58:36Dave Berke?

  Instantly. You can also hear it. You can, so you're a quarter mile away. You're seven, eight seconds from landing. When I say power or, or when I say power and you add power, your, your motors are going to change. You're going to hear that. You're going to hear the tone of that and you're going to, he did it and you can hear the duration. And so if I say power and you, you add it and it's not enough, I'm going to immediately say it again before I even watch you settle. Cause I know you didn't do it long enough. And I'm going to say power, power. And that means you're going to go longer. And if you go too long and I hear you really run the engines, I'm going to say easy with it. I'm going to ask you and you're going to bring power off. And so I'm going to talk and I'm going to watch.

• 1:59:11Jocko Willink?

  Are these uniform pro words used by all?

• 1:59:14Dave Berke?

  Every single word in the LSO manual is exactly the same. People, they're We only use one word for power. We only one word for takeoff power. One word to turn right, one word to turn left, and they're predetermined. They all know, every LSO uses the exact same terminology.

• 1:59:29Jocko Willink?

  Did you say easy buddy? What is it?

• 1:59:30Dave Berke?

  Easy with it.

• 1:59:31Jocko Willink?

  Easy, and that's the, that's the terminology in the book. Easy with it means back off power a little bit.

• 1:59:36Dave Berke?

  That's right. If you're gonna have someone go right, you say right for lineup. If you're gonna have someone go to the left, you say come left. That way, if you said come left, come right, you might get a little, I'm not sure, right for lineup, left for lineup, you might. So there's a different version of going right than there is going left. Every pilot in the world, and every LSO knows in the world, he's gonna go left, come left. If you want to go right, right for lineup. And as I start to hear the, I know he's telling me right for lineup, because I don't have to really decipher that call. And if I hear the E in the easy with it, I'm coming off the power a little bit. And so there are, you know, the terms are totally predefined. Everybody knows what they are, and we rely on those. And so, the zero zero recovery doesn't happen all that often, but it happens.

• 2:00:20Jocko Willink?

  You can't see the ship until you hit it.

• 2:00:22Dave Berke?

  Yeah. A zero zero landing, you may get lucky that a half a second before you feel the shudder of hitting the flight deck, you might catch something out of the corner of your eye.

• 2:00:32Jocko Willink?

  And meanwhile, at that moment, you go, prepare to go full, you actually go full throttle when you hit the deck, right?

• 2:00:38Dave Berke?

  When you feel your, your flight, when you hear your tires hit the, the flight deck, you go full power.

• 2:00:43Jocko Willink?

  Every time. That way, if you miss your taking off, you're not just falling into the drain.

• 2:00:50Dave Berke?

  That's right. That's exactly right. If you miss, you go back around.

• 2:00:52Jocko Willink?

  Everybody knows that.

• 2:00:54Dave Berke?

  And, you know, that, that LSO piece of flying around the ship is also a skill that it's really hard to get people to appreciate how, how good you have to be, how much confidence as an LSO you have to be to say, I got this.

• 2:01:10Jocko Willink?

  I, I would a thousand times over, like, prefer to be the guy that's the pilot and not be the guy that's, you know, it's one of those horrible situations where you're not actually in danger, but you've got someone that's relying on you to get it right.

• 2:01:26Dave Berke?

  Yeah.

• 2:01:28Dave Berke?

  You'd be a good LSO because you also know the power you talk about all the time of just how you communicate. The LSOs that panic when you're, when I look up and I see your jet in a really bad spot, a really bad spot, and if I panic in my communication to you, and that doesn't mean I won't be stern and very specific, power, but if I panic and I have a high pitched kind of a shrill to how I'm communicating, you're going to react that way. So the best LSOs were the guys that would look at the worst situation in the most dire circumstances and the worst weather with a pilot that he knows has one chance to get aboard, one chance.

• 2:02:05Dave Berke?

  And he has the coolest, calmest, most chill voice in the world. 202, you're a little low, just a little power. You're on glide slope. And that can put a pilot at ease to go, oh, holy cow, I can do this. I can get aboard now. Whereas before he's thinking, I can't see the ship. I got this engine problem. I got all these things and creates a situation in his mind that he knows he can't get aboard. And LSO can talk him out of that mindset and get him on the flight deck.

• 2:02:32Jocko Willink?

  So when, when Dan was talking about the guy that missed 12 times in a row, and I think it wasn't Dan that actually went down there and said, let me get on the radio. Let me talk this guy on. And that's the same thing. He says, hey, bud, we're going to get it done. We're going to get it done right this time.

• 2:02:46Dave Berke?

  Yep. And, and if it's from the right person at the right time and the right way, it makes all the difference. And that was that guy's night in the barrel. I mean, that's a lot. That's not common.

• 2:02:56Jocko Willink?

  The reason you don't get another shot is because you're out of fuel?

• 2:03:00Dave Berke?

  Yeah.

• 2:03:01Jocko Willink?

  Don't you have a refueler up there?

• 2:03:02Dave Berke?

  Yeah, usually you do. There are emergencies that your jet will not take gas. You've got emergencies that you've got a hydraulic problem that even if you had all the fuel in the world, eventually your hydraulic fluid will run out and you can't fly the airplane. So in most, these are not common cases, but there are cases that this happens.

• 2:03:22Jocko Willink?

  What do you do if you are out of hydraulic fuel? You missed your landing? What's the protocol to eject now? What do you do? Do you go to a certain spot? Do you, they spin up? They get the helicopters ready?

• 2:03:31Dave Berke?

  That's exactly right. So there's two options. You got a barricade option, but if it's on a controllable situation, I mean, the saying is you pull alongside the ship and eject. So what you do is you try to fly a parallel, straight, right across, you know, aboard the ship, you know, a mile a beam, the helicopters out there spinning. There's always a helicopter flying while you're coming aboard, at least during the day. And I've never, I've never been on a cruise where we had to intentionally do that. I've been on cruises where we started briefing that option. As an LSO, like, okay, here's what we're gonna do. This is what our plan is gonna be. You're starting to coordinate with the ship's emergency recovery team on this is what we're gonna do if indeed we don't, you know, get this guy aboard for whatever reason. Life of the ship is no joke and the Navy makes it look easy

• 2:04:16Dave Berke?

  because they're doing it hundreds of times a day, every single day. And 99 times out of 100, or 999 out of 1,000, these dire situations, they pull it off. And the only ones we ever hear about are the ones that it rarely. But these type of things happen all the time. These dangerous situations are happening right now.

• 2:04:35Jocko Willink?

  There's, there's someone in the someone in the barrel once a day on the, on a carrier deployment?

• 2:04:42Dave Berke?

  No, yeah. Once a day is, no, I'd say more often than not, certainly when weather is good. I mean, it's, it's smooth. I mean, you're putting 120 aboard and, you know, launch and recovery in a day and most days just go by. But if you've got, you know, if you did the math that we've got multiple carriers deployed to sea all the time and you're doing multiple flat ops all the time. Once a week out there somewhere in, in the blue ocean, there's a kid up there who's struggling. It might not be 12, you know, but he's struggling and he's having a hard time. And you're watching him have a hard time and you're, you're trying to talk him down.

• 2:05:17Jocko Willink?

  Did you ever have a hard time? Did you ever get shook to the point where you came back and like had to decompress and say, you know what? This, I had a, I had a buddy in this, in the teams and he did a, he did a, he was doing some, we'll just say maritime operations off the coast of Korea for an exercise.

• 2:05:43Jocko Willink?

  And it was just freezing cold and claustrophobic and the whole nine yards. And, and he was telling me, you know, he's in this evolution. And he's thinking to himself, I don't even know if I actually ever want to do this again. You know what I mean? I mean, think about that. So, like when that kid and, and you know, the kid that Dan talks about that does 12, 12 tries to make it and the next day they put him right back up there and he did fine. Did you ever get shook, as they say in modern terminology?

• 2:06:15Dave Berke?

  I struggled in the beginning before I would go launch.

• 2:06:21Dave Berke?

  I had a real problem in the very beginning when I got assigned to a carrier squadron and I kinda had to come to grips if this is gonna be in my day-to-day life.

• 2:06:31Dave Berke?

  I think I might even have mentioned it too. I think I mentioned the name Gunny Pilgrim being just this awesome gunnery sergeant that taught me everything as a lieutenant.

• 2:06:40Dave Berke?

  He and I were pretty tight and I'd say for the first, probably the first month of my carrier career where I'm doing sustained cyclic carrier operations, if I was, I would walk up on the flight deck, I would pre-flight my jet and I would throw up over the side of the ship. Just from nerves and anxiety and just like, man, just being stressed. And I would just, I would just be physically ill. And, you know, I didn't tell anybody about it and he knew and so if he ever managed to find this guy, he'll tell you those stories. And it was just something I just, I just had to learn to deal with. But, you know, you man up, and I don't mean it like the phrase man up. We call getting into an airplane manning up. Like you climb up the ladder to man up your jet. We manned up the jets and you'd go

• 2:07:22Dave Berke?

  and you'd come back. And then at the end, you'd look back and like, that was awesome. And then when it's time to go again, you'd get nauseous and that subsided. I did have a couple of landings and he described it really well. I had a couple of landings that were so kinda terrifying that I couldn't move, I couldn't control my legs. So my legs would, they would shake so, so fast and so your feet would, from the adrenaline that it'd be hard to steer the airplane. And a couple of times I had to stop the airplane. And the flight deck crew kinda understands this. Like when you just stop to kinda look at you and you just, you kinda give them like, give me a second. And so I had several times-

• 2:07:54Jocko Willink?

  This is after you, you hooked onto the-

• 2:07:56Dave Berke?

  You hook, you come to a stop, you kinda turn off and that adrenaline wash kinda goes out. So maybe about a minute after that, your whole body will convulse. Like your legs, and you steer everything with your legs. You're putting a lot of pressure on your feet and your toes and you maneuver the airplane with your feet. And your legs are shaking so hard that you literally can't steer and they're, they're, your margin for like, they, they take you to the side of the ship like three feet away from the edge of the ship. So you're looking over the water and you're just kinda, so I've had several landings where after I landed, I needed to stop for a second. And just like, hey dude, just give me a second. I would just stop the airplane. And usually they would look at you and go- To catch your breath. Um, I never got out of the airplane and said, I don't want to do that anymore.

• 2:08:37Dave Berke?

  Even on, and I had some pretty rough nights. And I think there was just this piece of this idea that

• 2:08:45Dave Berke?

  it's like,

• 2:08:49Dave Berke?

  you, you once said something a long time ago that I just laughed at. I'm like, that's not me. And you, you said, I like the taste of blood. You like, and I, I kind of took it like, you like fighting, not that you want to, I don't mean it like you like to fight other people, but that feeling that you get, you like that feeling. Well, I told him like, I don't like the taste of blood.

• 2:09:10Dave Berke?

  Flying a fighter around the ship with all the things that made me think about not wanting to do it. All the danger, all the emergencies, all, I loved it. I freaking loved every second of it. Even the things that I hated, and there were things I hated about it. I loved it. And I loved doing it. And and I hated it at the same time, but not once did I ever say, I don't want to keep doing that. Um, as the career went on later on, but being around the ship, being on the ship, doing ship things as much as I hated it. My, my squadron was telling you, Dave did not like flying around the ship. I hated it. But man, I freaking loved it. So

• 2:09:52Dave Berke?

  that was kind of my personal experience. Everybody's different. I never really quite normalized to it. I always just felt like, man, this sucks. But there was something about it that never got old and never got tired for me. And I, I I love doing it.

• 2:10:07Jocko Willink?

  Yeah. And it's weird because that idea of I, I like the taste of blood. It's one of those things where when, when I haven't tasted blood in a while, I don't, I don't notice. I'm not sitting there thinking about it. And then all of a sudden, something will happen. Something will, will, will happen. Well, you know, could be any number of things. It could be, it could be something as simple, not, not usually. Jiu Jitsu to me isn't, isn't this type of thing. Maybe occasionally there'll be something will happen on the mats, but normally that's not it. I just enjoy jiu jitsu too much, but something will happen. Some, some situation will unfold. And I'll, I'll go into like war mode.

• 2:10:51Jocko Willink?

  And when I go to war mode, I, I just feel so good. And when I get there, I'm like, oh yeah. And, and it makes me.

• 2:11:02Jocko Willink?

  You know, sometimes I, I, when I get there. It, it makes me just look around and I just think, I wasn't really.

• 2:11:12Jocko Willink?

  I wasn't really supposed to be doing anything else. You know, I wasn't really supposed to be doing anything else. I was supposed to be doing that, that thing. Because it, it makes me feel so. So good to, to, to be in that mode, to feel that focus. To have, like for me, and this is just so weird for me because. You know, I like to, uh, uh, you know, we're, we're, we're building relationships, we're building teams, we're working together.

• 2:11:46Jocko Willink?

  For me, when I have an opponent. Not, not just an opponent, it has to be stronger than that. When I have somebody or some entity. That.

• 2:12:00Jocko Willink?

  That isn't, that is, that is antagonistic to me and my family, my friends, my team.

• 2:12:09Jocko Willink?

  I feel something that is the best feeling to me. And, and it, and it doesn't happen that much anymore. I mean, it just doesn't, I mean, that's just the way it is. But like even. You know, even when I was a platoon commander and something would happen, some, some other. You know, whether it was, whether it was the enemy, whether it was some. Part of some organization. You know, some person that had some, did something that was. I, I don't want to throw this word out there because it just, it just sets off a whole bunch of, you know, what could it be? But you know, if there's a betrayal scenario. Where someone betrays me.

• 2:12:52Jocko Willink?

  And they want to go to war with me.

• 2:12:57Jocko Willink?

  That delivers me, you know, that's when I, I, I love the taste of blood and I, and I can feel it. And, you know, like I said, it's, it's a. You know, it's an old man talking now and just don't get those situations very often. But.

• 2:13:18Jocko Willink?

  It's a good, it's a good, it's a good feeling.

• 2:13:21Dave Berke?

  Yeah.

• 2:13:22Jocko Willink?

  It happens from time to time.

• 2:13:23Dave Berke?

  Well, it's, it's, you and I are two old men, at least for this game at this point.

• 2:13:29Dave Berke?

  But if I were to look back, and I spent a lot of my life dreaming of being a fighter pilot. A lot of my life was spent dreaming about doing the things that I got to do.

• 2:13:40Dave Berke?

  If you were to ask me at any point during my time at sea, flying, what I was doing, that I could have done anything, anywhere, for any amount of money,

• 2:13:53Dave Berke?

  there's not one single thing in the world I would have done. On my worst night, on my scariest, whatever, not one other thing. And when you said what you said, that, that I think described that feeling as, this is what I'm supposed to be doing. And every night, the thing that you were fighting, you know, in some sense was yourself, but it was that environment that is sort of designed to kill you. It's dark, it's pitch black at night, and it's a steel unforgiving ship with a tiny little area that's 42 feet wide and 130, and everything about that on paper is designed to kill you.

• 2:14:35Dave Berke?

  And the only way you're going to outmaneuver that is, is what you and your machine do. And there was a piece of that

• 2:14:44Dave Berke?

  fight, which I think is what it was, is that the satisfaction of doing that, on the best days or the worst days, is really hard to recreate and replicate and feel in other ways. That satisfaction of, I did something I was supposed to be doing, and if I didn't do it well enough, it was going to get me hurt or killed, or the people around me hurt or killed. And I haven't experienced a lot of other things like that, but it's rare to be in a, in a, in a, in a work environment where you get that so regularly.

• 2:15:15Dave Berke?

  And that's every single landing. If you take your eye off the ball, no pun intended, on the most clear, perfect, blue-sky day,

• 2:15:26Dave Berke?

  You'll kill yourself. You'll get yourself killed and you'll probably hurt a lot of people along the way. And there was a challenge there that I, that I, I never got tired of, which was for me, doing what you described as this is what I'm supposed to be doing.

• 2:15:40Jocko Willink?

  Can you imagine the screening process that it's the de facto screening process that we can launch? I mean, how many guys are landing on a carrier today, right? And that happens all the time. And this screening process and the training process is so good that these guys can pull this off over and over again around the world at every sea state, day, night, clouds, no clouds, fog, no fog. That's what, that's what, that's what we do.

• 2:16:09Dave Berke?

  We make it look routine.

• 2:16:10Jocko Willink?

  It's just insane.

• 2:16:11Dave Berke?

  Yeah, it's crazy. I mean, a ship's doing well over a hundred a day, every single day. And, uh, yeah, dude, what the Navy is doing, um, it's, it's unreal, man. It's awesome.

• 2:16:25Jocko Willink?

  So with that, with that, does that then, is this where, okay, look, the, the, inside the Navy, inside the Navy, where you cannot surrender because you cannot give up the ship because otherwise you all die. Inside the Navy, you have this, this, of all the people that are in the Navy, of all the people that are in the Marine Corps, a little bit different because it's just a different, it's a different, uh, uh, subset, right? But the subset of Marine Corps aviators, fighter jet pilots, the Navy, you're, you're, it's, it's more prevalent in the Navy. Let's face it. The

• 2:17:01Jocko Willink?

  delta between a surface warfare officer in the Navy and a Navy fighter pilot, that delta is bigger than the delta between a Marine Corps infantry officer and a Marine Corps fighter pilot. Unless we want to go back to World War II and you want to see some just insane, incredible, just, that, that, I mean, the danger of being on a Navy ship in World War II was totally insane as well. So, so the delta, the screening process, where you get to is you end up with a certain type

• 2:17:42Jocko Willink?

  of person. So in the Navy, when you're going to go for the SEAL teams, you're a certain, there's a certain element that's there. And for lack of a better word,

• 2:17:53Jocko Willink?

  And I think I'm using it because Dan talked about it. There's a rebellious nature, right? There's someone that's going, hey, look, I don't care. Look, you don't volunteer to go land on that freaking postage stamp. If you hold life to be the most precious thing, there's something else there, right? There's some, you don't do that. You just don't do that. And that's what I like about this Top Gun mentality. And I'll call it the Top Gun mentality. I'll call it the, the, the,

• 2:18:28Jocko Willink?

  the idea that I talked about earlier, this extreme ownership mentality of like, hey, I'm gonna go and make this happen. And when it goes wrong, I'm gonna figure it out and I'm gonna fix it. There is a certain breed of human that tend in that direction. And you can, because otherwise, I mean, let's face it, you talking about landing on a carrier at night? There is a massive swath of human beings that there's no way in hell they ever want to do what you just talked about. Echo, what is your, are you fired up to go do a carrier landing right now? No, not at this time, no, thank you. Not at 00.

• 2:19:13Jocko Willink?

  What about 00? What about nighttime? The whole barrel. What about day after day after day after day after night after night after night after night, right? So we're talking about a, a different, you know, a different kind of human with a different mentality. And what we've done is set up this process that finds those humans. Gets them to that point where they do that for 25 years. For 25 years, that's how we're doing this. That's pretty impressive.

• 2:19:51Jocko Willink?

  So I got, I had a couple more things I wanted to ask you. Flexible four, is that what it's called? The flexible four?

• 2:19:58Dave Berke?

  What's the, what's the? Fluid four.

• 2:19:59Jocko Willink?

  The fluid four?

• 2:20:00Dave Berke?

  Yeah, that's what it meant.

• 2:20:01Jocko Willink?

  What, we're, we're in a formation, we work together. It sounded like it was a lot more regimented than it was fluid.

• 2:20:07Dave Berke?

  Yeah, fluid four is not a fluid formation.

• 2:20:09Jocko Willink?

  Does anyone use it anymore?

• 2:20:11Dave Berke?

  Yeah, we use it to kind of like navigate to and from the space.

• 2:20:14Jocko Willink?

  Other than that, it's not happening?

• 2:20:15Dave Berke?

  It's not a tactical thing at all. You, you do it just to keep people close together. So you, hey, we're gonna go from point A to point B and I don't want to mess around. Just kind of get close to me, we're gonna fluid four out there.

• 2:20:24Jocko Willink?

  Um, I, I sent you a text. I said loose deuce. I said loose deuce equals, uh, cover and move plus decentralized command. Over? And you were like, Roger. Makes sense. Yeah, that's it.

• 2:20:40Dave Berke?

  Exactly.

• 2:20:41Jocko Willink?

  You got it.

• 2:20:41Dave Berke?

  Yep.

• 2:20:41Jocko Willink?

  Cause in a loose goose formation, or sorry, loose deuce formation, either one of us can take lead. We can, we can, we can take lead and we can make things happen on our own. And yet, we have to cover for each other. And if we don't work together, we're gonna die.

• 2:20:59Dave Berke?

  That's right. That's exactly right. I can, and I can direct you to do something that I need you to do. And when you don't comply, I know that it's because you can't. Uh, and so there's this relationship piece. There's all those components that you just talked about are inside there. And that's how you and I are gonna work together to eventually isolate the bad guy. And one of us is gonna kill him. And I don't really care who does it, as long as one of us does it. And if that means I gotta stay engaged the whole time that you get the kill, it's good by me, cause we're good and we move on.

• 2:21:30Jocko Willink?

  These guys figured that out, right? These guys figured that out. These guys said, the other way doesn't work. This way works better. This is again, you have to have some element of rebel mentality in your brain in order to say, you know what? It's same thing with, same thing with, uh, jujitsu, right? You, someone's gotta say, listen, I don't really believe that if you do this kata to me, that it's gonna work. Somebody's gotta say that in the teams.

• 2:22:01Jocko Willink?

  You know, the biggest, this happened to us in the teams. We were, we were using, we'd use real ammunition. We'd shoot at paper targets and you win every single time. And you, you know, you go through the house and every, every target is dead. And they didn't maneuver you, they didn't fire, they didn't fire on you and they don't maneuver. So it becomes so easy. When we brought in laser tag, we brought in paintball and simunition and these things that allowed us to fight each other. Even then, somebody had to have the mentality, number one, to say, you know what? First of all, we should try these tactics on each other because we've been being told over and over again. I got told that for my first 10 years in the teams, eight years in the teams. Hey, this is what works. You know what you say, Roger that, Roger that, Roger that. To say, you know what? We need to check this, we need to test it, you know what?

• 2:22:45Jocko Willink?

  There was people that when paintball, when paintball revealed the shortfalls of our tactics, there was people that said, yeah, but, yeah, but you know, it's, it's only paint. So it's, oh yeah, but it's not a real weapon. Yeah, but there's a difference in the penetration. There's all kinds of yeah buts. The rebels said, yeah, you're saying, yeah, but guess what? Somebody just pointed a paintball gun down the hallway and, and you know, 13 out of 16 of us got hit with paintball. That doesn't seem good. And there was people that were saying, yeah, but, yeah, but it's not an AK-47.

• 2:23:26Jocko Willink?

  AK-47 only holds 30 rounds, a paintball gun has a hopper with 100 rounds. That's not realistic. Okay, what if they had a freaking, any kind of machine gun? So you have to employ this rebel mentality. And that's why you get, you know, that's why you get these crazy Top Gun stories. That's why they're stealing a trailer to set up shop. The SEAL Teams has traced its whole history back to that kind of rebel behavior.

• 2:23:52Dave Berke?

  Yeah.

• 2:23:53Jocko Willink?

  There's a, there, and that's what shocked me. It didn't shock me, but that's what was so amazing. When Dan was like, hey, he's the OIC and he says, we are going to be the most professional humans that these pilots have ever talked to. We're going to brief these things, we're going to murder board each other, we're going to be in the perfect uniform. They're talking about uniforms. This attitude of we're going to be rebellious, we're going to, we're going to make sure things work. And at the same time, we're going to be. We're gonna be above board, across the board, in everything else, so that when we step out and say, "Hey, this is wrong," people will actually listen. That is a rare thing.

• 2:24:34Jocko Willink?

  It's a rare thing to know that you have to hold the line, toe the line, be above board, across the board, and then at the same time know that when something's not quite right, you've gotta be a rebel at heart.

• 2:24:55Jocko Willink?

  Top Gun mentality.

• 2:24:56Dave Berke?

  Yeah, man. It's so legit. And to have that legacy persist and to be able to cultivate it in a way that has evolved and changed a whole bunch. We're not dealing with the same problems that the original bros are dealing with back in the late 60s. We're not losing in Vietnam, we're not dealing... But we actually have to do the same thing. And what that mentality now is fighting against the complacency that comes with the things that we've been able to do so well for so long, and have people say, "Hey, listen, I know this has worked for a long time, and I know this has been the best way to do it, but it's not gonna keep working like this because the people we're fighting against are gonna figure this out. They're gonna build a new machine, they're gonna build

• 2:25:39Dave Berke?

  some countermeasure, they're gonna do something that keeps us from working, and we have to be every bit as creative and not tell the entire institution what we're doing won't work anymore. And figure out a way to get the institution, this giant behemoth institution, to listen to you."

• 2:25:55Jocko Willink?

  And none of that happens, ever, unless you, as a leader, as a team member, stay humble. If you don't stay humble, I can't even imagine. Like, I know what, you know, when you're going into the SEAL training, and it's the most elite training, and you, you know, the video, the recruiting video that I watched...

• 2:26:22Jocko Willink?

  The title of the video was be someone special, right? That's the title of the video to try and get you to go in there. So you're getting told you're special the whole time. Top Gun's gotta be 10 times worse. On top of that, you add the freaking, you know, Maverick and Viper and Iceman. I mean, we're talking, you're just, this is an, this is an ego booster rocket. And to, to have that ego booster rocket and yet, you know, throw out the sea anchor to keep you grounded, to keep you down to earth, to keep you humble. That is the last part of this Top Gun mentality.

• 2:27:02Jocko Willink?

  That's allowed us, you know, allowed the allies of America, our, our air forces around the world to be the best and continue to be the best. And you have to have all those elements. And what's awesome is if you have these elements, these elements do not only apply to fighter, flying aircraft, they, they apply to being in a SEAL platoon. They apply to being in an infantry company. They apply to being on the jujitsu mats. They apply to every, to be, to be in a, in a part of a family, part of a team, part of anything. These aspects will make you win in the end.

• 2:27:50Jocko Willink?

  Two and a half hours. Dave, did I miss anything?

• 2:27:54Dave Berke?

  No, man, that was awesome. There's probably a bunch of other things that you could get me talking about.

• 2:28:02Dave Berke?

  The mentality that you talked about at the end, I think for me is the most important thing.

• 2:28:06Jocko Willink?

  For sure.

• 2:28:06Dave Berke?

  Yeah. And that's, and to, to finish with that and to have that be the thing that persists in the legacy of Top Gun and have it have nothing to do with Hollywood or any of those things, but the legacy of people who took that burden of responsibility of I'm responsible for people's lives. We're going to go out and lead junior pilots out into combat and turn that into something that becomes in, in organization that's lasted for decades.

• 2:28:33Dave Berke?

  I mean, what Yank was able to do in the face of, of more organizational resistance than I've ever faced. I didn't face a big Navy or big Marine Corps telling me no all the time. I didn't grow up in that, that Marine Corps.

• 2:28:47Dave Berke?

  To be, and I said this last time, but to be a small link in that long chain.

• 2:28:52Dave Berke?

  I had a harder time reading this book personally because it was so easy to connect. I was so inside, I read this book and understood so much of it that a hard time seeing it. You and I actually even talked about a little bit of, hey, what, like I was missing components of that because I was on the inside. Talking about it with him last week and then coming back here again on today has helped me detach even more to see even what I did at Top Gun while I was there that didn't, I didn't understand quite that level because I was inside of it. And the story is incredible, but it's, it's the persistence of that mentality that is how you win everywhere.

• 2:29:32Dave Berke?

  Connected back to the attribute that has been my biggest challenge and by far the thing that has mattered the most in my life, which is humility. To learn at a place at Top Gun where people are telling you that you're the best of the best. That is the phrase that gets thrown out all the time, the best of the best.

• 2:29:52Dave Berke?

  You know, there's a difference between humility and showmanship. There's plenty of showmanship up there. You used to talk about it with Conor McGregor all the time. But there is so much humility inside that organization because of the, the burden and the responsibility that they feel. That it's cool to come from a circle from the beginning of this conversation was I learned more about humility at Top Gun than anywhere else because it was the thing that I was required the most for me to actually be successful there. And Yank and the, and the original bros.

• 2:30:21Dave Berke?

  They deserve a lot of credit for creating that.

• 2:30:25Jocko Willink?

  No doubt. And it's, it's also amazing that when you trace back the history of the SEAL teams and the way they were formed and the way they learned and the, the attitude, it's the same, it's the same traits, it's the same traits that we talk about all the time. This is what it takes to win.

• 2:30:43Jocko Willink?

  And with that, Echo Charles.

• 2:30:46Speaker 01

  Yes.

• 2:30:48Jocko Willink?

  Do you have any suggestions on how we can employ the Top Gun mentality in our own lives?

• 2:30:56Speaker 01

  Yeah, sure. But first, I have a question for... Good deal, Dave. So, back to the, because it's kind of confusing, back to the dogfighting situation of scenario one. Okay. Maybe to scenario, the one where...

• 2:31:10Jocko Willink?

  Dang, you're going way back.

• 2:31:11Speaker 01

  Yeah, because, let's face it, that wasn't as cut and dry, straightforward, as far as understanding it goes.

• 2:31:17Jocko Willink?

  It was, it was, it was just because... Hard to track.

• 2:31:19Speaker 01

  Yeah, a little bit, right? So, okay, so, you're trying to close the distance as the...

• 2:31:26Jocko Willink?

  The guy on offense?

• 2:31:28Speaker 01

  No, defensive guy wants to close the distance.

• 2:31:30Jocko Willink?

  You got it.

• 2:31:31Speaker 01

  That's right. So, yeah, because it's confusing, because usually, like, in jiu-jitsu or fighting, the offender wants to close, if you're a jiu-jitsu fighter, you want to close the distance as the, you know?

• 2:31:41Jocko Willink?

  Yes.

• 2:31:42Speaker 01

  And then that outside green zone is not available in this scenario, but it is still available in the whole kind of scope of, of fighting.

• 2:31:51Speaker 01

  Okay, you said that you don't do like a, like a, like a juke or, or like a feint or anything like that, you know? Go one way and then break right or whatever. Is there any version of a feint in dogfighting at all?

• 2:32:08Jocko Willink?

  Well, wouldn't it be you do a break and then you do a ditch? And then you do another break and then you do another ditch?

• 2:32:15Speaker 01

  No, I would not equate, I, I did not explain it well enough to have it in your, in your mind, see it clearly enough. But the break and the ditch are two exclusive things, and the simplest way to answer that is, is no.

• 2:32:32Dave Berke?

  Because if you're fighting against opponent, an opponent who recognizes that that's a feint, what a feint would do if you move to one direction to set up a move in another direction, is that you're giving him the separation that he wants to attack you. And part of what might be confusing about this is that, you know, we started with this one against one, which is a very canned setup that we're starting at a mile or whatever that might be, you know, that's 6,000 feet. It hasn't accounted for all the things that have gotten to that point. But that mile is actually the optimal separation for an attacker to get. So if you were in whatever the optimal position between you and somebody else in jiu-jitsu, for you to be successful as the person with the offensive advantage, that's a mile.

• 2:33:17Dave Berke?

  So if you can kind of equate, if you were to just show me exactly how you'd want to position yourself against someone else, you know, you've taken his back, you've kind of started to set up the rear naked or whatever that might be, whatever that separation is, that's not the same separation as if someone in the mount pulled you and kind of grabbed you and pulled you close to him so you couldn't strike them. So that start of you being behind him is that start of that position. And if I kind of fainted or kind of hinted at I was going to move in one direction to stop the choke and I opened up my neck to do it, the guy you're fighting is going to laugh at that feint, because all you did was open up your neck. And he's good enough and fast enough to take advantage of that,

• 2:33:59Dave Berke?

  that what you're doing is giving him more positional advantage than you already have.

• 2:34:03Speaker 01

  Yeah, totally understand now because I think it's natural when we're not fighter pilots to think, oh yeah, the defender, right, the guy who's in front or whatever. We think of that as like, why doesn't he just get away, right? Or why doesn't he, you know, why don't you just do a move here and fake him out and get away? But it's not that. It's like the offender, the offensive guy is just kind of trying to keep you at a certain range, right, attack range. Like, that's essentially his goal. It's not to like follow you everywhere, you know, like a high-speed car chase or something. It's like to keep you in that range the whole time. So if you compare it to jiu-jitsu, right, you know how like we have situational training, which that's essentially what it is, right, situational training.

• 2:34:51Speaker 01

  If you start on my back, Jaco, I'm the defender. It's essentially the same thing. I'm the defender here. And you hold me. I hold you tight. Like, I'm holding your hands and stuff. Like, I got one hand here, one hand here. I'm holding you tight. You can't like maneuver at all. I'm so tight. Everything is just so tight. You want to get me in a range that essentially you can choke me, right? So, or actually, a better one is side control. You know how?

• 2:35:20Jocko Willink?

  I think I have it. I think I have it. I think I, I think I figured out what's going on here. You've heard me say in jiu-jitsu that if I'm going to fake a move, if I'm going to feint a move, I actually have to feint the move enough that you have to react to it. Right? I can't just, I can't just fake the sweep and expect you to react because if you, if I fake the sweep and you know it's a fake sweep, you just pass my guard or you, you, you take advantage of my fake or you don't fall for it at all. I think because of the, because of the reaction of an aircraft,

• 2:36:04Jocko Willink?

  if you're going to fake enough that I'm gonna actually have to fall for your fake, for you to recover back is you can't do it quickly enough and I am going to be able to take advantage of it. So you can't, it's, it's not possible to throw a, a fake that's committed and like when you commit, the, the, the, the hands down, the best thing you can do is commit to that move and that is the hardest thing for me to track. Is that an accurate assessment?

• 2:36:38Speaker 01

  Yes.

• 2:36:39Jocko Willink?

  Yeah, that took me so long to figure out. It took me this entire conversation to figure out that.

• 2:36:45Speaker 01

  Yeah, so like in jiu-jitsu, they're not really even feints. They're essentially just chaining moves together. I'm gonna do this move and when he reacts to this move that I'm doing, not a fake one, a real one, when he reacts, then I can do this.

• 2:36:56Jocko Willink?

  You have to do a real move.

• 2:36:57Speaker 01

  Yeah, yeah.

• 2:36:58Jocko Willink?

  And then let's face it. If you do a real move in jiu-jitsu and the person doesn't react to it, well, then you just get the move. So that's what they're saying here is you're doing the move. And if the person doesn't react to it, cool, you win. If they do react to it, you go to the next move in the chain, just like you would in jiu-jitsu.

• 2:37:17Speaker 01

  Yeah, yeah, exactly.

• 2:37:20Speaker 01

  You ever been against someone where you get side mount on them and they hold you really, really, really tight? Like just new guys, I think do it out of panic, but if you get a strategic guy like some of the Gracies will do this where they'll hold you. Cause if you're too tight, Chester, you can't do any submissions. You need a little bit of space, you know? So it's essentially that, right? Where the defender, he's holding you tight. That's what he wants. He wants to hold you tight. You don't start off tight, but that's, that's how he can kind of defeat your attacks. Cause you're out of range of attack, right? So it, I think it's just a misconception where outsiders, people who are not pilots or whatever, they look at Top Gun and they're like, yeah, you just shoot the guy. That's how you win, you know, kind of thing, but it's no, you gotta keep them in that range.

• 2:38:04Speaker 01

  And then, yeah, if you can find the, the correct jujitsu scenario, that's, that's similar, then it becomes easier to understand. Cause I wasn't understanding at all. I was like, bro, that doesn't even like, why doesn't this guy? Yeah. But then, yeah, after a while, I think I got it. I think I'm ready.

• 2:38:20Dave Berke?

  Let's go up to Top Gun.

• 2:38:22Jocko Willink?

  Ready for Top Gun. Let's do this.

• 2:38:24Speaker 01

  Think so. Speaking of Top Gun, we do want to be capable, as capable as we can. You know, we don't all have 20, 30 vision. Wait, which one is the good vision? 2030 or 3020?

• 2:38:39Jocko Willink?

  25.

• 2:38:41Speaker 01

  25, that's the dope one.

• 2:38:43Dave Berke?

  25 would be like superhuman.

• 2:38:45Speaker 01

  So second number is the low number.

• 2:38:47Dave Berke?

  So 2020 means at 20 feet, the object appears like it's 20 feet away. That's normal. 2030 means at 20 feet, the object appears like it's 30 feet away. Fighter pilots, some fighter pilots out there, they got 2010 vision. They see it as if they're 10 feet closer. That's how good their eyes are.

• 2:39:05Jocko Willink?

  My, my daughter, allegedly, allegedly, uh, they brought other, you know, they, when she was doing the eye, this is my oldest daughter, when they do the eye test, the doctor was or the, whatever the practitioner was, hey, everyone come in here and look at this. Cause she was just really good. I, I, she said 25.

• 2:39:28Jocko Willink?

  That seems unrealistic to me, but she also kind of gave like a 25 and then she was like 25 2010. So maybe it's just 2010, but yeah, it's pretty uh my, my, my dad also had really insane vision. Really insane, really good vision. Mine was always just, you know, solid, we'll say.

• 2:39:48Dave Berke?

  Good.

• 2:39:48Jocko Willink?

  What, what did you, was yours?

• 2:39:50Dave Berke?

  So I was.

• 2:39:51Jocko Willink?

  Better than 2020?

• 2:39:52Dave Berke?

  Yeah, yeah, yeah. So like I was, I would read the 2015 line, kind of no factor. And I was picking off like a couple off the 2010. Which is not, not common. I mean, not a lot of, I was lucky enough to have a gift of really good vision.

• 2:40:08Jocko Willink?

  Yeah. I mean, they're just a ma, yeah. How stoked were you? When you're like, they're like, oh yeah, you're going to take your vision because you want to be a fighter pilot. Oh, by the way, this is one of the most important factors. Oh, by the way, you happen to have just naturally one in a hundred thousand humans have this kind of vision.

• 2:40:24Speaker 01

  Can you like not become a fighter pilot if your vision is like a, you know?

• 2:40:28Dave Berke?

  Used to be like that. Like I said, now that he figured out like Jock can go get Lasik and like as long as he passed a physical, he's good. Then there's, there's technology and science out there that improves your vision. You don't have to be born with it anymore.

• 2:40:40Speaker 01

  Did you notice that on the muster video, the one that got, the muster that got canceled, Orlando, Orlando, right? The one that got canceled in the video, I put little attributes to each of the team members and yours was the ice test. It was real quick. If you look, you can notice that's why.

• 2:40:56Dave Berke?

  I saw that.

• 2:40:58Speaker 01

  Yeah, you did. Picked it off.

• 2:40:59Jocko Willink?

  Check that out.

• 2:41:00Speaker 01

  10 line. Anyway, capability, right? All right. You want to be capable, you want to stay capable. Jocko Fuel will help you do that. Factually, here's the thing. All right. Look, do you have a perfect diet? Do you have a perfect diet?

• 2:41:14Jocko Willink?

  No, I do not.

• 2:41:15Speaker 01

  I don't have a, I don't have a perfect diet either. So Jocko Fuel, food, drink, supplementation.

• 2:41:25Speaker 01

  Boom, all in one. So what do we got? Joint Warfare, Super Krill Oil for your joints. When they go out and they will.

• 2:41:32Jocko Willink?

  After you said boom, I was like, uh oh, he's trapped. I don't know. I don't even think Echo knows where he's going. But then you just, you just maneuvered right out of that.

• 2:41:39Speaker 01

  No, that was like.

• 2:41:40Jocko Willink?

  You, you did a little deck transition and you rolled right out and I was pretty impressed.

• 2:41:44Speaker 01

  Like, what is that? A hard break scenario? Deck transition was awesome, man.

• 2:41:49Jocko Willink?

  So that's what happened right there, right?

• 2:41:51Speaker 01

  All right, there you go. Nonetheless, I'm just trying to explain what we got here. You know, what we're taking, what I'm taking, you know? Anyway.

• 2:41:58Jocko Willink?

  Well, let's just be straight up. What do you take every day?

• 2:42:00Speaker 01

  Uh, Super Krill Oil. I ran out of Joint Warfare, just texted. I know, I know, you know? And I'm quarantined 2020 and that's my excuse, but nonetheless, you know, I got a response.

• 2:42:12Jocko Willink?

  So that's it. So is he FedExing?

• 2:42:15Speaker 01

  I, you know, I don't go over those details.

• 2:42:18Jocko Willink?

  Okay.

• 2:42:19Speaker 01

  He's a come through guy, 100%.

• 2:42:20Jocko Willink?

  The good thing is we can, we will now get another, uh, what is that? Scientific assessment of when you go off Joint Warfare?

• 2:42:30Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 2:42:30Jocko Willink?

  And you start getting aches and pains.

• 2:42:33Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 2:42:33Jocko Willink?

  Which is what happens.

• 2:42:35Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 2:42:36Jocko Willink?

  All right. So you take Joint Warfare?

• 2:42:38Speaker 01

  Super Krill Oil, that's the combo. That's the joint maintenance antioxidant combo right there.

• 2:42:42Jocko Willink?

  What do you take? I take three Joint Warfare in the morning, three Joint Warfare at night, three Super Krill in the mornings, three Super Krill at night, every day.

• 2:42:49Speaker 01

  Yeah, I take basically half. I do that, but not night and day.

• 2:42:53Jocko Willink?

  Oh, you just do it one time?

• 2:42:53Speaker 01

  One hit, three in three. Easy money. Discipline every single day. Every, put it this way, every day that I work out, deep playing all day.

• 2:43:03Speaker 01

  With like a electrolyte kind of thing. You know, I used to take this pre-workout with caffeine. Don't even take it anymore. Discipline.

• 2:43:10Jocko Willink?

  So the powder discipline?

• 2:43:13Speaker 01

  Yes, sir.

• 2:43:13Jocko Willink?

  What flavor?

• 2:43:14Speaker 01

  Uh, which are all of them.

• 2:43:16Jocko Willink?

  All of them.

• 2:43:17Speaker 01

  All interchangeable to me because I kind of.

• 2:43:19Jocko Willink?

  Dave just looked at you like you are evil.

• 2:43:21Speaker 01

  Well, the

• 2:43:22Jocko Willink?

  You're on the Jocko Bombard, right? With ice, with ice.

• 2:43:24Dave Berke?

  Yeah, crushed ice.

• 2:43:25Jocko Willink?

  Crushed ice is ridiculous.

• 2:43:27Dave Berke?

  So good.

• 2:43:27Speaker 01

  Tropic Thunder, you know, is my go to with the cans. Hundred percent, I drink cans every day. But the discipline powder, hundred percent. Every, every day that I work out, which is five, sometimes six days a week, yes. So that's an everyday thing too. Molk, not every day.

• 2:43:42Jocko Willink?

  Oh, really?

• 2:43:43Speaker 01

  That goes, comes in waves. Cause

• 2:43:45Jocko Willink?

  Interesting.

• 2:43:46Speaker 01

  You know, sometimes you just

• 2:43:47Jocko Willink?

  I told you about the milk and the coconut milk, right?

• 2:43:49Speaker 01

  Yes, sir.

• 2:43:50Jocko Willink?

  That's a big difference because, look, I can't pound a freaking half gallon of milk or whatever. I can't pound a big giant, uh, what is it? Twenty ounces of milk on an empty stomach.

• 2:44:03Speaker 01

  It's not optimal.

• 2:44:04Jocko Willink?

  It's not optimal.

• 2:44:05Speaker 01

  As far as the way you feel.

• 2:44:06Jocko Willink?

  Right. You're familiar with this.

• 2:44:08Speaker 01

  I understand, yes, yes.

• 2:44:10Jocko Willink?

  But you can hammer that coconut milk and it tastes, you're freaking delicious.

• 2:44:15Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 2:44:15Jocko Willink?

  Delicious.

• 2:44:16Speaker 01

  Arguably better than regular milk. Taste wise, coconut milk with

• 2:44:20Jocko Willink?

  We could be there.

• 2:44:22Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 2:44:22Jocko Willink?

  We could be there. I know that's, Dave's looking at me like I'm crazy. I'm telling you, we could be there. If you haven't gone, have you gone down the coconut milk road yet?

• 2:44:29Dave Berke?

  No, but I'm not a, I'm not a milk guy. I, we do almond milk.

• 2:44:32Jocko Willink?

  Oh, okay.

• 2:44:32Dave Berke?

  And so I, you're, you're speaking my language. I, I, I mean, to drink like twenty ounces of milk right now actually sounds like a, would be a problem for me.

• 2:44:40Jocko Willink?

  Yeah.

• 2:44:40Dave Berke?

  Cause I haven't drank regular milk in a long time.

• 2:44:43Jocko Willink?

  Like a night carrier landing.

• 2:44:44Dave Berke?

  It would be. The bigger issue is

• 2:44:46Speaker 01

  Barrel all day.

• 2:44:47Dave Berke?

  What do you mean you don't take it every day?

• 2:44:49Speaker 01

  What, milk?

• 2:44:49Dave Berke?

  Yeah.

• 2:44:50Speaker 01

  Yeah, I do, you know, it goes in waves like for, you know, week, two weeks or whatever.

• 2:44:54Jocko Willink?

  So what do you do like if you're, what do you do when you get done with dinner? And it was a really good dinner and then you're like, oh yeah, but I want dessert.

• 2:45:00Speaker 01

  Yeah, but I don't

• 2:45:01Jocko Willink?

  Dessert that makes you strong.

• 2:45:03Speaker 01

  Well, you know, when I'm thinking that, milk train all day. But the thing is that feeling comes in waves. You see what I mean? Anyway, the, the almond Dave, Dave's are not relating at all. The almond milk, coconut milk, regular milk. I like regular, regular milk, straight up, like, like it. Empty stomach, full stomach, whatever. I had coconut milk in like a, you know, a random smoothie before and I was surprised, it was surprisingly good.

• 2:45:32Jocko Willink?

  Oh, it's good.

• 2:45:33Speaker 01

  For, coming from a dairy milk, cow's milk lover, that's, that's something.

• 2:45:39Jocko Willink?

  Cool. Alright, so we got that, uh, we got Warrior Kid Molk as well, we got Jocka White Tea, we got the cans of Dispongo, which I've been partaking into quite a, quite a few many today, uh, so getting a little crazy with that and part of that reason is just because it freaking tastes delicious. All these things are available at the Vitamin Shop, so if the Vitamin Shop's open around you, you can find some of this stuff. If not, you can go to OriginMaine, M-A-I-N-E dot com. You can order it up and we will send it to you stat.

• 2:46:12Speaker 01

  Yep, very reliable crew.

• 2:46:14Jocko Willink?

  Stat. Oh, the, the crew is up there just getting after it.

• 2:46:17Speaker 01

  Yes.

• 2:46:18Jocko Willink?

  Just getting after it.

• 2:46:21Speaker 01

  Also, Origin, they also make geez for jujitsu, because we are doing jujitsu, hey, slow, we gotta get back into jujitsu, have to, at some point, we have to.

• 2:46:30Jocko Willink?

  Right.

• 2:46:30Speaker 01

  And I dig it if we're, if we're, if we're exercising restraint, being a little hesitant, you know, giving the current, I dig it, but some of us, man, it's kind of.

• 2:46:40Jocko Willink?

  Got a corn and train.

• 2:46:41Speaker 01

  Train with your quarantine, yes, sir.

• 2:46:44Jocko Willink?

  With your quarantine.

• 2:46:45Speaker 01

  Yeah, man, and some people getting back into it quicker than others, so if you don't have a gee, you want to know what the best gee is factually, Origin Gee Boom, made in America, hundred percent. Also, aside from jujitsu, not forgetting about jujitsu, but aside from jujitsu, we got.

• 2:47:00Jocko Willink?

  In addition to jujitsu.

• 2:47:02Speaker 01

  Yes, correct.

• 2:47:03Jocko Willink?

  In addition to jujitsu geez that are made in America, we have other things.

• 2:47:07Speaker 01

  Yes, sir, that is true. Denim, American denim, in the form of jeans.

• 2:47:12Jocko Willink?

  Yep.

• 2:47:13Speaker 01

  We all wear jeans, quarantine or not, we can wear our jeans and we can represent made in America, hundred percent.

• 2:47:20Jocko Willink?

  By the way, no big deal, but you can also help rebuild manufacturing in the United States of America. Maybe that's important to you, I know it's important to me.

• 2:47:30Jocko Willink?

  So you might want to get on that train as well, get yourself some Origin boots.

• 2:47:37Speaker 01

  Hundred percent, yeah. Boots have it, as you mentioned the last time.

• 2:47:41Jocko Willink?

  Yeah, do you even have Origin boots yet?

• 2:47:43Speaker 01

  Yes, I do. As a matter of fact, I do.

• 2:47:45Jocko Willink?

  I don't think I've seen you wearing them. Have I?

• 2:47:47Speaker 01

  Oh, wait.

• 2:47:48Jocko Willink?

  Well, no. No, I haven't seen you wearing them.

• 2:47:50Speaker 01

  I tend to reserve my boot-wearing scenarios, um, pretty conservatively, you know, so I, uh, you know, I don't wear them there very often.

• 2:47:58Jocko Willink?

  Basically, this is your way of saying we need to make Origin slippers and

• 2:48:03Speaker 01

  Slippers, yeah.

• 2:48:04Jocko Willink?

  And some form of, uh, sneakers. Sneakers, tennis shoes, running shoes, whatever, whatever, depending on what part of the world you're from. What do you guys call sneakers in, in Hawaii?

• 2:48:15Speaker 01

  Shoes.

• 2:48:16Jocko Willink?

  Shoes?

• 2:48:17Speaker 01

  Uh, you know what? I don't know if we were ever familiar with that product, shoes or whatever.

• 2:48:22Jocko Willink?

  Cause it was just slippers.

• 2:48:24Speaker 01

  Yeah, when I moved to the mainland, it was like, yeah, shoes, sneakers. We wear slippers, AKA flip-flops.

• 2:48:29Jocko Willink?

  Flip-flops, yeah.

• 2:48:30Speaker 01

  Or go barefoot, hundred percent.

• 2:48:33Dave Berke?

  What are we calling sandals?

• 2:48:35Jocko Willink?

  Uh, I call them flip-flops.

• 2:48:38Dave Berke?

  Yes.

• 2:48:39Jocko Willink?

  Um, sandals, to me sandals means has a strap over the top. It's a different situation. Maybe this is a like, uh, this is like a, a guy that lives in Miami that's taking his, you know, his young, uh, girlfriend and he's like 52 years old and he's taking her out to like an Italian restaurant. That guy's wearing sandals, right? I'm wearing flip-flops over here.

• 2:49:01Dave Berke?

  Well, is there a, did I catch maybe, is there an Origin flip-flop scenario brewing here?

• 2:49:07Speaker 01

  I would not be mad at that scenario.

• 2:49:09Jocko Willink?

  No, let me put it to you this way. I don't want to wear things that aren't made in America at Origin. So, so yes, and as, like you, I wear flip-flops pretty much every day. So, are there some brewing? The answer is in the affirmative, big time.

• 2:49:29Speaker 01

  Well, I think sandals, and this is just how it feels, so I don't know technically. Flip-flop sandals, if you're referring to flip-flops, are the ones that they go between you.

• 2:49:38Jocko Willink?

  If you're referring to my homeboy in Miami?

• 2:49:40Speaker 01

  Yeah, well, that's different.

• 2:49:41Jocko Willink?

  With his trophy girlfriend?

• 2:49:42Speaker 01

  Well, if the thing goes between your, your big toe and your second toe. The thing, you know, they call them thongs sometimes.

• 2:49:48Jocko Willink?

  Oh, that's a good other term for it.

• 2:49:49Speaker 01

  If it has that, then yeah, sandals don't. They just cover your foot. They don't go between your toe. I don't know. That seems like the technical reason.

• 2:49:56Jocko Willink?

  All this stuff and more available at originmaine.com. Get some.

• 2:50:00Speaker 01

  Yes, very true. Also, what do we got?

• 2:50:04Jocko Willink?

  I think we have a store.

• 2:50:06Speaker 01

  Yes, it's called Jaco's Store. It's where you want to continue to represent on the path is where you can get your Discipline Equals Freedom, Good shirts, more rash guards, Dave Berke, hoodies, hats, beanies, you know, all this kind of stuff. We got some posters on there too. Some Warrior Kid stuff as well.

• 2:50:28Jocko Willink?

  That's always good.

• 2:50:29Speaker 01

  Yeah, so yeah, Jaco's Store dot com. Go over there, you know, get something, represent while you're on this path that we're all on.

• 2:50:39Jocko Willink?

  Also, you can support this podcast by subscribing to it. Subscribe to this podcast. And then this podcast called Jocko Podcast. We also have another podcast that I'm changing the name of and we'll get it back out there. And I'm, we're discussing how we're gonna actually play that game, or how we're gonna do it. But, so there was a podcast called The Thread. It will be back under a new name. I didn't, I didn't even Google the name when I just named my own new podcast, right? Just zero research. This is a good name. I like it and do it. So sometimes I'm a little bit too default.

• 2:51:19Jocko Willink?

  So gotta watch out for that. Got the Grounded Podcast where we talk about life through the lens of Jiu Jitsu. Warrior Kid Podcast for your children and also pretty good for parents to listen to. And also get some Warrior Kid soap. Available yet?

• 2:51:34Speaker 01

  Yes.

• 2:51:34Jocko Willink?

  Oh, it's available on Jaco's Store dot com. Order yourself some Killer Soap made by Young Aiden so that you as a human being

• 2:51:44Jocko Willink?

  can stay clean.

• 2:51:46Speaker 01

  Also, not to mention Jaco Soap and Trooper Soap.

• 2:51:49Jocko Willink?

  Oh.

• 2:51:50Speaker 01

  Yeah, so the, you know, so sometimes, I'm not saying this is what it's for because it's not what it's for, but sometimes soap is sort of sitting out. It's just sitting out on display, we'll call it.

• 2:52:04Speaker 01

  So word on the street is the Trooper soap in particular gets many, many compliments with the aroma.

• 2:52:10Jocko Willink?

  Interesting.

• 2:52:11Speaker 01

  So it smells good is what I'm saying.

• 2:52:12Jocko Willink?

  Interesting.

• 2:52:13Speaker 01

  Yeah, I personally like that killer soap.

• 2:52:16Jocko Willink?

  Yeah, I like the killer soap.

• 2:52:17Speaker 01

  But I guess the Trooper soap, if you wanna, you know, let's say it's nighttime, your final shower, you're gonna go, go sleep with your wife or something like this, maybe use the Trooper soap is what I'm saying.

• 2:52:28Jocko Willink?

  Interesting.

• 2:52:29Speaker 01

  Anyway, yes.

• 2:52:30Jocko Willink?

  I thought you also spoken.

• 2:52:31Speaker 01

  Ranch.com also, JacoStore.com, boom, soap available, get some. Also, we have a YouTube channel. If you're interested in the video version of this podcast, you're gonna watch it instead of just listen.

• 2:52:43Jocko Willink?

  Uh, by the way, I posted a video the other day of me making some food with Josh Hall and Tori and somebody wrote like, um, the no explosions, so I think we kinda owe it to the world.

• 2:52:59Speaker 01

  To put explosions in there.

• 2:53:01Jocko Willink?

  To put explosions in some, you know, some Jaco cooking videos. I'm the worst cook.

• 2:53:07Speaker 01

  Uh, well.

• 2:53:08Jocko Willink?

  You know, some guys are into it.

• 2:53:09Speaker 01

  Yes.

• 2:53:10Jocko Willink?

  You know, it's kinda like a thing like, I'm gonna grill up. Leif Babin, all the way, dude, Leif Babin's all about that grilling and what do you do with the, what do you do with it before you cook it? You leave it in the fridge inside some sauce for the night.

• 2:53:21Speaker 01

  Oh, marinade.

• 2:53:22Jocko Willink?

  Yeah, he's marinating. He's doing all the nine yards. Leif's like, yeah, I got some, uh, some marinade. He's all fired up for that. I, you know what I'll do with food? Eat it.

• 2:53:32Speaker 01

  I understand. So. You know, you can tell if someone's really into cooking. When they put salt on it, they don't just put salt like this or like a, you know, you put seasoning, you know, before it goes in the oven, wherever it goes. You know, you just put salt, put seasoning. This is how you can tell. They grab the salt. They grab the salt with their fingers and they, then they sprinkle it like in a circle, you know, like they have a, they have a technique to sprinkling, so you see what I'm saying? People not into cooking, they don't do that kind of stuff.

• 2:53:57Jocko Willink?

  What about the guy that, that, the Salt Bay?

• 2:53:59Speaker 01

  Oh, advanced.

• 2:54:00Jocko Willink?

  Here's the deal.

• 2:54:01Speaker 01

  Oh, advanced salt administrator.

• 2:54:02Jocko Willink?

  I've been to his restaurant.

• 2:54:04Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 2:54:05Jocko Willink?

  And I have had him actually put salt on my steak, cut it for me.

• 2:54:10Speaker 01

  Yep. All right. And did he, and he did it that way?

• 2:54:13Jocko Willink?

  I did.

• 2:54:14Speaker 01

  He was advanced.

• 2:54:15Jocko Willink?

  Name drop, you wanna hear a name drop?

• 2:54:16Speaker 01

  Yes, sir.

• 2:54:17Jocko Willink?

  You know who I was sitting there eating steak with? A couple of friends, including.

• 2:54:21Jocko Willink?

  Henzo Gracie, we're kicking it.

• 2:54:23Speaker 01

  Oh, yes, that is, that's a solid.

• 2:54:26Jocko Willink?

  Oh, you're so awesome. Such an awesome guy.

• 2:54:29Speaker 01

  Yes, sir.

• 2:54:29Jocko Willink?

  So there you go. Name drop.

• 2:54:30Speaker 01

  Yeah. Anyway, so the point is, yeah, we have a YouTube channel. So yeah, check that out if you're, if you know, you know, watch the podcast straight up. Also, psychological warfare. Need a little spot. That's what it is. A spot. If you're hitting moments of weakness, specifically in the workouts that I mean, if I'm speaking for myself right now, if you need a little spot, you want to get past that feeling of, oh, I don't feel like doing this, whatever. Boom. Psychological warfare will spot you a little bit.

• 2:54:58Jocko Willink?

  flipsidecanvas.com Dakota Meyer, making prints for you to hang up in your house that will keep you on the path. We got a bunch of books. We got Top Gun by Dan Pedersen. You can get that on jockopodcast.com, the books. Some people were late getting that up there. No big deal.

• 2:55:17Speaker 01

  Eh, you know.

• 2:55:18Jocko Willink?

  Whatever.

• 2:55:18Speaker 01

  Better late than never.

• 2:55:19Jocko Willink?

  Yeah, that's what I'm saying. Uh, you can get that there. You can also get the latest book called The Code, The Evaluation of Protocols. Dave Berke, getting some good feedback on that book?

• 2:55:30Speaker 01

  Some good feedback on that book. Big time.

• 2:55:34Speaker 01

  Agree. Troopers are in the game on this book, which is awesome.

• 2:55:39Jocko Willink?

  Humbling book.

• 2:55:40Speaker 01

  Dude, humbling and repetitively humbling.

• 2:55:43Jocko Willink?

  Repetitively hu- it's one of those books where, uh, it's kind of like what you were saying about landing on a carrier and being on a carrier and having that life where you're like, this is hard.

• 2:55:56Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 2:55:56Jocko Willink?

  But I love it. That's the code, the evaluation. Put yourself in check.

• 2:56:02Speaker 01

  And it's like a, there it is, a reminder. Cause like a lot of this stuff is like, yeah, like you could have a one day. You could have a zero day, right? But if you forget about the code, it won't even really move you either way. But if you're on the path, you know, if you're, if you are reminded that, hey, you're going by this code, you throw up a zero, but that hurts, you know? But if you're not reminded, it doesn't hurt. See what I'm saying?

• 2:56:26Jocko Willink?

  Yep. Remind yourself. So get the code. You can get Leadership Strategy and Tactics Field Manual. You can get Way of the Warrior Kid, one, two, and three. You can get Mikey and the Dragons. You can get Discipline Equals Freedom Field Manual. You can get Extreme Ownership Dichotomy Leadership. Been writing books over here. Get some information in ya. Check those books out. Echelon Front is our leadership consultancy where we solve problems through leadership. You may think, well, how are you doing that? No one's traveling because of COVID-19. Well, we are. We are doing it all day long. We're actually stepping up. We're doing a lot of it virtual. Well, we're doing it all virtual now. And what we found is that you can have me come and talk to your,

• 2:57:12Jocko Willink?

  you can have me come and talk to your team of a thousand people in a big auditorium. And most of those people, what they're watching is the screen next to me on stage that's projecting my face. That's what they're actually watching.

• 2:57:30Jocko Willink?

  And then they don't have any interaction. They can't ask any question because there's too many people there. Or during a Zoom call,

• 2:57:38Jocko Willink?

  I'm right there. Dave's right there. Lace right there. Whoever, whoever from the Echelon Front team is right there, talking directly to you, to your team. So it's turned out awesome. You know, the interaction that we can have, the connection, the discussions, that's what we're doing at Echelon Front now. It's been a great transition. I'm sure we'll do, we will end up doing live face-to-face consulting again. But right now, it's no factor. We're pushing right through it. How many Zoom calls do you think you're doing a day right now?

• 2:58:18Dave Berke?

  Dude, I'm doing a lot of Zoom calls. And the whole time in my head, I was thinking what it was, it's no factor. It's no factor. It's been awesome.

• 2:58:27Jocko Willink?

  Yep. It's, it's in many ways, it's better.

• 2:58:31Dave Berke?

  Yeah.

• 2:58:32Jocko Willink?

  It's better to be able to have Dave talk to your 12-person team twice a week.

• 2:58:42Jocko Willink?

  And that cost Dave an hour, but he spent, it cost him two hours, you know, in a week. Whereas if he had to fly up to your location and spend two hours up there, that cost him, whatever, two days. It cost him two days. And your people can't, you know, hit him up in that conversation and say, hey, what do you think? Hey, let me, let me hit you with an email. It's, it's, it's truly developing relationships that we didn't think was possible. So go to echelonfront.com for details on that. And, and in that, we also stepped up our game with EF Online, EFOnline.com. This is the other thing we're doing. We are communicating all the time. We're having live meetings. We're doing them basically five times a week.

• 2:59:24Jocko Willink?

  If you want to say, if you want to ask me a question, if you want to ask me a question, if you want to sit there on a computer, look at me and ask me a question, go to EFOnline.com and come to one of our live meetings. You will get to ask me a question. We'll have a full conversation. It's, it's epic. Not to mention, we've got all kinds of material on there to, for you to, to learn, leadership, to train your tactics. It's all in there and it's only growing. It's grown really fast. We've, we're, we're pouring everything we got into EF Online. So check that out. We also have the muster coming up. We have Dallas, Texas, December 3rd and 4th. We have Arizona, Phoenix, Arizona, September 16th and 17th.

• 3:00:08Jocko Willink?

  So if you want to come to those, better register quick.

• 3:00:14Jocko Willink?

  ExtremeOwnership.com. We've sold out all of our gigs we've ever done. We'll sell these out too. So if you want to come, go register and EF Overwatch and EF Legion.

• 3:00:27Jocko Willink?

  Look, we work with companies all the time. All companies need leaders at every level, from frontline leaders to senior leaders. If you need a senior level leader, go to EF Overwatch. If you need a frontline leader, go to EF Legion. If you were in the military, in any capacity, go to EFLegion.com and go and register so we can get you connected with companies that are looking for frontline leaders. And find the Americas MightyWarriors.org. That is Mama Lee. That is Mark Lee's mom. And that is her charity, which she set up after Mark was killed.

• 3:01:09Jocko Willink?

  She decided to pick up the fight. She decided to carry on. And she's out there helping service members, helping their families, helping Gold Star families around the world. Uh, to give you an example of what she's doing, there's medical treatments that sometimes aren't covered by insurance. America, America's Mighty Warriors is covering that kind of thing for our vets. She's doing it all the time. That's one of the many things that she's out there doing. So if you want to support, go to that website and you can either donate or you can get personally involved. And if you want to hear any more of my despotic sermons, or you want to hear any more of Echo

• 3:01:52Jocko Willink?

  Charles's preposterous myths, or you haven't had enough of Dave's overindulgent anecdotes, then you can find us, all of us, we're on the interwebs. We're on Twitter, Instagram, and Facebook. Dave is at David R Burke, Echo is at Echo Charles, and I am at Jocko Willink. And thanks to all of the military personnel out there. Look, they all make this machine work. When that carrier, when that fighter pilot's going to land on that carrier, there's 5,000 people that are making that possible on that ship. There's 5,000 people working, coordinating, making it happen.

• 3:02:37Jocko Willink?

  They're all over the place. So, thanks to all of you that are out there. Thanks to our police, law enforcement, firefighters, paramedics, EMTs, dispatchers, correctional officers, Border Patrol, Secret Service, and everyone that defends our way of life right here at home. Also, thanks to all the doctors, nurses, and medical personnel who care for us when our way of life is threatened. And everyone else out there, just remember to keep that Top Gun mindset. Put your ego in check. Throw in a little bit of rebellion. Push yourself to learn.

• 3:03:17Jocko Willink?

  Set up competition that forces you to get better. And then get out there and get after it. And until next time, this is Dave Berke, and Echo, and Jaco. Out.