255: Attack is the Key to Success. "Guidelines for the Leader and Commander" Pt. 5

0:00:0- - Opening 0:01:44 - Guidelines for the Leader and Commander 1:41:40 - Final thoughts and take-aways. 1:42:29 - How to stay on THE PATH. 2:07:02 - 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.

• 0:01Jocko Willink?

  This is Jocko Podcast number 255 with Echo Charles and me Jocko Willink. Good evening, Echo.

• 0:07Speaker 01

  Good evening.

• 0:08Jocko Willink?

  And joining us again is Dave Berke. Good evening, Dave. Good evening. So we go on with Guidelines for the Leader and Commander. And I think at this point, I'm not even sure that I'm just doing this purely out of my own joy of having searched for this book for more than a decade, finally have found a copy. And now I'm making everyone else enjoy it with me.

• 0:40Jocko Willink?

  And we covered this book on 251, 252, 253, 254.

• 0:47Jocko Willink?

  But there's a reason, there's a reason to dig through the past to our roots, to my roots.

• 0:56Jocko Willink?

  The roots from this book, from a man that served in World War I, World War II, Korea, General Bruce Clark, Bruce Clark, who then overlapped that service in Korea with Colonel David Hackworth, who served in Korea and then Vietnam and who wrote the book about face. And these are the lessons that I learned, that I tried to pass on. And the DNA is so clear, it's so clear to read this book.

• 1:24Jocko Willink?

  And see that DNA to find the roots of knowledge. And in knowing it, we learn more. And that's the goal. The goal is to learn and improve and get better. So Guidelines for the Leader and Commander by General Bruce Clark. Here we go. Back to the book. This next section, and I'll be honest with you, the last section, I liked it. You know, there's some lessons, you know, some takeaways for sure.

• 1:58Jocko Willink?

  This one I started getting, this one I had a good time with. So, and I was a little worried at first because the last section we were talking about was talking about training the individual soldier, which to me is like, okay, you know, this is what we're doing. We're talking about the individual soldier. I thought that might have been a little bit of a peak. A little bit of a peak where I started, you know, like this is it. But then I got to this section, chapter 10, which is called Training the Unit. And I started saying, oh, okay. Which makes sense, right? Which makes sense. Because certainly there's going to be parallels when you talk about training individual soldiers. But when you start talking about training teams and training units, this is where things really start to come to light. From a leadership perspective.

• 2:42Jocko Willink?

  So, Importance of Unit Training. The Army's investment in the soldier pays off only when the unit is combat ready. Proper training develops combat-ready units by welding skills, skilled individuals into teams and combining teams into effective platoons, companies and combined arms forces. It is my purpose in this chapter to highlight the application of principles and techniques that will contribute to improving a unit's combat readiness in less time at less cost, thus enabling the Army to realize full measure from its investment in the soldier and his unit. So there you go. This is about training that team, getting them to work together. Theme of Unit Combat Readiness.

• 3:25Jocko Willink?

  It has often been said that battles are fought by squads and platoons and won by teamwork of small units supported by fire.

• 3:37Jocko Willink?

  Combat power is inflicted on the enemy by fire and movement. There you go. Cover, move, welcome. It's been three, it's been three paragraphs. We're talking about cover, move. This is why I start getting fired up.

• 3:53Jocko Willink?

  The purpose of movement is to get the fire in the most advantageous position to destroy the enemy. That's a good little thing to think about. That's why we cover and move. We cover and move to close with and destroy the enemy, to get in an advantageous position to destroy the enemy. That's why we cover and move. One must remember, however, that gasoline, ammunition, and other vital supplies are needed to sustain tactical operations. Accordingly, emphasis on small unit training should habitually stress teamwork to the point that tactical execution is accomplished with the same precision as dismounted drill, that delivery of effective fire is as automatic as gun drill, and that supply to the tactical

• 4:34Jocko Willink?

  unit is as responsive in battle as it is in garrison. These battlefield reflections vividly point out the basic theme of small unit combat readiness. No small unit training should be undertaken in a vacuum. Why is he pointing this out? He's pointing this out because in the military, it's very easy to silo yourself. It's very easy to say, "I want my platoon to be good, so I'm gonna go train my platoon." Or, "I want my company to be good, so I'm gonna train my company." Or, "I want my battalion to be good, so I'm just gonna go train my battalion over here in a vacuum." And if you're doing that, you're wrong. In any organization, if you're a salesperson and you're not training alongside the operations people to make sure that you know how to communicate to them what you want, and they

• 5:19Jocko Willink?

  know how to communicate to you what they can deliver. What about the IT group? Do they understand how to handle the threshold of emails that you're gonna be getting when you offer this new product? There's all these things that you need to work together.

• 5:36Speaker 01

  Sometimes is it because of like internal competition as well? Like, um...

• 5:40Jocko Willink?

  Wait, that's why we wouldn't train together?

• 5:42Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 5:43Jocko Willink?

  Maybe?

• 5:44Speaker 01

  Or...

• 5:45Jocko Willink?

  Maybe? But I think it's... I think it's just like the straight up silos. You know what I'm saying? Just like the straight up like, hey, this is my platoon. I'm gonna take care of my platoon. This is my division. I'm gonna take care of my division. This is my department. I'm gonna take care of my department.

• 5:58Speaker 01

  So like you're not thinking about necessarily the other guys? Or you're just like, eh, leave me alone. I'm, I'm.

• 6:05Jocko Willink?

  I don't think it, I think it could be either a real like negative attitude, but it could also be just a positive attitude. That's like, hey, I'm gonna train my platoon.

• 6:14Speaker 01

  Right, right. That's what you're focused on.

• 6:15Jocko Willink?

  Yeah, yeah. I'm probably having to train my platoon. I'm a platoon commander. I'm gonna train my platoon. We are gonna be ready.

• 6:19Speaker 01

  Yeah, yeah.

• 6:19Jocko Willink?

  Here's the problem. You can be ready, but if you can't call for fire correctly, it doesn't matter. If you've never coordinated with a QRF before, it doesn't matter. When that QRF is needed, you don't know what you're doing.

• 6:31Jocko Willink?

  And it happens in business too. Hey, you know, we, we're, we're, like I said, we're the sales team. We don't care. I'm not gonna, I don't need to train the, the, the customer satisfaction group. I don't need to train with them. That's not my deal, right? I don't care what happens when, you know, once I sell the product, I don't care what happens. Oh, really? You should care what happens because if the client calls customer satisfaction and looks for a solution to a problem that they've got as they're implementing the thing that you just sold them and the solution isn't there, guess what? You're not getting good reviews and you're not gonna sell any more product to that company.

• 7:08Speaker 01

  Is the name Customer Satisfaction Department? Is that it?

• 7:12Jocko Willink?

  Yeah, yeah.

• 7:12Speaker 01

  Is it called that?

• 7:13Jocko Willink?

  Yeah, or sometimes they call it Client Implementation. There's many, many organizations that are set up in such a way that there's someone that sells the product and then there's someone that helps them implement the product.

• 7:23Speaker 01

  And that's customer satisfaction?

• 7:24Jocko Willink?

  Could be customer satisfaction, client satisfaction. What are some other names for it? Dave, do you, can you think of any?

• 7:29Speaker 01

  Customer service, tech support?

• 7:30Jocko Willink?

  Yeah, stuff like that. Tech support, that's a good one. Tech support, you might think of like, that's a broad based, like, hey, I've had this computer for two years and now it's not working. We're talk, I'm talking about companies where you buy a new system of software for your organization.

• 7:48Speaker 01

  Like a solar panel.

• 7:51Jocko Willink?

  Uh, I guess.

• 7:52Speaker 01

  At home, you buy a solar panel for your roof?

• 7:55Jocko Willink?

  Well, let's say, let's say you did that. Maybe you buy solar panels for your roof, right? And then, great, you're the salesman, you sell them to me. Guess what you're done when you're done selling me my solar panels? You're on, trying to sell the next pair. So when I call, because the installation I'm having a hard time with, I call customer satisfaction. It's Dave. Dave picks up the phone. Hey, I just ordered this thing. And now he says, well, how many, you know, and I say, look, we're having trouble installing this. It doesn't fit on my roof right. And you say, okay, well, how many panels did you get? And what size are they? And all of a sudden, he realizes that he needs to give you feedback that, listen, if the roof is this angle, it fits a different way. And so now you can sell the product better.

• 8:40Jocko Willink?

  And that will keep people more satisfied. You can also do a follow-up call with me and say, hey, hey, sir, I'm really sorry. When I measured your roof, I thought it was this angle. And so I, I sold you this thing. Here's what we're gonna do. We're actually gonna come out and pick up three of the panels that you're not gonna need anymore. And I'm gonna, you know, I'm gonna give you a 10% rebate. And we're also sending an installer out there to give you a hand. Boom, right? Now I'm taken care of. We're all happy. Now guess what I'm doing? When somebody asks me, oh, you got solar panels? What company? And I say, oh, Echo's Solar Panels. Is it a good company? Yeah, you know, it was a little rough, but they got everything taken care of. You should definitely call them. You see where I'm going with this?

• 9:17Speaker 01

  Yeah, fully. And that's weird.

• 9:18Jocko Willink?

  Damn, you just took me down the rabbit hole of solar installation.

• 9:22Speaker 01

  That was good. Maybe not the best example, but you did good with it.

• 9:26Jocko Willink?

  I'm over here to run with it.

• 9:27Speaker 01

  Yeah, yeah.

• 9:28Jocko Willink?

  I'm over here to make it happen. What do you got?

• 9:29Speaker 01

  But yeah, cuz you don't really think about that when you're at work, you know, where you, you kinda wanna be the best worker in company, sure, you know? But the customer like experience is kinda the whole deal, you know? You know how like, man, when you leave your review, you're like, great product, bad customer service? And that can be like, well, that sucks cuz I need some customer service kinda thing. So it's kind of a downer, you know?

• 9:51Jocko Willink?

  Yeah, cuz we're not thinking everything's gonna work perfect every single time, right?

• 9:54Speaker 01

  Not necessarily. You see what I'm saying? But I'm saying like, you know, you have these elements of a product or service that are all to the customer, it's like.

• 10:04Speaker 01

  It's all the same thing. I'm not gonna go to this person just for one thing. I'm gonna go, I mean, as far as one quality of their, their product, they're gonna, they'll get turned off by other departments. So if you work there, if you're just focused on yours, brother, that affects you.

• 10:19Jocko Willink?

  That's what General Clark is saying. You have to interact with other people inside your organization. And if you're not doing that, you're wrong.

• 10:27Speaker 01

  You're wrong.

• 10:30Jocko Willink?

  Fast forward a little bit. Training philosophy, the basic, the basic philosophy of successful training is that of obtaining superior results with average personnel. God, I love that. Well, the reason we're training is to take average people and make them exceptional. Superior results. A unit to be truly outstanding should be excellent in all undertakings and activities. Commanders must know and understand that capable, the capabilities and limitations of personnel and set high and exacting standards of capabilities of the high ability of a groups, of a unit's personnel. This tends to give the low ability group a hopeless feeling because of having to compete against a standard which they cannot attain. A unit satisfactory in all

• 11:13Jocko Willink?

  things is better than one outstanding in some, excellent in others, and unsatisfactory in a few. That's a, that's a good thing to think about.

• 11:28Jocko Willink?

  You know, it's better to be good at a bunch, good at everything than outstanding at this one thing, okay, at some other things, and unsat in some, in some final things.

• 11:41Jocko Willink?

  Next section.

• 11:43Jocko Willink?

  Fast forward a little bit. Emphasize fundamentals. The basic difference between well-trained unit and one that is not well-trained is found in the attention paid to the fundamentals of marksmanship, chemical, biological, and radiological warfare, communications, maintenance, administration, and all other arts and skills that contribute to making the unit combat-ready in the shortest possible time. A well-trained soldier is the only foundation upon which effective combat-ready units can be built. When the soldier fails to demonstrate proficiency in individual skills, the army's investment is wasted and the combat readiness of the unit is diminished.

• 12:17Jocko Willink?

  Each commander should approach his problems of combat readiness with a sense of wartime urgency. There is no magic formula, no sweatless solution to achieving a high state of combat readiness in a unit. Application of the fundamentals enumerated below however will help. So that, by the way, sweatless solution, you've heard that before, right Echo Charles?

• 12:41Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 12:41Jocko Willink?

  That's, that's, that's Hack. Well, Hack took that actual phrase. And I was, I had tried to find it in About Face and of course About Face is 836 pages. And I was like, oh, I know it's in here somewhere. I've, I've done it on the podcast. I've talked about the sweatless solution. There is no sweatless solution. We've covered that on the podcast. You may have wondered where he got, I always thought he made it up, right? Of course, we thought he made it up. If you ever heard me say it, maybe you thought I made it up. I didn't make it up. Neither did Hack. There you go. I believe the source is General Clark.

• 13:14Speaker 01

  Sweatless solution. That's like, that was, that stuck with me for a long time. Still is with me, really. Cause sweat, and part of it is yes, because I had to admit to myself, bro, that's me a lot of the time. I'm looking for that sweatless solution. Let's face it, man. If you can go and get like, you know the kind where.

• 13:35Speaker 01

  The other day.

• 13:36Jocko Willink?

  Echo Charles going deep. Stand by.

• 13:40Jocko Willink?

  Get some.

• 13:41Speaker 01

  So I'm sitting on the couch, right?

• 13:43Jocko Willink?

  Big shocker.

• 13:44Speaker 01

  There's, there's a, so the remote control, I have the kind where, you know, like the remote control for the cable and then for the volume, they're two different.

• 13:51Jocko Willink?

  Okay.

• 13:53Speaker 01

  So I got the one for the cable, but I was like, fuck, the volume one is.

• 14:00Speaker 01

  The volume one is somewhere else. So I'm like, you know, the kind you're looking around has to be close to you, right? Cause it's not like it's, you know, in the next room or something like that. It's not, it doesn't have, it's not gonna go far, but it's around here somewhere, right?

• 14:12Jocko Willink?

  This is what we train for.

• 14:15Speaker 01

  So you know, you kind of look around your little vicinity or whatever. I'm not getting up though. But I'm already sitting down. That might cause me to sweat a little bit, but whatever. So I'm looking around and I turn around and we have this ledge like behind the couch there. You know that ledge there? And I look and it's behind me. But it's the kind of it's in this weird spot where I can't like, I gotta stand up. Just if I would have stood up when I first saw it, but I would have had the remote control enjoying some television at this point. But I'm like trying to contort my body like all weird. It was weird. It was almost like I was putting more effort into my sweatless solution than

• 14:56Speaker 01

  actual energy would have been expended if I went for the sweat solution, the real one, you know? Put in that just stand up for a second. You see what I'm saying?

• 15:04Jocko Willink?

  Bro.

• 15:05Speaker 01

  But I'm saying, okay, okay. So the point is, the point is, no, no, no, no.

• 15:09Jocko Willink?

  You are lazier than I thought.

• 15:14Speaker 01

  The point is.

• 15:15Jocko Willink?

  Bro, I'm talking about Hackworth. I'm talking about General Clark. He served in World War One, World War Two, Korea. Hackworth was a Nam Most Decorated Soldier. You couldn't get your remote?

• 15:27Speaker 01

  I could. What I'm saying is, sometimes we, us, the people, sometimes we put so much effort into looking for a sweatless solution. See what I'm saying? Like as a philosophy, you know? And how General Clark is saying, subsequently Hackworth, subsequently Jaco, what they're saying, stop looking for the sweatless solution. Stop, like straight up. But just do the work. Stand up. Get the remote control. The case may be whatever.

• 15:58Jocko Willink?

  This may be the

• 15:59Speaker 01

  You see what I'm saying though?

• 16:00Jocko Willink?

  This may be the apex of the Echo Charles examples.

• 16:05Speaker 01

  I'm just saying, there's a lot of those, you know, kind of like when you're vacuuming and you see the little thing, it doesn't want to get sucked up by the vacuum. And then you like, you just bend down, pick it up. You should, but I don't want to do that. So you'll like kick it to try to get it loose or whatever. I'm just saying these lessons are kind of everywhere when you think about it. You know what I'm saying?

• 16:25Jocko Willink?

  All right, man. Check.

• 16:27Speaker 01

  General Clark would agree, I think.

• 16:28Jocko Willink?

  No, he definitely would. When he wasn't like on the line.

• 16:31Speaker 01

  Yes, of course.

• 16:33Jocko Willink?

  Fighting the Nazis.

• 16:34Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 16:35Jocko Willink?

  Or fighting the communists.

• 16:37Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 16:37Jocko Willink?

  These guys didn't even have remote controls, bruh. They have TVs. Or couches.

• 16:43Speaker 01

  From over here, just trying to understand.

• 16:44Jocko Willink?

  All right, well, there you go. All right, so back to the book.

• 16:51Jocko Willink?

  He's talking about the things that you can, you can do to keep a unit trained up. Number one, do essential things first. There's not enough time for the commander to do everything. Each commander will have to determine wisely what is essential and assign responsibilities for accomplishment. He should spend the remaining time on near essentials. This is especially true of training. Non-essentials should not take up required, time required for essentials. What do we call that? We call that prioritize and execute.

• 17:19Jocko Willink?

  Next thing, do things right the first time. The commander should not consider his unit ready for battle until it can carry out a plan well the first time. Too often commanders hold rehearsals of things their unit should be able to do well without rehearsal. I like this because this is a, a little bit, you know, there's this mantra in the dames about you should do one, one third planning, one third gear prep, one third rehearsal. We put all this emphasis into rehearsal, which is awesome and I 100% believe that, but you, there's things that you shouldn't have to rehearse, right? And that's what he said. There's some, you should just know, should have some, some standard operating procedures that you should know. Look, are we going to rehearse them? Yes, we are.

• 18:01Jocko Willink?

  But you should know, you shouldn't need, you should rehearse them, you shouldn't have to rehearse them. But you should rehearse. I rehearse everything.

• 18:11Jocko Willink?

  This practice causes officers and men expecting a dry run or two to pay little attention to initial instructions and to make inadequate preparations. There will be no dry runs in combat.

• 18:26Jocko Willink?

  It is good to issue adequate instructions and hold officers and men to them the first time. That's something that I wish I would have learned. Imagine saying, "Hey, look, I'm going to tell you guys this one time, then we're going to go execute. No rehearsals." Just to see, just to get people in the mindset of paying attention and figuring out where your directions and your planning is a shortfall. Because if I can't say, "Okay, Dave, here's what we're going to do. You're going to go in this building, I'm going to go in this building, you're going to take your squad, you're going to move to here, you're going to move to there." Does everyone understand? "All right, we're going to go do it right now in this training exercise with no rehearsals." That will show us the shortfalls of our planning and our communication.

• 19:09Jocko Willink?

  It will also show the team's shortfalls. And when they don't know what to do, they should raise their hand and say, "Hey, boss, that doesn't make sense to me right now. Hold on a second, let me hear that again. I don't understand that part."

• 19:26Jocko Willink?

  Practice more than one thing at a time. Okay, so wait a second, are we going against prioritize and execute? Is that what's happening? No, actually, whenever I see a unit practicing only one thing at a time, I'm reminded of the history paper my son brought home one day. "The grammar construction and spelling were not good. This is very poor English," I told him. "But Dad," he said, "I was only being tested in history." Sound training requires that many subjects be skillfully integrated and taught concurrently. This is an excellent time saver in training. And he goes through this. And what he's saying is, "Look, you've got to do multiple things at the same time." And even though prioritize and execute, when you've got multiple problems and you can't try and solve them all at the same time,

• 20:08Jocko Willink?

  that doesn't mean that you're going to say, "Hold on a second. We need to move towards the target, but we also need to make communications. We can only do one at a time." No, there's things that you have to do concurrently. And that can include, "Hey, we've got to move wounded people and we've got to fight a firefight." If we only ever practice just getting in a firefight and just moving people, how do we know how to do both those things at the same time? Which you may have to do. So do you have to prioritize and execute? Yes, you do. But guess what? You also have to learn how to do things concurrently.

• 20:49Jocko Willink?

  He says a paper integration and training schedule is not efficient. So just like talking about it, well, you know, if we have to do move a wounded guy while we're in a firefight, well, then we'll just do this XYZ. No, you have to try it, which is contradictory to rehearsals, right? Don't, don't, don't do rehearsals. Yes, do rehearsals.

• 21:12Jocko Willink?

  A commander should take every opportunity to exploit the effects of integrated training. It is the key to accelerated intensified unit combat training. In effect, it increases the amount of available training time. Good. Eliminate the habit, eliminate the administrative habit in training. I am convinced that all commanders should take maximum advantage of field training time to develop correct tactical practices and procedures. We talked about that one last time. Practice dispersion, concealment and camouflage. The penalty for bad habits and passive measures in air defense warrants special mention. The day when American soldier could be lax about dispersion, concealment and camouflage is in the past.

• 21:53Jocko Willink?

  So again, how does this apply to everyday life and business? Train how you fight. Train how you fight. Know the status of men and equipment. Check, check up on those that are absentee from training. Practice maintenance in the field, practice, and he's got little sections about these, each one of these. Practice sound troop leading procedures. The subject of troop leading procedures and allied techniques requires increased emphasis on tactical exercises. Fundamentals found in field manuals and related publications are worthy of stress. Sound command procedures diligently practiced in all field training will form good habits in the unit commander.

• 22:39Jocko Willink?

  Form the checklist habit. Meticulous planning and reconnaissance are required to make sure that every minute in the field will be expended profitably. Checklists for this purpose are a necessary command and staff tool, just as they are for supervising and testing the conduct of training. What do you got?

• 22:57Speaker 02

  I got the same thing I keep thinking about every time I hear what he has to say. He keeps repeating fundamental, sound, realistic. Fundamentals. These are the fundamentals, the basic things. All the basic things associated with our job. And being good at those things and training in a realistic scenario. There's a lot, obviously, General Clark is talking about war. He's recounting his experiences of war. I hear this, I hear what he's saying is connecting it to war. But the application of these things, as I keep hearing it in my head, hearing what you're saying, and thinking about the things I'm thinking about now.

• 23:38Speaker 02

  If you are in the private sector, anywhere in the private sector, unless you happen to be in one of the rare sectors that's not competitive, and there are almost none, if you are in the, if you are in the American capitalist private sector, you are at war. Your competitors don't want to share space with you, they don't want to cooperate with you to, to work in harmony, to, they want to run you over. They want to take all of your clients, all of your market share, and all of your product. They want to take all that from you. And the way you are successful is the exact same things. Your people have to be trained on the fundamentals, on everything that applies to them, and the

• 24:20Speaker 02

  only way to do that is to find a way to train them realistically that replicates what they're going to deal with in the real world, in their real world. It's just kind of crazy how, while it seems difficult to make the connection to his world, the connection is so straightforward to any world that you're operating in.

• 24:39Jocko Willink?

  You know, I've broached this subject before, and I'm sure there's got to be some kind of...

• 24:47Jocko Willink?

  Scientific or psychological experiment or whatever.

• 24:52Jocko Willink?

  But the

• 24:55Jocko Willink?

  the improvement of your response from a time when you don't know what's going to happen and you haven't practiced it to a time when you do know what's going to happen, you have practiced it is exponential. It is absolutely exponential. And we see this all the time at Esalen Front when we role play with people. Totally. We put someone in a role playing scenario and, and they say, well, you know, I've got to go talk to this. I gotta go talk to my subordinate leader who's got a giant ego. And okay, roll in there and just talk to him, see how that goes. You, you, it's going to be a disaster. So you role play and guess what? The first time you role play, it's a disaster. The second time it's 10 times better. Yeah.

• 25:37Jocko Willink?

  And then the third time it's 15 times better. And then the fourth time it's 17 times better. But that first look, that first look that you get, when you know a little bit of what to expect, man, you are just

• 25:50Jocko Willink?

  you're, you're exponentially more prepared for that situation. And, and we know when you're in a leadership position and you're going to roll into a meeting where you've got to deliver some bad news to the troops, you know what they're going to say. You know, there's eight responses you're going to get. Why not think through those things? Why not think through those things? You're going to talk to a client that you've disappointed, you've let down, you've made a mistake. You know, they're going to have one of six different reactions. Why not work through those? Why not have a contingency plan for each one of those six things? This will take you four minutes to do. It'll take you and I four minutes to role play. Maybe it'll take us five, 10 minutes to role play the six different responses.

• 26:32Jocko Willink?

  When I roll into you and I say, hey, Dave, listen, I know we promised you this product on this date. We ran into some hiccups. Here's the mistakes that I made. Here's what we're going to try and do to resolve it. You're only going to be able to say so many different things back to me. And, and depending on how I respond, I could either salvage that relationship or I could destroy it. So why would we not train to be prepared for this? There's no reason, there's no excuse for it. It doesn't take a week to train for that situation. It takes 10 minutes.

• 27:01Speaker 02

  It does. It takes 10 minutes. If your own brain is the only place where you consider the potential outcomes of that conversation, you are gonna miss so many things. If I get one other person sit across from me to answer in any way that they want, how I'm gonna interact with them, I actually now A. reveal the, wow, I didn't expect that. I didn't see that coming. I don't know what to say here. And you also have another person to just interact with you in a way that helps you anticipate a real response that you won't consider if you do it in your own brain, which is a vacuum. Because what you convince yourself is, oh, this isn't gonna be that hard of a conversation. I'm just gonna say this, he's gonna say that, and everything's gonna be fine.

• 27:46Speaker 02

  The role play scenarios we do, just to add one more thing to that, when we do role play, it usually comes right after we've done the initial training where we explain it. And he talked about this. That is, that is paper training. Hey, this is what we're going to do. And it makes sense. We think we understand it. In our heads, it resonates. And we can explain these principles and we say, okay, let's role model this. The first role play, the first role play is always a disaster, even when we just talked about it. Because on paper isn't enough. It's not enough. And three role plays later, five minutes later, they've gone from here to way up here and they can actually go have that conversation

• 28:31Speaker 02

  in real life, in real time, with the real person they need to talk to. That five minutes of live, realistic, fundamental training is the difference.

• 28:41Jocko Willink?

  This brings up another topic. So I said, hey, look, this individual's only gonna have six different responses, right?

• 28:49Jocko Willink?

  There's a seventh. And the seventh is one that you didn't predict, you didn't understand, and you didn't think could come. And guess what? You can actually train your response for the thing that you just came, that came completely out of left field. And it might be as simple as when Dave, if Dave says something to me that I had no anticipation, and it doesn't make any sense to me, what am I gonna do? You know what I'm gonna do? I'm gonna say, if Dave says to me, "Well, I'll tell you what. Not only do we want our money back, I wanna, I wanna take you guys to court." I didn't expect him to say that. Our relationship wasn't that bad. And I, you know, my response to him, if, if I don't know what else to say, I'm gonna say, I'm gonna say, "Dave, you know what? I need to think about this for a minute.

• 29:34Jocko Willink?

  Let me just think about what you're saying, cuz I wanna make sure I understand." That right there, that right there is a response. And it, and if I'm prepared for it, you know, here's a funny one. It used to be back in the day in the days when you would go to get your SEAL Trident. You had to, you should, you got done with BUDs, you went to a team, you went through more training, and then you were on probation for six months. And then you had to go do an oral board for all the different departments. And you had to go and program the radios and break down the weapons and build demolition charges and, you know, show how to put on a parachute rig and set up a diver. You had to do all these different things, answer all these questions. And one of the things that you learned was, or you better have learned,

• 30:17Jocko Willink?

  was when someone asks you a question that you don't know, you better have a response for it. And the response is, "You know, Master Chief, I'm not exactly sure of the answer to that question, but I know that it is in the dive manual that I can find down in the dive locker." That's great. That's, that's, that's a response that the Master Chief says, "All right. Fair enough. We'll go, you better get, you better start learning a little bit deeper." But if you go, "Uh, uh, uh, is it..."

• 30:45Jocko Willink?

  30 feet for 30 minutes? No, it's not 30 feet for 30 minutes. You try and BS the master chief and you're going to end up getting your ass kicked. So what you do is you, and we, we did this, we role played the, uh, the, the oral board. Me and my friends that had showed up at SEAL Team One and we'd gone through this training and now we were getting ready for that. We, we crushed each other in those oral boards. And one of the things that we figured out was, which we got, you know, some of the senior guys said, hey, listen, if you don't know the answer, it's okay. Here's the response. But rehearsing that and being ready for it is infinitely better than no rehearsal. Go in there blind and get, get smacked upside the head with something you didn't expect.

• 31:30Speaker 02

  That you will talk yourself into that you've got it covered if you're doing this alone. You'll tell yourself like, this isn't going to be that hard. I got this covered and you go in there solo, you're going to get crushed.

• 31:38Jocko Willink?

  Yeah.

• 31:39Speaker 02

  Because you're just, you don't have that other person to, to put you on the spot and go, wow. Hang on a second.

• 31:45Jocko Willink?

  Training is important.

• 31:49Jocko Willink?

  Uh, he breaks down here, organization for unit training, training plans. Comprehensive and workable plans are indispensable and should be formulated with consideration of the following four essentials. Establish training goals.

• 32:04Jocko Willink?

  That's number one. Number two, continuous evaluation. This process must go on throughout the training cycle and as an integral part of it. Only by continuous evaluation can deficiencies be discovered early enough to make immediate correction possible. Number three, testing closely related to evaluation is the more formal testing that is given to an individual or unit at the conclusion of a phase of training or block of instruction. It's here that we determine whether our training goals have been met. Number four, remedial training.

• 32:38Jocko Willink?

  I must emphasize here the value of remedial or makeup training. Once eval, once evaluation and testing have identified the areas of deficiency, remedial training must be used to correct them. It should be an integral part of every training schedule. Of course, the instruction will be designed to overcome specific weaknesses that have been exposed by the testing program and will have to be keyed to the specific needs of your unit. It is essential, however, that remedial training be regularly scheduled. Gosh, that makes sense. So those are the four things, established training goals, continuous evaluation, testing and remedial training.

• 33:15Jocko Willink?

  What were the, was there a test, were there tests at each phase of Top Gun as you were going through the training?

• 33:21Speaker 02

  Yeah, absolutely.

• 33:23Jocko Willink?

  What was an example of a test?

• 33:26Speaker 02

  The most common test that we give is that we'd want to make sure the students understood the mechanics of a system. So how a missile system worked, how the targeting system worked, how the radar system worked. We wanted to make sure they understood the mechanics of it before they use it in, in practical terms. It probably isn't too much different than, than your experience of understanding how the radios worked before you were using them in the field.

• 33:48Jocko Willink?

  Right. You had to understand HF propagation.

• 33:51Speaker 02

  Yeah, you did.

• 33:52Jocko Willink?

  You had to understand the ionosphere.

• 33:55Speaker 02

  You, you absolutely did because what would happen is you're going to find yourself in a position, and this is me. I don't know, I wasn't in that position is if you're in a particular geography, a particular place and talking to a particular other person, some radios are going to work better than other radios.

• 34:09Jocko Willink?

  This is true.

• 34:09Speaker 02

  And you might need to know, hey, you know what? We're like in the bushes here, in the, in the wilderness, in the jungle. This radio doesn't work here, it doesn't penetrate through this, this thing. So there's a million different examples of that. If you get that out of order and you just work, you, you learn how to maneuver the system like I, my cursor moves it here and I, I move my, my cursor on the display here. And you don't actually know what's happening to the mechanics behind that. You're going to start making mistakes inside in specific settings. Oh, it worked here, so it must work everywhere. Like, no, it doesn't work everywhere. This environment is optimized here, this environment, it doesn't work at all. And if all you know is the mechanics and not what's happening behind it, you actually can't apply it when it matters the most.

• 34:49Jocko Willink?

  You know what that made me think of? The book Leadership Strategy and Tactics by me.

• 34:55Jocko Willink?

  Cause, cause I say that exactly thing. When I'm talking, I compare, I compare a leader to a woodworker. And talk about the fact that, you know, when you're a leader, you gotta know the different tools. But then you gotta, if you're a woodworker, you gotta know the different tools. And then you gotta know the different types of wood. And then you gotta know how to apply those different types, those different tools to different types of wood. And then you gotta realize that even each individual piece of wood, a piece of pine is super soft, a piece of oak is super hard. You gotta use those tools differently with those different types of wood. And then on top of that, each individual piece of pine is different. It has a knot, it has a rift, it has a cut, it has a split, and you gotta know how to deal with that. So you gotta understand the principles of the tools.

• 35:42Speaker 02

  I may regularly plagiarize the hell out of that book, by the way.

• 35:46Jocko Willink?

  Check. Uh, talks about assignment of administrative tasks. He talks about when a unit is under strength, reduced strengths must be offset by more efficient utilization of men and equipment. I got asked this question today by a client. Yeah, but you know, we, we don't, we don't, we need more people. Guess what? Everybody, everybody needs more people. We got visited by a senior ranking officer in the SEAL teams when we were in Ramadi and Leif likes to tell the story. The, the, you know, great, great officer, huge supporter, says, hey, what else do you need out here? Is there anything else you need? And I said, I need two more task units worth of men.

• 36:26Jocko Willink?

  You know, like we need, we had enough missions to, to get everybody busy. But guess what? We didn't get anybody. We didn't, you know, like that's the way it works. Um, next, next little section, inject realism. The experienced commander knows that soldiers do in combat exactly what they have been taught and have practiced in training. Therefore, each training situation and problem must be as valid and realistic as possible with unreal or artificial aspects eliminated. Training must reflect as many of the conditions, scenes, noises, and situations of the battlefield as ingenuity can conceive and safety rules will permit.

• 37:10Jocko Willink?

  And I remember, I remember I'd put on, we'd be doing, when I got back from my last deployment, when we, when we got back from Ramadi and I took over training, a few months into that, when you would put on your nods at night, you would, you might as well be in Iraq. You might as well have been in Iraq. We had, we had the, the speakers playing gun battles and, and called a prayer. We had tires burning. We had people dressed up like, you know, local Iraqi citizens walking around. It was freaking awesome. It was freaking awesome. That's what you're supposed to do.

• 37:46Jocko Willink?

  Damn, I remember that. The first time we were rolling into the mulab and it was early in the morning. It was, it was, it was actually when the blue on blue happened in extreme ownership, but when we were rolling in there.

• 37:58Jocko Willink?

  I remember rolling in and like there's tires burning in the streets and yeah, I was like, okay, cause what does that do? That screws up your nods and luckily the sun was coming up, but it was still dark outside. But I'm thinking these, these Mujahideen fighters know what they're doing. These guys know what they're doing. There's, and then guess what? So it messes up your night vision when you're staring at these burning fires. And then, then the sun comes up. Well, now there's just black soot, smoke everywhere.

• 38:26Jocko Willink?

  And you, you can guarantee you that when I got back and I was running training, you rolled out of the street. We're burning tires. Your night vision is going to be all jacked up. And when you're done with the night vision being all jacked up and the sun comes up, guess what? It's going to be black smoke everywhere. One of the best ways to emphasize realism is to assess personnel casualties for improper use of cover or in the case of night exercises, vehicles can be knocked out for unauthorized use of nights. What does that mean? You're putting, you're putting people down. This is like trade debt instructions. I might as well have written this for trade debt to use. This is exactly what we did. Oh, you're, you're not saying to my cover? Cool. You're dead.

• 39:09Jocko Willink?

  Oh, you're going to move out, cross an open street without any cover fire? Roger that. You're dead. You're down, man. Now let's get this thing figured out. Oh, by the way, your buddy wants to come help you immediately without putting down suppressive fire? Cool. He's dead too. Let's rock and roll. Who wants to figure this out? Who wants to put the cover in cover and move?

• 39:24Speaker 02

  Dude, you're literally like, I wrote that thing down. Fundamental sound and realistic. Oh, cool. You're not applying the fundamentals? Good. You're dead. Oh, your tactics aren't sound? Cool. He's gone. Now what are you going to do? I mean, I should have a tracker. I should literally just be marking how many times he and you were referring back to the realism that's required. And the beauty of that, especially when you have experiences, it completely takes away that ammunition of this would never happen. Or, or this is unrealistic, you know, them, the, the, the unwinnable scenarios where you go, well, this would never happen. Oh, really? Oh, cool. This would never happen? Watch this. And

• 39:59Speaker 02

  The easier the training is, the more acclimated people get to things being easy. And the more unwilling they are to believe how difficult they can be. And when your training is realistic, how many times have you told me and everybody the story of Seth's first firefight? And the guy's like, wow, how many firefights have you been in? You must be, and he's like, it was my first one.

• 40:21Jocko Willink?

  That was my first one.

• 40:22Speaker 02

  That comes from fundamental sound, realistic training.

• 40:24Jocko Willink?

  Yeah.

• 40:25Speaker 02

  And putting that guy in a position, I might not be able to re, I don't know what this, I can't recreate this scenario. I don't know exactly how it's going to play out, but I do know what it's going to be. I do, I do understand how this is going to reveal itself. And the only way to prepare for that is fundamental sound, realistic training over and over and over again.

• 40:43Jocko Willink?

  Emphasis on night training. Self-sufficiency and confidence are key factors in developing a unit's capability for night operations. And this was just, you know, not going to spend a bunch of time on this because now we've got night vision. But what is more important, what do we talk about? I'm not talking about night vision versus not, not night vision. What I'm talking about is put your troops into hard training situations. That's what you need to do. Put your troops into the most difficult of situations. Cause when you're used to fighting at night, pre night vision, if you're used to fighting at night, number one, yes, you get used to it. Number two, fighting at the day becomes easy.

• 41:21Speaker 02

  It, it makes fighting at the day become easy. And it also gives you a potential advantage if it just so happens that your competition isn't willing to put in the hard training at night. Good, you're going to dominate.

• 41:35Jocko Willink?

  Same thing here, inclement weather training. I gotta read this one though, because it's funny. Adverse weather will inevitably be encountered in combat and will give rise to problems that can best be solved by experience. It will have an impact on mobility, on maintenance of vehicle and equipment, on observation, on the availability of tactical air support, and in fact, will hinder tactical operations in every conceivable way. Adverse weather conditions can be turned into an asset during battle, however. Boom, there you go. So we're already, look, bad weather, good.

• 42:06Jocko Willink?

  Commanders should take every advantage of training under such conditions. Troops who have mastered the problems of operating effectively in spite of the weather can turn low visibility, extreme hot heat, biting cold, or heavy rain into tactical advantage against an enemy not so well adapted to these adverse conditions. So that's everything you just said, and then it's this. The solution of rainy day schedule is to put on the raincoat and take full advantage of the adverse conditions for profitable field training and experience. Totally legit. You know what's fun? In the, in the teams.

• 42:44Jocko Willink?

  When there's giant waves, like when a massive storm comes and there's massive just destroyer waves, it's like time to go out and do surf passage with the Zodiacs and just get annihilated. It's so fun. And they do that with Bud students. Oh, it's, oh, the waves are freaking just giant. Cool. Get your boats. You're going to do surf passage or sometimes get to swim. Uh, in the teams, it was, hey, rig up the Zodiacs. We're going to go get some experience in this stuff. That's what absolutely you have to do. If you're in the teams and there's big waves in, in Coronado or Virginia Beach and you're not getting jocked up to go get some, you're wrong. Get your platoon together and get them out there getting after it.

• 43:27Jocko Willink?

  Cross training for flexibility. Cross training is vital to any organization. When your personnel are trained in several jobs, you have achieved depth and capability that may well split the difference between success and failure in combat.

• 43:40Jocko Willink?

  Of course, needless switching of personnel from one job to another is harmful. So cross train, but that doesn't mean you switch them completely. Training personnel and duties other than their primary MOS, however, will increase your peacetime efficiency and subsequent combat effectiveness. It will also make the individual a more valuable asset to the army, increases pride and self-confidence, and may well help him qualify for promotion. Boom. A little time spent cross training will be amply rewarded in the increased overall effectiveness of your unit. Everyone will benefit. Not the least to you as the commander. Just throws that in there. Every once in a while, he's got a little ego that sticks out. Every once in a while, we hear it. Got to be something driving this guy to do 45 years in the army, I reckon. But he likes that.

• 44:26Jocko Willink?

  Taking care of the troops also. Little Benny, little side Benny for the man.

• 44:34Jocko Willink?

  Chain of command, a good organization always has a smoothly functioning chain of command, a sound training program, properly supervised can be the primary means of developing the proper functioning of the chain of command, which is also essential in combat. A good commander will guide the development of his unit to ensure that subordinate commanders retain and use their authority and responsibility in any unit. The non-commissioned officer plays a leading role. That's your frontline managers. He must be carefully instructed, given responsibility, and then held accountable. I frequently find squad leaders ignoring their team leaders by issuing orders, giving fire commands, and taking other actions directly with the individual members of the squads. Even worse, I found responsible officers who were condoning these mistakes.

• 45:19Jocko Willink?

  The squad leader should use his team leaders to exercise control over the squad at all times. Commander should supervise assault, battle drill, and squad exercise to ensure that squad leaders understand and apply the principle of exercising command over the rifle squad through designated team leaders. So don't jump through the chain of command. Let your subordinate leaders lead. Self-sufficiency and confidence. Confidence to fight semi-independently under conditions of decentralized control is developed by training exercises. Current concepts of warfare, visualizing greater dispersion on the battlefield, so we're more spread out, dictate the necessity for units to acquire self-confidence and self-sufficiency.

• 46:03Jocko Willink?

  These aspects can be developed in most tactical exercises and can be furthered through realistic use of active aggressor forces. Force-on-force training. That's what we want to do. Ranger-type operations also instill confidence and show the need for self-sufficiency. When out of physical contact with friendly forces or beyond the range of mutual fire support, so we're not covering and moving anymore, the isolated unit becomes a problem.

• 46:37Jocko Willink?

  In our training, commanders should recognize the plight of the isolated unit, not by simulating it, but by actually demonstrating it. When the small unit is confronted with an isolated mission, confidence can always be instilled by ensuring that procedures are established for maintaining communications and for rallying to its support if required. Training should be aimed at developing integrated procedures for the employment of Army Aviation and Air Force Troop Carrier Troop Movements for resupply and medical evacuation. So, we have to learn to work independently, but we always have to be able to support each other. If we're alone out on the battlefield, we die.

• 47:17Speaker 02

  You mean, there's a balance there?

• 47:18Jocko Willink?

  There's a balance. There is a little dichotomy, but cover, move. There's another doctrinal term that I love is supporting distance. I'm not allowed to be further away from Dave. If I can't defend Dave's position or cover for Dave because he's out of the range of my weapon systems, he's too far away?

• 47:39Speaker 02

  That's a perfect example of the cross-training he's talking about. I could be an infantryman. Do I need to be an expert on indirect fires? No, I probably don't need to know how to field strip every little... But you don't need to know how far that thing can shoot. Because if I get too far away from that supporting element, and I go, "Well, the reason I got too far away is I didn't know how mortars worked." Cool, the outcome is your team gets annihilated. So, do I need to know every single thing that the mortar platoon commander knows? No, you don't, but you gotta know a little bit. You gotta know how you and he interact together. And so, even that idea of cross-training is, if you don't have a sort of a functional understanding inside your company, you used the example before of the salespeople and the customer satisfaction people.

• 48:19Speaker 02

  If you're a sales lead, and the only metric you measure for success is how much you sell, and you don't realize that in the return department, that number is the same, you're losing. You're losing because there's a piece that you don't... Do you have to know everything they know? You don't, and actually, you don't have time to know everything they know. But you gotta know enough. You gotta have enough understanding what's going on there to measure the success of the entire organization, to include your team, and that requires a little bit of cross-training. And that is a perfect example of how come you need to know something about everybody.

• 48:53Jocko Willink?

  Small unit tactical exercises. Tactical exercises should be as well-prepared as training tests. As often as possible, a tactical situation for a field exercise should be laid in the framework of an echelon one or two levels higher than the participating unit. This is desirable to bring into play the necessary intelligence, supply, evacuation, and similar roles of supporting forces that have a bearing on the specific tactical operation. Don't confuse the squad leader, however, by giving him everything that was in the battalion and company commander's orders. That's an interesting little point to bring up is that, well, they're saying that you need to test the subordinate units, you know, subordinate

• 49:34Jocko Willink?

  leadership. You can't just, I can't, and this is true in the SEAL teams, I can't test myself. If I'm relying on me as the platoon leader to test my platoon, it's very difficult to do that. Look, and it can happen, and there's some great platoon leaders that'll be able to do that, but there's platoon leaders that will, they'll pass every test for some reason with flying colors, because they're not really being tested. So it's good when you are utilizing the chain of command and some of the, some of the elements above to test the elements below. So that's, that makes sense. Again, he always emphasizes all exercises should be conducted under simulated combat conditions. I think we've covered that one enough.

• 50:18Jocko Willink?

  Despite limitations on our capabilities to conduct field exercises and combined arms training, I am convinced that commanders can always devise ways and means of achieving essential training objectives. And I'll give you an example of that. We would want to have close air support in our urban environment for training. We'd want to have an AC-130 overhead. We'd want to have F-18s overhead. We'd want to have a Marine Corps fighter squadron ready to come and drop bombs for us. That doesn't always happen. In fact, it's very rare that we would get those live assets. So what would we do? We would either bring a pilot, or we'd bring a JTAC, a person that was qualified to call, and we'd put them up on one of the buildings in our mount facility and give them a radio. And, and look, it's

• 51:03Jocko Willink?

  almost the same thing, you know? You've got a guy that understands how pilots talk and he imitates a pilot talking on the radio. And then we would put up simulated explosions to go off. When, if they dropped the bomb in the right spot, we would blow, we'd blow something up and they'd get that.

• 51:19Jocko Willink?

  They'd get that satisfaction. In fact, there was a company we were using that had little model airplanes. They were actually big model airplanes, but the model airplanes would fly over. And then explosions would happen. We kind of went the distance to make the training realistic. Launching these, you know, F-18s that would come down and strafe the city and explosions would go off. Pretty good, but that's a great way to do it. And what does it cost for me to give the radio to one of my JTACs and stand on a building? It costs zero dollars, zero. What does it cost to get an F-18 to give me, or a section of F-18s to give me a few hours of support? It costs, what, a hundred thousand dollars? Yeah.

• 52:05Jocko Willink?

  How much, how much, how much fuel do you burn in an F-18 in an hour? 10,000 pounds.

• 52:14Jocko Willink?

  Yes. Check. Check.

• 52:21Jocko Willink?

  So there's always ways, figure ways out.

• 52:24Jocko Willink?

  Training exercise should be concluded with a critique to provide the basis for reviewing the action and to indicate areas requiring additional, requiring additional training emphasis. Boom, debrief. Yes, we have to do that.

• 52:37Jocko Willink?

  The use of live ammunition is not authorized. When, sorry, when the use of live ammunition is not authorized or practical, or when its use violates safety requirements, maximum utilization should be made of various simulators. Boom, again, I basically could have written that. You heard what I just said. Simulators can duplicate the sound of artillery, machine gun smoke, flash, and most other effects associated with the noise and conditions of the battlefield, including just tires burning.

• 53:04Jocko Willink?

  Habitual use of aggressor in the field exercises is desirable to develop interest in realism. The training value to the unit functioning in an aggressor role should not be overlooked. The adherence to established tactical principles and techniques by the aggressor forces will aid the friendly force in forming sound tactical habits. This is why we, we, the SEAL teams picked up so much emphasis on force on force training using simunition or these, these high-speed laser tag systems that we had. This is why. And that's basically all you guys did at Top Gun, right? It's 100% aggressor.

• 53:46Jocko Willink?

  And as an aggressor, what do you fly, an F-16?

• 53:48Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 53:51Jocko Willink?

  How long does it take you to learn to fly an F-16?

• 53:54Speaker 02

  Not long, a couple of months, if that, you know, that, that part of it is not that hard.

• 54:00Jocko Willink?

  Are you worried when you go back to an F-18 that you're going to be, have bad habits?

• 54:04Speaker 02

  There's, there's something called negative transfer. So there's a couple of things that you gotta, you gotta pay attention to. You gotta know that there are some differences that if you get those wrong, those can be really bad. But most of it transfers over pretty easily. The, the larger issue, like you were talking about, and I, my first kind of real job at Top Gun was what's called the adversary officer. So my responsibility was to make sure that all the training scenarios that we developed at Top Gun on the red side.

• 54:29Jocko Willink?

  Name to give some of the people that we work with. Like you, you're working with a company and you're like, oh, you know what? Maybe we'll just call you the adversarial officer.

• 54:37Speaker 02

  The adversarial officer.

• 54:38Jocko Willink?

  Because there's certainly people that, that we work with, we're thinking, man, go, you know, you're working with a company, you think, hey,

• 54:46Jocko Willink?

  when I bring you in, or I bring up your name, all I hear is like, uh, bad things. This is not a good idea.

• 54:52Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 54:52Jocko Willink?

  What are you doing? What are we, what's going on over here? Are you the adversarial officer here? So, uh, sorry, cut you off.

• 54:59Speaker 02

  No, no, I was just saying, you know, we were talking about the, the challenge of that is the adversary's officer, adversary officer's job is to make sure that the training scenarios that we built on the adversary side. So the opposing force was realistic and reflected the capability of the enemy. So we provided real training for, for the, for the blue students, for the, the, the friendly fighters going out to fight. Cause if they went out and fought an enemy that wasn't performing the way a real enemy would, they were going to be unprepared. We had an entire, you know, cell inside of Top Gun designed just to learn and study enemy tactics to make our training more realistic.

• 55:35Jocko Willink?

  How, what is you have, did you have to fly the F-16 a certain way to simulate?

• 55:39Speaker 02

  Normally, when we replicated a force on force, so there is some incremental training. So at the beginning of some phases of flight training, we limit the capability of the enemy aircraft to get some building blocks and fundamentals. But once we get to force on force training, and most of Top Gun is straight up just your best game, my best game as the adversary, I'm flying the F-16 to the max performance capability.

• 56:02Jocko Willink?

  And how did the max performance of the F-16 compare to the max performance of the SU-27 or whichever aircraft?

• 56:12Speaker 02

  Close, not exactly, but but close and and better than a similar aircraft. F-18 against F-18, me trying to replicate a different airplane. Look, at the end of the day, they're machines. Now, a different machine, even if it doesn't fully replicate the enemy, it does things differently. And that alone is a really powerful tool to practice against because it shows you things that, oh, I can't do that on my machine. My machine won't do that, this airplane can, and I have to have a tactic to respond to that.

• 56:40Jocko Willink?

  Am I mistaken in that the early 90s, when I went up to Fallon and I would go through some air wing training, would it be mistaken to think that there were aircraft up there besides the F-16 that were acting as adversaries?

• 56:51Speaker 02

  No, I think you're you'd be correct.

• 56:53Jocko Willink?

  Did you have any other aircraft besides the F-16? What would you guys fly? Or what other adversary aircraft were available to your opposing force?

• 57:03Speaker 02

  Yeah, the ones that the Navy furnished, the most common ones for the Navy were the F-5 and the F-16. But we also had contract air, so we had, you know, Mirage.

• 57:13Jocko Willink?

  F-5 Freedom Fighter?

• 57:14Speaker 02

  Uh, yes, you've got it absolutely. There was a squadron of F-5s in as adversaries in Fallon, painted like enemy aircraft designed just to replicate an enemy threat.

• 57:29Jocko Willink?

  I remember those.

• 57:30Speaker 02

  Dude, absolutely.

• 57:31Jocko Willink?

  Did they have red stars on them?

• 57:32Speaker 02

  They totally did on the tails, yes, absolutely. I actually, they might, they probably still have them. And we would outsource to, you know, we'd we'd we'd get the Air Force to come bring up some F-15s to fly with us for a class. We'd get, you know, a contract company to fly, you know, French Mirage. and Israeli kaffirs, just whatever was out there to give you the student a what we called a dissimilar look. F 18s against F 18s is not a great way to replicate real training. So you want to give something that's different. Sometimes it's better, sometimes it's worse, but the fact that it's different creates much more realistic training.

• 58:09Jocko Willink?

  Why is it when I read about like old school fighter and like test pilots, like reading when we had Dan Patterson on, they're just getting in different aircraft. They're just flying out to area 51 and just getting in random alien aircraft and just flying those things. Is that because those old school aircraft were more similar in terms of the way you fly them?

• 58:34Speaker 02

  No, man, I just think that those guys weren't afraid of anything. Like I can fly that thing. Whatever. No, I think it was, you know, one of the coolest things that that Dan Patterson talked about here on the podcast and just in general was the idea that, hey, we need to go figure out how this stuff works. We need to get in these machines and figure out how they work. And if we don't, we're going to go across to Vietnam and we're going to lose because we don't know how those machines work. And regulations and restrictions and safety and all these things were forces were counterweights to doing that. They're all reasons not to do it. Was there a risk? And yeah, there's a ton of risk. That risk did not weighed, didn't outweigh going to Vietnam and losing. And they

• 59:17Speaker 02

  they believed that and they pushed hard against the institution to be able to do that.

• 59:21Jocko Willink?

  Yeah. And you know, the last podcast, we were talking about, I was talking about the 80s and the 90s. And, and look, when you're in, when it's the 80s and the 90s and you've been tasked to, you know, do the best you can to maintain the, the spirit of going to war. But think of how hard the pushback is against pushing the envelope and training when you're saying, listen, when you're, when you, when you've got, listen, we better push the envelope, otherwise we're going to go get killed in Vietnam.

• 59:49Speaker 02

  Yep.

• 59:50Jocko Willink?

  If it's 1994, it's like, we better push the envelope, otherwise.

• 59:59Jocko Willink?

  Then they come back and you say, just hey, don't really push the envelope.

• 1:00:01Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 1:00:02Jocko Willink?

  And it makes, you know, you're like, you know, got it.

• 1:00:05Speaker 02

  Dude, that was a tough time. And if you look at kind of our, what we call the baseline adversary, if you think about countries that would be our adversaries now, China, Russia, those countries were not a threat in 1994. They're really, the institution had a really hard time being convinced that we needed to train hard. It was really, it was a much harder sell. Now it's, it's a very different environment and you know, selling the training and demonstrating why we need to do this is actually easier. Uh, because back then there was, it was hard to make a compelling case why we needed to push the envelope. For what?

• 1:00:41Jocko Willink?

  And when, when you guys would look at doing a mission back then, what were you thinking the big mission would be?

• 1:00:48Speaker 02

  The, the big mission.

• 1:00:49Jocko Willink?

  In 1996, when you were thinking, all right, there may be a big mission that I need to be ready for. I mean, I guess we could look at the, the Bocklands this time.

• 1:00:59Speaker 02

  Yeah. So the, the things in near memory were Desert Storm and you know, multiple, you know, the Kosovo, former Yugoslavia, those, there was, there was enough of those in there. And there was always this, believe it or not, it held over, there was always this specter of, of, of like, you know, great competition, you know, Russia and America, those, those type of things. So they, those are always there. And there was enough holdover from the, kind of the Cold War era of leadership, which is the eighties and, and you know, very early nineties was, hey, this stuff all travels in sine waves. And sooner or later, what's going to happen is that their, their ability, which obviously we know that. Um, and so

• 1:01:43Speaker 02

  that, that specter of that was always there. And the proliferation of their stuff all throughout Europe and you know, great, great war competition type stuff was, was always part of what we did.

• 1:01:54Jocko Willink?

  That makes sense and I, I guess it probably makes sense to think that what it was leaning towards in the teams back in those days and probably in, you know, in the greater ground troops, the ground forces was that these, this idea of like going into a sustained ground combat was really, that was really seemed like a less likely thing all the time, less and less likely that we're going to actually, hey, we're going to, if you would have told me in 1995, hey, the, the US, you're, the, the frogmen of the 2000s and the 2010s are going to do deployment after deployment after deployment after deployment after deployment

• 1:02:39Jocko Willink?

  to the desert and they're going to be fighting in ground combat sustained for two decades. It, it would have been, it would have been very, it would have been hard to predict. Yeah.

• 1:02:53Jocko Willink?

  But we trained, we trained and then we kept training.

• 1:02:59Jocko Willink?

  Next little section, testing a unit's proficiency, the chief objective of readiness training is to ensure that all units are maintained at a high rate of operational readiness throughout the year. That is that every unit is prepared to carry out its combat mission at any time. Operational readiness testing to determine your unit's operational teddy, operational readiness, you must provide testing.

• 1:03:21Jocko Willink?

  And he, and he kind of talks about what the covers a minimum and I, he talks about you got to, you know, these various abilities, the ability to rendezvous, the ability to shoot, move and communicate, all good. And he talks about, um, for best results readiness tests should be unannounced, which I totally agree with. These tests should be practical demonstrations of how successfully a unit can be expected to execute all or any part of its emergency mission. Totally get now, here's where, here's where testing can concern me.

• 1:03:57Jocko Willink?

  When we do a test, we, we, we kind of have to give, hey, here's the task, condition and standard, right? Here's the, here's what you're going to be told to do. Here's the standard and, and here's what you need to do it in, right? Um, or sorry, here's the task, right? This is what you have to do. Here's the conditions of that task and here's the, the standard that you have to meet. I, I was working with a, a government agency and one of the tasks of this government agency was they had to be able to interdict vessels, small vessels. And so in order to interdict these vessels, they may have to disable the motor of that vessel. And so they had to be able to shoot

• 1:04:41Jocko Willink?

  a weapon from a moving vessel that they're in, add another moving vessel to disable an engine.

• 1:04:49Jocko Willink?

  Okay, got it. So over time, that became a qualification that you had to get. And over time, it became a test that you had to, you had to be able to successfully complete this tech test in order to maintain this qualification to do it. And here's the thing. One of the guys that was, had this standard was telling me about the test and he was complaining about the test. And what had happened was this test, the task, condition and standards were so controlled that there was no realism to it whatsoever. And it was, okay, the, the target vessel will have a target on that vessel that is whatever, three feet by three feet. The vessel will be moving in

• 1:05:34Jocko Willink?

  X sea state, which was no waves. They, they basically would do, only do it if there was no waves happening whatsoever. And it will be moving at five knots and the assault vessel will also be moving at five knots. The distance will be 14 feet. And it was just this whole thing. And so basically, you know, it took zero skill to do it. It took zero skill. It was basically a 10 or 20 foot shot at a nice big target and it didn't prove anything. The reality of shooting an engine to get an engine to go down on an outboard motor is a pretty tough thing. It's sea state at night. There's a lot of things going on. And by the way, what weapons do you have? Because if you have, if you know, if you've got a laser on your weapon and it's at night and you've got night

• 1:06:17Jocko Willink?

  vision on and you can train your laser on that, you're at a sea state and you can keep it steady, you can fire a few rounds, cool. I worry about testing sometimes because when you put test, when you put task conditions and standards so that you can provide a test, oftentimes those restrict the environment and they make it canned.

• 1:06:36Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:06:36Jocko Willink?

  And when things become canned, you're not, you're not testing on what you want to test on. So I would always, you know, sort of have testing things. Then I'd have the real test, you know, which is gonna be mayhem. It's gonna be mayhem. And that's what we want to see. How do you handle the mayhem?

• 1:06:55Speaker 01

  When you have night vision on and a laser.

• 1:07:00Speaker 01

  If you don't have night vision on, can you still see that laser?

• 1:07:03Jocko Willink?

  There's lasers that you can see and there's lasers that you cannot see. So you could have a laser without night vision. That's a red laser. It's like what you see in the movies.

• 1:07:11Speaker 01

  Yeah, yeah.

• 1:07:12Jocko Willink?

  Are you familiar with movies?

• 1:07:13Speaker 01

  Oh, yeah. Terminator one.

• 1:07:15Jocko Willink?

  So you get, you get laser where you, where you can see the little red dot?

• 1:07:19Speaker 01

  Yes, sir.

• 1:07:19Jocko Willink?

  That's a visible laser. There's also IR lasers, infrared lasers that you can't see without night vision on, but with night vision on, it's, it's, it's actually insanely bright and clear. And then they have something that's an IR flood, which, so you can actually are lighting up the entire target area with, so it's illuminated and then there's a laser right in the center of it.

• 1:07:41Speaker 01

  And that you can see that without goggles?

• 1:07:43Jocko Willink?

  Nope, you need goggles.

• 1:07:44Speaker 01

  Need goggles.

• 1:07:45Jocko Willink?

  The equivalent to that would be just a regular flashlight, which we also have where you press a button and a flashlight comes on and in the center of that flashlight, there's a red laser.

• 1:07:52Speaker 01

  Gotcha. Okay, so, okay, you have all of that in play.

• 1:07:56Jocko Willink?

  All that, you have all that on your weapon all the time.

• 1:07:59Speaker 01

  Oh dang, okay, the whole deal.

• 1:08:01Jocko Willink?

  That's why when you see guys' weapons now, it gets pretty out of control. There's a lot of stuff going on in weapons. And it's getting better, you know, because all these little pieces are getting smaller and they're, they're, they're consolidating some of these pieces. So it's one piece instead of three different pieces. You know, now you can get like a, a grip that has a, has a white light and a red laser in it and the batteries. There was a time where you had the battery thing and then you had the laser thing and then you had a battery for the flashlight thing and you had wires going all over the place. It was a total gut check. Nowadays, people are making stuff more square away, bottom line.

• 1:08:35Speaker 01

  What about that one, you know, the, the ones that? Like you can see the laser through the little lens almost kind of thing, you know?

• 1:08:42Jocko Willink?

  So that's

• 1:08:42Speaker 01

  Like, or you can see the dots.

• 1:08:43Jocko Willink?

  You can see a red dot, yeah, yeah. That's, that's just another type of system and the enemy is not going to be able to see that.

• 1:08:49Speaker 01

  Yeah, but you guys don't have those.

• 1:08:51Jocko Willink?

  No, we have those too.

• 1:08:52Speaker 01

  On the deal.

• 1:08:53Jocko Willink?

  Bro, in the teams you got everything.

• 1:08:54Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:08:55Jocko Willink?

  Pretty awesome. Actually, what guys are doing now, that's really cool, because it's sort of getting next level. The way that the, the technology is just really getting so much better right now.

• 1:09:07Speaker 01

  High speed.

• 1:09:07Jocko Willink?

  Yeah, it's getting way more high speed and the guys' systems are much better than they were, you know? I mean, the, the, the, the changes that took place from Vietnam to 1995 is, is tiny compared to the changes that took place last year. You know, it's just exponentially better weapon systems and, and not so much the, the weapon system, but the, the accoutrements that you put on the weapon systems are way better. Um, I mean, I mean, I get kind of crazy when I'm watching like some of the new technologies coming out. It's awesome. Awesome to see.

• 1:09:48Jocko Willink?

  Next little section is, and by the way, just, I skipped, you were wondering, Dave, I told you I was going to skip some stuff. The stuff that I skip, it really goes into like the details of each and every type of unit that you can be working with. And it goes into just some very granular detail. Good for a military leader.

• 1:10:11Jocko Willink?

  But a little bit too granular for general public consumption. And you know, I haven't, I haven't actually started the execution of publishing this thing on my own. And obviously I need to, this needs to be a Jocko publishing, Jocko publishing book. So I gotta, I guess I gotta

• 1:10:28Jocko Willink?

  figure out the legality of that. I think the legality is none. I think it's, it's more than 50 years old, which means it's public domain. So I'll write a little foreword to it. And we'll go from there. And I'm sure now a bunch of people are going to go and publish this.

• 1:10:45Jocko Willink?

  Uh, you know what's interesting? So the, the name of this, and I brought this up already, but it's, uh, Stackpole Publications. And by the way, Stackpole Publications, you're welcome, because I know I've read books from you that you publish. One of them I know is, uh, The Clay Pledge in St. Lo, which we covered a long time ago, Glover Johns, which by the way, is another connection back to Hackworth.

• 1:11:07Jocko Willink?

  And I talked about it, I'm, I'm pretty sure some of copies of Clay Pitches Saint Louis sold. I wrote Stackpole Books an email and said, hey, I'm here, here's a book I'm trying to find. I haven't been able to try it, haven't been able to find it. Love to, you know, do something, write a forward, republish this thing, whatever. Never heard back from him, unfortunately. You know, I probably, I, I don't think I was persistent enough. I probably sent him one, maybe two emails. So I probably should have done a better job and explained to him maybe better where I was coming from. Didn't do a good enough job, but hopefully we'll do something with it.

• 1:11:48Jocko Willink?

  So back to this training for contingency operations. In addition to being prepared to execute combat missions as part of a combined force, units overseas must be trained and ready to perform a wide variety of contingency operations. It is not possible to identify all contingencies which may face army units stationed overseas. Generally, a unit that is well-trained for its basic combat mission will be capable of supporting contingency operations. Commanders must be aware, however, that their troops may be employed in areas where the weather and terrain differ greatly from that found in areas in which they're stationed. Combat-ready elements should be air transportable for movement on short notice to potential trouble areas. They should be trained to quell civil disturbances, control riots,

• 1:12:30Jocko Willink?

  guard or recover critical installations, bolster civil authorities, and police provide emergency relief from natural disasters, and handle numerous other related tasks.

• 1:12:43Jocko Willink?

  And imagine if commander can visualize appropriate and feasible contingency missions for his unit and present it with appropriate training situations. Now here's, here's something that I'll throw in there. It says such, such training will provide variety, but must be based on logical conditions and be realistic. The thing that I'll throw in there is, since you don't know what these contingencies are, you have to train people on what to do when they don't know what to do. How do you assess a situation? How do you look at it? How are you looking at it with an open mind? And that's one of the, one of the real benefits of I had of growing up in the SEAL teams is we lacked doctrine. We have more now. Man, when I grew, when I was got in the teams, there was no, there's almost no doctrine. It's all word of mouth.

• 1:13:27Jocko Willink?

  And, and so when you got told, hey, you're going to do this type of mission, you just got told word of mouth of how you're going to do it. And if it was a type of mission that no one had ever done before, we were going to sit there and make up how to do it. There was no book to refer to. We didn't, and we didn't have, I'll tell you what, we didn't have in 1995. No one ever said to me, hey, we're doing an assault. Here's the army manual of what they do. No one ever said that. I never saw an army manual, you know, uh, in the teams in the nineties. It was all word of mouth. So you had to, you got, you have to put people in situations where you go, hey, here's a random mission.

• 1:14:11Jocko Willink?

  Figure out how you're going to do this. Figure out how you're going to do this. And then you see what they do. And there are protocols for what to do when you don't know what to do. Um, then it gets into this section right here, which is, you know, I was like, oh, maybe I'll skip this. And then I read like four lines. I'm like, all right, this is freaking awesome. So guidelines for planning brigade and battalion attacks. Training regardless of size of unit has but one purpose. That is to teach effectively the techniques of combat. The attack is the key to success.

• 1:14:55Jocko Willink?

  The defense is merely a temporary expedient to conserve forces for an attack elsewhere, or to prepare for an attack at a future date. So the only reason you're going on defense is so that you can go back on the attack. That's the only reason you're going. Everything is to attack. That's all you're doing. You're going to attack. Oh, we gotta hesitate. Cool. We're hesitating so that we can attack later.

• 1:15:19Jocko Willink?

  That's what we're doing. We're going to attack. The consequences of having an attack grind to a halt are great. The effort required for it to bounce back is tremendous. Once an attack is launched, its momentum must be maintained until the objective or objectives are seized and secured. Battle losses received due to poor planning and faulty execution are inexcusable and will result in a loss of respect for and confidence in the commander.

• 1:15:46Jocko Willink?

  The best reputation a commander can have is that he accomplishes his missions with few losses.

• 1:15:56Jocko Willink?

  The end sought in planning and executing an attack is brought about by deliberate planning and violent execution. The opposite is fatal. Speed and planning is often needed, but haste should be avoided. Remember that in combat, there is no second opportunity and seldom opportunity for rehearsals. This deliberate planning is accomplished in five phases.

• 1:16:23Jocko Willink?

  Phase one, basic factors, principal factors which must be considered by a commander in deliberate planning are: Mission, enemy situation, troops available, terrain and weather. This is something we all learn, basic mission, enemy, troops available, terrain and weather. Phase two, tentative plan of attack. How much time do my subordinates and I have for reconnaissance, planning and the issuance of order? What general scheme and maneuver do I want to employ? What formations are feasible? What is the mobility of my command? How much dispersion can I achieve and still accomplish my mission with speed and violence? What supporting nuclear fires are planned for or are available to me and for adjacent units? When I got to that, I'm like thinking, wow.

• 1:17:08Jocko Willink?

  Wow. This is, I think this book is 1962, 1963? This is like, it's on Cold War. And we're thinking if we're going to do an attack, you know what? We may bring in some tactical nukes. That's where we're at.

• 1:17:27Jocko Willink?

  So these guys are planning and thinking and thinking through using nuclear weapons on the battlefield.

• 1:17:36Jocko Willink?

  How can I employ my conventional fire support? That's a secondary thought, by the way. My primary is go nuke. What logistical problems will I have? Can I support the operation logistically? What is the status of personnel and equipment? How can I best use my supporting elements to include armor? Armor personnel carriers and helicopters? Are communication facilities adequate? Can I communicate with my supporting units? Do their radios net with mine? What flank security problems do I have? How can I best control the attack? From where? What control measures? What must I be ready to do next when I have seized and secured the objective?

• 1:18:11Jocko Willink?

  So that's that right there. That was the tentative plan of attack. And then it goes detailed plan of attack. Having analyzed these factors and having developed a tentative plan based on this analysis, the commander is ready to get down to details. These things must then be considered. What is the formation that will be initially used? Mounted, dismounted or by helicopter? What units will be in the initial attack? What units be in the supporting or in reserve? What will constitute my base of fire? Cause it's all cover and move. We're gonna have a base of fire and we're gonna have an element maneuvering. Will forward assembly areas or attack positions be used for my attacking troops? If so, where? When will my components of my fire support start?

• 1:18:56Jocko Willink?

  When will we shift fire and stop? How will I arrange for this to happen? How can I exploit the effects of my supporting nuclear fires?

• 1:19:05Jocko Willink?

  It's so crazy to think about.

• 1:19:11Jocko Willink?

  From what position will each of my attacking elements start their attacking by fire and maneuver? Cover and move. This is the true line of departure and should be considered as such. That's an LD. There may be other coordinating lines or points in the rear. How and from what distance will I start a coordinated assault? What command signal and contingent will I use to start it? What reports will I expect from my subordinate units? What reports will I give to my superiors? With whom should I establish liaison? How, when, and where should I issue my attack order? What arrangements should I make for this? And then it gets into the war gaming. So the reason I'm going through this is like, think of the level of detail.

• 1:19:55Jocko Willink?

  Think of the, you know, I got that section of Discipline Equals Freedom field manual. I was like, question everything. This is it, man. What are we doing? How are we doing it? Having a checklist like this to think about before you conduct an operation? I don't care if you're at a business. I don't care if you're going to the grocery store, thinking about what you're going to be facing.

• 1:20:14Jocko Willink?

  This is a smart way to operate.

• 1:20:20Jocko Willink?

  Phase four, war gaming the plan. The commander now having come to a pretty firm idea of what he wants to do and how he wants to do it. Now war games it in his mind and asks himself the following questions. This is when you're trying to punch holes in your own plan. To the maximum extent possible, have I based my plan on knowledge gained through active ground? Map and aerial reconnaissance and knowledge of the enemy situation? Have I analyzed the enemy defense thoroughly, thereby locating and taking advantage of weaknesses? In enemy disposition or terrain where the defender cannot use his weapons or obstacles to advantage? Have I given adequate considerations to terrain and weather? What effects do they have on the accomplishment of my mission?

• 1:21:04Jocko Willink?

  Have I planned for maximum exploitation of available nuclear fires? Have I considered troop safety in the planning of my nuclear fires and scheme of maneuver? Have I considered the use of armored personnel carriers? Have I considered the effects of nuclear weapons upon the terrain over which I am attacking? Blow down, contaminated areas, secondary fires?

• 1:21:28Jocko Willink?

  I didn't know what blow down was. I had to look it up. Guess where I went? I went to FM 100 Tac 30, Nuclear Operations. What is it? Blow down is when trees get blown down and they're splintered and they're, they create just obstacles everywhere. They're very hard to move through. So you got to account for that in your assault. Got to account for the blow down of the nuclear weapons you use to prep the area for assault.

• 1:21:57Jocko Willink?

  Man.

• 1:22:00Jocko Willink?

  Have I provided for full shock effect on the enemy? This comes from surprise, tanks and strengths, attacks from several directions, simultaneously intensity of supporting fires during the assault, and the speed of the assault by use of armored personnel carriers and helicopters. Does my plan provide for the waiting of the main effort? Have I used attacking units as a base of fire when I have artillery, heavy weapons, and mortars for this purpose? Isn't it crazy that everything is cover and move? Everything is cover and move. The use of tanks for this purpose is especially faulty if the tanks can be used in the attack role to close with the enemy and overrun them.

• 1:22:36Jocko Willink?

  Has the excessive use of attack troops as a base of fire, as reserves, or as reconnaissance and security elements caused me to have too little strength in the attack? Have I selected unnecessary intermediate objectives? Which, let me go back to number 10 here.

• 1:22:58Jocko Willink?

  Have I used too much of the attack troops in the base of fire? So when you have, we'd be doing assaults, like let's say it was a basic SEAL platoon in the 90s. And we'd be doing an assault. And so you have a base of fire, and then you have an assault element. And you could say, okay, Squad 1, you're going to be the base element. Squad 2, you're going to be the assault element. So Squad One, you're gonna lay down this base of fire. And while you're laying down that base of fire, in comes the maneuver element. The assault element is gonna move into position. And then they're gonna start going through the target. And then the base of fire is gonna shift off the target. But they've suppressed the enemy fire. Now you can go through pretty clean.

• 1:23:40Jocko Willink?

  So there's a tendency to think, well, you know, I've got this base of fire. Why don't I take my machine gunners from Squad Two and put them in the base element? So then they have massive firepower. And plus, that means the assault element's a little bit lighter. They can move a little bit quicker and we're good. And, and I remember, you know, sitting in a platoon brief and we were gonna do that. It wasn't my plan. I, you know, I was like a new guy, literally a new guy. I was just sitting there going, okay, tell me what to do.

• 1:24:10Jocko Willink?

  And the plan got briefed, hey, okay, well, this is how we're gonna task organize for this assault. We're gonna put all the machine gunners. So four machine gunners in the base element. And so we're gonna have this massive firepower. And then these other guys, the point man from the, from Squad One and the rear security from Squad One. And whatever, one of the corpsmen from Squad, they're gonna go down and they're gonna go through the assault element. And so then the old Master Chief says, well, what if? What if the assault element gets compromised? They got no machine guns. What if the base element, once the assault element gets compromised and starts to engage the target? What happens if now they have to go on the assault?

• 1:24:53Jocko Willink?

  And now the base of fire is weak from the former assault element? So what did that tell me? I remember sitting there thinking, okay, you, you gotta be, that's a contingency. And what you're really doing is you're, you're, you're, you're chain, you're giving away so much tactical advantage. Because not only that, a SEAL platoon squad, a squad is meant to work a certain way. There's a reason it's designed that way. And all of a sudden you mix it all up. Now, now it's not really a SEAL squad anymore. There are no freaking machine gunners in it.

• 1:25:22Jocko Willink?

  What's a SEAL freaking squad without machine gunners?

• 1:25:26Jocko Willink?

  But you've taken those machine gunners away and then you've overly burdened the other one with too many machine gunners.

• 1:25:34Jocko Willink?

  So that idea of, hey, I'm going to make these adjustments for this particular situation. And if everything goes perfect, it's good. But if anything changes, it's bad. What are the chances things are going to go a little bit different? The chances are freaking too high and you don't really gain that much. There's not really that much of an advantage anyways. So that that reminded me of that. Next, have I selected unnecessary intermediate objectives which distract from the attainment of the final objective? Intermediate objectives facilitate control and maintain direction. However, too many such objectives destroy flexibility and initiative and tend to slow up the attack.

• 1:26:19Jocko Willink?

  Man.

• 1:26:22Jocko Willink?

  Man, that's good. You know what's good about that? I like that because it's contrary to what we all say, I say. And I'm saying we not, I'm not just talking about Echelon Front. You know, people, hey, what? And it makes sense. We know it makes sense. Hey, we got this big project due. Okay, let's figure out some intermediate steps that we have some short-term goals and we can move in that direction and it feels good. We get gratification. We make sure we're on track. There's a dichotomy. Can we go too far with that? Yes, we absolutely can. Now all of a sudden we've got goals that we're trying to achieve and we're doing reports on goals that don't even freaking matter.

• 1:26:56Jocko Willink?

  Don't let that happen. Have I determined the time and space factors of attacking units from the line of departure back to the assembly area? Have I set the stage for the assault? Have I set the limited or the line of departure too far back? Have I used my forward air controller, supporting artillery commander, supporting battery mortar commander, engineer platoon leader, communications officer, assault, assault gun platoon leader, reconnaissance platoon leader, surgeon and my planning? And my staff in planning, checking and completing the detailed plans? And I'm kind of breezing through, but that one right there, I'm going to pause.

• 1:27:32Jocko Willink?

  So he names off all these different people, all these different professionals. And then he says, have I used them in planning, checking and completing the details of my plans? And the reason I want to focus on that, because a bunch of times he talks about, hey, I gotta give my plan. Have I given my plan clearly? And what he's saying here is it's not my plan. It's the plan of the artillery guy, the mortar guy, the engineer guy, the communications guy, the assault guy, the reconnaissance guy, the surgeon. And my, it's their plan. Have I used them to come up with this plan? And if I haven't, then I'm wrong.

• 1:28:14Jocko Willink?

  Have I considered the ammunition available to my fire support units? Are my supporting fires planned so that there will be no lulls during critical phase of the attack? Have I given consideration to the use of nuclear fires?

• 1:28:28Jocko Willink?

  To time fire over my tanks if the tanks are available, to smoke, to having my infantry follow closely to supporting fires? Does my plan require holding up any elements during the attack to clear barriers or obstacles? Does my plan of attack foresee and provide for the next step in case of success? Partial success or failure?

• 1:28:49Jocko Willink?

  This planning should in no way influence the violence with which the attack is to be executed. But think about that, do I have a plan for success? Partial success or failure? Do I know what I'm gonna do? Have I given some unit the mission of watching and securing my flanks?

• 1:29:07Jocko Willink?

  Have I ensured that after the seizure of the objective, my units have a detailed plan for consolidation, reorganization and continuing the attack so they will not rest on their laurels, thus exposing themselves to a surprise counterattack and losses from enemy fires or the loss of the initiative?

• 1:29:27Jocko Willink?

  Just imagine sitting down with your leadership. As you assess something that you're gonna do and try and come up with this many holes to punch in your own plan.

• 1:29:39Jocko Willink?

  If you're not doing this, the holes don't get filled in.

• 1:29:47Jocko Willink?

  Having, having, next phase is the attack order. Having war game the plan in his mind and being satisfied as to his condition. I know, I'll say this, it's not in, it's not in his mind as far as I'm concerned. I'm getting the staff together, we're gonna sit there, I'm gonna have everyone beat this plan up. We're gonna go through these questions, we're gonna come up with more questions. Having war game the plan in his mind and being satisfied as to his solution. The commander then proceeds to the actual issuing of his order. It can be assumed that sometime during the foregoing phases, he has in addition considered the following, he's not even done considering yet. I must, I must not take so much time in making my plans and announcing my orders that my subordinates have inadequate time before H-hour.

• 1:30:30Jocko Willink?

  In case of doubt, I will send a staff officer forward to a subordinate commander rather than calling him back or hold my conference for issuing orders well forward. What does that mean? We're taking care of the frontline commander. Dude, hey, Dave, I know you're preparing for this right now, but I want you to come back to my location so I can brief you. No, I'll send a guy out to get you, make sure you know what you need to know. In order to avoid misunderstandings and overlooking, overlooking important things, I must issue my orders in the standard sequence. I must make sure that every commander knows what he is to do and when.

• 1:31:09Jocko Willink?

  I must impress all with the need for vigorous execution of my plans. If the answers to all these are satisfactory, you and your units are off to a good start. What, what do you like about that?

• 1:31:27Speaker 02

  If you do all these things, all these things, you're off to a good start. You made the first step in the right direction.

• 1:31:37Jocko Willink?

  Do not later second guess your decisions and change your orders. Now, this is one to talk about at least a little bit.

• 1:31:50Jocko Willink?

  Are there times when you need to change your orders? Absolutely. Are there times where new intelligence comes to light and you say to yourself, you know what, the plan that I came up with is no longer optimal. I need to change it. Does that happen? Yes.

• 1:32:05Jocko Willink?

  Are there times where you, you, some micro change occurs on the battlefield? And you decide to change plans that's already been rehearsed, thought through, and, and everyone's been briefed and now you're gonna throw a, a curve ball at everybody? I can almost guarantee you that you should just, a- as we used to say in the teams, plan your dive and then dive your plan. Plan your dive and dive. So you come up with a plan and then go and execute your plan. When you start throwing curve balls and trying to change things on the fly, it's actually Evan, Evan, Evan Hafer from Black Rifle Coffee. Uh, I was out doing some archery with him.

• 1:32:47Jocko Willink?

  And, uh, we were talking about something. He goes, yeah, yeah, we'll just figure it out underwater. Which is, which is actually hilarious thing, cause when you're diving, obviously you can't talk. You can't figure anything out underwater. And, and surprisingly, I'd never heard that expression before, but it's, it's freaking awesome. It's freaking awesome. Hey, we'll just figure it out underwater. Meaning if we let this go, we are screwed. We're screwed. So you don't want to figure things out underwater. What you do is you dive your plan. This is such a, this is why leadership is hard. Cause there are absolutely times where you go, you know what? Bad plan. We need to change it. We need to change it right now. We need to change the plan right now. That's fine. There's also times where you say, you know what? We're close.

• 1:33:29Jocko Willink?

  And what we will gain from trying to adjust this plan right now will be, the adjustments will be so hard to make at this juncture that it's gonna counter any positives that will come from trying to change this plan right now. So you have to be careful of that. Uh, don't harass the subordinate commanders while they are planning. Issue their orders and getting ready to carry out their assignments. You and your staff should make such checks as are needed without violating this. So bother the frontline troops. Once the attack starts, you can influence the battle by shifting of supporting fires maneuver and use of your reserves. You should be prepared to do this.

• 1:34:10Jocko Willink?

  You should now anticipate what may happen so that you will be at the critical spot, at the critical time to give that command push necessary to keep the attack going.

• 1:34:26Jocko Willink?

  Commanders should make planning the attack a subject for schools and table exercises and tactical walks or rides for the appropriate officers. And man, I know you didn't get a chance to do EF Battlefield, which we went out to Gettysburg, but that tactical walk that we did is just, it's freaking awesome. It is awesome. Walking the battlefield and understanding the terrain and seeing it on the ground is absolutely phenomenal. Lessons learned are incredible. I'm gonna have, I'm gonna have Jason and Steve on, we're gonna talk about that. And this is really the last piece and we'll, we'll, we'll hold off for one more, I think we're gonna get one more episode.

• 1:35:10Jocko Willink?

  One more, one more episode for me to fulfill my, my, my own personal satisfaction in this book. A commander who prepares a checklist from these guidelines will have a great aid in time of pressure. It will enable him to plan thoroughly with speed instead of haste. So, speed instead of haste. Do essential things first. Do things right the first time. Practice more than one thing at a time.

• 1:35:54Jocko Willink?

  So many just quotes to think about. I think one of the first quotes I sent you in a little picture. "The attack is the key to success. The defense is merely a temporary expedient to conserve forces for an attack elsewhere or to prepare for an attack at a future date."

• 1:36:17Jocko Willink?

  So many good quotes and, and look.

• 1:36:22Jocko Willink?

  I'm not saying that you should blindly follow the thoughts and ideas in this book. And I would never say that. And we've, we've gone back and forth and we've hinted at areas where we're, we disagree with, with what the general has to say. But I'll tell you what, at a minimum, you should consider them.

• 1:36:42Jocko Willink?

  You should consider, that you could consider those thoughts.

• 1:36:48Jocko Willink?

  You should understand where they came from. You should understand what they meant. You should, I should.

• 1:36:56Jocko Willink?

  Keep them in front of mind because these are lessons that were written in blood and they were proved on the battlefield.

• 1:37:05Jocko Willink?

  And they were meant as the book states, you know, I'm sitting here saying, hey, don't, you know, don't follow blindly. Guess what the book is called? The book is called Guidelines. It's called Guidelines. Guidelines are supposed to steer us. They're supposed to get us going in the right direction. They're not supposed to be followed blindly. They're not supposed to be obeyed with, with no deviation whatsoever. They're supposed to steer us. Supposed to steer the people that we lead.

• 1:37:40Jocko Willink?

  In the right direction.

• 1:37:46Jocko Willink?

  What do you think, Dave?

• 1:37:49Speaker 02

  It's kind of crazy, right? Dude, it's crazy. That, I'm scribbling, I'm writing notes on this, you know, my hearing what he's saying. And I'm just kind of thinking about, almost trying to put myself in, in,

• 1:38:04Speaker 02

  in General Clark's shoes, as if I could do that.

• 1:38:08Speaker 02

  But that's page after page after page of

• 1:38:13Speaker 02

  what appears to be all this kind of minutia, all these little details he's bringing out. But they're all things, just like you just said, these are all things that he has probably seen over and over again be the reason why teams don't succeed. And I was, I was trying to summarize what he was saying in my mind is, how much of your plan, how much of this thing that you've created, you build the strategy, this is what we're gonna go do. Then you build a plan. How much of that plan, as you go through these other phases to test it and pressure, test it and consider the errors in it? How much of that is really based in reality? How much of it is based in truth? And how much is just what you conjure up in your own brain thinking,

• 1:38:56Speaker 02

  this is all gonna work out, my idea is brilliant, I know what's gonna happen, I put it all together in my head, and this is how it's gonna play out, this perfect scenario that I create? And he's basically saying, don't do that. Bring in all these other people to annihilate and poke holes and dig and pick and and pull every possible error and omission and all the things you haven't done in your plan.

• 1:39:23Speaker 02

  And in the same breath, he's saying, and oh by the way, we're gonna stick to the plan. And the reason we're gonna stick to the plan is because actually, it's not my plan anymore. It hasn't been my plan for a long time because all these people came in and understand what we're trying to do, picked apart, and they're the ones that are gonna go execute. And you, you talked about humility before. The humility of, of a, of a leader to say, I built the strategy, I built the plan, you know why you guys are all here? To figure out everything wrong with it so you can go execute when the scenario completely falls apart because there's no way I can predict what's gonna happen. I mean, that is, that is crazy.

• 1:40:04Speaker 02

  The application to that in life is, especially since this is a guideline. It is universal because that's what you need to do. I don't know the tact, all the tactic. I don't know how the thing is going to play out. I don't.

• 1:40:18Speaker 02

  But hearing what he's saying and the risk of creating it in your own mind and saying, this is what's going to go happen, go execute and setting your team up to fail for not being prepared for the thousands of contingencies that are absolutely going to happen with your plan.

• 1:40:33Speaker 02

  That finish was, and I know it's not the finish of the whole thing, but that finish was crazy. And then he likes to, he concludes with, oh, by the way, if you do all these things.

• 1:40:40Jocko Willink?

  You're off to a good start.

• 1:40:41Speaker 02

  You're off to a good start.

• 1:40:44Speaker 02

  That's, that's mad.

• 1:40:45Jocko Willink?

  I, I think I talked about it in EF online. I think I might've even talked about on the debrief podcast of planning with a negative attitude. Like when you're coming up with a plan, you should, you should be looking at that thing as a total pessimist. This isn't going to work. We're not going to have enough people. The enemy is going to be there. That's how you want to plan. And then the other thing you gotta be careful of, you know, you just said thousands of contingencies.

• 1:41:12Jocko Willink?

  And it, it, there are thousands of contingencies and there's no possible way you can plan for thousands of contingencies. What you can do is you can have decentralized command. You can have a plan that's adaptable. You can give people the freedom to maneuver, to adapt to those contingencies, which are unforeseen.

• 1:41:34Jocko Willink?

  As long as they understand why they're doing what they're doing and they understand what the intent of the operation is, they can make a thousand decisions and never even talk to you. Never talk to you one time. And that's the goal. The plan has to be flexible enough that the, the command needs to be decentralized down to the lowest possible level. And as long as everybody understands what it is that we're trying to accomplish, they understand why they're doing what they're doing, they understand the intent of the operation, they can make a thousand decisions by themselves and get the mission done.

• 1:42:13Jocko Willink?

  And that is a powerful thing to think about.

• 1:42:17Jocko Willink?

  So like I said, I think we got, I think we've got one more podcast with this book and then we'll be done and I'll, we'll, we'll, we'll get it out there to the world. We'll get some, some version of it out there to the troops. And that way we can use this book to guide us, to steer us in the right direction.

• 1:42:37Jocko Willink?

  So Echo Charles, speaking of steering us and guiding us.

• 1:42:45Speaker 01

  Sir.

• 1:42:46Jocko Willink?

  Yep. In the right direction.

• 1:42:47Speaker 01

  In the right direction, yeah.

• 1:42:48Jocko Willink?

  Maybe in that right direction where we're gonna, when we need that remote.

• 1:42:52Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:42:53Jocko Willink?

  We're gonna get up and we're gonna, we're gonna do the right thing.

• 1:42:55Speaker 01

  We're gonna get the sweat full.

• 1:42:56Jocko Willink?

  Yes.

• 1:42:57Speaker 01

  Solution or the solution with some sweat, we'll say.

• 1:42:59Jocko Willink?

  Yeah.

• 1:43:00Speaker 01

  Potentially.

• 1:43:00Jocko Willink?

  Check.

• 1:43:01Speaker 01

  Either way, yes. So a path, really? Direction.

• 1:43:05Jocko Willink?

  The path.

• 1:43:06Speaker 01

  The path, yes, exactly.

• 1:43:10Speaker 01

  Not all that right now, but I'm gonna hook that up.

• 1:43:14Speaker 01

  Okay, yes, we're all on this path and a wise man's once said, path is not easy. The path is hard.

• 1:43:27Speaker 01

  Anyway, so, okay, so on this path, we do need supplementation. Okay, and supplementation and I kind of, you kind of, I kind of sometimes forget about this where you know how like, you, okay, you probably will never have this problem, maybe do, maybe don't, I don't know, but Dave Berke maybe. So you know how like you're real used to taking, okay, so I'm real used to taking discipline, right? Before workouts and if I start running low or run out.

• 1:43:52Jocko Willink?

  Panic.

• 1:43:53Speaker 01

  Yeah, like, nah, well, for lack of a better term, we'll say, yeah, panic, but it's the kind like, bruh, if I run out, I don't know if I can work out. Of course, I'm not thinking that specifically, but that's the feeling I get, you know? But then I gotta remind myself, no, no, this is all supplementation to help on this path. That's what all this stuff is. So just keep that in mind, okay? So anyway, with that and the reason I thought about that also, another reason was uh this the path is hard, right? Like I just said, okay, so the other day, my wife got injured, right? So I took on some of the

• 1:44:28Jocko Willink?

  Not not serious, by the way, because I'm I mean, it's not not sure, but I'm saying I just, I don't want people worried about

• 1:44:34Speaker 01

  Oh, yeah, yeah. Correct. Yeah. Like, yeah, some fractures on the feet, you know, whatever, you know, I had to slide in

• 1:44:39Jocko Willink?

  Injuries that are not life-changing in any negative way.

• 1:44:43Speaker 01

  Fully recoverable.

• 1:44:44Jocko Willink?

  They're a inconvenience, but we're pushing through it. We're gonna recover.

• 1:44:50Speaker 01

  We're gonna shift some, some, some resources, you know, some sliding into various roles, right? One of them is required a little bit earlier of a morning for me, a lot earlier, right?

• 1:45:03Speaker 01

  We were not gonna go into those details, you know, um, but I wound up with, if I'm not mistaken, two hours of sleep, a little bit more than two hours, like under three hours of sleep, right? So of course, you know what that means?

• 1:45:18Speaker 01

  The workout becomes questionable. You see what I'm saying? But so I started thinking and it has, has to do with what we were talking about last time, where you kind of think about it like, what does it take? To to get this workout done? And my default is, well, obviously a long nap first, but let's say that's not available to us.

• 1:45:40Jocko Willink?

  Wouldn't you rather just get it done?

• 1:45:42Speaker 01

  Well, you know, I'd rather it be done, for sure, but I don't know about the getting it part. See what I'm saying? When you're only on two half hours of sleep, whatever. Anyway, so I'm like, what would it take? Okay, so what if, and this is just going on in my mind, wha- uh, what would it be like? Like, what's holding me back from actually just doing it? You know, like, what would, would, is there anything that would keep me from achieving that? You know, getting the workout done? Some small, like, like such a small deal when I'm saying it out loud, but nonetheless.

• 1:46:15Jocko Willink?

  Have you, I saw a video the other day of Joe Rogan and they had Joe Rogan, somebody was talking to him and they just were like, they were showing his face while the person was talking. He was thinking about like some other totally random thing. He just wasn't paying attention.

• 1:46:26Speaker 01

  Is that how you're feeling right now?

• 1:46:32Jocko Willink?

  What are you talking about?

• 1:46:33Speaker 01

  Brad, trust me, trust me, this is gonna

• 1:46:35Jocko Willink?

  Let's bring it home.

• 1:46:35Speaker 01

  It's gonna have some value. No, I'm, bro, I'm telling you, this will have some value.

• 1:46:41Speaker 01

  So I wind up just concluding that I wind up concluding that okay.

• 1:46:48Jocko Willink?

  Dave's gotta look at the scary thing is Dave, I just look at Dave's face. No, he's got a look in his face like he's really trying to, he's trying to stay with you.

• 1:46:57Speaker 01

  Yeah, he's staying with me because he knows that like he's gonna be able to use this.

• 1:47:00Jocko Willink?

  Okay, alright.

• 1:47:01Speaker 01

  Approach.

• 1:47:03Jocko Willink?

  Alright.

• 1:47:03Speaker 01

  So anyway, I'm like, okay, technically, there's nothing keeping me from getting this workout done, even though it seems like a real painful idea right now.

• 1:47:12Jocko Willink?

  Is there anything keeping you from getting this story done?

• 1:47:15Speaker 01

  The actual content of the story. So bear with me, bro, you should incorporate this mindset into right now.

• 1:47:21Jocko Willink?

  Okay, alright, alright.

• 1:47:21Speaker 01

  Hey, I can't finish it if I don't start it.

• 1:47:23Jocko Willink?

  Okay, yeah.

• 1:47:25Speaker 01

  Anyway, the answer ended up to be nothing, aside from me very much not being in the mood to. I had convinced myself that I need a certain amount of sleep to get a workout done. On an individual level, it's not true.

• 1:47:38Jocko Willink?

  Not true.

• 1:47:39Speaker 01

  So it's kind of like, okay, it's kind of a form of realizing that you kind of have mental toughness in a way.

• 1:47:45Jocko Willink?

  Okay.

• 1:47:45Speaker 01

  Like realizing it, not invoking it, just realizing it. And then you can use it. So I got the workout done.

• 1:47:52Jocko Willink?

  Okay, alright.

• 1:47:57Speaker 01

  What also what that did, what that did also is set the precedent.

• 1:48:02Jocko Willink?

  There I was, thinking it was going nowhere.

• 1:48:05Speaker 01

  It set the precedent for if that happens again, you just automatically know, you see what I'm saying?

• 1:48:11Jocko Willink?

  Okay.

• 1:48:12Speaker 01

  Rather than trying to dig deep, you don't have to dig deep. You just gotta realize some stuff sometimes, is what I'm saying.

• 1:48:17Jocko Willink?

  Roger.

• 1:48:18Speaker 01

  Anyway.

• 1:48:18Jocko Willink?

  Okay, cool.

• 1:48:19Speaker 01

  Back to the supplementation.

• 1:48:20Jocko Willink?

  Yes.

• 1:48:21Speaker 01

  When you're doing these things, right, whether you're out of discipline or not, this is all supplementation.

• 1:48:27Speaker 01

  You do the workout, you take the supplementation, it's like, you ever play that game, Super Offroad?

• 1:48:32Jocko Willink?

  No, bro, no.

• 1:48:34Speaker 01

  It's like a game like you race in a truck. Bro, it makes sense. You race in a truck and then if you win, you get credits where you can buy like acceleration or speed or traction or whatever, right? That's what every one of these supplements is. You see what I'm saying? Got the discipline for your mind, for your body, got milk for the protein, you know, all these things. So if you get them all, like you have the full decked out routine for the path is what I'm saying.

• 1:49:05Jocko Willink?

  So a bunch of things, joint warfare, super krill, discipline, vitamin D, Cold War, milk.

• 1:49:13Speaker 01

  Yeah, but you-

• 1:49:14Jocko Willink?

  Smashing pumpkin milk, which has to be just brought up because-

• 1:49:18Speaker 01

  Yeah, it's good. But you gotta include what milk is, that milk is though. It's protein.

• 1:49:25Jocko Willink?

  Doesn't everyone know that now?

• 1:49:26Speaker 01

  Kind of.

• 1:49:27Jocko Willink?

  I mean, let's face it.

• 1:49:28Speaker 01

  Maybe this is the first one.

• 1:49:29Jocko Willink?

  They just listened to your story, bro. They're so, they're so, they know everything, man.

• 1:49:33Speaker 01

  I think you're factually incorrect on that. I think that, that your opinion is factually incorrect on that. I feel like there was some value there.

• 1:49:40Jocko Willink?

  Okay.

• 1:49:41Speaker 01

  Dave, was there some value there or no?

• 1:49:47Speaker 02

  Do you think there was some value?

• 1:49:49Speaker 01

  Yes, sir, I do.

• 1:49:50Speaker 02

  I'm, I'm, I gotta be honest with you. I'm kinda over here thinking there's a little bit of a conflict in what you're saying.

• 1:49:56Speaker 01

  Okay.

• 1:49:57Speaker 02

  Because what I would think is if I was on two hours of sleep, man, I'm like, look, the sooner I get this, sooner I get in, the sooner I get out. And you are in complete control of that situation. And it's kind of the situation we're in right now is like, bro, if there's anybody in control of getting through the support phase, it's you.

• 1:50:15Speaker 02

  Bro, you can jam through this.

• 1:50:18Speaker 01

  Well-

• 1:50:18Speaker 02

  Much like you did that workout.

• 1:50:20Speaker 01

  Well, respectfully, I don't think this phase is the part you just jam through, as it were, you know? This is important information. I don't know. I think it is. Do you think it is?

• 1:50:30Jocko Willink?

  Fair enough.

• 1:50:30Speaker 01

  All right, well, let's not jam through it. How about that, guys? Cool?

• 1:50:34Speaker 02

  Can we, can we get through it at all?

• 1:50:36Jocko Willink?

  Everyone that just, that's about to press stop. Thank you for listening.

• 1:50:40Speaker 01

  Right, okay.

• 1:50:42Jocko Willink?

  Thanks for the support.

• 1:50:43Speaker 01

  Okay. Hey, look, Jaco, if you want to be invited back onto this podcast, you're gonna bear with me, okay? Anyway, supplements, joint stuff, joint warfare, super krill, this is for your joints, okay?

• 1:50:55Speaker 01

  Vitamin D3, Cold War, immunity, also other benefits. Discipline, Discipline Go for your mind and your body. Every day take that one, it'll, it'll help you, trust me, it'll help you. Energy drink, Discipline Go, RTD, energy drink, healthy, legitimately, factually healthy.

• 1:51:13Jocko Willink?

  Real energy, real energy, not like, I'm hyped up for two hours and now I'm just like, no, real energy, clean energy.

• 1:51:22Speaker 01

  And this sounds kinda like odd, but there's no poisonous elements in there.

• 1:51:30Jocko Willink?

  Yeah.

• 1:51:30Speaker 01

  Seems, seems odd, right, to have to say that.

• 1:51:33Jocko Willink?

  Until you look at some other

• 1:51:35Speaker 01

  Energy drinks.

• 1:51:36Jocko Willink?

  Things out there that do have poisonous elements.

• 1:51:39Speaker 01

  That may or may not have poisonous elements in it.

• 1:51:42Jocko Willink?

  Or things that can be considered poisonous.

• 1:51:44Speaker 01

  Yeah, so you know, there's that, so it's a big deal, alright, boom, continuing on the list. Milk, dessert, in the form of a protein, all kinds of flavors, including but not limited to Smashing Pumpkin, which is inspired by Pumpkin Spice.

• 1:51:59Jocko Willink?

  Yeah.

• 1:51:59Speaker 01

  It is fall at the moment.

• 1:52:01Jocko Willink?

  Hey, listen, we, we, just real quick, when you talked about maybe some other, let's call them, energy drinks broadly. Right now, we're experiencing some conflict. Some people might even say acts of war have been, have transpired in this category. So, we may need to go, well, we will retaliate, we are retaliating. The best way, if you wanna help retaliate, and you happen to, at this time, when is it? If, if you're alive right now, if you're, it is

• 1:52:40Speaker 01

  If you're alive right now.

• 1:52:42Jocko Willink?

  November 2020. We are rolling, we are in Wawa stores in Florida. If you're there and you wanna help win the war that we are engaged in at this time, go to Wawa in Florida, and you get yourself a bunch of Jaco Discipline Go to help us defeat the enemy.

• 1:53:07Jocko Willink?

  Thank you.

• 1:53:07Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:53:08Jocko Willink?

  You can also get it at Vitamin Shoppe if you're not in Florida. You can also get it at originmaine.com. You can also get it. You can get it on Amazon, straight up.

• 1:53:18Speaker 01

  Yep. Also forgot to mention Jaco White Tea, tea bags and cans. By the way, again, these are, this is supplementation, right? You're on the path with or without this. Now you got the supplementation, you have the, got the full decked out vehicle on the path, good to go. You do all these things.

• 1:53:39Speaker 01

  You're off to a good start.

• 1:53:41Jocko Willink?

  Hey, hey, speaking of flavors, by the way, you mentioned Smashing Pumpkin?

• 1:53:45Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:53:46Jocko Willink?

  We have another flavor that's been released into the wild.

• 1:53:50Speaker 01

  Yeah, okay.

• 1:53:51Jocko Willink?

  Dave Berke, what's the new flavor? Why don't you tell us?

• 1:53:53Speaker 02

  Uh, the Discipline Go?

• 1:53:55Jocko Willink?

  Yes.

• 1:53:55Speaker 02

  Flavor? Afterburner Orange.

• 1:53:59Jocko Willink?

  And this is Dave Berke's

• 1:54:03Jocko Willink?

  signature flavor.

• 1:54:04Speaker 02

  Indeed it is.

• 1:54:05Jocko Willink?

  So, we, this came from when you were a child, you liked to drink orange soda of some kind. We're not talking about brands. You have replicated that flavor. Now, is it a little bit, cause, cause Discipline Go traditionally is not syrupy sweet, right? It's not sugar.

• 1:54:27Jocko Willink?

  It doesn't have that taste. So, did you, is it a lighter form of one of these former orange drinks that you used to drink?

• 1:54:32Speaker 02

  By design. It's actually supposed to kind of make you remember what it tastes like, without it tasting like you're drinking a pile of sugar.

• 1:54:39Jocko Willink?

  Cool.

• 1:54:40Speaker 02

  And that's exactly what it does.

• 1:54:41Jocko Willink?

  So, it's a little more refreshing?

• 1:54:42Speaker 02

  It is refreshing, it is cleaner, but dude, it is, it is good.

• 1:54:48Jocko Willink?

  So, there you go. If you want to support, well, if you want to support Afterburner Orange, if you want to support Dave Berke.

• 1:54:55Speaker 01

  Good deal Dave.

• 1:54:56Jocko Willink?

  Yes, that's the one. Does it say Good Deal Dave on the can?

• 1:55:00Speaker 02

  It does.

• 1:55:00Jocko Willink?

  Does it say Good Deal Dave?

• 1:55:03Speaker 01

  Man, you're off to a good start.

• 1:55:04Jocko Willink?

  It's cool that anyone can go back in time and witness the creation of the nickname Good Deal Dave.

• 1:55:11Jocko Willink?

  It's pretty, that's kinda cool, right?

• 1:55:12Speaker 01

  Very cool, yes sir.

• 1:55:13Jocko Willink?

  I think it's kinda cool. Alright, so yep, what else?

• 1:55:16Speaker 02

  You kinda jammed through that, man. It was really good.

• 1:55:18Speaker 01

  Thank you. Yeah, it kinda is my jam, one might say. Alright, yeah, additionally, Origin Main, you mentioned OriginMain.com, you can get this stuff. That's one of the places you can get, get all this great stuff, great stuff. Um, you can also get jujitsu stuff, gis, rash guards, all made in America, by the way. Um, so you know, some hoodies and whatnot. Uh, also,

• 1:55:42Speaker 01

  American-made denim jeans and boots.

• 1:55:46Jocko Willink?

  Yeah.

• 1:55:47Speaker 01

  For work.

• 1:55:48Jocko Willink?

  You might wanna check out the Delta 68 jeans.

• 1:55:50Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:55:51Jocko Willink?

  They are being produced as fast as we can make them right now. We had a little, we had a Delta to make. There was a, there was a gap. We had a little stand down during COVID and we're back up and running and, and there is a little bit of a redesign. And the new version of Delta 68s are just freaking awesome. They're awesome. You don't, you don't have any yet, do you Dave?

• 1:56:13Speaker 02

  I do.

• 1:56:14Jocko Willink?

  Oh, you do? You got the new ones?

• 1:56:15Speaker 02

  I do, I got one pair.

• 1:56:17Jocko Willink?

  That's cool.

• 1:56:18Speaker 02

  Yes.

• 1:56:18Jocko Willink?

  They're sick.

• 1:56:19Speaker 02

  They're awesome.

• 1:56:21Jocko Willink?

  Alright, so Delta jeans, you can check those out. And obviously, we're training jujitsu.

• 1:56:26Speaker 01

  Yes.

• 1:56:28Speaker 01

  So there's some jujitsu stuff on this. Gis, yes.

• 1:56:31Jocko Willink?

  Rash guards, boots.

• 1:56:33Speaker 01

  Boots.

• 1:56:33Jocko Willink?

  Belts.

• 1:56:35Speaker 01

  Oh damn, yeah, and wallets, huh?

• 1:56:36Jocko Willink?

  Belts, wallets.

• 1:56:38Speaker 01

  Yeah, I saw that too. I saw this too. And bruh, I don't look at C wallets and be like, ooh, cool wallet. You know, you know how you get marketed to, right? You know, it's like, ooh, check out our new XYZ. I'm not the kind, well, usually wallets don't like, what do you say? They don't, they don't, they don't land.

• 1:56:55Jocko Willink?

  They don't light your fire.

• 1:56:56Speaker 01

  They don't light my fire.

• 1:56:57Jocko Willink?

  Got it.

• 1:56:57Speaker 01

  Exactly right. But the Origin Wallet, let's face it, it kinda lit my fire, actually. Nonetheless, it's on there, OriginMain.com. Also, Jaco has a store. It's called Jaco Store. And this is where you can represent. You wanna get off to a good start, boom, here you go, right here.

• 1:57:17Speaker 01

  Discipline equals freedom, shirts, hoodies, hats, some rash guards on there, other stuff too. Get after it, good. It's an important.

• 1:57:27Speaker 01

  How should I say approach to life? Good, a good philosophy. Also, big deal. I guess kind of an announcement in a way. There's a T-shirt club happening. You can get one shirt every month for a little subscription situation. These aren't-

• 1:57:45Jocko Willink?

  Echo Charles with the subscription situation.

• 1:57:48Speaker 01

  This is not shirt. These are not shirts that you can get on Jaco's store. By the way, they're what's called exclusive.

• 1:57:55Jocko Willink?

  Look at you.

• 1:57:56Speaker 01

  To the subscription T-shirt club. This is not for everybody. Or maybe it is for everybody. I don't know. You gotta look, but nonetheless, yeah, it's on there. So yeah, JacoStore.com. Look, if you like something, subscription T-shirt club or not. Get something. Good way to support and represent while you're on the path.

• 1:58:15Jocko Willink?

  Here's some other things you can do. Subscribe to the podcast if you want to. You, this isn't the only podcast, by the way. We've got a podcast called Jaco Unraveling with myself and Daryl Cooper. We got the Grounded Podcast. We got the Warrior Kid Podcast. And I know, I know, I owe you. So some Warrior Kid Podcasts and some Grounded Podcasts, really.

• 1:58:38Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:58:39Jocko Willink?

  Unraveling Echoes, he's just rolling those out now. He's going hot on those things. We throw the debrief in there too, right? We got the debrief podcast.

• 1:58:47Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:58:48Jocko Willink?

  Which Dave and I have been doing, Leif and I have done a couple. So that's just, that's inside the Jocko podcast.

• 1:58:56Speaker 01

  Feed.

• 1:58:56Jocko Willink?

  Feed.

• 1:58:57Speaker 01

  Sure, the feed. RSS feed. It's true. Also, YouTube channel, video version of this podcast. Some people like to watch video rather than just audio. Maybe more immersive. You know, we got our smart TVs, projectors, whatever the case may be. Anyway, we do have a YouTube channel. Also some excerpts on there. If you need these messages in smaller, what do you say? Doses? Not doses. That's not the correct word.

• 1:59:24Jocko Willink?

  Seems to work.

• 1:59:25Speaker 01

  Smaller cut up clips. Anyway, some excerpts on there.

• 1:59:29Jocko Willink?

  I think doses work better than cut up clips.

• 1:59:31Speaker 01

  There you go. Boom, there you go. Doses according to Jaco. Anyway, yeah, it's on there. Real easy to find YouTube. There it is. Boom. YouTube channel, subscribe on that one. Also, psychological warfare. If you're having moments of weakness, two hours of sleep or otherwise. If you're just in the mood to skip a workout.

• 1:59:49Jocko Willink?

  I got three hours of sleep last night.

• 1:59:51Speaker 01

  Yeah, but you don't count with the sleep thing. Sorry, bro. I said it. I said what I said.

• 1:59:55Jocko Willink?

  Yeah, check.

• 1:59:56Speaker 01

  You're like, yeah, you need five point five hours of sleep.

• 1:59:59Jocko Willink?

  What's insomnia? Here's the insomnia. Here's what insomnia is like for me. I'm my mind is in a roller coaster. Well, it's not like I was a roller coaster, but I'm going down tracks. And every like every thought I have is just a right turn, left turn. And I'm just, I it's just my mind is just racing.

• 2:00:17Speaker 01

  Yeah, yeah.

• 2:00:18Jocko Willink?

  And I'm going this, thinking that, thinking the other thing. And there's no possible way I can go to sleep. There's no possible way I can go to sleep.

• 2:00:23Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 2:00:23Jocko Willink?

  And so I was up until one around. It was like, it was like. One oh eight, the last time I looked at the clock.

• 2:00:33Jocko Willink?

  And then the alarm clock went off.

• 2:00:36Speaker 01

  So like you fell asleep, didn't realize you fell asleep and by the time you were just.

• 2:00:40Jocko Willink?

  Somewhere after one oh eight. AM. I fell asleep and then. The alarm clock went off and got up and got after it.

• 2:00:51Speaker 01

  I'll get that sometimes that that's actually a pretty good description. I'll get that sometimes, but not before I go to sleep. It'll be like. I'll wake up in the quote unquote, middle of the night and. That'll happen and I can't go back sleep. And it gets to the point where I'm like, bro, I just got like 25 more minutes.

• 2:01:06Jocko Willink?

  I almost got up. I almost got up at midnight and just went and worked out. I probably should have. I in fact, I should have. But I kept thinking it's right there. Like maybe over the maybe around this next corner is.

• 2:01:17Speaker 01

  Is and yeah, yeah.

• 2:01:18Jocko Willink?

  Even if it's only going to be a little while, maybe it's just there. So I'm waiting for it, waiting for it. And the longer you're trying to wait for it, the harder it is to come around. So.

• 2:01:26Speaker 01

  Yeah, it's a debate for sure.

• 2:01:28Jocko Willink?

  And then I then I had a bad, I had a dream the other night, a bad dream.

• 2:01:33Jocko Willink?

  Had a dream the other night. I'm in like somewhere, some foreign country and something happens.

• 2:01:42Jocko Willink?

  And we like get the call like, hey, we gotta go right now. And so I run to get my gear. I pick up my gear and my magazines are not loaded. And the helicopters coming in to like, take us to do whatever we gotta do. There's guys in trouble. The helicopter comes in and I'm sitting there loading mags as fast as I can. And then I'm running and I see the helicopter leaving. With like my guys on board and then it's leaving and I missed it. Like they had to go. And bro, I mean, I was just like feeling sick and I woke up and it took me, you know, whatever. 10 seconds to realize that it didn't really happen.

• 2:02:18Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 2:02:18Jocko Willink?

  And so I had the worst feeling ever. And then five seconds later, I'm like, super thankful. And then I'm bummed out again, because it happened in my brain.

• 2:02:27Speaker 01

  No, brother, that makes sense. I was gonna like, kind of tease you or whatever. You're like, but I used to have that kind of dream, not with that kind of stuff, obviously, but it was with football games. Like I'm like trying to make it to the football game or whatever. And then I can like hear on the radio. It's like halftime. You know, that's way into the first quarter. And I'm like, not even at the game yet. And it's like, you know, it's third quarter and I get there and the game is like finishing.

• 2:02:48Jocko Willink?

  Dude, I never would have anticipated in 1 million years that you had some kind of anxiety about being late for anything.

• 2:03:00Speaker 01

  Yeah, okay. Yeah, yeah. Well, hey, mate, you know, maybe, maybe there's some circular like thing that kind of makes it all make sense, you know? I don't know. Nonetheless, no psychological warfare. This was good. Okay, we gotta, I gotta explain what it, what it is. Again, back to the one. No, no, no, no, no. Some people, they don't know. Anyway, get two hours of sleep, you get eight hours of sleep, you get 12 hours of sleep. I don't know. Sometimes you're in the mood or you're not in the mood to do, whether it be a workout, whether it be a maintain the diet situation. Boom, psychological warfare. Chaco. Telling you why you don't want to do these things that support your moment of weakness. Boom. Get through it. Easy money. Chaco's help.

• 2:03:37Jocko Willink?

  There you go. Flipside Canvas Dakota Meyer, making really awesome things that hang on your wall. Go to flipsidecanvas.com for that. A bunch of, a bunch of books to talk about. About Face Hackworth, Leadership Strategy and Tactics Field Manual. We got the code, the evaluations, the protocols. We got Discipline Equals Freedom Field Manual, brand new version out. People are asking, what's the difference? There's like 40 more pages, 35, 40 more pages of words in there.

• 2:04:04Jocko Willink?

  Way of the Warrior Kid 4 Field Manual also out, sitting right here on the desk. These are the first batch. These are like legit first edition. So you can check that book out. Get it for your kids. Get it for, get it for the kids that you know to get them on the path. Warrior Kid 1, 2, and 3, Mikey and the Dragons, Mikey and the Dragons, recently selected as a teacher's pick. So thanks to all the teachers out there that picked it.

• 2:04:32Jocko Willink?

  And thanks for the teachers out there that said it's the best children's book that they've ever read. Lot of those teachers, appreciate it. And then finally, Extreme Ownership and the Dichotomy of Leadership. The original books that I wrote with my brother Leif Babin. Also, we have Echelon Front Leadership Consultancy, where we solve problems through leadership. We got EF Online, EFOnline.com. If you want to ask me a question, you want to ask David a question, you want to ask Leif a question, you want to ask any of the Echelon Front instructors a question, go to EFOnline.com. We will be there. We will be there to answer your question. You don't have to submit it through Twitter and hope that I see it. You can go on there and ask it. So go to EFOnline.com for that.

• 2:05:15Jocko Willink?

  We have the muster, which is a live event, leadership training, December 3rd and 4th.

• 2:05:22Jocko Willink?

  If you want to come to it, go to ExtremeOwnership.com for details. Every gig we've done has sold out. This is going to sell out too. We got compressed space, well, not compressed space, we got compressed seats in big space because of social distancing, so there's less tickets to sell, so it's going to sell out early. So be advised on that. Go to ExtremeOwnership.com for details. EFOverwatch.com, if you need leaders in your organization that have the experience, the military experience and leadership that we talk about, that understand the principles we talk about. Go to EFOverwatch.com to find those leaders. And if you want to help service members, you want to help active duty, you want to help retired,

• 2:06:07Jocko Willink?

  you want to help their families, Gold Star families, then check out AmericasMightyWarriors.org. That is Mark Lee's mom's charity organization. Mama Lee, she's out there helping our veterans.

• 2:06:26Jocko Willink?

  And if you are into...

• 2:06:30Jocko Willink?

  If you want to torture yourself,

• 2:06:34Jocko Willink?

  and you want more of my wearisome words, or you need more of Echo's certifiable sermons, of which there were plentiful today,

• 2:06:48Jocko Willink?

  or you can't wait to hear just a few more of Dave's jubilant judgments,

• 2:06:57Jocko Willink?

  then you can find us on the interwebs, on Twitter, on Instagram, which, according to Echo Charles, should only be known as The Gram, and on Facebook, Dave is at David R. Burke, Echo is at Echo Charles, and I am at Jocko Willink. And once again, thanks to General Bruce Clark and Colonel David Hackworth for continuing to serve our great nation with the lessons you have passed on to us, and thanks to all the military troops out there,

• 2:07:23Jocko Willink?

  on the sea, air, and land, that maintain vigilance at all times for our security, and thanks to the police and law enforcement, firefighters, paramedics, EMTs, dispatchers, correctional officers, Border Patrol, Secret Service, and all the other first responders who also remain vigilant to keep us safe here at home. And to everyone else out there, once again,

• 2:07:48Jocko Willink?

  from General Bruce C. Clark, quote, "The attack is the key to success. The defense is merely a temporary expedient to conserve forces for an attack elsewhere, or to prepare for an attack at a future date." End quote.

• 2:08:10Jocko Willink?

  You know what to do. Go out on the attack.

• 2:08:16Jocko Willink?

  And until next time, this is Dave, and Echo, and Jaco.

• 2:08:21Jocko Willink?

  Out.