From the Ranger Regiment to Asymmetric Warfare | Jason Davis | Ep. 319

Jason is a 3rd generation Army Ranger, he served in 1/75 and later in Asymmetrical Warfare Group & Special Operations Command. https://ventusrespiratory.com/ Order Jack Murphy's new book "We Defy: The Lost Chapters of Special Forces History" today! ⬇️ https://www.amazon.com/We-Defy-Chapters-Special-History-ebook/dp/B0DCGC1N1N/ Support the show here:⬇️ https://www.patreon.com/TheTeamHouse Subscribe to the new EYES ON podcast here:⬇️ https://www.youtube.com/@EyesOnPodcast/featured —————————————————————- Today's Sponsors: GhostBed⬇️ https://www.ghostbed.com/house FOR 50% OFF!!! ____________________________________ Pre-order Jack Murphy's new book "We Defy: The Lost Chapters of Special Forces History" today! ⬇️ https://www.amazon.com/We-Defy-Chapters-Special-History-ebook/dp/B0DCGC1N1N/ —————————————————————— To help support the show and for all bonus content including: https://www.patreon.com/TheTeamHouse -AD FREE AUDIO -AD FREE VIDEO -Access to ALL bonus segments with our guests Subscribe to our Patreon! ⬇️ https://www.patreon.com/TheTeamHouse Or make a one time donation at: ⬇️ https://ko-fi.com/theteamhouse Team House merch: ⬇️ https://teespring.com/stores/my-store-10474963 Social Media: ⬇️ The Team House Instagram: https://instagram.com/the.team.house?utm_medium=copy_link The Team House Twitter: https://twitter.com/TheTeamHousePod Jack’s Instagram: https://instagram.com/jackmcmurph?utm_medium=copy_link Jack’s Twitter: https://twitter.com/jackmurphyrgr?s=21 Dave’s Twitter: https://twitter.com/dave_parke?s=21 Team House Discord: ⬇️ https://discord.gg/wHFHYM6 SubReddit: ⬇️ https://www.reddit.com/r/TheTeamHouse/ Jack Murphy's memoir "Murphy's Law" can be found here:⬇️ https://www.amazon.com/Murphys-Law-Journey-Investigative-Journalist/dp/1501191241 The Team Room Reading Room (Amazon Affiliate links):⬇️ https://jackmurphywrites.com/the-team-room-reading-room/ Intro music by https://www.youtube.com/user/RemixSample Want to sponsor the show? Email: ⬇️ [email protected] Become a supporter of this podcast: https://www.spreaker.com/podcast/the-team-house--5960890/support https://www.spreaker.com/podcast/the-team-house--5960890/support?utm_source=rss&utm_medium=rss&utm_campaign=rss.

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

• 0:00Speaker 00

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• 1:06Jack Murphy?

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• 1:47Speaker 03

  Special Operations, Covert Ops, Espionage, The Team House, with your hosts, Jack Murphy and David Park.

• 2:09Speaker 04

  To a Christmas edition of the Team House. This is a pre-recorded episode, so we can all be with our families around the holidays. Hope everyone's having a good one out there. As you know, I'm Jack, this is Dave, and our guest on tonight's show is Jason Davis. Jason served in a number of infantry assignments, a number of 75th Ranger Regiment assignments, and then a few assignments with the Asymmetrical Warfare Group and Special Operations Command. Thank you for coming and joining us in studio. Today, Jason works with Ventas, developing respiratory protection for soldiers. And we'll get into all of that as well. So Jason, thank you for joining us tonight.

• 2:54Speaker 04

  Thank you so much for having me. I really appreciate it. So let's start at the beginning. We usually start off talking about the guest's origin story, and I think yours is definitely worth going down memory lane a little bit, because your grandfather, your father, and your uncle were all Rangers. Yeah, that's a family lore. My mom likes to say that she's the wife, daughter, sister, mother of a Ranger. And so my grandfather was a 5th Ranger Battalion and WWII Ranger. He says he joined the Rangers as opposed to the paratroopers, because those paratroopers were crazy, which you look at what they did, point to Hock now, that's kind of crazy itself. And then my father got told, "Go to war, go to jail," not as a draftee, but because

• 3:39Speaker 04

  he got into so much trouble as a kid. And so, as he likes to say it, "I enlisted in the Army because nobody was going to tell me what to do." And then you fast forward to 1974, and he's an airborne Ranger medic, you know, plank owner of 175, when he stands that up at Fort Stewart in those days, before he moved over to Hunter Army. Yeah, so my dad met my uncle inside of 1st Ranger Battalion. My uncle was a BECO Ranger in those days. My dad was in HHC, and my uncle took my dad, who was from the Washington, Oregon area, and my uncle's from Hollywood, Florida. And so my uncle took my dad home for Christmas, met my mom and, you know, a couple of years later, next generation is born. That's fantastic.

• 4:24Speaker 04

  So never, never had any designs for me to go into the military, never pushed me into the military, but was always proud and, you know, kind of accidental in the family business, I guess.

• 4:33Jack Murphy?

  So where did, where did you grow up? I mean, if your, your folks were in the military, I mean, presumably you moved around a lot.

• 4:39Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 4:40Jack Murphy?

  Obviously you must have grown up hearing all these Ranger stories too.

• 4:43Speaker 04

  Yeah, I didn't know you weren't a Ranger if you were in the Army. I, I thought everybody in the Army was a Ranger. It's all I lived around. So I was born in Alaska, actually, in, in 1977, which on my dad's file, it says he was an Arctic Warfare Instructor through most of Vietnam. And so it's a really cool kind of, you know, he was up there for about six months when I was born, went to, you know, Texas where my sister was born and my dad went to PA school, which in those days they were, you know, became warrant officers at the end of that. And then spent most of the rest of my life bouncing around the southeast, Georgia and North Carolina, the usual.

• 5:18Jack Murphy?

  Yep.

• 5:19Speaker 04

  Places that, you know, Rangers go to and infantry guys in particular. And, and then my dad was assigned back to Ninth Manchu, some of us old guys, the Ninth Manchu up in Alaska, Fairbanks, were basically my formative years until I was about 10 or, you know, 10 or 12. And then moved, my dad retired in 1988 and we moved to a little town in Oregon called Ontario, Oregon. And so right on the Oregon Idaho border, in fact, you guys know Orida fries? Uh huh. Yeah. So Oregon Idaho border, that's Orida. Oh, interesting. And so that plant right there. So that's, that's what we're famous for. Yeah. Now we're famous for prisons and Orida fries. And so our big city was Boise, Idaho. And then, yeah, from there, went to college in New York. So at New York University where

• 6:03Speaker 04

  I met my wife and ended up going to ROTC at Fordham University. Thought I wanted to get away from the military when I left the house and then realized I gravitated right back towards those people.

• 6:14Jack Murphy?

  Yeah. I mean, you were, you were on track to be a pinko liberal commie.

• 6:18Speaker 04

  A hundred percent.

• 6:19Jack Murphy?

  Let me one up you, man.

• 6:20Speaker 04

  What, what? Yeah, okay, so let me back this up just a second. So I applied to two colleges from my little town in Ontario, Oregon, right? I think, I don't know, graduating sixty people or something. I applied to West Point and I applied to NYU Skitish School of the Arts. Yeah, Stella Adler, I wanted, yeah, I wanted to be an actor. Yeah, I loved the theater. I still love the theater. I love Shakespeare. And my dad, I got accepted to both. So I was hoping, I was hoping one would, you know, you know, reject me and kind of choose my life track for me, right? Because I either want to be an actor or in the army.

• 6:55Speaker 05

  Did you feel pressured to go in the army? Like, was there a party that wanted West Point to reject you so you could?

• 7:01Speaker 04

  No, I felt no pressure whatsoever. And in fact, it was my dad who said, you can always join the army whenever you want. But when can you be a poor actor in New York City?

• 7:13Speaker 05

  Right, right.

• 7:14Speaker 04

  And, and I took that advice and I was always very thankful. And to be honest, I thank my dad a lot for this. I think it really, you know, put my outlook into perspective. The reason why I have my daughter here right now is so that we can have this life experience together, this cool trip, right? And so he set me on the path for that life experience. I went there and within about six weeks, I joined a Greek fraternity. I stopped showing up to school. I started hanging out with the ROTC kids and by December I learned that I really didn't like the acting community at NYU and it really wasn't the people that I wanted to be around. Not that they weren't great people, they were. It just, I had different interests. And the fraternity tended to fill that a little bit more than Stella Adler did.

• 7:56Speaker 04

  And I think we were both happy for the break of each other. And so I ended up spending most of my time with my fraternity brothers and, you know, the ROTC, and it sounds so dated now, like twenty-four years later, just to say fraternity brothers. And the ROTC guys and ROTC for New York City in those days, I think it's still the same now, was run out of Fordham University. So that's where the detachment was. And then if you went to Columbia or, you know, NYU or Lincoln Center, Fordham, or any of the local SUNY schools.

• 8:27Jack Murphy?

  Columbia didn't have ROTC until they repealed Don't Ask, Don't Tell.

• 8:32Speaker 04

  Hmm. Well, we used to have the Columbia students, and so I don't remember the timeline for that, but um so they would come to Fordham to do ROTC. Oh, interesting. If they wanted to do that. Yeah. Um, and so I I ended up kind of falling in love with the military from a, you know, a user experience. Right. As opposed to from a brat experience. Right. And so I I grew up as a brat, and I tried to break away from it and then realized that it was actually what I loved. Yeah. So I went right back to it. And commissioned in two thousand and one. Yeah. Bit of a pivotal year for this country and Ha. Especially for somebody commissioning into the military. Yeah, yeah. So I I got married and commissioned on the same day. Uh, so so Meg and I, who we'd met at NYU our freshman year, um, stayed together basically most of college. Uh, and

• 9:17Speaker 04

  then um, got literally officially married like the week before my commissioning ceremony. And I remember getting out of the car. Nobody knows we're married yet. Like, it's just just she and I. And getting out of the car, and it was kind of a drizzly, cold, May day, you know, in in New York. And I remember one of the guys going, you know, they say if it rains on your commissioning, you're going to war. So that guy was right. And about three months later, I found myself in IOBC, uh, and nine eleven occurred while I was at the urban phase of IOBC. Interesting. And my wife had just moved down from Fourteenth Street between B and C and Lower Manhattan, where we'd had our apartment for a couple of years. Wow. The week before the towers went down.

• 10:01Speaker 04

  Would she, was she, did she have uh, military members in her family? What did she think about the military? No, no, I'm I'm her family's nightmare. So her, her, her, so her, her mom and dad are uh, are hippies. Yeah. Uh, for, well, her mom's a reformed hippie. Uh, her, her dad is not, and it's funny, the older I get, the more I connect with, you know, my, my father-in-law than than anybody else, I think. But um, he was a, you know, like literally follow, you know, followed a cult in in India for a little while and came back and had a commune. Jerry Garcia. Yeah. Oh, yeah, yeah. And and and, you know, in Ozark, in the Ozarks, you know, like, lived in the Ozarks before.

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• 12:39Speaker 04

  An acre apple farm. My father-in-law literally handmakes his cabin, like, lives off the grid, like, you know, living his values, for sure. Yeah. And I met, yeah, she, she kinda, she was born in Arkansas, lived in that lifestyle for quite some time when she was, you know... About 10 or so, her mom and dad divorced. Uh, her mom wanted a different lifestyle. Uh, ended up going very conservative with her lifestyle to the point where, you know, who she married, I was like, man, you're a little bit right for me at this point, you know?

• 13:07Jack Murphy?

  Yeah.

• 13:08Speaker 04

  And moved to Asheville, North Carolina, where she did, uh, her high school years and then went to NYU as a, as a film major, in fact. Uh, and we both decided we didn't fit into that community pretty quick.

• 13:19Jack Murphy?

  Yeah.

• 13:19Speaker 04

  Yeah, yeah. So, so my father-in-law is now an organic farmer in Kauai, uh, on the island of Hawaii. He's been here for, uh, or in Hawaii. He's been out there for about 20 some odd years. He's Uncle Ned now. And, uh, when we lived on Hawaii, it was always nice to be able to spend some time out there.

• 13:34Jack Murphy?

  Yeah. So like these massive life changes that happen in such a short span of time.

• 13:39Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 13:40Jack Murphy?

  Uh, is incredible. And then you get assigned to, uh, the 101st, third of the 502nd.

• 13:46Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 13:47Jack Murphy?

  Uh, tell us about that. I mean, it sounds like by the time you get there, you're kind of getting into the run-up to the Iraq invasion.

• 13:53Speaker 04

  Yeah. So if, if, I don't know if you guys know this, so when you, when you're in IOBC as an infantry officer, in those days, it's expected. You're going to Ranger School. Like that's, that's not really an option, right? And, uh, in the last, uh, the last, you know, couple of weeks of that, we're all getting ready to go Ranger School. The towers come down and, you know, word comes in that if you're in the 18th Airborne Corps, you know, so 101st Airborne, 82nd, 10th Mountain Division, all the DR, you know, Deployed for Combat Ready Brigades, um, you, you get one shot at this. And that's it. Period. The end. Um, and so we all went to Ranger School like two weeks later as fast as we could. Uh, I ended up breaking my foot that first week. And so, which by the way, another great lesson. Um, so I still believe to this day, if I'd been tougher, I could have toughed it out. I broke

• 14:38Speaker 04

  a couple of metacarpals or metatarsals, I don't know what they're called in the foot. I broke a couple of those things, stress fracture. And I still believe that if I, I could have been just a little bit mentally tougher, I could have toughed that out. It was my first taste of failure and I hated it.

• 14:54Jack Murphy?

  It, it, it's interesting. And you say you still.

• 14:57Speaker 05

  Believe that. And so it's sort of like that.

• 14:59Jack Murphy?

  Yeah, that's like I believe I can fight five guys at the same time.

• 15:02Speaker 05

  No matter what.

• 15:02Speaker 04

  On a broken knee though, right?

• 15:04Speaker 05

  Yeah, right, right. Because somebody's always got it harder.

• 15:07Jack Murphy?

  Right.

• 15:07Speaker 05

  And, and, yeah, no, I get that.

• 15:09Jack Murphy?

  For sure.

• 15:10Speaker 04

  It was a defining moment in my life, coming back from Ranger School without my tab and with my story.

• 15:14Speaker 05

  Yeah.

• 15:15Speaker 04

  Right? Defining moment. And I didn't want to feel like that ever again.

• 15:19Speaker 05

  Right.

• 15:20Speaker 04

  And so went to my unit without my tab, with my story. Showed up to my battalion commander, you know. Luckily, he put me into a Delta Platoon to, you know, kind of earn my way back into, in those days, you know, you had, you earn your way back into your tab. Had a great experience as a Delta Platoon leader, that really learned a lot in those, in those gun trucks in those days, about how to, how to lead small teams, how to move, you know, guns around, big guns. But really what it did for me is it, it gave me an appreciation of why Ranger School was important. And it, and I really started to understand, it wasn't about the tab, it was about the, the mental toughness, it was about understanding how to lead yourself in those times of, you know, real turmoil.

• 16:03Speaker 05

  Right.

• 16:03Speaker 04

  And then, how do you lead others when you yourself are just wanting to cry most of the time?

• 16:09Speaker 05

  Right.

• 16:09Speaker 04

  And so that was a defining moment for me, when I understood how important that training was. And when I went back, it was, it was a very different mentality. I was no longer interested in surviving. I was interested in learning and getting better at my craft because I knew we were going to war.

• 16:24Speaker 05

  Right.

• 16:25Speaker 04

  And so we thought we were going to war in that first like 90 days, and we all thought we were gonna miss it if we didn't get to our unit. And so having, you know, having a little stress fracture was a great excuse, you know, to get to the unit that had to go to war. But really, it, it taught me what I needed to learn.

• 16:41Speaker 05

  Right.

• 16:41Speaker 04

  Which was how important that training was. And so I went back, I, I got that tab. I would encourage everyone to try hard things to the best of their ability. I was successful this time because of the people who surrounded me and cared for me. And then the 101st deployed to combat for the invasion of Iraq. And I, I was fortunate enough to be assigned as a rifle platoon leader in Baker Company, B Company then, with a Ranger, former Ranger platoon leader as the company commander.

• 17:06Jack Murphy?

  And, and this is sort of like, I mean, it sounds counterintuitive to some people watching this maybe, but if you're an infantry platoon leader, I mean, this is the dream, right? This was your dream.

• 17:16Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 17:17Jack Murphy?

  You're gonna, you're gonna lead soldiers in combat.

• 17:19Speaker 04

  Right. This is all I wanted to do.

• 17:21Speaker 05

  Had the 101st already been to Afghanistan? Had they done any rotations?

• 17:26Speaker 04

  I believe that Rakaasan's, the Rakaasan Brigade, had done some initial work in Afghanistan. I had friends of mine in the 82nd that had gone in. And of course, obviously, the Rangers at Rhino, you know, that I ended up learning later. But I think they had some elements initially in Afghanistan. I would have to double check.

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• 19:27Speaker 04

  No, no, very new. And we all thought we were gonna miss it.

• 19:30Speaker 05

  Yeah.

• 19:31Speaker 04

  Like, we all thought that if we don't get into a unit that's going to war, this is our Mogadishu. This is our opportunity.

• 19:38Speaker 05

  Right, yeah.

• 19:39Speaker 04

  We're thinking Desert Storm, not thinking Vietnam.

• 19:41Speaker 05

  Yeah, absolutely. So in the workup for that, for Iraq, what were your...

• 19:50Speaker 05

  What did you think it was going to be? What were you training for? And then were any of those things kind of wrong?

• 19:59Speaker 04

  That's a great question.

• 20:02Speaker 04

  We knew that there was going to be a lot of urban fighting. We didn't really understand what that was in those days. And so I can remember we would have kind of OPD's Officer Professional Development, you know, with I had Smoke and Joe Anderson was my brigade commander. So I don't know if you guys know General Joe Anderson, retired as a three star. Phenomenal commander. One of my, I have amazing stories about Smoke and Joe Anderson just being bulletproof. I mean, he taught me what combat leadership looks like at the senior leader level. He set that example almost immediately for me. Anyway, I can remember Smoke and Joe Anderson bringing in these different kind of OPD opportunities to hear from the experts at urban warfare.

• 20:46Speaker 04

  And we were talking to the police in Northern Ireland and we were talking to the cops in London. You know, we were the IDF every once in a while getting in, you know, with the tunnels and in some under subterranean, like we were, we were taking the best that we could. And we were training that in trenches. And so a trench is a hallway, a bunker is a room. And that's the way we trained urban warfare in those days was on trench systems, right? And so we, I think in my mind, I imagined it was going to look like Vietnam where you, you know, what we saw in movies where you helicopter in, because I'm in the 101st. And clearly we're going to helicopter in. And so we're only a 90 day force, by the way, too. We're only supposed to be there 90 days and then we recover because then the big infantry divisions and, you know, come in.

• 21:30Speaker 04

  And I remember thinking that we're going to have kind of a, we're going to helo in, air assault. And then when we get there, we're going to be doing urban warfare through these buildings. And it was very much like that when we got to the city centers. So, you know, the. The Kerbalas, the Mosels, you know, I wasn't in Fallujah, but I've heard it was very similar. But also, I think what was striking was all of the outskirts fighting for key terrain. It's where I really started to understand the importance of what key terrain meant at the strategic level. When there's, you know, one or two roads and you're fighting for a couple of key intersections.

• 22:11Speaker 05

  Right.

• 22:12Speaker 04

  You know, the fog of war of, I need you to move your people here. And then, you know, I forced road march my platoon on the first day of combat for like 20 miles to get to this anti armor blocking position. And there's a tank company there. So we felt kind of useless.

• 22:29Speaker 05

  Right.

• 22:29Speaker 04

  So they literally just got us into the shooting, like to hell, you know, let us get our shoot on.

• 22:33Speaker 05

  Yeah.

• 22:33Speaker 04

  It was it. So it was a very, it was very much, I think, what we were expecting, at least in the infantry side of it.

• 22:42Speaker 04

  It definitely met my expectations.

• 22:44Speaker 05

  Yeah.

• 22:44Speaker 04

  It was, it was full kinetic.

• 22:47Speaker 04

  Yeah, it was, it was scary and fun all at the same time, right?

• 22:51Speaker 05

  So on this show and many like it, like we often have people from special operations, from Rangers. And, you know, and we've said this before, that the special operations mission was very sort of Gucci, right? You know, you had the support, you usually had the transportation. You're, it was generally like in and out type of ops for a specific target. What, what don't people understand? What stories aren't told about conventional military? Who were out there hooking and jabbing with a 10th of the resources?

• 23:24Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 23:25Speaker 05

  And for prolonged periods, what are some of the stories or things that you think people should know about the conventional military?

• 23:34Speaker 04

  I think it's exceptionally hard. I, I, I think we look at, you know, we don't make a lot of movies about the, you know, like the 101st or, I mean, 3rd Infantry Division. Like when I was a kid growing up, there was, you know, Audie Murphy movies and, you know, things like that were going on in World War II. What you see these days is primarily the special operations community, so SEALs and lots of SEALs, you know, Rangers and, you know, other units that are, that are, their stories are getting told. What's not getting told is how separating the enemy from the populace.

• 24:09Speaker 04

  While a nighttime affair and very dangerous work when you're going after very dangerous people, high-profile targets, that day in and day out with the people and feeling the empathy for the small child and for the animals and just living amongst that war and that kind of atrocity in some cases of what you're watching people have to survive through. I think they don't understand the toll that that ultimately takes on just, these are humans, these are people, and we are really the most caring and, I think, discriminatory military in history. That's arguable, I suppose, but the American soldier in and of themselves

• 24:52Speaker 04

  is highly trained, highly empathetic, really wants to do well and to do good, and we put them in these situations where it's extremely dangerous. There's no right answer for what you're doing, and we're asking them to figure it out. Right. And they do, for the most part. And typically, all we hear about is the mistakes, but what you don't see is the amazing things those guys and gals are doing every single day out there to keep the lights on and the people safe. And I think it is an untold story for the most part, but when I talk to my brothers and sisters who spent, I did a good portion, five or six years of my career, fully conventional at the beginning, and then

• 25:34Speaker 04

  had a solid two or three years of conventional writing between it again, and those were the hardest and the most rewarding jobs that I really had in the military. I loved everything I did inside of the special operations community or the asymmetric warfare community. I loved all of it, but they were very different, it felt like. This was leadership. Right. At its base level. And when you talk about leading Rangers, for example, I mean, I used to laugh, Rangers don't need leadership. Leadership is providing purpose, direction, and motivation, and they need almost none of those things.

• 26:09Jack Murphy?

  Ranger PL say that, what's it, Ray McFadden?

• 26:15Speaker 05

  He's a 275. Yeah, McPadd and 275 PL. He said very much the same thing.

• 26:21Speaker 04

  Yeah, if you think about, you know, that these are guys you can, I had it explained to me once. Imagine the best non-commissioned officer, the best sergeant in your mind, you know, that you're just the caricature of this is the guy that I want with me. And imagine everybody is that guy.

• 26:38Speaker 05

  Right.

• 26:38Speaker 04

  And so it's a very unique culture and it's a very, you know, we're the summer help, right? Like, we're coming in to help you. We're not really a part of that internal, you know, NCO community, although we try to be. And that core of non-commissioned officers drives the special operations community deeply. And then you go out into the conventional ranks and we're raising those NCOs. What you gonna do, PL?

• 27:01Speaker 05

  Yeah.

• 27:02Speaker 04

  Right?

• 27:03Speaker 05

  Yeah.

• 27:03Speaker 04

  Right. Well, yeah, and the Rangers, they're not gonna ask. They're just gonna do it.

• 27:07Speaker 05

  Yeah. Yeah, it's, again, the conventional story is one that is very important to me. And again, did, because you were an officer and you grew up, you know, seeing, you know, you went through the ranks as officer. One of the things as an outsider, looking at that, and then talking to guys who were stationed out, these little cops with no support. Or, you know, in these places that it's like somebody looked at that and said, let's put 20 guys there to draw fire. But not give them any resources, any assets to actually do anything.

• 27:43Speaker 05

  Were, at any point, were you frustrated by, by senior leadership, by, by what seemed to be disconnected decision-making?

• 27:55Speaker 04

  That's a really complicated question. I'm gonna try to give you a simple answer.

• 27:58Speaker 05

  Okay.

• 28:01Speaker 04

  We, we were trying to enact a new doctrine, you know, so COIN, counterinsurgency. And, you know, I, I, I was fortunate enough to be on the periphery of some of the, you know, General Petraeus kind of building this in the 101st while I was, you know, in his command in the 101st. He was in command of 101st in those days. And I believe his doctrine was the best available at the time, and I still do to a respect. I think counterinsurgency is ridiculously hard. Mm hmm. And I think the tactic of placing those small outposts was designed to get, you know, in those days, we talked about it as a cop on every corner, right? Get, you know, the rule of law and order out into the hinterlands so that we can

• 28:44Speaker 04

  control those spaces, or at least compete for them, right? Right. And so when you see things like, you know, Cop Keating, or, you know, and I had in, you know, my 82nd Airborne days, you know, I had two outposts with a company headquarters that I shared with a Polish company, Polish airborne company. It's a whole different story, a whole different leadership lessons there. Right. So you've got two platoon outposts and then a platoon plus company headquarters that shares a forward operating base with a Polish airborne company. And then I've got these rifle platoons that literally, you know, nine months out of the year, you can't drive to them. Right. You know, the wadis fill up, you can't get these, you know, 10,000 pound, you know, Humvees, up armored Humvees down these dirt paths that are flooded.

• 29:28Speaker 04

  And so these guys can get stuck there with only aircraft able to touch them. Right. And so if you're asking me to argue the doctrine, I would say, I think the idea was correct, which was we assume more risk in order to connect more deeply with the population so that we can compete with that population, or for that population. Right, right. With the enemy, with the Taliban in those days. I think that was the right approach. The application of it was not always the result that we wanted. Right, okay. And so I would say that, you know, Colonel Bill Oslund, I don't know if you know him,

• 30:08Speaker 04

  but he, you know, he pushed back on some of that, you know, when people started arguing that the coin doctrine, you know, was a mistake and that he as a commander should have changed those things. And, you know, that was the only doctrine we had at that point to separate the enemy from the people. Right. So I think it was the right answer of your nation building. Mm hmm. Now, the different question might be, should we have been nation building? Right. And so there, I don't know the right answer, but that's what we did. Yeah. Fascinating. Did that answer your question? It did, it did, yeah. It did. Yeah.

• 30:43Jack Murphy?

  And tell us about during the, I guess, maybe the tail end of this deployment brushing across the IED task force.

• 30:50Speaker 04

  Yeah, yeah, so that, so we, in the 101st, we, we basically went and bermed Mosul. And so for, you know, for the old timers, we crossed the berm from Kuwait into Iraq and then did the thunder runs and we were air assaulting in on top of third ID and jumping from, you know, city to city or urban center to urban center and fighting those urban fights and then getting on helicopters and flying to the next one, right? And we end up in Mosul is, is kind of the end of it. And so now we're in this FOB, you know, which is really, it was like a, it was like Camp Zed is what we called it because somebody was trying to steal copper wire out of the, you know, the lights before we got there and he, he got fried. And so there's, you know, there's literally a burnt corpse where my platoon is supposed to bed down, like hanging up in the wires, right?

• 31:32Speaker 04

  And so our first task is to, you know, kind of clean up our living space. So we called it Camp Zed because Zed's dead. That's the kind of dark humor you get, you know, in the military, particularly in those days. And I, I can remember doing things like gator patrols. Do you remember the gators, the little, like little, looked like little lawnmowers, you know, with the, with the trunk in the back? And I can remember three, two, three o'clock in the morning, pulling my shift, right? So platoon leader with an RTO and a saw in the front of this thing, driving through the streets of Mosul at two o'clock in the morning.

• 32:03Jack Murphy?

  On a gator?

• 32:04Speaker 04

  On a gator, you know, keeping the peace.

• 32:05Jack Murphy?

  Yeah.

• 32:06Speaker 04

  Just making sure everything's okay.

• 32:07Jack Murphy?

  Yeah, so a gator is like an industrial, like slow ATV in a way, I guess, is the best way to. It's more like a golf cart.

• 32:14Speaker 04

  Yeah, that's a better way to put it. Yeah, but it was, it was all we had in the infantry in those days. We didn't have any vehicles, you know? And so we were trying to, you know, to patrol, cop on every corner, you know, separate the enemy from the populace. And I, I can remember, we were starting to hear of this thing called the improvised explosive device. And I honestly didn't really appreciate it or understand it in those days. We were driving around in, you know, no skin vehicles, you know, inside the, you know, every, every air rifle company had one, you know, cargo Humvee. And so we'd just be in the back of that, you know, squads at a time moving around. And we started seeing new units that were starting to rotate in to rip us out, right?

• 32:56Speaker 04

  After 13 months in theater, ripping us out, having these like welded plates coming with their Humvees. And we were like, that's not a bad idea, you know? Stopping the bullets, it's good, you know? And I can remember in that period, this, this small team, you know, walked into, you know, Camp Zed, and they were in civilian clothes, you know, clearly packing pistols on their hips. And, and I, and, and the, the look about them was they just looked different. And, and, and those of us that have seen-

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• 35:27Speaker 04

  You know, really competent, intelligent, you know, operators, which, you know, when you start working inside the special operations community, just become almost a character, just a dime a dozen everywhere you look. But they they're different. And and the confidence that they had when they walked in as a, you know, a 23 year old platoon leader in the 101st Airborne Division, I immediately knew I wanted to be a leader like that. Like whatever that was that they had, like I I needed to earn that, whatever that is. And and so I was kind of fanboying a little bit as these three, you know, guys walk in and, you know, they're wearing like Safari Land holsters, you know, and they got, you know, Columbia shirts on and one of them had a 45 Colt cocked. Like, that was insane to me.

• 36:10Speaker 04

  Like a cocked, like a hot weapon, just roaming around, you know. We're standing around the kind of the terrain model that we have of our battle space, which I don't even know if we called it battle space in those days, you know, the area that we were responsible for. And they were just asking us questions about what we'd been seeing with, you know, what trigger wires and, you know, improvised explosive devices. And we had started to have some of these initial kind of like pop blasts that would go off, take a tire, you know, maybe maybe give you some frag fragmentation, you know, injuries, but nothing really all that interesting. It was kind of like a claymore where you would hit us, which, you know, just let's be careful. And having this conversation with them and they were picking our brains about how we

• 36:53Speaker 04

  were seeing the operational environment and how we were seeing the threat. And I don't know if we gave them any valuable information at all because we were, we had no idea who they were, what they were talking about. And I remember as they were talking and as I'm being TQ'd, which we we learned to think of it as TQ like 15 years later by this, you know, incredibly impressive dude, who I just wanted to be like when I grew up. And He said, well, what are you doing after this? And I was like, I'm going to the captain's career course. He's like, well, if you're interested in, you know, kind of trying this out, you'll give us a call. Right? I didn't think much about it. He gave out that card. I heard to about a dozen or so guys as he roamed around and saw people that just were interested

• 37:38Speaker 04

  in what he was thinking, you know, what he was working on. One of my buddies ended up calling that card and ended up inside the asymmetric warfare group back in the old task force IED, IED days. And I don't know how true the story is, except I've heard it from a couple of different guys now. But I said, what was it like? And he goes, well, the vast part of, you know, the greater part of selection in those days was trying to find the unit. You got a call, you said, yeah, show up at this, you know, this payphone on this corner at this place, you know, and this guy will come and pick you up. And so the hardest part about finding the unit was finding the unit.

• 38:12Speaker 05

  Yeah.

• 38:13Speaker 04

  And it was in the old prison on Fort Meade. So it already looked like you were, you could get there. So it was just this really interesting first contact that I had, you know, I'd run into ODAs in my ground war experience with the 101st. I'd run into Rangers. I got the opportunity to see our special operations community employed as they were intended to be employed. So I got to see what a special forces officer as an ODA team leader was doing on the ground. I got to see what a Ranger platoon leader was doing on the ground. I got to see, you know, these select special mission units that are, you know, how they're operating.

• 38:54Speaker 04

  And what I noticed was there's just a different caliber of individual that ends up, you know, getting into those units. It's a different mentality. And I don't know what it is in particular, but I've been chasing it and fanboying it since 2001.

• 39:10Speaker 05

  Yeah.

• 39:11Speaker 04

  They just look different.

• 39:12Jack Murphy?

  After the invasion, you spent some time as a IOBC instructor.

• 39:17Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 39:18Jack Murphy?

  And then it's off to the 82nd.

• 39:19Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 39:20Jack Murphy?

  In another deployment. Tell us about getting to the 82nd and deploying to Afghanistan.

• 39:25Speaker 04

  Yeah, so that was, it was a whirlwind. First of all, I don't want to blanch over the IOBC experience.

• 39:32Speaker 05

  I wanted to ask you about that. You go back as instructor, now you have combat experience. And you know, so Afghanistan's been going on for about a year and a half. When you and when you go into Iraq, or about a year when you or two years, two thousand one, March two thousand three. You go into Iraq, how long was your tour in Iraq?

• 39:51Speaker 04

  Thirteen months.

• 39:52Speaker 05

  Thirteen months, which is an exceptionally long time to spend.

• 39:55Speaker 04

  It wasn't those days.

• 39:56Speaker 05

  So now you go to IOBC, is IOBC changing because of people like you coming back with experience?

• 40:03Speaker 04

  Yes, the short answer is yes. And so we, we, we had to redesign how we were training our lieutenants, you know. And so we, you, you gotta pick and choose. It's always trade offs. So do, do you wanna have a, you know, a two week, large dug in defensive operation like we used to do?

• 40:19Speaker 05

  Right.

• 40:19Speaker 04

  Large ground combat, or do you wanna spend two weeks in an urban center, teaching them how to survive in the fight they're in?

• 40:24Speaker 05

  Right.

• 40:25Speaker 04

  Right. And so we started to transition the military from more of a large scale, ground combat operational force to, you know, much more that coin CT footing that we saw throughout the GWAT for the next twenty years or so. Some amazing experiences that I, that I got there and, and as a leader, you know, some of the most humbling experiences for me to understand, you know, who was volunteering at this time.

• 40:51Speaker 05

  Uh huh.

• 40:52Speaker 04

  You know, I, I kinda felt like I'm a bit of the pre GWAT generation.

• 40:56Speaker 05

  Right.

• 40:56Speaker 04

  I, I, I joined the military before all this happened and, and just kinda thought this is exciting and I like what I'm doing. Whereas these guys were a little bit different, you know, these were lieutenants. And a lot of them were senior non-commissioned officers that were going green to gold in my unit that I got to work with. And the, these were, these were dedicated people, like these were believers in what we were doing and, and why we were there and the importance of it. And that was a formative experience for me, but I, I, what I really wanted to comment there was I wanted that assignment because in those days, you, you came out of your platoon leader job, which most of us did thirteen months of combat. And, and it was about, you know, the eighteenth Airborne Corps at least did that. And, and then you went to the captain's career course for, you know, six to nine months.

• 41:38Speaker 04

  And then you were immediately getting turned to another brigade and going right back for another year.

• 41:43Speaker 05

  Right.

• 41:43Speaker 04

  And so we wanted to have a child at that point. And so I, we, we took that assignment, you know, we actually fought for it, tried out for it so that I could be home when she was born because. Not many people were able to do that in those days. You were gone. That was it. And so I got to be there for the birth of my child and then showed up at the 82nd Airborne. You know, she's 15 months old at this point. Another showed up on a Friday, took command on a Monday. You know, did inventories over the weekend, didn't really do good inventories, I might add. It was all going to combat and it was all going to be a combat loss, you know, at some point. And so it was to get accountability of your in items, you know.

• 42:23Speaker 04

  The last company commander had been, you know, fired unfortunately. There was 32 UCMJ packets sitting on my desk when I took the job. And we're going to JRTC the next week, you know, to train up for this 15 month deployment. Amazing experience because we had amazing leadership. And so that Martin Schweitzer, Colonel Martin Schweitzer was the brigade commander there. Ended up being one of the, you know, senior officers in the 82nd Airborne Division, but you know, kind of a legend in the infantry himself. And he, he, he took that brigade of newly formed leaders. I mean, really just that fourth brigade, 82nd Airborne Division was just getting formed. You know, it was being pulled off of different brigades inside the 82nd. And he did a train up with all these new leaders and all these new soldiers.

• 43:05Speaker 04

  And he walked us through that pipeline and then we went and did a 15 month rotation into Afghanistan.

• 43:11Jack Murphy?

  Can you, can you say why the former captain was relieved?

• 43:16Speaker 04

  If I remember correctly, there was a pornography ring in the 82nd.

• 43:23Jack Murphy?

  Oh, yes.

• 43:24Speaker 04

  You remember that?

• 43:24Jack Murphy?

  Yes, I do. Did, did that happen when they were overseas or was that just a general? That was a brag.

• 43:29Speaker 04

  That was a brag.

• 43:29Jack Murphy?

  Yeah, it was a gay porn ring.

• 43:31Speaker 04

  Yeah, there was, it was, it was a, it was a pornog, it was a, I don't even know if it would be illegal these days. I'd, I'd have to look at it, I guess.

• 43:39Jack Murphy?

  It was like the notorious like man in the pink hat. Uh, and he was like approaching soldiers just around the Fayetteville area and recruited a bunch of dudes to do gay porn.

• 43:49Speaker 04

  Okay, yeah. So I had, I, I, here, here's, here's what I knew about it. So I report, I didn't, and I didn't want to know anymore because I.

• 43:55Jack Murphy?

  There could be more than one porn ring.

• 43:57Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 43:57Jack Murphy?

  And porn brag.

• 43:58Speaker 04

  Yeah, it's true.

• 43:59Jack Murphy?

  I have to point that out.

• 44:00Speaker 04

  That's fair, that's fair. Um, so, you know, Colonel Schweitzer. As I, as I take over the, you know, this company, he goes, uh, he goes, eh, the, the organization has some troubles. That is going to require some good leadership. And so, you know, at, once you get your hands around it, come back and talk to me and let's hear your plan, right? I had no idea what was happening. I had no idea what I was walking into. I didn't even really understand the full story until, you know, a, a year or so later. But it, it, it, to me, the hallmark, and I think, you know, Colonel Schweitzer, General Schweitzer, you know, retired as, as he, I think he nailed it. They, they needed good leadership.

• 44:34Speaker 05

  Yeah.

• 44:34Speaker 04

  And, and I, I, I don't know if I was that good leadership, but I know there were some amazing non-commissioned officers that circled around me and really, you know, grabbed those young platoon leaders and we, we formed a quick cadre, you know, just really tight. And, and it was interesting because, you know, really that E six and above, we'd all been to war at this point, you know, sometimes, some of us a couple of times. I, I hadn't been, I'd only been once, but we, we'd spent enough time at war that, you know, squad live fires had a different feel to them.

• 45:04Speaker 05

  Right.

• 45:04Speaker 04

  Doing your train up, going out. And I can remember at one point, walking up on a, on a squad leader, you know, and, and, his team leader had just, you know, thrown a temper tantrum and, you know, chewing guys out, you know, and I, I watched this squad leader just, cool and calm, walk up to this squad and go, did you hear Sergeant, I don't even remember his name now, did you hear Sergeant so and so? What he keeps telling you to get cover in concealment? And, and they're like, you know, yes, Sergeant. And he goes, we're never going to tell you that again.

• 45:34Speaker 04

  We're telling you to get cover in concealment so that you come home.

• 45:37Speaker 05

  Yeah.

• 45:38Speaker 04

  If you don't want to do that, we'll have to write a letter, but we're not going to yell about it anymore. We don't have any more time. And the boys took that to heart. And so that, that non-commissioned officer corps in those days was unreal.

• 45:52Speaker 05

  Yeah.

• 45:53Jack Murphy?

  That's one of the differences, I think, that you were alluding to between special operations and conventional. I'm not saying these are like bad soldiers per se, but you're going overseas with them regardless. You know, and so you have to figure out how to use your leadership and make do with what you have because you're not getting new guys.

• 46:10Speaker 05

  Yeah.

• 46:11Jack Murphy?

  Right.

• 46:11Speaker 05

  You can't RFS them, you can't, you know.

• 46:13Speaker 04

  Yeah. Well, to your point, you know, I had thirty two UCM J packets sitting on my desk.

• 46:18Speaker 05

  Yeah.

• 46:18Speaker 04

  And I don't know if it was the right approach, but, you know, me and my first sergeant, Derek Gondik, who ended up being my command sergeant major in the twenty fifth, infantry division, which, you know, you, poor him. Um, but he, we decided that we'd rather. Only have who we wanted in the line, then have to be forced to deal with people who didn't want to be there.

• 46:39Speaker 05

  Right.

• 46:39Speaker 04

  And so you could join my headquarters platoon anytime you wanted.

• 46:44Speaker 05

  So, okay, so you were giving guys an out if they didn't want to be on the line?

• 46:48Speaker 04

  I would tell, I would tell platoon sergeants that if, if you'd rather go without him, you're not going to get a replacement. But if, if it's a disruption and it's disrupting you from preparing your team to go to war, bring him to headquarters, we'll have plenty of stuff to do and they will earn their way into another squad. Or another platoon. And it ended up being, I think, a success story for us because what we found was that when the guys started getting put on that headquarters team and then being given the opportunity to earn their way back into the line. And, and we used to say, you know, liv- living in a rifle platoon is a privilege. It's not, it's not, it's, it's not a right.

• 47:29Speaker 05

  Right.

• 47:30Speaker 04

  And so you got to earn your way back down there and only a platoon sergeant can walk into the first sergeant and say, I want to take that guy and put him in my platoon. And so every one of their NCOs would rotate through who had, you know, headquarters platoon that day doing all the details. So whatever the detail was that needed to be done, the, the rifle platoons are out training. And if you want to go out and train and you want to get ready to go to war with those guys, we want you to, but we can't force you to want that. And, and so as your NCOs were rotating through that headquarters platoon, they would find talent. And they would find people that they were connecting with and leadership that they were responding to.

• 48:05Speaker 05

  Yeah.

• 48:05Speaker 04

  And, and they would say, you know, it would walk into Derek and say, hey, I want this guy down in, in my squad. And suddenly that guy would get removed and be an amazing soldier, amazing paratrooper.

• 48:15Speaker 05

  You, you said something that I think is kind of funny right now where people, like, there's a lot of mythology built around the number of times somebody's been to war or how many deployments they've been on.

• 48:27Speaker 04

  Hmm.

• 48:28Speaker 05

  And the idea that, you know, a lot of the conventional units were doing 12 plus, 16, sometimes 18 month deployments. And it's like, well, I've been to war one time or two times. And then somebody from the soft community has been like, well, I've been 12 times. And it's like, yeah, well, those were three to six month trips.

• 48:45Speaker 04

  Right.

• 48:45Speaker 05

  Compared to this 18 month trip. So, you know, the, the whole idea of, you know, talking about experience based on number of deployments, it's, it's such a fallacy right now.

• 48:57Speaker 04

  Yeah, to your point, in my opinion, I never felt one was easier or harder than the other. Although I struggled more in the special operations community than I did in the conventional community, just because of the talent that you're just surrounded with.

• 49:14Speaker 05

  Right.

• 49:15Speaker 04

  I'm average on my best day inside the special operations community. Just being able to keep my job and stay on the roster, that was a pretty successful week, right? But the operational tempo in those special operations units, it feels like a 15-month tour went down in about four months.

• 49:34Speaker 05

  Sure. The high-intensity ops, I mean, again, not taking anything away from special operations, it's a dangerous job.

• 49:41Speaker 04

  Right.

• 49:41Speaker 05

  You know, it's just, it's sometimes it's like comparing apples and oranges.

• 49:45Speaker 04

  It is. It's, but I would say the effect, I think, is somewhat more akin than we give it credit, at least from my experiences. Doing 15 months in a leadership position in the 82nd Airborne Division with dispersed cops on the Pakistani border and, you know, dealing with a Polish counterpart who gets promoted three days before he shows up so he can outrank me on the FOB, right? Like, that kind of, of an operational tempo, it's a little bit slower, and yet the challenges were just as exhausting.

• 50:21Speaker 05

  Right.

• 50:22Speaker 04

  You know, and then you transition to now you're, let's say, a Ranger Team Commander, and you're doing a four-month DFC, a four-month train-up, a four-month ready, you know, unit. You're constantly on an 18-hour sequence. It feels like you're always deployed.

• 50:40Speaker 05

  Right.

• 50:41Speaker 04

  And so even when you're home, I know I'm rotating back into the, generally that same battle space, and I'm gonna be ripping my, you know, second or third Ranger Battalion, you know, brother up there, and we all kind of get into a rotation with our classmates, right? And so you come back from that, deployed for combat with task force, and it's not like, you know, you take two weeks of leave and then you go right back to your computer Monday morning, and you're tracking the same targets.

• 51:07Speaker 05

  Right.

• 51:07Speaker 04

  You're tracking the same intelligence, you're going through the same ideas, except you're doing individual training. And then you do ready training, and then you're two weeks leave, and then you're right back in again. And so I think the comparison is, in the early days of GWAT, conventional units, the leadership would deploy. Twelve, fifteen, eighteen months, who knows, right? The officers and the senior non-commissioned officers would come back, get dispersed to the next unit, train them right up, and then go do another fifteen. So it was basically year on, year off for those conventionals. But they don't have that year off.

• 51:45Jack Murphy?

  Right.

• 51:45Speaker 04

  They're training the next unit that they're gonna take to war, putting them through a JRTC and an NTC. And so, you know, going through an MLAT or going, you know, going through a JORT cycle inside of the task force feels like a twelve-month, you know, high-intensity op run for the entire time you're inside the units.

• 52:06Jack Murphy?

  Right.

• 52:07Speaker 04

  And it feels the same way to me as a company commander in the 82nd Airborne Division. It's just I've got a little bit of a different focus. Maybe more COIN here, more CT there.

• 52:19Jack Murphy?

  Right, right. So tell us a bit about that deployment to Afghanistan with the 82nd.

• 52:27Speaker 04

  Honestly, one of my quieter deployments. So we were, um, what sticks out is I had my first suicide on that deployment.

• 52:36Jack Murphy?

  In your unit on deployment?

• 52:38Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 52:39Jack Murphy?

  That's terrible.

• 52:39Speaker 04

  It sticks out. And I'll tell you what tears me apart to this day about that. We were in Ghazni at the time. So we really hadn't moved out to Wazikwa yet, which is where our FOB would be located, you know, our company FOB, which can really circle of Hescos in a burn pit in the middle of it.

• 52:59Speaker 04

  He's on guard tower, seeming suicide. You know, rifle underneath the throat, right? And a guy comes into the tent that, you know, Derek and I, First Sergeant Commander, and, you know, my clerk, right? And basically, I hear him waking up, you know, Derek with, you know, you know, so-and-so shot himself. And I'm just gonna leave names out of this. But, you know, so-and-so shot himself, and I hear it. And we all kind of like, what? Like, you know, an ND? Like, you know, what happened here? No, he committed suicide on the, you know, in a guard tower, on guard watch. And, you know, to this day, you know, it strikes me that, you know,

• 53:42Speaker 04

  I was in contact with his mother for a number of years. And... She doesn't really understand what happened. And it was, I felt so empty and I felt so helpless because I don't know what happened.

• 53:56Jack Murphy?

  You didn't have the answers.

• 53:58Speaker 04

  And, and I look back on, you know, you think about those crazy stories, those crazy Vietnam stories, right, that we hear growing up in this community of, of, you know, the, the stuff that happened and, you know, that what really what happened there is, you know. And so I feel like, or I'm afraid that she thinks we were trying to cover something up.

• 54:17Jack Murphy?

  Right.

• 54:18Speaker 04

  That, you know, something terrible happened and we tried to cover that up. And, and the reality couldn't be any farther from the truth, but I couldn't convince that I don't know what happened.

• 54:29Jack Murphy?

  I, I don't think that's all that uncommon. I mean, the survivors are always left with these unsettling questions.

• 54:34Speaker 04

  Right.

• 54:34Jack Murphy?

  That just can't be answered, you know, that's like, God, literally God knows. And, and that's probably the only person that can answer some of those things.

• 54:42Speaker 04

  Well, and, and then you go through as the command team, you know, so taking this back to a leadership perspective, you, you go to the, okay, do you, do you give full honors?

• 54:52Jack Murphy?

  Right.

• 54:53Speaker 04

  You know, like, how, how does that work?

• 54:55Jack Murphy?

  Right.

• 54:55Speaker 04

  You know, do, do you have a eulogy? Do you give a 21-gun salute? Do you get, do you get buried at Arlington? Like this, you know, this paratrooper gave great service to his nation. And we didn't understand in those days that maybe this was beyond control.

• 55:11Jack Murphy?

  Right.

• 55:11Speaker 04

  Maybe this was beyond his control. Maybe we had, you know, we don't know what happened and that's gonna haunt us for the rest of our lives. But it was a eye-opening and awakening experience.

• 55:21Jack Murphy?

  It really was like even like his close teammates and his squad, this came as a shock.

• 55:25Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 55:26Jack Murphy?

  Wow, that's rough.

• 55:28Speaker 04

  At least from my observation, yeah, in, in my conversation.

• 55:30Speaker 05

  And, you know, and you can't blame the family either because there, there are enough military cover-ups that get exposed, right? But then everything starts to look like a cover-up.

• 55:42Speaker 04

  It's, it's, it's, it's hard not to seek meaning when it seems meaningless.

• 55:47Speaker 05

  Right.

• 55:48Speaker 04

  And, you know, as a, as a parent now of, I mean, that, you know, that, that, that young paratrooper wasn't much younger than, you know, my daughter who sits here with me right now.

• 55:55Speaker 05

  Right.

• 55:55Speaker 04

  As a parent, I can only. I can't honestly imagine what that was like. And it was the first time in my life as a leader that I felt empty and helpless. And I didn't really know how to deal with that now. Because how do you lead your organization? Through that. Which we've been in theater like three weeks. Yeah. Right, like we haven't even really moved into our, you know, to our FOB yet. And we know that this is probably, this is at least a 12 month or probably going to 15. Like we were getting word of that almost immediately. And so this is how we start that rotation, right? So that puts an immediate on it, but what it did for me is.

• 56:34Speaker 06

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• 58:33Speaker 04

  It really perked my ears up to, you know, how do you, how do you keep your pulse on your people? And this is what I think, you know, conventional command teams in particular, you know, really spend a lot of their, you know, thank goodness, a lot of their time on,

• 58:50Speaker 04

  you've got a platoon in a cop where they're just getting shot at or mortared, or, you know, they're just sitting there. There's not much they can do to protect themselves from that. And they're there for nine months, 12 months. And what I started to internalize is we now know this thing called post-traumatic stress disorder, PTSD. And I will constantly tell you that just because we all have post-traumatic stress, and I do believe that every single service member who served overseas or trained to go overseas probably has post-traumatic stress. Whether it's a disorder is a, you know, a question of degrees in a lot of cases. But it's our post-traumatic stress is the reason why I think we're alive. You know,

• 59:35Speaker 04

  when I hear the car backfire, it's the immediate action that I took that saved my life and the life of my friends, right? And so there's goodness in that post-traumatic stress. But then you watch that play out when you are helpless to do anything about it. And I started to recognize that rotation, that those who were able to go out and be proactive and patrol and hunt and, you know, fight the enemy and do the things they came there to do, their level of disorder in my observations is lessened. Those who are, you know, we used to jokingly call them the Fobbits, right? You know, the folks who never left Kandahar,

• 1:00:16Speaker 04

  never left Bagram. Well, I spent a couple of weeks on those places and it was terrifying to me. You know, that all of a sudden, you know, the front gate gets detonated by a VBIA D and you and you get turned into pink mist. Like, you know, that the mortar comes down in the middle of your chew.

• 1:00:34Speaker 05

  Right.

• 1:00:35Speaker 04

  And there's nothing. It's just all random.

• 1:00:38Speaker 05

  Right.

• 1:00:38Speaker 04

  Right?

• 1:00:39Speaker 05

  Right.

• 1:00:39Speaker 04

  Uh, and so that that post-traumatic stress really started to highlight itself for me on that rotation. And how do you confront that?

• 1:00:47Speaker 05

  Right.

• 1:00:47Speaker 04

  You know, that as a leadership team, what do you do? Do you rotate your people around? Do you go see them? How does that work? I struggled with that a lot.

• 1:00:54Speaker 05

  I think, you know, one of the other things, like, I have a theory that, like, suicide ideation is sort of memetic, right? It's it's viral, it's mentally viral. That once one, once one person in a, in a group uses it, it, it sort of.

• 1:01:09Speaker 04

  It gives permission.

• 1:01:11Speaker 05

  It puts the thought in people's head that maybe this is a solution. Were you guys concerned with that at all? Was there, like, are there means that the command can use to attempt to, like, inoculate their, their soldiers?

• 1:01:25Speaker 04

  Yeah, like, is it catching?

• 1:01:28Speaker 04

  I can tell you the, the non-traditional things we did, and then I can, I, I can maybe speak a little bit about from the leadership perspective.

• 1:01:34Speaker 05

  Yeah.

• 1:01:35Speaker 04

  How, how I think we thought through that. So the USO, right? You, you, things rotate around and something that I always laugh about is, um, we lived in a place where only a ring route could hit you like once a week. And then, of course, it's red air like 90% of the time. And so when an aircraft comes through, it's kind of like, you know, Christmas is coming and everyone's there. Um, and, and one day I can remember, you know, it's Christmas and, and birds are landing, males coming off, you know? And out comes, you know, five or six, and, and they were ring card girls from the UFC.

• 1:02:06Speaker 05

  Uh huh.

• 1:02:07Speaker 04

  Right? And they were, they were coming down to hang out with, you know, paratroopers on, on, and, and we were definitely in the hinterlands.

• 1:02:15Speaker 05

  Yeah.

• 1:02:15Speaker 04

  You know? And, and all of them were wearing white T-shirts and body armor in 110 degree, you know, Afghan summer. And so when they took off their body armor, they were very popular. And everybody wanted to get pictures and hang out. So there's that kind of just touching home a little bit. And I know that's a little off. Color, right? But that that's that's war.

• 1:02:37Speaker 04

  Yeah. And those are the, and oh, by the way, all that's happening around a hundred by hundred foot burn pit. That's been smoldering for the last, you know, nine months, right? Which we'll hopefully get into that a little bit. Um, so there's all those USO opportunities. There there was the psychologists that I thought were very helpful that and and and once again, you know,

• 1:02:58Speaker 04

  very attractive psychologists showed up and everybody wanted to go talk to the psychologist. And and and we're absolutely go talk to psychologists. They they just wanted to talk to an American woman.

• 1:03:10Jack Murphy?

  Yeah.

• 1:03:10Speaker 04

  At that point, I think.

• 1:03:13Speaker 04

  So those types of, you know, kind of morale boosting things occurred. Getting ice cream down to the guys, right? But I think the most important thing that we could do is leadership. Which, by the way, I had one of my platoon sergeants use my call sign to call in a bird to get ice cream. I thought was amazing use of power. It was awesome. Good choice. And I thought the the best thing leadership could do, though, was keep the guys proactive. I I never liked the term presence patrol. I never liked the idea that you're just gonna go out and wait for someone to shoot at you and react to it or blow you up and then we're gonna deal with that. That made no sense to me. I even if you're telling them, go get a six pack of Coke at the local bazaar.

• 1:03:55Speaker 04

  Like, go find me something that, you know, gives them a mission and a purpose and a task that allows them to go out and do the thing they volunteered typically three or four times to do. If you let that dog hunt what it's supposed to do, you will be shocked with American ingenuity. And I found that those who were able to actively go out and perform the duties that they wanted to do, that they volunteered to do. Those were the guys that, or at least that's the way I thought that leadership could do its best to increase morale.

• 1:04:27Jack Murphy?

  Yeah.

• 1:04:28Speaker 04

  Or deal with post traumatic stress.

• 1:04:29Jack Murphy?

  So let's uh transition into going to rope. Which I believe what Ranger Orientation Program today called RASP two?

• 1:04:41Speaker 04

  RASP one.

• 1:04:42Jack Murphy?

  RASP one.

• 1:04:43Speaker 04

  No, no, RASP two, you're right. RASP one is is the RIP.

• 1:04:45Jack Murphy?

  RIP.

• 1:04:46Speaker 04

  You're right. You're right. And now there's a RASP.

• 1:04:48Jack Murphy?

  So so enlisted go to RIP, now RASP.

• 1:04:51Speaker 04

  Yep.

• 1:04:52Jack Murphy?

  Officers and NCOs go to rope, now RASP two.

• 1:04:55Speaker 04

  Yes, sir. Yeah, yeah, right on.

• 1:04:58Speaker 04

  Yeah, so when I was in Afghanistan for those 15 months, I had to make the decision of whether I wanted to go to SFAS, or whether I wanted to try the Ranger Regiment, or whether I wanted to stay where I was, which I was having an absolute blast. And I decided that after having watched those communities in action, what I felt I wanted to apply myself to the most was that Ranger experience. And so, you know, if it absolutely positively must be destroyed in one period of darkness, you know, these are the guys to do it. And so, that's what I wanted to get involved with. And so, I was fortunate enough to earn a slot in rope. And I can remember,

• 1:05:43Speaker 04

  it was the first time you realized you weren't that special. Like, when you go to a, you know, to get selected for that kind of an orientation program, you're clearly in the top, you know, 10% of your peer group. And so, you've been running, you know, pretty comfortably Right. in those organizations. You've been doing fairly well. Right. You know, playing 18-ball, you know, every single day. And then you show up and you suddenly realize that just being average here is a great day. Right. And I'm not the fastest runner. I'm not the best road marcher. I'm not the best rope climber. I can't shoot the best. I can't, whatever it is,

• 1:06:26Speaker 04

  there is somebody seated, you know, seated right next to you that can do it 10 times better than you. And the professionalism of the Ranger non-commissioned officer just struck me. The professionalism, the competence, and the thing about the Ranger Regiment that I find most special is everybody's a Ranger first. You know, your cook is a five-star Michelin-trained, you know, chef.

• 1:06:54Speaker 04

  And he jumps out of planes with a gun and he seizes the objective first. And then he starts cooking up dinner for everybody. Like the fact that you're a Ranger first, there is no second-class citizen inside of the regiment. Everybody has a tambourade. Everyone goes through the same selection process. Everyone goes through the same training evolutions. And watching that cadre of, I mean, you said Adam Nash was a rip instructor.

• 1:07:19Jack Murphy?

  Adam Nash was, oh, he's, he might, I'm a little afraid to say this out loud. He was a hellacious rip instructor.

• 1:07:24Speaker 04

  I can only imagine. He was, he was, he was, he was a great first sergeant.

• 1:07:27Jack Murphy?

  He was good at his job. Don't get me wrong. I'm not saying, I mean, that's their job is to put you through your paces, right?

• 1:07:32Speaker 04

  Well, and for those, for those in the audience who don't know Adam Nash, he's like eight feet tall, best Ranger competition. Uh, you know, literally made it look like, you know, uh, you know, I had Mike and Ike, you know? I'm about like this tall, you know, bald headed, can't run for shit. You know, you got Adam Nash, who's like, I'm like a Clydesdale, but everything works. I had Alex Caprati. So Alex Caprati was my, uh, was my rope, uh, my rope senior NCO. That, that corps of non-commissioned officers just set the tone of what this organization expects out of you. And the immediate emotion that gets, you know, raised, at least with me is I'll sweep the floors. Like whatever job you'll offer me just to be around these guys.

• 1:08:16Speaker 04

  I mean, these guys are literally my heroes. You know, these are, these are guys who, you know, Mogadishu. These are guys who jumped into Rhino. These are, I mean, these are guys who went after, uh, uh, uh, what was her name?

• 1:08:27Jack Murphy?

  Jessica Lynch.

• 1:08:28Speaker 04

  Jessica Lynch, thank you. Apologize for, you know, Jessica Lynch's family for forgetting that. I had friends who were on that mission, right? Like, these are literally my heroes. And I'm standing, I'm in the barracks, you know, Rip barracks, which rope barracks is just a room down the street from Rip barracks, right? And I'm in this room with three or four other officers who are clearly better than me. They're clearly smarter, they're clearly better looking, they're clearly faster. They're, I mean, just everything about them, you know, I know I'm already on the B team, just getting in the door. And to be around that caliber of person, it forces you to either give your best or get out of the way. You just can't even. Coming to work that day without giving it your all.

• 1:09:11Speaker 04

  And so that rope experience, I thought was one of the best introductions to a special operations organization. And I've seen a few different selections now and I've helped build a couple of them at this point. And I felt that the rasp, you know, with the rope that then became rasp and rasp is even better, was such a great culture inculcation for everybody that you bring into the regiment and you are a ranger first.

• 1:09:41Jack Murphy?

  That's why they called it indoctrination.

• 1:09:43Speaker 04

  That's right. That's right. And so at the end of that selection, when they're like, you know, well, hey, I know you came here to be a ranger company commander and to go down to a ranger battalion, but we don't have room in one of those battalions for about nine or 12 months. Would you be willing to serve on regimental staff? And the answer is just, of course.

• 1:10:01Jack Murphy?

  Yeah.

• 1:10:02Speaker 04

  Whatever you want me to do to stand in this door, I'm in.

• 1:10:05Jack Murphy?

  In a sense, it's like good that you get to learn a lot about the organization from like a top down level, maybe before you take a position at battalion.

• 1:10:13Speaker 04

  Yeah, you know, I, that was probably the effect, but you know, for me, what I remember of it was being around guys like, you know, Rich Clark, Colin Thule, Marcus Evans, I mean, just these, these legends of the community when they're, you know, majors, you know, Ray Devens and I mean, just these guys that raised me as a young officer inside the regiment to the best of their ability. No fault of their own that I'm all fucked up. It's, they did their best. But I also started to learn that I had different interests in the regiment. So when you put, you know, you put someone on RHQ, on regimental headquarters staff, it's like a nightmare for an infantry officer, right? You want to be in the three shop. That's where everybody wants to be.

• 1:10:57Jack Murphy?

  Ops.

• 1:10:58Speaker 04

  Yeah. Do ops. Everybody wants to be there. I was the assistant S1.

• 1:11:05Speaker 04

  Nobody wants to be the assistant S1 at Ranger Regiment. And I suddenly found, I really liked it.

• 1:11:12Speaker 05

  Right.

• 1:11:13Speaker 04

  Like, I really enjoyed the manning and the talent.

• 1:11:16Speaker 05

  Right.

• 1:11:16Speaker 04

  And understanding how to get that talent, and how to align that talent, and how to put that talent with the right teammates to get the most out of the team. You know, understanding how the senior officers and NCOs and those types of organizations, that's what they consider to be one of their primary responsibilities, is getting the right leadership dynamic for that team. You know, when a commander breaks his leg on a jump, and you've got to bring in a new, you know, a new major to command that team for Afghanistan, or Fallujah, and, you know, for a four-month rotation at high op tempo, like, who's the right guy?

• 1:11:48Speaker 05

  Right.

• 1:11:49Speaker 04

  And, and that's the answer that they'll always give, well, who's the right guy?

• 1:11:53Speaker 05

  Right.

• 1:11:53Speaker 04

  They don't care who's supposed to do it. They don't care who's next in line. It's who's the right guy to lead these Rangers in combat? And they build teams around that, and those teams get, I mean, we've, we've heard about it from Stan McChrystal now, and, you know, teams of, teams of teams, right?

• 1:12:08Speaker 05

  Yeah.

• 1:12:09Speaker 04

  That style of focused leadership is what, you know, from the Solutions 21 perspective now, as a leadership consultant, I really hark on with, you know, the CEOs and presidents that I work on in all these private organizations. You need to spend the most, most of your time talking to your people and understanding how to align teams, and how to get leaders bought into the vision that you've got for where this needs to go. It's not in front of your computer sending emails. It's not in the boardroom, you know, making those decisions. If you've built your staff the way you should, they will do those things for you. I learned that from watching senior non-commissioned officers and officers in the Ranger Regiment build task forces.

• 1:12:49Speaker 05

  It's, it's interesting because, and speaking purely from a pre-GWAT Ranger perspective,

• 1:12:58Speaker 05

  you know, you would see, for the, for, people don't know, like, when you first become an officer, you cannot go to Ranger Battalion. Like, you have to have a command someplace else, and, uh, you know, and then, and then you come on, come in. You've got to prove you can do it in the conventional force.

• 1:13:12Speaker 04

  Right.

• 1:13:13Speaker 05

  Before you get the opportunity to try out for it in those special operations communities.

• 1:13:17Speaker 04

  And it's very interesting seeing different platoon leaders.

• 1:13:21Speaker 05

  And and how they either adapt or don't adapt. Once they get to Ranger Battalion, you know, and they've got this platoon of, you know, highly motivated, you know, a bunch of kind of knucklehead privates, but also, you know, your team leaders, your squad leaders, your platoon sergeant. And um. Whether.

• 1:13:45Speaker 05

  Whether they could stand back, because everybody wants to look good, right? You want, that's your time to shine when you go to Ranger Battalion and you want to look good. But it was the guys who learned that if they stepped back and facilitated, right? They facilitated these Rangers doing what they're doing. They were going to look good. The Rangers were going to make them look good. Compared to the guys who felt that they need to, needed to imprint their vision onto these guys who had been, who've been doing this job nonstop.

• 1:14:15Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 1:14:16Speaker 05

  Since before they got there.

• 1:14:17Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 1:14:18Speaker 05

  Um, and and how they adapted and and if they could accept that they weren't, they weren't really the star of the show.

• 1:14:25Speaker 04

  Right. Well, it's it's kind of, um, I don't know if you guys know this, but the Dodgers beat the Yankees a little bit ago in a World Series.

• 1:14:33Speaker 05

  I didn't know.

• 1:14:34Speaker 04

  Yeah, it kind of pissed me off, because I was a Yankees fan for a long time. I was telling Ray to go to the old Bronx Stadium here a while back. I don't remember the dude's name, but he hit a grand slam homerun in the first inning. Uh, what, not first inning, but in game one. And that's an A-team player on the Dodgers, right? That means most of that roster is B-team players. And then you got four or five A-team players. And Yankees have the same thing, right? And officers in particular that go into a special operations organization, the regiment in my experiences, um, the first thing they're confronted with is they're accustomed to being the star quarterback. Wherever they were at, they were the star quarterback.

• 1:15:18Speaker 04

  They were definitively top three in their division. You know, so for those who don't know what a division is, you know, about 20,000 personnel, which means that's a whole lot of platoon leaders and company commanders. They were, they were a top three of that division to get the tryout, right? And so you get to that unit, knowing that you're elite and you're select. And suddenly, you're on a team of all guys who hit grand slam home runs every single day. And I'd love to even talk about, you know, those crazy knucklehead privates because there's no crazy knucklehead private in the Ranger Regiment. By the time you hit a team, you're a TAB Spec 4. You're a TAB Specialist 4 generally by the time you're really rotating on the aircraft.

• 1:16:00Speaker 04

  I don't know if that was your experiences, but mine was you show up as a PFC. You go immediately into Ranger School Preparation. You then go to Ranger School Preparation while going through all your AIT and finishing schools and holy schools and all that other good stuff that's going on. And then by the time you come back and then go on a rotation.

• 1:16:20Speaker 06

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• 1:17:03Speaker 06

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• 1:17:21Speaker 03

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• 1:18:21Speaker 04

  Where you're probably working backside support inside the targeting cell, you know, running errands until you get your chance to go on a couple of missions that we know are going to be good for you to break in on, right? By the time that guy is going out the back of an aircraft, he's probably a TAB spec four. Was that your experiences?

• 1:18:42Jack Murphy?

  I mean, by the time guys are going out of the aircraft, I mean, we had guys graduate from RIP and go out of the back of an aircraft a week later.

• 1:18:49Speaker 04

  It used to be that it was like you had to, you had to spend your time, you were probably going to be on the line for eight months to a year before you, before you were allowed to go to Ranger School.

• 1:19:01Jack Murphy?

  I, I went, and I mean, this isn't because I was-

• 1:19:04Speaker 04

  That's closer to my experience.

• 1:19:05Jack Murphy?

  Not because I was anything special, just because I passed a PT test. They, they sent me to Ranger School like right away, which was good and bad, but prior to that, yeah, I think there was a thought that you'd, depending on the first sergeant's philosophy, that you're going to stay there like a year to two years before you go to Ranger School. And that's why we had a deficiency of Ranger TAB guys in the company at that time.

• 1:19:29Speaker 04

  Yeah. No TAB, no slab. I don't know if that, I don't know if they still do that anymore, but that was the old days. But yeah, so that, so the, the, the greatest thing that I really pulled from that experience is you, you have to eat a whole lot of humble pie immediately. You're coming in with an 80 second, I walked in there with an 80 second combat patch, 101st combat patch, you know, 27, 28 months of, of deployed combat time at that point, right? I'm feeling pretty confident in my abilities. Yeah. C-team player, day one. Like, don't even know how to, don't even know what the acronym is. I hope you didn't wear an air assault badge when you showed up.

• 1:20:03Speaker 04

  My first introduction, right, was a senior non-commissioned officer looking at me going, "We gotta get that in stereo before you talk to me." And so, yeah, of course I had to resalt it, but not on top, on the bottom where it belonged, in that unit.

• 1:20:21Jack Murphy?

  And then, so you mentioned you really enjoyed S1, you're learning about the regiment, but then you had this rear D job that you said was just horrific.

• 1:20:30Speaker 04

  Yeah, that was the worst job in my career. And so, and I say worse because think about your, my job is to be the voice of the command, you know, rear, literally. And the times that they really need me are when we have killed and wounded Rangers. And so, it's caring for those families, it's connecting those families to the resources, and the special operations community really lays it out, right? And some of the most, you know, heartbreaking events are funerals. And you go to these funerals and you're the escort for a general officer who's presenting the flag, which in those days, you know, General Votel did almost all of the ones that I was

• 1:21:15Speaker 04

  on, for whatever, I don't know if that was just the rotation or that was his decision. And you're dealing with these parents that are in one step so proud of what their son has done, and on the other, just, we've just devastated a family.

• 1:21:36Jack Murphy?

  Right.

• 1:21:36Speaker 04

  I mean, they're never going to recover a change from this. And the toll, that, just the emotional toll that that took on the rear detachment, I really got to understand it. And I really got to see it, and it was compressed. And so, in the 82nd or in the 101st, you know, conventional unit, those, you know... Those five KIA, those thirty, I think it was thirty-two VSI, very seriously wounded. So we're in Walter Reed, we're in San Antonio. I'm flying to visit those Rangers who have life-altering injuries. Like, will never, you know, live without care kind of injuries. Uh, you know, you're, you're working with the, the wife who has small children, who, you know,

• 1:22:18Speaker 04

  the, the parents and the, the emotional toll, I watched that take on our Rangers going through that and I only started to understand the emotional toll that was taking on me years later. Right. And, and, and that is, uh, you know, when, when you think back to the things that really trigger my, you know, like my post-traumatic stress disorder, the thing, it's, it's children. Yeah. You know, kids getting hurt and, and watching children, you know, at a coffin and, you know, and, and it's probably because of my own children, right? Yeah. But it's a, it's a very much my, my nightmares are always about kids. Uh, something happens to a kid and, and to be with someone's kid, you know, to escort

• 1:23:00Speaker 04

  that body home, which literally you're talking about your Ranger buddy and you know how it works, it's your Ranger buddy that's gonna escort you home. Uh, we're gonna make sure of that if we can. And then to surround yourself with the family that is so proud. Like, I, I literally, you know, Jason Dahlke, I'll just, you know, give this one. Ja- Jason Dahlke, we're in Jacksonville for his funeral, if I remember correctly, Jacksonville Naval Air Station. And beautiful chapel, uh, Jason's remains come in. The naval commander had everyone in dress whites from disembarkment of the plane all the way to the chapel and then all the way off of the installation.

• 1:23:45Speaker 04

  And then when you got off the installation, I'm in the lead vehicle with, you know, the police and the fire department, they shut down the interstate. I-75 North was shut down. And they were escorting us with, I was, and I'm in the lead vehicle and I can remember coming up this little hill and looking in the rearview and General Botel is sitting behind me and all I see is Patriot Riders. So just hundreds and hundreds of motorcycle riders. And then behind them, this endless convoy of Jackson Naval Air Station. These are, these are, these are our Navy brothers and sisters.

• 1:24:26Jack Murphy?

  Yeah.

• 1:24:27Speaker 04

  And just, I'm getting a little emotional just thinking about it right now.

• 1:24:29Jack Murphy?

  Yeah.

• 1:24:30Speaker 04

  Jason Dahlke was this amazing, I mean, I didn't know Jason. I, I, I, you know, I unfortunately only got the stories of Jason. Um, and when you listen to his wife go, I mean, look at him. I, I, I remember this plain as day, his picture in full gear. You know, we all take the operator picture when you get into theater, right? So we're in our full kit and the talk and in the jock and someone snaps that picture. Well, Jason literally looked like a poster child. Like this is the Ranger, you know, this is our modern day Ranger on the battlefield. He looks like he'll tear you apart from there. And he died doing what he loved doing. And she knows that and how heartbreaking for, for them and for the family and that.

• 1:25:14Speaker 04

  That was the worst job.

• 1:25:16Jack Murphy?

  Yeah.

• 1:25:16Speaker 04

  Ever. And yet it probably made me a better commander.

• 1:25:21Jack Murphy?

  Yeah, because you understand the gravity of all this. That's what it sounds like you took away from it.

• 1:25:26Speaker 04

  When, when we make mistakes in our business, it, it can result in life altering.

• 1:25:33Jack Murphy?

  Right.

• 1:25:34Speaker 04

  Changes.

• 1:25:35Jack Murphy?

  Right. So after this, uh, this ordeal, you, uh, become a company commander in 175.

• 1:25:42Speaker 04

  Yeah, HHC 175.

• 1:25:43Jack Murphy?

  We're happily representing all three battalions here on the show today.

• 1:25:46Speaker 04

  We are, we are.

• 1:25:47Jack Murphy?

  Uh.

• 1:25:48Speaker 04

  And we're getting together for second and third.

• 1:25:50Jack Murphy?

  We're, we're getting, we're, uh.

• 1:25:52Speaker 04

  I'll tell you, I always feel an, as an imposter inside of the Ranger community. I always feel like, you know, I, I never quite became one of you. Like you, you guys are just so my heroes. And so I, I look at you guys and, and you're what I wanted to be when I grow up. And so it's, uh, it's been just a humbling experience.

• 1:26:10Jack Murphy?

  It's, it's the, I have very much the same sort of feeling that you do, that I was just lucky to be a part of this like storied historical unit for. A short period of time, you know.

• 1:26:19Speaker 04

  Well, I feel like the unit revolved around me.

• 1:26:22Jack Murphy?

  It probably did.

• 1:26:23Speaker 04

  No, no, I was, I was average everywhere I went. Yeah.

• 1:26:28Jack Murphy?

  Tell, tell us about becoming HHC Company Commander in one seven five.

• 1:26:32Speaker 04

  Yeah, so I was the, the Kandahar Fusion Cell Director. So we were overseas and the Kandahar Fusion Cell Director. I remember I worked really hard for like three or four months to make this a useful thing. And so for the, you know, for the people who don't know what the Kandahar Fusion Cell Direct, uh, Kandahar Fusion Cell was. It was where all the NATO SOF elements, you know, white and black, were supposed to be synchronizing their efforts inside of the Kandahar, you know, battle space, the Kandahar, Kandahar AOR. And I, I was the Kandahar Fusion Cell Director from, you know, from Task Force. And so my job was to coordinate and synchronize all of these with the, with the battle space owner, which in those days was the 10th Mountain Division.

• 1:27:12Speaker 04

  I was really proud of myself because I was able to coordinate one or two somewhat synchronized operations of delivery of humanitarian assistance. I mean, just ridiculously, you know, low output, right? And I was really proud of my ability just to put that together. And I can remember, you know, Mike Foster, the Battalion, Battalion Commander one seven five. He's like, you've run how many missions? And I was like, I've done two missions over there, something like that. And he's like, sounds like we need to find another job for you. He called me to congratulate me that he just selected me to be the HHC one seven five commander. And I put a good face on it. Because I was disappointed that I didn't get a rifle.

• 1:27:51Jack Murphy?

  Right, right.

• 1:27:52Speaker 04

  I wanted a rifle company.

• 1:27:53Jack Murphy?

  Right.

• 1:27:54Speaker 04

  And, and I put a good face on it. And I think, you know, I think to, you know, Mike Foster's credit, you know, he, he, he, he wasn't letting me get away with that. He continued to, you know, this is, you know, rare opportunity and blah, blah, blah. And I knew it was. I, I knew intellectually, I knew this was a lifetime opportunity, right? But I was still a little disappointed. I, I wanted a rifle.

• 1:28:12Jack Murphy?

  So for, for viewers out there who are a little confused, Headquarters and Headquarters Company is where the mortars are located, the snipers, the recce guy.

• 1:28:23Jack Murphy?

  And then you had all this like burgeoning intelligence capability.

• 1:28:26Speaker 04

  Technical, yeah, technical support element is what we called it, TSE. And so it it it became, I I lovingly nicknamed it the dark arts. And I remember Mike Foster, and I think you and I were chatting about this before the show, but Mike Foster, he always had this uh this kind of, you know, bloom where you're planted. And I always hated him for it because he planted me in a place that I didn't want to bloom, right? And and and low and behold, and and I probably owe Mike a call at this point, you know, but he was right. You know, I I think what he recognized is I I I wasn't quite, you know, I was just as good, I could do it as good as them. But that wasn't where my talents lied. You know, there was lots of people who could do that just as well, if not better than me.

• 1:29:11Speaker 04

  And in fact, I know at least, you know, five guys who can do it better than me. And here was a place that needed something a little bit different. He wanted something a little bit different and he saw, I think, something in me that he said, you you can go and do this.

• 1:29:27Jack Murphy?

  Right.

• 1:29:28Speaker 04

  And so it ended up being almost a life altering moment or or experience for me where I suddenly realized. You fast forward now, you know, almost 10 years later and I'm on a range and with the asymmetric warfare group doing non standard shooting through a rental car, which that's a whole of fun story. And a guy asked me, are you, you know, your battalion command selection is coming up? Are you going to the 82nd, 101st, 173rd, the usual places that we go to before we try out for a Ranger Battalion, right? And I was like, no, I, there's about 50 other guys in the back of my head that can command a a paratroop battalion better than I can. But I think this is where my talent lies, is here. And and I really enjoyed it.

• 1:30:13Jack Murphy?

  Right.

• 1:30:13Speaker 04

  And I really loved it and I I I fell in love with HHC. I mean, to the point where I I almost tried to rebrand it, right? Where it's just, I just had H instead of, you know, HHC.

• 1:30:23Jack Murphy?

  Yeah.

• 1:30:23Speaker 04

  Because I I Adam Nash was my C, my my senior enlisted advisor. And I was like, nobody listens to me in the headquarters. Nobody cares what Major Davis says. The headquarters, no NCO or officers listening to me, but they will listen to Adam Nash. And so, Adam, I need you to command headquarters because I can't walk in the battalion commander and go, hey, sir, this is what you're gonna do today. But Adam Nash can as a Ranger non-commissioned officer. And hotel company was where I put my emphasis, which was the dogs.

• 1:30:54Speaker 05

  Right.

• 1:30:55Speaker 04

  The recce platoon.

• 1:30:55Speaker 05

  Right.

• 1:30:56Speaker 04

  TSE. And how do we start changing the way that our organization connects to other intelligence organizations out there in order to give a strategic through tactical picture that then we can put strike forces on target?

• 1:31:14Speaker 05

  Which, which is very important because one of the challenges, I think, with uh, whether it's work with other units or whether even working with the line is a lot of times, people don't know how to employ their snipers. They don't know how to employ their recce. They don't know what their capabilities are. You know, and so a lot of times those elements, if they aren't there to like sell themselves, if they aren't there. You know, they, the planning is just like a lot of times the most unimaginative, right?

• 1:31:47Speaker 04

  Can't be, yeah, can't be. Well, they're after effect, right?

• 1:31:50Speaker 05

  Yeah.

• 1:31:50Speaker 04

  Like, this is the big show, you're the enabler.

• 1:31:52Speaker 05

  Yeah, either that or too imaginative, like, okay, the sniper's gonna infill, you know, three hours plus. They're gonna eliminate this guy and do this. And it's like that, I'm sorry, that's, you know, I, you, we appreciate that you think that we're all that, but that might not work, right?

• 1:32:12Speaker 04

  Yeah, we're swallowing Call of Duty, right?

• 1:32:14Speaker 05

  So, um, and you know, and even I think for a long time, pre-GUAT, even the commander of HAC didn't really understand the capabilities of the people who worked for him because he was more focused on headquarters.

• 1:32:31Speaker 04

  Right.

• 1:32:32Speaker 05

  Aspect out.

• 1:32:32Speaker 04

  Right.

• 1:32:33Speaker 05

  Right? We just, the, the, the people who got put into HAC is like, well, we don't know where else, you know, they, we try them on the line. You're in the, in, in the, you know, in line companies, we'll put them in HAC. But for you to take such an interest in, and, and it grew, right? Cause you had the TSE and the dogs and somebody has to understand.

• 1:32:57Speaker 05

  What they're capable of, sometimes what they're not capable of.

• 1:33:00Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 1:33:01Speaker 05

  And then proselytize, right? And, and sell them and, and, and teach.

• 1:33:06Speaker 04

  And fight for them.

• 1:33:07Speaker 05

  And fight for them, absolutely.

• 1:33:08Jack Murphy?

  It's interesting to mention it that way because you have to interface up and down the chain of command in that regard, right?

• 1:33:15Speaker 04

  Yeah, and with my, you know, with my fellow company commanders.

• 1:33:17Speaker 05

  Yeah.

• 1:33:18Speaker 04

  Who are the priority, you know, and so when you've got a rifle company that's doing, you know, a, a CalFAX or, you know, a large combined arms live fire exercise as a team, you know, well, they need their mortars, they need their snipers, they need their dogs and training those guys and getting those guys selected because their psychological profiles are a little bit different.

• 1:33:37Speaker 05

  Right.

• 1:33:38Speaker 04

  Than other Rangers.

• 1:33:39Speaker 05

  Right.

• 1:33:39Speaker 04

  Right? And so just finding the guys that psychologically fit into those teams. I got to spend so much time with the, you know, the task force psychologists and learning about, you know, human, uh, human needs and human interactions and personality styles and understanding how, and I, I, which by the way, if you guys don't use DISC at this point, you know, DISC personality styles, like I'll teach it to you because once, once you do it, you can't unsee it.

• 1:34:04Speaker 05

  Really?

• 1:34:04Speaker 04

  Oh yeah, it's just I, I can see the personality style, which means I can understand how you like to be engaged with, how you like to be talked to and learning all of that from the psychologists. And then, by the way, the reason why I joined this company, Solutions 21, is they employ a lot of those same understanding and ideas of how to build and align leaders.

• 1:34:24Speaker 05

  Yeah.

• 1:34:24Speaker 04

  As, as we learned inside the special operations community. And so seeing that.

• 1:34:29Speaker 05

  Yeah.

• 1:34:29Speaker 04

  And, and understanding what we could be doing with these teams and how we could be connecting to the, you know, Ranger reconnaissance detachments and how that could be connecting to, you know, TFO and how that could be connecting to different, you know, intelligence organizations that are all trying to gain targetable fidelity on X.

• 1:34:49Speaker 05

  Right.

• 1:34:49Speaker 04

  Whatever it is.

• 1:34:50Speaker 05

  Right.

• 1:34:50Speaker 04

  And that ultimately, I think, is what grows me into the AWG where I get into strategic studies and strategic understandings.

• 1:34:58Jack Murphy?

  So as you finish off your time at HHC, you're going to staff college? And I think you were saying that like a waiver had to be signed because of the, what was going on in the war at the time?

• 1:35:10Speaker 04

  Yeah, so we.

• 1:35:13Speaker 04

  It was timeline management of officers and I don't want to get too deep into it, but I was fortunate enough to get hired very young as an officer. So, you know, I had like three years before my major selection. And then was retained, you know, for two years after that. And so there was about three or four of us in my class.

• 1:35:31Speaker 05

  She spent five years.

• 1:35:32Speaker 04

  I did.

• 1:35:32Speaker 05

  Okay.

• 1:35:33Speaker 04

  At the regiment. Yeah. So one year.

• 1:35:34Speaker 05

  It's a good run.

• 1:35:35Speaker 04

  It was a.

• 1:35:35Speaker 05

  It's a long run.

• 1:35:36Speaker 04

  I was the longest standing officer at that point when I left.

• 1:35:39Speaker 05

  Yeah.

• 1:35:39Speaker 04

  So Chris Vanek, who, you know, long standing officer. At that point, it's the end of the five year run of Davis, which was probably a blessing for some and a curse for others, I hope. But yeah, that, there was about five of us or so, four or five of us that came out of that same regiment class that we had to get waivers because we were too old to go to the Command and General Staff College because we were getting, we were already majors.

• 1:36:05Speaker 05

  Right.

• 1:36:05Speaker 04

  You know, and, and so General Botel reached in again to my life and, you know, signed a letter to get us into the Command and General Staff College. And I was fortunate enough to also be offered the SOCOM Interagency Studies Program where I got to spend, you know, really a year in the basement with some truly impressive, you know, special operators, Green Berets, SEALs, you know, Rangers, you know, a couple of Special Mission Unit guys, only 20 of them in the cohort. And we lived together trying to understand how best to interface with all of these three and four letter agencies while conducting overseas operations.

• 1:36:42Speaker 05

  And that was, you know, the GWAT was really the first time that there was a loose relationship sometimes. But really the GWAT put, put JSOC and SOCOM, USOC, whatever, in bed with the, because they both realized how much they needed each other.

• 1:36:59Speaker 04

  Lots of, lots of, and I hate to use the word synergies, but yeah, there was a lot of, a lot of Venn diagramming of what we were working on and how we could help each other. And we were starting in those days to understand how technology can tear us apart and bring us together.

• 1:37:14Speaker 05

  Yeah.

• 1:37:14Speaker 04

  And that's the days when we started building, you know, SOIS nets and Socrates and coming off the giants and, you know, stuff like that. And so it. It was really interesting to watch those different organizations try to tear down those barriers in order to integrate the intelligence picture, in order to optimize the effects on the ground.

• 1:37:32Speaker 05

  I, I, I know we kind of skipped, or we're, we're at the, the college now, but, but I, I wanted, those five years that you were in regiment, and you, especially in headquarters, as, so a lot of things you were talking about did not exist when I was with you, right? They, they were, we had mortars and snipers, right? And so many-

• 1:37:53Speaker 04

  Which has plenty to keep you busy, by the way.

• 1:37:54Speaker 05

  But, but, but, but what I mean is, is that the regiment very much like professionalized, it very much realized the things that it needed and, and grew up to be more than just-

• 1:38:08Speaker 04

  The lead infantry.

• 1:38:09Speaker 05

  The lead infantry, the best lead infantry in the world, or the shock troops-

• 1:38:12Speaker 04

  Right.

• 1:38:13Speaker 05

  Uh, for airfield seizures. What, what were some of the things when you were there? What were some things that you were impressed by? What were some of the biggest growths you saw where regiment really came into its own?

• 1:38:27Speaker 04

  Yeah, I, I, so I, I think, um, you know, the eight hundred pound gorilla is what it's commonly referred to, right? So Ranger Regiment, the eight hundred pound gorilla of the special operations community.

• 1:38:39Speaker 04

  Because the GWAT and the op tempo and the area that we were at, we couldn't just have, you know, unit platoons out there, you know, three or four of them. You know, we needed thirty of them. And so, well, you can't grow, you know, a special operations team overnight. And, and we were even trying to grow-

• 1:39:32Speaker 06

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• 1:40:00Jack Murphy?

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• 1:41:00Speaker 04

  The regiment in those days, Delta Companies, you know, started coming online in the days that I was there. And we were trying to grow Ranger. Well, what we were doing was essentially taking a platoon from the three companies and, you know, taking, you know, just basically making two platoon companies to make a D Squadron and then trying to bring in more Ranger and build them. And the soft truth is you just can't make them fast enough, right? Which is why I'm really interested in the longevity of the operator, which is why I'm really interested in respiratory care. But that was, I think, the transition is, wasn't a like mission creep. It wasn't the regiment trying to get a little bit more like an SMU.

• 1:41:42Speaker 04

  It was more the regiment was asked to perform more of those functions.

• 1:41:48Speaker 05

  Right.

• 1:41:49Speaker 04

  And so the regiment did what the regiment does. It responds to its nation's call and it started to professionalize those teams to do those particular functions and thus multiplied the effect. I'm trying to not be too specific on there and I.

• 1:42:04Speaker 05

  That's fair.

• 1:42:05Jack Murphy?

  I think I I know a little bit about like what you're the the road you're going down. And I think something that's really impressive about the Ranger Regiment, you know, that you're alluding to is like when there's a problem, when there's a task, they really can and will throw a bunch of highly motivated Rangers onto a problem. And sure, we can be knuckleheads at times, but eventually they get to the right answer. You know, they really do put themselves into it and fix the glitch, whatever it it may be.

• 1:42:32Speaker 04

  Whatever tribe you come out of, you know, before you go into an SMU, I I I find that the same caliber that's in the SMU is just the same caliber you've got in the tribe you came from. There's just more concentration.

• 1:42:47Speaker 05

  Right.

• 1:42:47Speaker 04

  The SMU. And so to your point, that level of competency and that level of proficiency in those functions that we're which, you know, is basically direct raid. I mean, these are direct raids in in urban environments and wherever it needs to be. You know, so this is the world's premier raid force, the 75th Ranger Regiment. We come in and we come out.

• 1:43:07Speaker 05

  Yeah.

• 1:43:07Speaker 04

  Fast.

• 1:43:08Jack Murphy?

  But then as time goes on, I mean, you have Rangers with beards and, you know, cruising around, doing intel stuff.

• 1:43:16Speaker 04

  Yep.

• 1:43:16Jack Murphy?

  That the public doesn't really associate the Ranger Regiment with.

• 1:43:20Speaker 04

  Yeah. So the the the relaxed grooming standards, which in those days we would tell you it it wasn't a relaxed grooming standard. We were just meeting the army standard.

• 1:43:29Speaker 05

  Right, right.

• 1:43:30Speaker 04

  We just weren't.

• 1:43:31Speaker 05

  You didn't have high yet. You didn't have to have the high and tight.

• 1:43:34Speaker 04

  Your four your four inches.

• 1:43:35Speaker 05

  Right, right.

• 1:43:36Speaker 04

  Four inch landing strip on the top, which is kind of the, you know, what I thought of is Rangers for, you know, get four inches. For those who don't know, you know, which is high and tight, basically.

• 1:43:44Speaker 05

  Yeah.

• 1:43:45Speaker 04

  Relaxed grooming standards, well, they weren't relaxed grooming standards. We just met the army standard.

• 1:43:49Speaker 05

  Right.

• 1:43:50Speaker 04

  And then the the types of. Missions that the Rangers needed to do in order to gain fidelity on the target. Required that we grow some of those capabilities now like RRD has always been, you know, the Ranger Reconnaissance Attachment has always been a thing. It was RRC, you know, Ranger Reconnaissance Company for the years before I got there, but that has always been there for the regimental commander. And then we started to then professionalize those forces and make them even more competent at the battalion level to tie into those ideas.

• 1:44:21Speaker 05

  Yeah.

• 1:44:22Speaker 04

  And then technology just forces us to, you know, get away from green face recce for a while.

• 1:44:29Speaker 05

  Right, right.

• 1:44:29Speaker 04

  Camouflage in the woods and, and what was interesting about that is by the time I now, you know, take command with, you know, Adam Nash and HHC 175. When I come through there, you know, Adam and I have these hilarious conversations about we're having to teach Rangers how to put on camouflage.

• 1:44:45Speaker 05

  Right, right. And do, and do patrol base activities.

• 1:44:48Speaker 04

  Right, like how do, how do you put up a poncho hooch?

• 1:44:50Speaker 05

  Yeah.

• 1:44:50Speaker 04

  You know, how do you stay, how do you sustain yourself in a hole in a hide site for two or three days?

• 1:44:55Speaker 05

  Yeah.

• 1:44:55Speaker 04

  These were things we had been raised in.

• 1:44:57Speaker 05

  Right.

• 1:44:57Jack Murphy?

  Like these guys have been doing urban warfare.

• 1:44:59Speaker 04

  These guys have been doing CQB, you know, running and gunning in Assault Man shirts and yeah.

• 1:45:04Jack Murphy?

  Um, so War College and then you make your way to.

• 1:45:09Speaker 04

  Command and General Staff College.

• 1:45:10Jack Murphy?

  Command.

• 1:45:11Speaker 04

  Yep, so major school.

• 1:45:13Jack Murphy?

  And then 25th Infantry, Hawaii.

• 1:45:16Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 1:45:17Jack Murphy?

  How did, how do you end up there? What's, uh, what, what assignment do you land in there?

• 1:45:21Speaker 04

  Yeah. So I did not want to go back to the conventional army. I did not. I was, I was doing everything humanly possible to, you know, keep touching the dragon and riding it. Uh, I, I, I, I went to RASP II or RASP ILE is what they call it now. So, uh, it's where majors go at ILE to compete to go back as a field grade inside of the regiment.

• 1:45:40Speaker 04

  Made it to the final four and, and, and wasn't selected. Uh, and, and because I wasn't selected, um, I walked out of that room and, you know, I, I was fortunate enough to get offered a job by Marcus Evans. To, you know, go to Second Brigade, 25th ID and, and, and be in his team, uh, which was truly humbling. And, and so I, I, I took that opportunity as, you know, if I. If I can't be in the Ranger Regiment, uh, well, actually, what I should say is my plan was to then go to the long walk in the spring. If I couldn't be in the Ranger Regiment, uh, and so I got my age waiver. And I remember coming home from not being selected and from, you know, having a quick phone call with Colonel Marcus or Colonel Evans at, you know, two o'clock in the morning, my time, right? You know, like noon, his time.

• 1:46:24Speaker 04

  And, uh, uh, and sitting on the stairs in my, in my, you know, Fort Leavenworth, you know, BOQ with my wife, you know, there. And, and she goes, well, all right, what's next? And I was like, well, long walk in the spring, you know, and she goes, okay. Now may not be the right time to have this conversation, but you're a little bit older than most majors here, you know, you, you've got 18 years or not like 16 years or something like that then, you know? Just, just to clarify for people out there, when we say like a little older. Not exactly an old man. What's considered a little bit older? Yeah, that's a great point. So in, in 2013, I would have been 36. Yeah, one foot in the grave. Yeah, dead. Yeah.

• 1:47:09Speaker 04

  Dead, dead in special operations. Two years from retirement. Right. Yeah, really. I mean, really, right? For an 18 year old. But I had to get a waiver even to be go to selection because I was older and I don't remember maybe 38 is the break off point or something now. Uh, so we got the waiver and everyone, most guys coming out of the regiment get the waiver. And I remember her, her, her, you know, her saying, okay, so you've got a lot of buddies who have now done this and, and, and, you know, had the same experiences you had, you know, were, were some of them a lot more successfully than you have. What happens if you go to selection? Not that you fail, but you get selected. And then you wash out of OTC, which is what was happening to most of my peers, right?

• 1:47:53Speaker 04

  Like just because you get the opportunity to go and, and try out for the big leagues, it doesn't mean that you're going to make it. And I watched a lot of, you know, of my peers who were way better than me. Get selected, go to OTC, wash out in OTC. Well, when you've got a few years in your timeline to play with, that's okay. But I was at the point. Where if I didn't KD, if I didn't get a key development job as a major, meaning a battalion XO or S3 job in some unit, I wasn't going to be eligible for promotion to lieutenant colonel. Right. Which means I was gonna miss my window for colonel, which means I wasn't gonna get a battalion command, which means, and you just start seeing the downward trajectory of I'm gonna be exiting this career very quickly. Right. A lot of stress being an officer. Yeah. Can, well, it can be if you mismanage your career as badly as I have.

• 1:48:39Speaker 04

  And so, I always did what I want, not, not what is I supposed to do. And so she goes, hey, how about, she goes, so if you go to selection, and you get selected and you wash out of OTC, what happens? And I said, I'm probably being riffed, you know, forced retired as a major at 18 years. And she looked at me and she said, how about you take one for the family? Yeah. And I was like, that's, that's a fair ask. Right. Right? It's a fair ask. And so I then looked at every, you know, all, all kinds of other organizations to see if it was gonna be a better idea. But in the end, I, I begrudgingly went back to the light infantry. Not airborne, not air assault. Right. I'd never been in a, in a straight leg infantry unit in my entire career.

• 1:49:25Speaker 04

  And it was the best experience of my career, of my, of my entire career being a battalion XO. And the 25th Infantry Division was my favorite job. How come? It was the first, that's a great question. It was the first time, I think, it was the first time that I knew what to do.

• 1:49:49Speaker 04

  I had been trained in how to do it, and I was given the authority to make it happen. Right. You got some ownership over this. Right. And so, you know, for, for, for those who may not have served at a, you know, a senior leader level in the battalion or brigade, you know, the battalion commander is the boss, right? But he doesn't want to do the job of the battalion XO or the battalion operations officer, battalion S3. And so those two are intended to be, you know, autonomous, making decisions in, you know, within the intent of their commander, right? And so it was the first time, so I'm a 2IC, second in command of a rifle battalion in the 25th Infantry Division. I know how to be a better S1 than my S1.

• 1:50:32Speaker 04

  Because she's been in the army for twelve months.

• 1:50:35Jack Murphy?

  Right.

• 1:50:36Speaker 04

  Literally.

• 1:50:37Jack Murphy?

  Right.

• 1:50:37Speaker 04

  Eighteen months by the time she gets here, you know, she's learning her role. I've done that for a long time. I I know how to do target packages better than my S two. Who's fresh out of, you know, his, his military intelligence captain's career course. And so as you walk through a battalion level staff, you're walking through the growth of leadership occurring. At every, at every door. And I really found that I loved it, that I truly loved, you know, mentoring and teaching these younger officers, the things that I didn't need them to learn. Right? Like I learned these lessons. Please don't relearn them. Let me help you get through this.

• 1:51:18Speaker 04

  And it was a pivotal moment in in my leadership growth as an officer, because I I had kind of grown up in a pretty high pressure, you know, high intensity environment, you know? The term toxic leadership probably comes from our community, right? And and we know that it's effective, not necessarily the right way, but it can be effective.

• 1:51:38Jack Murphy?

  Right.

• 1:51:39Speaker 04

  And really, high performing teams can also be terrible to be on, right? But that experience, I decided I don't think you have to do it that way. I don't think it has to be that way. I think you can do it differently. And I got the opportunity to really test that idea. Because I just didn't want to be that person to my people. And so, you know, when when I was getting, you know, you know, beat down by my majors, rightfully so, by the way, I was a cluster fuck. And so when I'm getting beat down by my majors, I didn't want to beat down my captain. I wanted to build my captain. And so I wanted to have a different approach to that. And it changed my leadership style forever.

• 1:52:24Speaker 04

  I wanted to teach you everything that I knew, not beat you over the things you were supposed to know.

• 1:52:30Jack Murphy?

  So did you have a good time out there in Hawaii?

• 1:52:32Speaker 04

  I had a blast.

• 1:52:34Jack Murphy?

  Other than just the job of which sounds like you had a good time, found it rewarding?

• 1:52:37Speaker 04

  Most of what I did was the job.

• 1:52:40Speaker 04

  You know, from there, I go to the Brigade XO, we do. Pacific Pathways, right?

• 1:52:43Jack Murphy?

  You did Australia, Malaysia, Indonesia.

• 1:52:45Speaker 04

  Yeah, yeah. So I was fortunate enough after being a battalion XO to then get the opportunity to be a brigade XO in that same brigade. Not as much fun because you don't spend as much time with the, you know, the young officers and the NCOs down on the line doing the, doing the D, but another really rewarding experience because now I'm leading a staff of my peers. You know, and so I've got, you know, now the S1 is one of the best S1s in the army. You know, now the S2 is, this is their KD job, their key development job as a major, right? And so now I, I get to learn the lesson that leading down and mentoring down, it's actually kind of easy, right?

• 1:53:26Speaker 04

  Like people will do what you pay them to do in the end. And so leading down can be pretty simple, right? Leading up, you know, getting your boss to 100% aligned with your vision is like, that can be hard, right? But getting your peers to come online with you and to, you know, drive together as a team like that, that is the hardest form of leadership. I think you can imagine and, and, and as a brigade, you know, field grade, you have to be able to lead your peers. And I, I failed so many times and, and I had so many successes and, but all of that really grew into us going to this Pacific Pathways experience where we deploy the brigade into the theater

• 1:54:09Speaker 04

  to conduct mutual training exercises with these other partner nations.

• 1:54:13Jack Murphy?

  How did you accomplish that? I mean, as far as getting your peers, as we'd say in the military, on the same sheet of music?

• 1:54:19Speaker 04

  Yeah. So I think the way that it, it is, I learned, I think, because it definitely didn't happen the first couple, you know, couple of times.

• 1:54:30Speaker 04

  If you can get everyone to envision what it looks like when you've successfully completed the task. So the effect I'm trying to achieve is X. And the more detailed you can be with what success looks like, and I would get as you know, my ADHD brain would get as focused as when you hit that corner, take a knee and pull security and then call set position one, you have personally achieved my decisive point. Like that kind of, I need you to envision what this looks like, what success is. And when you can paint that vision and then surround yourself with people that you trust, that you've you've built and empowered to make every decision within the limits of

• 1:55:15Speaker 04

  their comfort, another Mike Foster-ism, I gotta call him. You know, so, you know, when you give them that trust and they have the authority to make those decisions and they agree to the vision and they've bought into that, they'll do it better than you ever could.

• 1:55:31Jack Murphy?

  Right.

• 1:55:32Speaker 05

  And so did the 25th, did they do a deployment during this time while you were there?

• 1:55:37Speaker 04

  So we did the Pacific Pathways was considered a deployment. This was getting a little post GWAT now.

• 1:55:44Speaker 05

  Right.

• 1:55:44Speaker 04

  Yeah, we did a JRTC rotation, which I did not get to do because I blew my knee out, also another leadership experience. First time Scott Kelly, the brigade commander there, a former unit member, he walked up and he said, you're never going to be the same again. You're breakable now. And he was 100% correct.

• 1:56:00Speaker 05

  Yeah, yeah, once one thing goes.

• 1:56:02Speaker 04

  It all starts going downhill.

• 1:56:03Speaker 05

  Do you think, because you did have a combat scroll.

• 1:56:07Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 1:56:08Speaker 05

  And, you know, in addition to 101 and the 82nd, did you wear your combat scroll? Do you know, do you remember?

• 1:56:16Speaker 04

  Yeah, no, no, I did. I wore combat scroll, I wore.

• 1:56:19Jack Murphy?

  He's not an apostate.

• 1:56:20Speaker 04

  Well, no. It depended on where I was at.

• 1:56:22Speaker 05

  But the reason I'm asking is, obviously, there's, whether it's real or not, there is a presumed, I think, authority and expertise, right, that goes along with having a combat scroll or a combat SF or, you know what I mean?

• 1:56:38Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 1:56:38Speaker 05

  That, that when you, when you were in a conventional unit, does that help you when you are talking to people where they, they're automatically giving you like credibility?

• 1:56:52Speaker 04

  Yes, and I think it's a double edged sword, but yes. So, one, I would say my, my personal rule was I wore the last patch of the unit that I went, that I deployed with.

• 1:57:04Jack Murphy?

  Right.

• 1:57:05Speaker 04

  Unless I was assigned to a unit that I had a combat patch from.

• 1:57:09Jack Murphy?

  Okay.

• 1:57:09Speaker 04

  So if I was to be reassigned to the 82nd, I would wear 82nd in stereo. Like, I'm very proud of my 82nd combat patch.

• 1:57:16Jack Murphy?

  Right.

• 1:57:16Speaker 04

  If I was in the 101st, I would wear 101st in stereo. I'm very proud of that combat patch. The last unit I deployed to combat with and that I saw combat with was the 1st Ranger Battalion.

• 1:57:26Jack Murphy?

  You didn't have a 25th ID patch.

• 1:57:27Speaker 04

  And, and, and the, yeah, and, and in the AWG, I never heard a shot fired in anger, thank God.

• 1:57:32Jack Murphy?

  Right.

• 1:57:33Speaker 04

  Yeah, I didn't get that opportunity.

• 1:57:35Jack Murphy?

  Tell us, tell us about that, um, starting to, you know, you, I believe the, the trajectory here is that you had a job and then it got changed, kind of, there's a rug pull, unfortunately.

• 1:57:48Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 1:57:48Jack Murphy?

  And you were trying to find a way to stay in Hawaii. Uh, but tell us about how the Asymmetrical Warfare Group came about for you.

• 1:57:56Speaker 04

  Yeah, so, uh, uh, thank you for tying that back together for me. So I run into Task Force IED in 2003 in Iraq, right? And then they grow throughout the years. I actually have them assigned to one of my patrols in Afghanistan as a company commander. You know, two guys come out of Iraq. Um, and, and so I get to kind of touch them again a little bit and kind of see what they're doing. Uh, and then I was leaving my, I left my Brigade XO time. And I was fortunate enough to get a follow on assignment as the Brigade Operations Officer for the 196th JPMRC, so Joint Pacific. I'm gonna screw this one up, readiness center.

• 1:58:37Speaker 04

  Uh, but it, it, it basically, it's a deployable, uh, uh, sure, I'll take one, yeah. It's a deployable, um, uh, training center or, or NTC, JRTC package that goes to the units that are assigned to Indo-PACOM. And so Indo-PACOM, literally a, a, a place of, you know, tyranny of distance. And so instead of moving those units to a national training center, we go to them. Thank you, sir, I appreciate you.

• 1:59:06Speaker 04

  And I was in that unit as the Brigade Operations Officer, which I was very thankful for the opportunity because I hadn't had any ops experience as a field grade officer. I'd been a, oh, sorry, man, I'd been an XO in a battalion and I'd actually wanted to be the XO in the Brigade. I didn't want to be the three. And so I got the opportunity now to kind of round out my experiences and go be a Brigade Operations Officer. And I was supposed to be a two-year assignment that would keep me on island, on Hawaii, so my family would be stable. I didn't want to move my kids, you know, any more than I had to. And we loved the island, so we didn't want to leave. Learned how to, I really, I really learned how to surf there, you know? Like, I really enjoyed it.

• 1:59:49Speaker 04

  And about, I was in Indonesia at the time with the 196th and we were, or with the 25th, actually, at that point. And my branch manager called me and said, hey, the code on your billet has been changed from an infantry officer to an armor officer. And so we're going to need you to find another job next year. And I was like, well, find another job means those jobs are closed right now because we've already filled them out. And so to find another job, I'm going to have to leave Hawaii. And he was like, more than likely, bad news, right?

• 2:00:26Speaker 05

  For a short tour somewhere.

• 2:00:28Speaker 04

  So in essence, and I'll just truncate this so we don't have to belabor officer timelines, but, you know, in the end, you know, when you're trying to get a battalion command, your window gets real short and people start driving you to positions. So you've got to go to pre-command course, you've got to go to pre-pod of the organization. Ideally, you've been in that organization before. You know, usually the chief of staff, at least from my understanding, likes to place commanders who have lots of experience in those units as battalion commanders because we want you to be successful day one on the job, right? We don't want you to learn the proclivities of, you know, training in Hawaii, which is really hard to train in. You know, we want you to understand those things inside and out.

• 2:01:11Speaker 04

  And so I just did my reverse career when I applied for battalion. Battalion Command and there was that one year that I was supposed to be stable before I did that PCC Battalion Command etc. Well, now I lose that year. And he goes, I'll tell you what, Jay, and this is a guy I was in the 101st with as my branch commander or branch, uh, branch manager. Uh, he goes, I'll tell you what, if you can find anything on island, anything on island with a, you know, an 11 Alpha 04, you know, billet fill, an infantry officer at the major level, uh, I'll, I'll give it to you just for stability. And so I immediately went and started to look for something that was nominative or had a selection involved in it so that I could lock it in with branch, right? Because if you get invited to a

• 2:01:52Speaker 04

  selection or you get nominated, I don't have to go through this, you know, submitting my packet and you know, kind of a resume selection. Uh, and so I, I went down what was available and the only thing that I could find on island that had a selection that would, you know, make it where I could go compete was this asymmetric warfare group, uh, you know, senior strategy advisor to Indo-Pacom. I have no idea.

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• 2:04:14Speaker 04

  I have no idea what this job means. I have no idea what the unit does. I've heard of it before. I've sent guys, I've approved guys' packets to go and try out for it. Most of them were returned, you know, without being selected. And it just, it's this weird little corner of the world that I've never seen except once or twice. And I was like, fine, it's got a selection that keeps me on island. I'll go for it. And so submitted my packet and then followed it right up with the recruiter and said, hey, did you get my packet? Did you get my ORB? He was like, I did. And I was like, are you interested? And he's like, we are. And I was like, would you be willing to call Branch and tell them that if I don't shit the bed on the, on selection, that you want me?

• 2:04:58Speaker 04

  And he was like, I would. Let me talk to a couple of people, right? It's hard to get a staff guy that, that, you know, that has some of those experiences to go want to do a staff job. And for me to be on island, that worked for me. And so I kind of accidentally fell into going to selection for the Asymmetric Warfare Group. And so I went to support selections a little bit after that.

• 2:05:20Jack Murphy?

  As we talked about already, you really didn't know what the hell this unit did.

• 2:05:26Speaker 04

  Nope.

• 2:05:26Jack Murphy?

  So before we get into what it does.

• 2:05:28Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 2:05:28Jack Murphy?

  Tell us about selection.

• 2:05:30Speaker 04

  Yeah, yeah. So I, yeah. I'm not going to talk a whole lot about it because it is, it is designed to allow you to work through those things in the moment.

• 2:05:43Jack Murphy?

  Problem solving.

• 2:05:44Speaker 04

  A lot of problem solving, but also how you think through problems. And I'm gonna do not do this justice because there are guys who absolutely know this better than me. So I forgive, I forget, I'm thinking about the guys down at A W T C that built that thing, asymmetric warfare training center. Forgive me as I butcher your, your, your baby here, but um. I believe the distinction is it's, it's slightly less physical. But it's extremely intellectual and it's extremely mental. And so we want to see how you're gonna make decisions. We want to see why you're gonna make decisions. We're gonna, we want to see if you can connect the dots. You know, so you, you get a piece of information here, you get a product there, you get an idea here, can you connect the dots?

• 2:06:26Speaker 04

  And then can you take that problem that you've just identified? Connect the dots on the effect that will have on an organization that's confronting that. And then develop a solution for that problem. And then go get it in through the training and doctrine element. So that by the time, you know, your sons and daughters are showing up to contend with that asymmetric threat. They've been trained, prepared, armed to deal with.

• 2:06:55Jack Murphy?

  That's actually a, a pretty heavy lift, getting an institution the size of the army to change.

• 2:07:01Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 2:07:01Jack Murphy?

  You know, identifying problem through in uh, forcing new doctrines.

• 2:07:05Speaker 04

  Especially before it's like 10 years after the fact.

• 2:07:09Jack Murphy?

  Right, right.

• 2:07:10Speaker 04

  You know, like it before it's like a lessons learned, okay, let's change things. Right, right. And so, and so the, the, the, the, the easy way to explain the asymmetric warfare group is it's, it's the army scouts. And so they, they want to make sure, and, and these guys do, they did do it better than anyone. And most of them are still out there doing different stuff, but their job is to ensure the United States military is not surprised again.

• 2:07:35Jack Murphy?

  Right.

• 2:07:36Speaker 04

  By whatever it is. And so I E Ds, electronic warfare, information warfare. You know, U G Vs and U A Vs, you know, all of these technologies that we take for granted. Can be, they're dual technologies and they can be weaponized against us. And so we go to where conflict is occurring.

• 2:07:56Speaker 04

  And we observe how, as I used to say, how we're using the kitchen sink in order to solve problems.

• 2:08:02Speaker 05

  Right.

• 2:08:03Speaker 04

  Right? So just tactical problems are occurring. How are the experts on the ground who are dealing with that problem daily, dealing with that problem?

• 2:08:12Speaker 05

  Right.

• 2:08:12Speaker 04

  And what lessons can we extract from that? And then what dot MILF PLP, you know, doctrine, training, leadership, facilities, the whole system that builds a service member from, you know, a civilian to a warrior with the tools they need to be able to shoot, move and communicate on that battlefield?

• 2:08:33Speaker 05

  It it's interesting too, because just from an outsider point of view, you know, like, they started out, like you say, as Task Force IED, which is, you know, they're out there in early part of the GWAT, collecting up samples.

• 2:08:50Speaker 04

  Right.

• 2:08:50Speaker 05

  Creating products of like, this is what to watch out for. These are some of the TTPs. They were, they were going out and collecting up the individual, like, everything they could, and then trying to disperse it to the wide. And then, then a little bit later in the GWAT, you know, you see these guys come in who are all like former operators or former, you know, former, former soft guys or whatever.

• 2:09:14Speaker 04

  Sure.

• 2:09:15Speaker 05

  Who are now like going out with these conventional units and almost like an SF, and almost like an assistant advisor.

• 2:09:23Speaker 04

  Right. Well, and, and literally the title of, of those guys is operational advisor.

• 2:09:29Speaker 05

  Right.

• 2:09:29Speaker 04

  And they go on the ground and they say, these are the lessons that we've learned in other places that are applicable here, and these are the things that we're going to take from this and apply elsewhere.

• 2:09:39Speaker 05

  Yeah.

• 2:09:39Speaker 04

  It, it, it's, it's one of the most humbling collections of experts. And, and when I say my heroes, I mean like guys who did the Pablo Escobar hits.

• 2:09:48Speaker 05

  Yeah.

• 2:09:49Speaker 04

  You know, guys who are in some of the most storied operations of the special operations community.

• 2:09:54Jack Murphy?

  Does it bring in, obviously active duty, but also contractors?

• 2:09:58Speaker 04

  Correct.

• 2:09:59Jack Murphy?

  And so, yeah.

• 2:09:59Speaker 04

  Half and half, almost.

• 2:10:00Jack Murphy?

  So you have a blending of SF Ranger, uh, JSOC guys. Who else, who else was in the mix?

• 2:10:07Speaker 04

  There, so, uh, to make it simple, there was literally no tribe or no color unrepresented.

• 2:10:15Speaker 05

  Yeah.

• 2:10:16Speaker 04

  None, like even though we didn't pull seals on the MTO, we had seals as contractors.

• 2:10:23Speaker 05

  Do you know how that evolution happened? I know it was before your time, but you know how that evolution happened from TFI ED to somebody going, this, this deserves more clarity and more attention?

• 2:10:43Speaker 04

  I, I, I believe, you know, General Votel for sure, but General Cody also took an active interest in this in his time. I think, and I should, if I ever get the opportunity to talk to General Votel again, I'll probably ask him this at this point. We, we have kind of a storied connection to Once an Eagle as an officer corps, particularly in the Ranger Regiment. So, you know, Once an Eagle is just this book that it's almost required reading, right? Next to Starship Troopers for any infantry officer, right? The book, not the movie. The book's awesome. And, and inside of Once an Eagle, Sad Sam Damon, the lead character, he, he literally goes to Communist China before the war, before World War II, embeds with these, as, as it

• 2:11:25Speaker 04

  says in the book, you know, the, these guys are eating a handful of rice and, and living, you know, wearing, wearing slippers and running through the mountains in 20 degree below weather with, you know, T-shirts on, and they're winning. Like, how is that possible? And, and Sad Sam Damon, who's, you know, this pre-war, you know, captain in the Philippines, you know, an infantry captain, gets told to go and embed with that organization and understand that we are seeing a different kind of warfare here than we are prepared to fight as an American institutional army. And it's got this new thing called guerrilla warfare, right? And so Sad Sam goes and, and he embeds with that organization and he extracts all the

• 2:12:06Speaker 04

  lessons that if we are ever going to be successful against a guerrilla warfare campaign, these are the things we're gonna have to train differently and that we have different equipment, you know, different ideas, different doctrine. And he writes this huge book about it, right? And the character Sad Sam comes back to the Philippines to his commanding officer and he hands him all the lessons. After action review, right? And the commanding officer shoves it in a desk and close the door and we all move on to World War Two. It's never seen again. Right? And so what I believe General Votel and General Cody were trying to, you know, uh, really codify was a learning organization for the Army.

• 2:12:44Jack Murphy?

  Right.

• 2:12:44Speaker 04

  You know, the Army is a learning organization.

• 2:12:46Jack Murphy?

  To speed it up too.

• 2:12:47Speaker 04

  Right. And so some people called it the Army's consultants, but I think that was a little bit, you know, a little, a little bit tongue in cheek. But what he wanted to do was he wanted to increase the deployment or the rapid deployment of capability that we needed to fight this breathing, living war that was occurring in multiple countries in the Middle East at that point, you know, Iraq, Syria and Afghanistan.

• 2:13:12Speaker 05

  Just one more question about that because you said that, uh, when you accompanied commander, right? With 101st, uh,

• 2:13:18Speaker 04

  I was a platoon leader.

• 2:13:20Speaker 05

  And that these, that, you know, these two AWG guys were with you.

• 2:13:24Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 2:13:26Speaker 05

  How, how does?

• 2:13:27Speaker 04

  That in the 82nd, I did have two.

• 2:13:29Speaker 05

  Sorry, in the 82nd.

• 2:13:32Speaker 05

  How do these guys out on a combat patrol who are advising, but also learning, they're also like, they're to take in what's going on.

• 2:13:39Speaker 04

  Right.

• 2:13:40Speaker 05

  But they're also advising. How, how does that work? You know?

• 2:13:46Speaker 04

  Uh, it, it, it's, it's really hard.

• 2:13:49Speaker 05

  Yeah.

• 2:13:50Speaker 04

  So how do you, as a, let's say, master sergeant or, or sergeant major, operational advisor from the AWG, how do you embed into a company or platoon without assuming command?

• 2:14:03Speaker 05

  Right.

• 2:14:04Speaker 04

  Right? Without or without undermining?

• 2:14:06Speaker 05

  Right.

• 2:14:07Speaker 04

  The command.

• 2:14:07Speaker 05

  Right.

• 2:14:08Speaker 04

  And it's a really tricky position and, you know, gray berets do it best, which is why I love some of those contractors that can come in and do that. But it's a very slippery slope of understanding when you're advising the young captain and you're mentoring the young captain and never getting on his command mic.

• 2:14:26Speaker 05

  Right.

• 2:14:27Speaker 04

  Things like that. So just little tricks of the trade of giving suggestions to the leadership while leading by example with the soldiers.

• 2:14:35Speaker 05

  Right.

• 2:14:36Speaker 04

  That, that would be, I think, the best way I would answer.

• 2:14:38Speaker 05

  Fascinating. It really is.

• 2:14:39Speaker 04

  Really hard. Really hard. I, yeah. I screwed it up a couple of times.

• 2:14:42Jack Murphy?

  Tell us about, uh, Baker Squadron.

• 2:14:48Speaker 04

  So I was selected for the AWG position, which you know, it felt like kind of a, you know, yeah, go out there and be a staff officer, man. Well, in my, in my board at the AWG, well, the last question I was telling you guys before, and the last question on the packet was, you know, who do you know? And I was like, I don't know anybody in this organization. I had no idea. I knew everybody in the board. I, you know, I knew the commander, I knew the command sergeant major, like I just knew everybody by reputation, if not personally. And in fact, the DCO was a personal friend of mine. And at the end of that, the commander, who I had known for about 10 years, you know, from previous stuff, he said, AJ, I want you to pick up, I don't remember what they

• 2:15:30Speaker 04

  call it now, but it's like, you know, one package, package one or something like that. And I was like, okay, whatever, you know, package one. Good to see you, sir, walking out of here. And I hit my buddy and I was like, hey, you know, the boss said to draw package one. What do you want? What does that mean? You know? And he goes, it's operator kit. He wants you in full load, not computers. He wants you with, you know, draw your kit. And I was like, I thought he said I was gonna be in bed at night when I go. And he was like, I don't know, man. He wants you to have operator kit, get operator kit. So I went down and it was like, you know, kid in a candy store, because the asymmetric warfare group had every bit of experimentation and testing, whatever you can think about. And so when you walk in and say, you know, I need to pick up cry, they're like, well, do you want cry or do you want Patagonia?

• 2:16:15Speaker 04

  Do you want Patagonia or want Arcteryx? Like it comes in different camos if you want it.

• 2:16:19Speaker 05

  Right.

• 2:16:19Speaker 04

  You know, so you get to choose the things you want, which that was a lot of fun for me. I hadn't done that in a while. And then I go out to Hawaii where I'm supposed to be, you know, in meetings during the day, being the eyes and the ears of the command, and then basically reporting back and saying, you should put guys here, you should put guys there, we should get teams in these locations, right?

• 2:16:39Speaker 04

  And I got a phone call maybe a week or so later, and one of the team sergeants was like, you know, one of the troop sergeants, I'm sorry, was like, hey, dude, would you be willing to go to the Philippines with us? We need an officer who knows how to do, you know, like a live fire planning exercise. And so that, you know, and I was like, oh, I'd love to go to the Philippines. Never been to the Philippines. And the next thing you know, I'm getting broken in by a troop sergeant major. You know, going through Korea and Thailand and the Philippines and Malaysia and Indonesia. And so I became the chief of strategy for the asymmetric warfare group, which was my official title. But really, I was reporting to Baker Squadron in asymmetric warfare group because they owned the Indo-Pacific area of operations.

• 2:17:22Speaker 04

  And so the asymmetric warfare group wasn't broken down necessarily by region. It was broken down by threat. And so Baker Squadron was PRC, you know, China focused, right? Able Squadron was Russia focused. And so different squadrons have different threat focus. And they build on those threats with those interested parties.

• 2:17:43Jack Murphy?

  That was, that was going to be my next question, actually, because the way I usually think of asymmetrical warfare group is, you have the IEDs, all the coin and counterinsurgency stuff, that that's what they were really invested in. But tell us a little bit about what they were doing in the Pacific. I think that's interesting.

• 2:18:00Speaker 04

  Yeah, so, yes, the AWG, the asymmetric warfare group was very much known because almost everybody who rotated through the global war on terror into Afghanistan, Iraq, or Iraq or Syria probably had an encounter with an operational advisor at some point. And Baker Squadron, well, and so in some ways, the organization did supplement. That was, you know, C Squadron, Charlie Squad, or, I forget what they're called now, but yeah, C Squadron.

• 2:18:31Speaker 04

  They owned that threat, the counter VEO CT threat. And so that was their box that they typically rotated into. That made sense. That's where the threat is. And then Able and Baker were often augmenting and supporting them for a number of years. And so as you transition from Task Force IED through a direct report to, you know, the J-357 in the Pentagon, through, you know, now an M-toed unit.

• 2:19:00Jack Murphy?

  Right.

• 2:19:00Speaker 04

  That starts to report to TRDOC.

• 2:19:02Jack Murphy?

  Right.

• 2:19:03Speaker 04

  In 2013, which you want to talk about a culture shift in an organization.

• 2:19:07Jack Murphy?

  Yeah, me, massive.

• 2:19:08Speaker 04

  So that was that decision. I'm going to come back to your Baker point, but I want to tell this too. So that decision to

• 2:19:16Speaker 04

  Report to TRADOC, you know, it wasn't that the organization changed. So the AWG was still the collection of the same dudes and dudettes. It had always been the same experiences, the same special operations expertise, the same culture of, you know, wearing civilian clothes and, you know, not showing up with, you know, we don't go to a whole lot of meetings in uniforms and stuff like that because we're always traveling and doing stuff. And then to have a TRADOC, you know, style of institution and bureaucracy laid on top of that. And so imagine as a squadron commander where I'm like dropping, you know, like vouchers for my trip to Yukon

• 2:19:55Speaker 04

  or to the Ukraine, where I'm like, you know, at a hotel, you know, off the, yeah. So dropping those vouchers into TRADOC's bureaucracy and watching their money managers go, wait, wait, wait a minute, why are you in the Four Seasons? Right. It's the only hotel in Indonesia where I may not get kidnapped, right? And just like things like that. And so the culture, you know, shock was a little hard for the organization, I'm told. Yeah. To work through because I wasn't there in those days. But I felt like they did a really good job of it. And I think it was the right decision. It was hard for the guys to, you know, kind of move under TRADOC socially, right? But it was a really good decision because

• 2:20:36Speaker 04

  it connected the eyes and ears of the army, the ones that were out there seeing and understanding the threat to the people that actually built those solutions for the long term. Right. And so it was a brilliant move as an institution. It was difficult for us to manage, but it worked really well. And so Baker Squadron then, as we start to transition in that 2013, 2014 days, we're starting to understand that, okay, the global war on terror and counterterrorism is still a thing. And it will always be a thing as long as, you know, we are a huge, large military that you can't fight us head to head. Right. So that's always going to be a thing. But we need to start looking at the next

• 2:21:18Speaker 04

  horizon. We need to start looking at the next threat. And in those days, if I remember correctly, we believed that, you know, while Russia was the most likely to Kickstarter regional war, it was China that we were most concerned with as a competitor. And I was very fortunate in those days to be the chief of strategy for with Baker and Abel's and the asymmetrical warfare group out there because we had General Brown, who was the one, the usurpak commander, United States Army Pacific, that his mentality with how to compete with China was that word. We're going to compete with China. They're not our enemy.

• 2:21:55Jack Murphy?

  At that time, no one would really identify, no, publicly, the military or the government would not identify China as a threat or refer to them as an adversary. It was always, you're pure competition.

• 2:22:09Speaker 04

  That's right.

• 2:22:09Jack Murphy?

  It's a pacing challenge.

• 2:22:11Speaker 04

  That's right.

• 2:22:11Jack Murphy?

  It's a pacing.

• 2:22:12Speaker 04

  That's right. You speak officer really well, man.

• 2:22:14Jack Murphy?

  I have to listen to you guys a lot more than I really want to.

• 2:22:18Speaker 04

  There's a lot of synergy in your pacing column. Yeah, so it's good. Yeah, that was, that was exactly it. And so we, you know, Baker Squadron in those days in particular, were spending a lot of their time trying to help, you know, into PACOM and usurpak in particular, understand where to compete and where the competition should occur. And the picture that started to develop for us was, you know,

• 2:22:44Speaker 04

  terrain doesn't change. It's the same thing that we learned as young, you know, platoon leaders and non-commissioned officers inside of any unit. You know, the, well, here's the great story. So I'm a company commander in Waziqwa in the 82nd Airborne Division in, you know, southern Afghanistan. And I'm looking at the map like a good officer does and doing my map reconnaissance before I drive down this thing for the first time. IED Alley is what the guys are calling it. And I noticed that there are two high points that command IED Alley on the left side of the Wadi and the right side. And this Wadi is, you know, 20 miles wide, right? And I went, you know, that would be a great place. RP, right? And it would be a great place for, you know, for maybe a reconnaissance element to do some Overwatch. You know, we can think about that, right?

• 2:23:28Speaker 04

  And so I drive out there with my convoy. I'm, I mean, I'm brilliant, clearly. Like, I've looked at a map. I know exactly where these high points are, and we need to command these things. And I get out there, and I kid you not, there's a castle on the left and there's a castle on the right. And I turned to the, my interpreter, and I was like, who built those? And he's like, that one's Russian and that one's British, and I don't mean from this century.

• 2:23:53Speaker 05

  Yeah, yeah.

• 2:23:54Speaker 04

  Like, we have been fighting the same war in the same location, for the same terrain, for different reasons, for literally hundreds of years and generations. And the lesson that I took from that was terrain doesn't change. And so when we went out to the, to the Pacific, and we were thinking through how to help, where should we compete with China? Well, let's look at the terrain.

• 2:24:18Speaker 05

  Right.

• 2:24:19Speaker 04

  And so the Malacca Strait became very important for trade. You know, obviously Taiwan becomes very important. And when you really start breaking down the geography of the Pacific, there becomes locations that you need to own to be able to project combat power into it. And so when you look at like the Marshall Plan or the MacArthur, right? So when MacArthur moved through there in World War II, the island hopping campaign that we all know, right? If you look at the map, you can see how, well, okay, we went to Fiji because in the old days, we needed a water refill for our sail ships. And then we needed coal for our coal burning ships. And then you needed a resource to resupply from crossing the Pacific Ocean from the continent.

• 2:25:03Speaker 04

  And then you get there and you island hop to work your way into the Philippines. And the Malacca Strait's right there. Well, when you start to look at island hopping that MacArthur did, you, you can see what's happening is we need to get from island A to island B. And on the way to island B, the enemy has a vote in this conversation, and we have Iwo Jima.

• 2:25:26Speaker 05

  Yeah.

• 2:25:28Speaker 04

  And we have Peleliu. And we have these places that they're not strategically important, except they give us strategic access to, you know, resources that we have to use in order to project combat power into the mainland. And so the Malacca Strait became really important to understanding. How do you compete for the Malacca Strait? When Malaysia is trying to develop and China is building the rail system that's connecting from the Malacca Strait to the opposite port? And you've got terrorism in the Sabah. And you've got, I mean, and you just start looking at the Thai separatists above it. And you realize that Malaysia, we drew an arbitrary line. Right.

• 2:26:11Speaker 04

  And the Thai separatists are actually Malaysian. They're Malay. And that's why they're separatists from Thailand. And that's why you have that fight there. And that, and you start to truly understand, you know, why we've been fighting over some of these pieces of terrain. It's not hard to extrapolate. Right. That we will again. That we will again. Yeah. And so now you look at it from the perspective of, well, let's just update the technology at play. So now we need satellites. And now we need aircraft. And now we need flotillas. And if you're crossing the ocean, and I, and I challenge everyone to look at a map of the Pacific. And it is a daunting exercise when you look at the time it takes to get to Australia.

• 2:26:55Speaker 04

  And that's not even the, the, the, the start point for most of us to get into the Pacific, right? So you're talking about how do you sequence these really exquisite assets?

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• 2:29:08Speaker 04

  In order to conduct a bounding fight into the Pacific, like literally Army bounding Navy and Navy bounding Air Force, like World War II style, with modern technology, and you start to see, oh, we're gonna need to own Guam.

• 2:29:27Speaker 05

  Out of curiosity, why?

• 2:29:31Speaker 05

  I I understand why AWG like what the benefit of being under trade doc in in in the theoretical terms.

• 2:29:39Speaker 04

  Sure.

• 2:29:39Speaker 05

  But trade doc in my mind is not a quick moving organization. Uh it seems like belabored by a lot of bureaucracy.

• 2:29:49Speaker 04

  Hmm.

• 2:29:49Speaker 05

  And it's training, right?

• 2:29:51Speaker 04

  Hmm.

• 2:29:51Speaker 05

  How, why is AWG uh not under inscom or or?

• 2:29:56Speaker 04

  Sure.

• 2:29:57Speaker 05

  US, US SOC or somebody that that understands the need to move quickly on certain things.

• 2:30:05Speaker 04

  Yeah, I I I think I'll challenge that just a little bit.

• 2:30:09Speaker 05

  Okay.

• 2:30:09Speaker 04

  Uh because I think the reason why AWG was fought for by trade doc. And and trade doc wanted the AWG.

• 2:30:18Speaker 05

  Oh, really? Okay.

• 2:30:19Speaker 04

  Is because they wanted to be able to increase that cycle.

• 2:30:23Speaker 05

  Okay.

• 2:30:24Speaker 04

  And and they knew that to do that, they needed to bring in and and you know, General Funk, who was the last trade doc commander that I I served under. Um he, you know, he used to call us the seventy fifth Ranger Regiment of Trade Doc. And you know, and in some ways that was a compliment and in some ways that was a shot, right? Uh because he's an armor officer.

• 2:30:43Speaker 05

  There you go.

• 2:30:45Speaker 04

  Uh so he, but he was a phenom- you know, phenomenal commander. Um so I I think, I think it was fought for by trade doc because if our job is to go out and ensure that the United States Army is never surprised again.

• 2:30:59Speaker 05

  Right.

• 2:31:00Speaker 04

  We have to be able to increase our ability to rapidly prototype and disseminate and train and get those tools into the inventory. And a lot of what we're talking about doesn't have like a hard product to it like.

• 2:31:14Speaker 05

  Sure.

• 2:31:15Speaker 04

  It's not like we're going out and you know, we we built drones and we did, you know, underground, you know, vehicle or uh you know, ground vehicles and we did all kinds of techie stuff, but we also did a lot of stuff about like decision making.

• 2:31:26Speaker 05

  Right.

• 2:31:27Speaker 04

  And leadership on, you know, under stress and you know, and.

• 2:31:29Speaker 05

  TTPs.

• 2:31:30Speaker 04

  Yeah, yeah, yeah, you know, sniper, sniper TTPs.

• 2:31:33Speaker 05

  Right.

• 2:31:33Speaker 04

  Like that's the tactical stuff, right? But I I I think what what really was important about us being under trade doc. And the reason why I think it was the right move for the institution.

• 2:31:45Speaker 05

  Yeah.

• 2:31:46Speaker 04

  Is it allowed us to help the organi- the the army move faster to provide those services to our service members.

• 2:31:53Speaker 05

  So trade doc wanted that and they they were able to. They were able to shed or change evolve based on like what you guys were providing.

• 2:32:06Speaker 04

  I'm not here to tell you that the asymmetric warfare group, you know, revolutionized trade. That did not happen. We were a small part of that conversation. I would just say the leadership of trade understood the value of having that organization underneath their guide on and they employed us to the fullest.

• 2:32:23Speaker 05

  That's fantastic to hear.

• 2:32:24Jack Murphy?

  Tell us about Able Squadron and the Russia folks. That was sort of your follow on to become the squadron commander there, right?

• 2:32:32Speaker 04

  Yeah, yeah. So I was fortunate enough that I think I mentioned it to you guys. I was at a pre-mission training, a PMT with Baker Squadron. And it was the first time I'd gone through a real PMT with, you know, the asymmetric warfare group. So I've done PMTs with other teams and units, but I've never done this one. And I was just humbled. So let me paint an egotistical picture and then show you how humbled I got. So I'm a senior major. I'm literally, you know, a breath away from being a lieutenant colonel. I'm going to get a command. It's the question is what kind of command is it's going to

• 2:33:10Speaker 04

  be? And I've been a ground force commander in, you know, some amazing special operations units multiple times. And in fact, I've just come off being a ground force commander like three or four years ago. Like I'm, I understand how fighting works at the tactical and operational level, I think. And I've employed it in an environment that not many leaders get to do in their careers where you've got, you know, anywhere from five to 15 aircraft stacked in the airspace above you with maneuver units on the ground and, you know, and you're doing a high value target, you know, X to the X strikes and just these amazing synchronizations

• 2:33:52Speaker 04

  of these assets in dynamic space occurring and you're trying to control that ball all at once. I feel pretty confident in my ability to do that. I finish it off with, you know, a couple of master's degrees in how to, you know, deal with people that, you know, in three-letter agencies and build coalitions. And I prefer your personality over your personality. And I finish that off and then I go become an XO in a, in a, in a large organization where I'm doing logistics support across the Pacific while I'm in Australia and Malaysia. Like, I feel like I kind of know what I'm doing at this point.

• 2:34:33Speaker 04

  And I show up to this AWG PMT and the first thing they have us do is, we called it multi-domain battle. And now, of course, we know that is multi-domain operations. But in those days, it was just this concept of multi-domain battle. And multi-domain battle is the integration of cyber and space and air and land and sea and understanding that the environment cannot be bifurcated as it was in the old days and that the Navy does the Navy stuff and the Army does the Army stuff. That's no longer true. We gotta be able to do a little bit of everything. We have to do it as a cohesive team to really be able to project that effect that only the United States military can do.

• 2:35:16Speaker 04

  And so...

• 2:35:21Speaker 04

  Sorry, I lost my thought.

• 2:35:22Speaker 05

  Oh, you're saying like this was a really humbling moment for you.

• 2:35:25Speaker 04

  Thank you. And so, the first exercise is we go through kind of a tabletop exercise of what is multi-domain battle and what are the potentials? And then we follow that up with, I am a ground force commander, playing a ground force commander at the Asymmetric Warfare Training Unit or Training Center, which has amazing subterranean, you know, subway systems and, you know, high-rises and just all this. It's this, you can go full cyber range down there in those days, you know? So you could do full multi-domain battle on this site. And I've got five of the most impressive sergeants-majors who have taken off their wreath to do this job, right?

• 2:36:09Speaker 04

  Around me as like my RTO, my radio telephone operator. So it's not like I've got, you know, my cell phone or radio playing like a JTAC and a CCT and so like, I have legit the best in the business who train the best in the business on how to do that function, surrounding me as a headquarters. And we had social media play, like doing social media reconnaissance. We had underground unmanned vehicles with subterranean maneuvers with, you know, low oxygen, no oxygen, hazardous particulate, the whole nine underneath there. We had drones when in those days drones was a brand new concept and we were talking swarms of drones.

• 2:36:50Speaker 04

  And we're doing all of this in one exercise where I've got three teams on the ground, conducting deep reconnaissance in order to bring in combat power. And at the after action review of that event, I stood up and I said, if one bullet had been fired, I would have been overwhelmed.

• 2:37:12Jack Murphy?

  Because of the amount of things you're managing at the same time?

• 2:37:15Speaker 04

  Because of the amount of information I'm trying to digest, the picture I'm trying to understand in a live combat situation. And I've got the best of the best of the best, performing a role that would be done by someone 15, 20 years younger.

• 2:37:31Jack Murphy?

  It's a real issue. I mean, when you think about the way we're trying to integrate some sort of reality plus goggles, which I, I think that's like the wave of the future. But you can easily see how much information is too much information. It's more than is able that they can process and know what to do with.

• 2:37:50Speaker 04

  I think one of the best things we did for multi-domain operations was to have a conversation about Echelon.

• 2:37:57Jack Murphy?

  Right.

• 2:37:57Speaker 04

  And so there, there are certain, yeah, so there are certain, in those days, it was all about let's get the enabler as load as possible. So let's get everything to the squad level, the team level, right? That's because that's what our experience is what we're overseas. So every lethal enabler goes to the line, right? And what we quickly started to learn is if this, you know, Senior major with all of this experience surrounded by this, you know, literally team of sergeants, majors can't do this. Okay.

• 2:38:27Speaker 05

  Yeah.

• 2:38:27Speaker 04

  We gotta figure this out. And so we started echeloning those capabilities based upon where those tools were arrayed inside of the army's system. And so some things for space do not exist below the brigade level.

• 2:38:43Speaker 05

  Right.

• 2:38:43Speaker 04

  They don't. You've got to go to division to get them. You've got to go to corps to get them. You've got to go to army to get them, right? And so let's let them manage those things and let's find a way to have connective tissue between those echelons so that commanders can choose how to employ those effects together, but the responsibility for managing them can be withheld at a location that can properly do it or an echelon.

• 2:39:09Speaker 05

  I'm curious, because when you start talking about multi, multi domain and how all these things go together, I, how, especially like at an AWG level, I imagine that obviously army cyber or military cyber, like you guys can get a decent read on what capabilities are.

• 2:39:32Speaker 04

  Mm hmm.

• 2:39:32Speaker 05

  And, and yet, you know, when we're talking about like the NSA or maybe the NRO or, or these other organizations, how do they play into this? Because I imagine at some point they're like, well, like they don't want to give up, they don't want to give up the, you know, give up the goods.

• 2:39:50Speaker 04

  Sure.

• 2:39:50Speaker 05

  Necessarily, right? So somebody at some level.

• 2:39:53Speaker 04

  Mm hmm. Rice pots?

• 2:39:55Speaker 05

  Has to, yeah, has to know what are all these capabilities are, but does that person who knows what all these capabilities are, are they like qualified or competent to manage all these capabilities? Or, or do they just know that they exist?

• 2:40:10Speaker 04

  So I'll try to, that's a really tough question. And so I'm going to try to answer that the best I can by giving an analogy.

• 2:40:17Speaker 05

  Yeah.

• 2:40:17Speaker 04

  So if you walk into any company on the planet right now, looking at yours, right? You've probably got an Apple computer, an HP computer, you know, one of you's on Microsoft. Some of you have Zoom, you know, you've got one guy who has that weird like alien computer and his software doesn't match any of your software.

• 2:40:35Speaker 05

  Right.

• 2:40:36Speaker 04

  And so what we find in large organizations that have been around for a long time is we have layers of understanding and capability that have been, that some are, you know, grown a little bit better and some are a little bit less developed, less mature, right? And what's important is if we can understand how to layer them all together to achieve the best effect. And so ideally, if you're on all Apple hardware with an M1 chip, running Microsoft, you know, Microsoft Teams that is incorporating Copilot from OpenAI and your team now only uses Apple computers, Microsoft, Microsoft software and an LLM from OpenAI, that's it.

• 2:41:21Speaker 05

  Right.

• 2:41:21Speaker 04

  And you just train on that persistently and consistently, you're going to get really good at those things.

• 2:41:27Speaker 05

  Right.

• 2:41:28Speaker 04

  We find the same when you start talking about echeloning capabilities in multi-domain battle, there are operations, there are some that are, you know, really mature and lots of people understand how to play with them, like drones and, you know, unmanned aerial is really starting to get something that, you know, these kids are growing up playing

• 2:41:47Speaker 05

  Right, right.

• 2:41:47Speaker 04

  That stuff, right? And so now as they come in, the, the ability to employ that effectively is really mature. And then there are some that will underwater autonomous vehicles, we, we don't have a lot of experience with that in the army, we're going to have to go to the Navy to do that.

• 2:42:02Speaker 05

  Right.

• 2:42:02Speaker 04

  Have we ever done those things in conjunction?

• 2:42:04Speaker 05

  Right.

• 2:42:05Speaker 04

  And so understanding where the possible, you know, Venn diagram is for that capability and that need, and then building an exercise or something that exercises

• 2:42:16Speaker 05

  Right.

• 2:42:17Speaker 04

  That, that capability. Does that help answer that question?

• 2:42:19Speaker 05

  It does, it does. And how willing are some of the organizations out there to share their capabilities in these types of environments?

• 2:42:29Speaker 04

  My, my experience has been very.

• 2:42:31Speaker 05

  That's great, varied.

• 2:42:32Speaker 04

  Yeah, no, very, very, very, very willing. I, I, I have run into, you know, protecting my rice bowl and making sure that, no, this is what I do. But to be honest, in, in my experience, I, I, I just haven't had a lot of those, a lot of those run ins.

• 2:42:47Speaker 05

  Right.

• 2:42:48Jack Murphy?

  And siloing.

• 2:42:49Speaker 04

  Yeah, yeah. Generally, what I find is when you show up, uh, you know, like a multi-domain task force, you know, or something like that, and you go, "Hey, I know how to build water bottles," and they're like, "We don't know if we need water bottles yet, but go over there and start building water bottles. Thanks for joining the team."

• 2:43:03Speaker 05

  Right.

• 2:43:03Speaker 04

  So I, I don't see that in the military for sure. Three-letter agencies, a little bit. I saw a little bit of that.

• 2:43:10Speaker 05

  Yeah.

• 2:43:10Speaker 04

  Um, but I didn't have as much experience.

• 2:43:11Jack Murphy?

  Army has more of like a can-do kind of attitude, right?

• 2:43:14Speaker 04

  It's a little bit like, yeah, we don't know what you do here, but you're one of us.

• 2:43:17Speaker 05

  Yeah.

• 2:43:18Speaker 04

  You know, jump on.

• 2:43:18Speaker 05

  Yeah.

• 2:43:19Speaker 04

  Yeah, we, we'll figure out where you fit in.

• 2:43:20Speaker 05

  Right, right.

• 2:43:20Speaker 04

  Yeah, get on the bus and fit in.

• 2:43:22Jack Murphy?

  I, and so you went on to one more assignment before retirement at, uh, Special Operations Command.

• 2:43:28Speaker 04

  Yeah, yeah, yeah. Well, we didn't even talk about Able Squadron there.

• 2:43:31Speaker 05

  Oh, yeah.

• 2:43:31Jack Murphy?

  We did, we, did we go right over?

• 2:43:33Speaker 05

  We did, yeah.

• 2:43:34Speaker 04

  Yeah, so, so I, I was fortunate enough after that to go to Able Squadron, which was, you know, Russia-focused. And so twenty nineteen to twenty twenty-one, that was my, that was my assignment there. Um, built an amazing team and, and we, we were working deeply with US Army Europe and, you know, the, the team over there to, you know, figure out, what does it look like if you're going to deploy a package, like in World War II style? Like a large, ground-scale combat operation, Normandy Beach, right? What does that look like in modern day? And the premise that we operate within is contact with the enemy starts at our home base. It's happening right now.

• 2:44:17Speaker 04

  You're, you're, you're in contact with the enemy, either electronically, informationally, whatever it might be, with the adversary right now. And so how do you move the Hundred and First Airborne Division from, Fort Campbell, Kentucky, is it still Fort Campbell, Kentucky? I'm not sure. Fort Campbell, Kentucky to, let's say, you know, Paris.

• 2:44:39Speaker 04

  How do you get there undetected? How does that happen?

• 2:44:44Jack Murphy?

  I would say almost not possible at this point.

• 2:44:46Speaker 04

  So then do you make it an information campaign? Okay, so then you get to the port and you've all seen port ops, right? Cause we've all been to NTC and GRTC and you're downloading all of this equipment. So clearly now in the age of social media, you're under reconnaissance, active reconnaissance, which means as I'm watching things come off the boat, I'm able to understand echelon, unit, you know, where they're coming from, what their capabilities are, cause most of that's open source. And then you start turning on all of your electronics. And a really interesting thing happens in the electromagnetic spectrum when Americans start turning stuff on. We look like Americans. Because you get, you know, six to nine, you know, dudes and dudettes in the back of

• 2:45:26Speaker 04

  a Blackhawk and all of them have Apple Watches and iPhones and Samsungs and 152 Harrises and all the communications equipment that only the United States of America-

• 2:45:37Jack Murphy?

  Only that blend.

• 2:45:38Speaker 04

  Can possibly do. And then I can give you echeloning, meaning I can tell that's a division headquarters. I can tell that's a brigade headquarters.

• 2:45:45Jack Murphy?

  Those are 160th guys.

• 2:45:47Speaker 04

  Right. And so we started building this understanding of what the multi-domain battlespace looked like from an adversarial, large-scale ground combat position, right? And we take those lessons back from working, you know, within Poland and Ukraine and the Baltics and the Balkans and looking at where, you know, conflict is happening and what lessons we can take from that. And we bring it back to our training centers and then we rep it and develop it into something that can then go into trade doc that can then start being disseminated throughout the team. This culminated for us in an NTC rotation. I think it was the first time a AWG squadron had ever gone to NTC. We painted a rock, by the way, still out there.

• 2:46:31Speaker 04

  I had my squadron do it, it was fun. I made them do it. I helped, but I made them. So they painted a rock out there first time and what we were- Doing was helping the unit that was in the box. Think through how to employ these multi domain, large scale, ground combat techniques that we had been. Repping and practicing in the European theater. And so some really fun stuff started to happen where I think the lesson that I took from that entire exercise was. In the modern day, modern day battlefield, the commander who's willing to turn off the lights first.

• 2:47:07Speaker 05

  Yes.

• 2:47:07Speaker 04

  Is gonna win.

• 2:47:09Speaker 05

  It it it's really interesting, you know, we we hear about Sagan and human all the time. But you know, you're talking a lot about like mass and like Elen's things like that that I don't they don't. They don't really, they weren't, they they didn't used to really be a thing.

• 2:47:24Speaker 04

  Right.

• 2:47:24Speaker 05

  That you needed to worry about.

• 2:47:25Speaker 04

  Right.

• 2:47:26Speaker 05

  But now, but now they're almost everything.

• 2:47:27Speaker 04

  So think about, uh, uh, you know, ambush protocol, right? So silence, violence, silence.

• 2:47:33Speaker 05

  Right.

• 2:47:33Speaker 04

  And this is standard, you know, grunt stuff. I'm walking through the woods, make contact. I don't, I'm not quiet anymore.

• 2:47:39Speaker 05

  Right.

• 2:47:40Speaker 04

  I'm yelling and I'm shooting everything. It's explosions, it's violence, and then as soon as we're clear. Right back down to silence, right?

• 2:47:47Speaker 05

  Right.

• 2:47:47Speaker 04

  Think about that electronically now.

• 2:47:49Speaker 05

  Yeah, yeah.

• 2:47:50Speaker 04

  All of your systems are up. You are literally on the electromagnetic spectrum. You're glowing. Like you were just a glowing beam, a target. And then all of a sudden.

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• 2:50:02Speaker 04

  All those go off, and then you disperse and infiltrate, and then you have decisions about when to do comm windows, just like submarines do, so that you are giving a picture to the enemy, a battlefield arraignment that you want them to digest and you want them to counter-array towards. And as soon as you can confirm the composition, disposition, and strength of that counter-arrangement, and then you can give your final intent-based orders, because only the Americans can run on intent-based orders, and your boys deploy, and then you turn off all the lights. And what I mean by that is you jam everything. Nothing electronic works. You can't see them, they can't see you. You can't talk to you,

• 2:50:47Speaker 04

  you can't talk to anybody. And the commander who's willing to do that first, confirm battlefield arraignment, and then turn off the lights after he's set his team, they're gonna win that fight. That's what I think we learned.

• 2:50:58Jack Murphy?

  So, a little bit interesting to, I mean, first off, you know, from what you're talking about, I mean, we think about, back in the old days, signature reduction, you know, in Vietnam was like taping down stuff, so you don't have metal on metal, you know, all that kind of thing. Today's signature reduction is the IR spectrum, it's electromagnetic, all this sort of stuff. But also, during the GWAT, I think there's this real propensity to use modern-day information technology for a general to basically reach all the way down the chain of command to the private. But with, you know, if we're facing a electronic warfare environment in future fights,

• 2:51:39Jack Murphy?

  that we may be going back to the old days. Like I'm reading, it's in my bag, book, Frank Subcheck wrote a book about special forces and partnership relations in El Salvador in the 1980s. He's like, some of these Seventh Special Forces Group NCOs would be out in the bush country in El Salvador and not have any communication with their commanders for weeks, if not months.

• 2:52:03Speaker 04

  Right. I would complement that thinking with, I believe, and I'm a little outdated, so you know, four or five years out of date, so it may have changed, I hope, a little bit. The future battlefield is a megacity. It is a, it is a littoral megacity. So it's a megacity with water, deep water access, you know, New York City, Taipei.

• 2:52:25Jack Murphy?

  Lagos.

• 2:52:25Speaker 04

  Yep, there you go. And so that means that you're going to have subterranean spaces, 10 stories down, easy. Like just think of the subway system in New York City. And the way I typically paint this picture to folks in New York City is imagine 10 9/11s a day.

• 2:52:42Jack Murphy?

  Right.

• 2:52:42Speaker 04

  That's what megacity warfare is going to look like against a peer threat in a large scale ground combat engagement. That means that our soldiers, sailors, airmen and marines, and now space cadets are going down into 10-story deep subterranean where right now we're still, you know, having to pump oxygen because we don't have Pappers.

• 2:53:02Jack Murphy?

  Right.

• 2:53:02Speaker 04

  Okay, how do you communicate down there?

• 2:53:05Jack Murphy?

  Right.

• 2:53:05Speaker 04

  And so we played with mesh systems. We played with, right?

• 2:53:08Jack Murphy?

  GPS.

• 2:53:09Speaker 04

  There you go.

• 2:53:10Jack Murphy?

  Yeah.

• 2:53:10Speaker 04

  So now take that, you know, team out of 10 stories deep, and now they come up to the surface, and now they go into a 10-story high-rise.

• 2:53:19Jack Murphy?

  Yeah.

• 2:53:19Speaker 04

  Think about the equipment changes you would want to make right now.

• 2:53:23Jack Murphy?

  Right.

• 2:53:24Speaker 04

  Think about the communication changes. Think, I mean, just everything that we do to shoot, move, and communicate, we're literally talking, gets combined into, you know, a 10 by 10 square island that's just full of this dense urban terrain.

• 2:53:37Jack Murphy?

  Right.

• 2:53:37Speaker 04

  And then when you get outside into the countryside, you're back.

• 2:53:41Jack Murphy?

  It's a whole different mission.

• 2:53:42Speaker 04

  Now you're back into camouflage.

• 2:53:43Jack Murphy?

  That's right.

• 2:53:44Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 2:53:44Jack Murphy?

  That's right. And so we have to build.

• 2:53:47Speaker 04

  An expert team, this is what America's always done best.

• 2:53:50Speaker 05

  Yeah.

• 2:53:50Speaker 04

  Is we have built a all volunteer that which quite frankly, looks like a special operations military to everyone else.

• 2:53:58Speaker 05

  It it it's fast, it it, you know, it's fascinating when when you're talking about like going dark and and and and the, you know, the signature and things like that. I remember uh back in DLI, one of the guys there was a civil affairs or not civil affairs, uh a psyops uh guy.

• 2:54:15Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 2:54:15Speaker 05

  And he would joke and he'd say, you know, like they're commanding officers say, hey, go to this top of this hill and pretend that you're a tank. And he'd be like, uh, hey, sir, how about we send a tank up there and pretend it's like, you know, a a nobody.

• 2:54:29Speaker 04

  Sure.

• 2:54:30Speaker 05

  And and the idea is it, you know, psyops, obviously psyops has evolved and it's like social media and a lot of other stuff now too. But when we start talking about these signatures and how the enemy responds to the signatures, it reminds me of like the tank on the hill.

• 2:54:45Speaker 04

  Right.

• 2:54:46Speaker 05

  Right?

• 2:54:46Speaker 04

  Right.

• 2:54:47Speaker 05

  Or or cardboard tanks made to look up.

• 2:54:49Speaker 04

  World War Two.

• 2:54:50Speaker 05

  Right.

• 2:54:50Speaker 04

  Hundred percent.

• 2:54:51Speaker 05

  Uh that now.

• 2:54:52Speaker 04

  Patton's army.

• 2:54:53Speaker 05

  Now, how is like psyops going to uh eh you know, be involved when it comes to?

• 2:55:00Speaker 04

  Tell that story.

• 2:55:01Speaker 05

  Yeah.

• 2:55:01Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 2:55:02Speaker 05

  To these electronic signatures.

• 2:55:03Speaker 04

  And now you get into missing disinformation.

• 2:55:04Speaker 05

  Yeah.

• 2:55:05Speaker 04

  And information warfare.

• 2:55:06Speaker 05

  Yeah.

• 2:55:06Speaker 04

  Yeah, it's absolutely, it's absolutely it. And so that that was another thing that we clearly started working on was information warfare. And that's what we called it in those days. Um and one of the first things that we started to recognize was that, you know, there's two types of information that we're being confronted with.

• 2:55:24Speaker 05

  Yeah.

• 2:55:24Speaker 04

  There's information that is from friendly sources, but it's just inaccurate.

• 2:55:30Speaker 05

  Right.

• 2:55:31Speaker 04

  Which is what we would call a first report. I mean, every first report is always inaccurate. And then there's there's information that is from an adversary that is intended. To disrupt your decision making cycle.

• 2:55:43Speaker 05

  Right.

• 2:55:43Speaker 04

  And how do you distinguish between the two?

• 2:55:45Speaker 05

  Right.

• 2:55:45Speaker 04

  In the modern world?

• 2:55:47Speaker 05

  Right.

• 2:55:48Speaker 04

  Where I go on X, I go on Facebook, I go on threads. I don't go on threads because I just have too many at this point. But you know, you go on those platforms and you can literally find the opposite of whatever it is that you found anywhere else at any given time.

• 2:56:04Speaker 05

  Right.

• 2:56:05Speaker 04

  And so miss and disinformation is something that our military has been forced to contend with for the last, you know, at least five or six years, I would say, since the early COVID days.

• 2:56:14Speaker 05

  Yeah, I, I think that, you know, they've also, because of social media, that whether it's political operatives or foreign, you know, threat actors, foreign nations, whatever, have gotten very good at poisoning the well in the sense of when there is a true report, they've been getting very good at, they're, they're very good at getting out ahead of it and throwing a false information, things that can be debunked.

• 2:56:40Speaker 04

  Sure.

• 2:56:41Speaker 05

  As part of that true information. So that when those things are debunked, everybody ignores the true information. By saying, oh, it's already been debunked.

• 2:56:48Speaker 04

  Yeah, we, we started calling that information overmatch. Where you're, you're, you're just being confronted with so much.

• 2:56:55Speaker 05

  Right.

• 2:56:55Speaker 04

  Information, you just cognitively cannot process. What is true, what is fiction, what is important, what isn't important. And it, it, it is absolutely something that we've built some systems. I know of some teams that have built some targeting ideologies.

• 2:57:10Speaker 05

  Yeah.

• 2:57:10Speaker 04

  Because it's not a technical solution.

• 2:57:13Speaker 05

  Yeah.

• 2:57:13Speaker 04

  It's a human cognition, understanding the source, the intent, and then the applicability to that particular moment. That is really, really hard.

• 2:57:22Speaker 05

  So let me ask you a controversial opinion. Uh, it, it, in that, you know, we have seen our government at times. And we see it, I think that like in special operations, these ideas that social media, things like that need to, uh,

• 2:57:43Speaker 05

  Be restricted or um that there that you know uh we need to protect against foreign influence, things like that, you run into one A issues. Like where where do you think the military and the government in general should be on the on those types of topics?

• 2:58:02Speaker 04

  My personal opinion

• 2:58:03Speaker 05

  Yes.

• 2:58:04Speaker 04

  is we should use information to our advantage. And so that means, just like I can walk down the street and I can cho- choose that deli or that bodega or that Pizza Hut or that McDonald's, I I can choose where I'm going to pull my information from that I think is going to be most probable most probably to be right.

• 2:58:27Speaker 05

  Mm hmm.

• 2:58:28Speaker 04

  I can then look at a track record of that information to verify that you know, this one has been probabilistically more correct than those others, and I can choose to go to a different location if I don't like the source there.

• 2:58:41Speaker 05

  Mm hmm.

• 2:58:42Speaker 04

  I can then choose which points of those information I am going to incorporate for an effect.

• 2:58:48Speaker 05

  Mm hmm.

• 2:58:49Speaker 04

  And so this is the same idea of, well, I can just choose which information I want.

• 2:58:52Speaker 05

  Right.

• 2:58:53Speaker 04

  And so my response to it is, I I I think we're post-truth uh in a post-truth era, I think there is no longer a truth. I think there is a version of truth based on that moment in time.

• 2:59:07Speaker 05

  Mm hmm.

• 2:59:07Speaker 04

  And that applicability can be pulled away and can be extracted to be useful. But we're so overwhelmed with information, our natural bias as humans is to short circuit that. And to say, I like this information because it fits into the narrative that I'm telling, and so I can easily draw the conclusions for it. And so I think we as particularly American service members and you know, and Americans in general, we have to become more discriminatory and uh about the types of information that we're allowing to be connected to our narratives. And we have to be deliberate about verifying that that is a source that we are choosing to trust on this.

• 2:59:50Speaker 04

  And I think it's really important these days to listen to the source itself. It's why I think that In the in the in the modern era where we are right now, human touch and authenticity are gonna win every single time. You know, the soundbites, the thirty second, you know, elevator speeches, the, you know, you've got one minute to describe what's wrong in Afghanistan. I mean, like, those types of engagements are no longer satisfying. Right. Because I think we, as a population, have started to become aware that we can pick and choose which truth we want to align with,

• 3:00:32Speaker 04

  but it doesn't mean it's always going to be true. Right. And we have the ability to interrogate that continuously, but only if we're willing to do so as an individual. Right. My example for this is is COVID. You know, COVID was the first time in human history that I believe, that I'm aware of, that we not only knew what we wanted to do, we knew how to disseminate it, and then we knew how to socially enforce it on almost global scale. Like, that has never occurred. We've never had the ability to inform the globe at once. And then to have to now go through a learning process, which we all know from our military experiences,

• 3:01:16Speaker 04

  when you hear that first report, we know that first reports are always wrong. We know that. But we had to learn that over decades of experience in decision making. And something that I tell, you know, private companies these days that I get to work with, with Solutions 21, is because in the military, we're constantly rotating into leadership positions, we're constantly learning those lessons over and over and over again at higher levels, and we become more comfortable with, that's a first report, let's let it develop. Right. And so I think the distinction that I find between what I would like myself to do a better job at and what I see as an example of what I don't wanna do,

• 3:01:59Speaker 04

  is I think we, as a society, can just go, okay, first report.

• 3:02:04Speaker 04

  Could be bad, could be good. Let's let it develop with all sources of information, enlightening us of what they believe the truth is, and then we will figure out the truth that we need to move forward.

• 3:02:16Speaker 05

  Yeah.

• 3:02:16Speaker 04

  I don't know if that sounds too mystic or, you know, squishy.

• 3:02:20Speaker 05

  No, no, no. No, it's good stuff.

• 3:02:22Speaker 04

  But I think we have to make that decision. And so it's, there's no longer a truth.

• 3:02:27Speaker 05

  Right.

• 3:02:27Speaker 04

  There, there is a way that we can incorporate information to achieve our ends.

• 3:02:31Jack Murphy?

  Right. So take us through the last, the SOCOM assignment and into your retirement.

• 3:02:37Speaker 04

  So we, we, we knew that, you know, the, the window was going to open. So, you know, my last year with Able Squadron was, you know, within COVID and I spent a lot of my time at Trade Dock Headquarters, actually, which in and of itself is an interesting story because, I don't know if you know this, but we were having trouble getting basic recruits to go to basic training. And, and so like I was down at this, you know, at, at Trade Dock advising a four-star general, "Sir, I don't think we should get haircuts at basic training anymore, at least until we can figure out how to deal with what we're dealing with." The Marine Corps just got shut down for their basic training. And so I, I, I did that to, at the conclusion, which was an education in, in a lot of ways, because then I spent about three months in

• 3:03:22Speaker 04

  the Pentagon and I really knew I didn't want to go into the Pentagon after that, mainly because I just wasn't happy. Like, I, I, I appreciated the work, great Americans and really important experiences that I, I know that I probably should have had if I was going to be a senior officer inside the military. I just wasn't happy there.

• 3:03:42Speaker 05

  Yeah.

• 3:03:43Speaker 04

  But, and it's where I need, and I wasn't happy there when nobody was really there. So I don't think it was going to be better when people were telling me what to do there. And so I, I decided that, you know, this next move could be our last, because if I don't get that one good piece of paper in this next assignment, which, I mean, you're at the level, you know, 05 to 06 transition where, you know, The paperwork, you know, you can stay there for a long time. So if you don't get that one paperwork that moves you to the next level for the next job, then just don't move on. And so we knew that just by, you know, the top gets tighter as you move up, this could be our last, you know, our last move, or at least our last command. And so if it was

• 3:04:26Speaker 04

  going to be our last command, it was probably going to be my last assignment. And so we wanted to move to a place that, you know, one, I was excited by the work, you know, I was, I got my blood boiling, you know, to go into work every day, to work on something that I thought was important. But also to put my family in a position where I could have some stability for, you know, one of my daughters right here, who was, you know, a sophomore in high school, who I only get to ruin her life once. Patiently. Right? You can't say I ruined your life twice. I can only ruin your life once. I wanted stability for her, and I wanted stability for her younger sister, you know, in those formative years. And we also realized that we just, I hadn't seen my girls as

• 3:05:10Speaker 04

  much as I wanted to. I'd been gone a lot, particularly, you know, this one. And I told you guys beforehand, I don't think we talk enough about the trauma that occurs to our, you know, our brats, our military children. I think they go through a lot of post-traumatic stress, just like we do, and they need just as much attention, I think, as our service members. And we don't give it yet, but I think we're getting there. And so I wanted to focus on my family if that was going to happen. And so we went to SOCOM because I was just blood boiling. I'd love to go back to, you know, something like that and touch that again and stay in it. Love Tampa. So we moved there. I was fortunate enough to get a job inside of SOCOM headquarters. General Clark was the commander, you know,

• 3:05:54Speaker 04

  General Evans came in while I was after it. So it kind of felt like, you know, the right culmination of my career, you know, there. And, you know, within the first week of being there in that job, you know, President Biden withdrew from Afghanistan and with that, withdrew a lot of the ways that we had been confronting the global war on terror, you know, traditionally speaking, because now it's been 20, 25 years. And that resulted in us, you know, having to find new ways to confront those threats and new ways and and quite frankly, I think in some ways good, you know, we did have a lot of, you know, inventiveness and creativity and lots of, you know, collaboration between all of your interagencies and the military. And it was a very humbling experience again

• 3:06:38Speaker 04

  to watch, you know, this team come together over the course of the year and solve a really hard national problem, you know, for whatever, you know, whatever you think about it. And it was about that time that I, I, I, I realized that I wanted to go chase my own shiny objects. I'd, I'd, I'd been chasing other people's dreams. And while I believe I, I, you know, could be a good brigade commander, I could be a good group commander, I could do those things well, there's 50 other people who could do that better than me. And, and, and maybe that's not where my talent lies, you know. And so I, I, I decided that I, while I probably had a, you know, future there, did I care enough to go to that next level?

• 3:07:23Speaker 04

  And I, and I don't think I did. And so I did what I thought was right for the service and for my family, which was I don't care enough to go to that level. It's probably time for me to leave. And so I started to retire and I started to think about what does it look like to exit? And then you start doing what everybody does, you know, what do I want to be when I grow up?

• 3:07:43Speaker 05

  Right.

• 3:07:43Speaker 04

  You know, and, and well, all I've ever wanted to do is jump out of planes and then blow stuff up and hang out with guys. And, you know, and so what does that mean? And so I started looking for what purpose. I started looking for what was, what was the thing that I loved the most about my career? And so kind of to rewind, I loved teaching and I loved coaching and I loved mentoring and I loved taking every lesson that I'd learned and giving it to someone so they don't have to learn those things. They can just catapult beyond me.

• 3:08:15Speaker 05

  Right.

• 3:08:15Speaker 04

  I loved finding the talent that was capable of doing that far beyond my capabilities. You know, guys who I know that if I can just give you 30 minutes of this, you'll take it to another level that I never could.

• 3:08:26Speaker 05

  Right.

• 3:08:27Speaker 04

  Started looking at consulting, but it wasn't working for me. So like the Mackenzies and you know where I was, I was gonna go in to write a 300-page book report. I didn't want to be sad Sam. Right. Who went in there and wrote a story about what the things we needed to change. And then the boss goes, hey, thanks for doing that and shoves it in desk. Right. I wanted to get dirty and to fix things. And, and so I started saying, I want to build companies. And, and people would say, well, what kind of companies? And I would go, I don't care. What kind of company do you have? I want to, I want to build leaders. House traps. Right. I want to build a leader who is building a really important company to solve really hard problems. And, and I was fortunate enough to be connected through an AWG former operator

• 3:09:11Speaker 04

  who was working for a small consulting firm called Solutions 21. And so I was introduced to the Solutions 21 team. They are a leadership development, you know, team and, and, and they focus purely on that kind of, we come in and we build elite leaders and then we teach alignment to the organization. So that as they are growing that vision, the organization's resources are aligned to achieve that vision. And the execution is then feedback looping into that vision. So that they're adjusting to meet the competitive market that they're in. It sounds like building a task force. Right. You know, it sounds like training a team for a specialized, you know, mission. And I just fell in love with these guys.

• 3:09:52Speaker 04

  And so I started going into these companies and learning from these amazing CEOs and presidents. And yes, I was getting satisfaction for, you know, being able to teach, coach and mentor and use the things that I had learned in my career. And I believe Solutions 21 does it better than anyone, which is why I still love working with them. And Solutions 21 has this amazing culture where we encourage you to pursue your passions for your community. Whatever that might mean, you know, if you really food drives or, you know, hurricane recoveries or, you know, whatever that, whatever it is that gets you back into your community in order to support your local community, we really want you to do that.

• 3:10:36Speaker 04

  And I suddenly realized that I don't have a local community. I don't, I don't have a hometown. I don't have a place that I can, you know, go to church and that's my bar and this is my, you know, I don't have that. Right. And.

• 3:10:50Speaker 06

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• 3:12:49Speaker 04

  So I started looking for, well, what is my community? It's us.

• 3:12:54Speaker 05

  Right.

• 3:12:54Speaker 04

  This is my community. This is the people that I so, okay, well, what's the problem that we're dealing with? And right about that time is when I started to, you know, hear about the PACT Act. And, and, and if you guys haven't read the PACT Act yet, it, you know, really, Rosie and Leroy Torres, you know, from Burn Pit 360, if you've ever heard of that organization, they, they lobbied for what we all dealt with for the last 25 years, which is how do you deal with trash in a combat zone? You know, persistent and consistent for the last 25 years, we have trash and it's everything from JP8, you know, jet fuel to human hair to animals to whatever it is that needs to go on the pile.

• 3:13:36Speaker 05

  Yeah.

• 3:13:36Speaker 04

  Most of us have turned to stick at some point in a, you know, in a, I don't know what they call them now, the outhouses with the burn drones, you know, like.

• 3:13:43Speaker 05

  Lot of that plastic MRE shit, everything, everything.

• 3:13:47Speaker 04

  You, you, every one of us has been in a built up outhouse, you know, four by four wood on the outside with a half, you know, oil drum with, with JP8 in it, burning it off, literally, you know, burning human waste with, with, with oil. And we sucked that in.

• 3:14:06Speaker 05

  Right.

• 3:14:06Speaker 04

  Over and over and over again. And the way I typically explain this to people is we went on a, a, a, a, a drive in this country to remove smoking. So literally smoking a cigarette, you know, a pack a day turns into cancer. We get it.

• 3:14:20Speaker 05

  Right.

• 3:14:20Speaker 04

  Okay, now stand over a hundred by hundred burn pit and suck it in for 15 months.

• 3:14:25Speaker 05

  Right.

• 3:14:25Speaker 04

  You know, it's not surprising that we're seeing these strange cancers and injuries in these pockets of teams. And when you're talking about special operators, I have a, a different problem. And so now Burn Pit 360 starts lobbying on behalf of our service members. And in November of 2022, the, the PACT Act is signed by the Biden administration. Phenomenal job by the Biden administration, we'll add. And that PACT Act, I was skeptical. Because I was like, I don't understand how we're connecting, you know, Beau Biden's brain cancer to, I mean, to burn pits. I don't, I don't get it. And it wasn't until I read the PACT Act and $283 billion over five years for respiratory related illnesses

• 3:15:10Speaker 04

  and injuries, that I started to recognize my own danger.

• 3:15:14Speaker 05

  Right.

• 3:15:15Speaker 04

  The, my own threats. And I started reaching out to buddies that I've been, you know, I've known for 20, 30 years and. I feel like I'm the only one that hasn't had cancer yet.

• 3:15:25Jack Murphy?

  Right.

• 3:15:26Speaker 04

  And I mean, honestly, Meg, my wife and I, we spend, we, we kind of darkly laugh about, we're just kind of waiting for the shoe to drop, right? Like, we've been in all those places, we've done all those same things, and harder men than me are going down for really tough stuff.

• 3:15:40Jack Murphy?

  One of my former teammates, guy I worked with, we got back in touch after 15 years and had him on the show.

• 3:15:47Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 3:15:48Jack Murphy?

  And I told him afterwards, I was like, man, don't wait another 15 years because those burn pits are gonna get one of us.

• 3:15:54Speaker 04

  Well, go get tested.

• 3:15:56Speaker 05

  And even before the burn pits, I mean, if you think about like, all the range time we spent, and then what do you do? You go collect up brass and put it in your hat, right? And, and all shoot houses with all the like, the lead dust, like, like there's so, there's so much that, that we were exposed to on a constant basis.

• 3:16:16Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 3:16:17Speaker 05

  Um, you know, we talk about TBIs or blast-related illnesses.

• 3:16:21Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 3:16:21Speaker 05

  That they're just now, and how many times were you on the range when you had to do a Spandex with Gustaf?

• 3:16:28Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 3:16:28Speaker 05

  And after like, three or four rounds, you're like, I, like, I don't want to do this anymore.

• 3:16:31Speaker 04

  Right, because your head's banging.

• 3:16:32Speaker 05

  Yeah.

• 3:16:33Speaker 04

  160th pilots, 160th gunners, those guys sucking off the mini gun.

• 3:16:38Speaker 05

  Yeah.

• 3:16:38Speaker 04

  And, and they, they walk out of those Calfaxes with, you know, just booming headaches.

• 3:16:42Speaker 05

  Yeah.

• 3:16:43Speaker 04

  And they wonder why, okay.

• 3:16:43Speaker 05

  Yeah.

• 3:16:44Speaker 04

  So I started to have those same encounters, right? And I started to put the pieces together.

• 3:16:49Speaker 05

  Yeah.

• 3:16:49Speaker 04

  And I started looking at, you know, the, the data, and what I realized is, we have this M50 gas mask that we've been carrying around in our pocket for 25 years. I, I've worn it legitimately once, you know, in Iraq, when we, when we had scuds on the invasion coming, and we thought all of them had chemical warheads on it. And so I, I legitimately wore my full mop gear, you know? And for those of you who don't understand the mop system, so you know, mop zero to four, four being nuclear, biological, chemical imminency.

• 3:17:17Speaker 05

  Yeah.

• 3:17:18Speaker 04

  Right? And so we were in this gear, fighting for three months, and then I look back at the rest of my career, and I wonder, when was the last time that we had a service member die of a nuclear, biological, or chemical attack? And the answer's World War I, World War II, maybe.

• 3:17:35Speaker 05

  Yeah.

• 3:17:36Speaker 04

  And, and, and so then it's, well, wait a minute. When I look at the PACTAC data, what it tells me is, In the Civil, I love telling this story, so please forgive me. In the Civil War in the 1860s, we decided we should probably start wearing helmets. Right? And we got those issued around World War I. And so in World War I, we started wearing helmets and then we realized we should probably have hearing protection. And we started getting that out in like Vietnam, Korea area. And then we decided in, you know, probably the 80s and 90s, we should start wearing eye protection for our eyes. And we really got that issued inside of the global war on terror. It's why I wanted to go to a special operations unit. I get the cool Oakley M-frames and I get to have my hands in my pockets. Right.

• 3:18:19Speaker 04

  And we missed the fact that the last piece of real estate, potentially the most important, is the nose and the mouth. And we're sucking in lead and antimony and aluminum and all of the things that we know to be carcinogenic. Right. And that we know we are going into shoot houses day in and day out without lung protection. And so I know this sucks. Yeah. Like I'm the guy who's like, I don't want more body armor. I don't want more, you know, I need to be lethal. Right. But now as looking back on it, I go, I don't just want you lethal, I want you long. Right. I want longevity. Right. I cannot afford to have a guy trained for 20 years and then to go down for something like this that is preventable.

• 3:19:02Speaker 04

  So we then went and found a company that was working on this innovative platform. And it's called Ventus Respiratory Technologies. And on behalf of Solutions 21, we've been working with that startup where who's the CTO is one of the key designers of the M50 gas mask. Of a low burden, low cost particulate respirator for the operator, by the operator. That protects you from all those hazardous particulates that you suck in day in and day out. And then. You go and we now connect that with the House Armed Service Committee and the Senate Armed Service Committee, and we did this last January. We were very fortunate to work with some members

• 3:19:46Speaker 04

  of the House and the Senate in order to get language inserted into the National Defense Authorization Act that asks the DOD to conduct a study and determine, do we have the right respiratory protection for our service members in accordance with what we think we know from the PACT Act? Rather than spending $283 billion over five years in injury and illness, can we provide a $300 tactical respirator in everybody's pocket as preventive maintenance?

• 3:20:17Jack Murphy?

  You want to show us this thing?

• 3:20:18Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 3:20:19Jack Murphy?

  I do want to show it to you.

• 3:20:20Speaker 05

  And, and, you know, and asking you, since you know what it's like to be on the objective, one of the challenges with a gas mask is your ability to breathe, right? Your ability to breathe because you are moving at a very high, you know, output.

• 3:20:39Speaker 04

  That's right.

• 3:20:39Speaker 05

  And so like when, when they were building this, were they taking that into consideration?

• 3:20:45Speaker 04

  Yeah, absolutely. So this was designed in order to not impede the way we shoot, move and communicate. And so it is literally a quarter mask, which is why it's not.

• 3:20:56Speaker 05

  Can you hold it up?

• 3:20:56Speaker 04

  Yeah, absolutely. So it's literally a quarter mask and it's designed to fit atop the chin so that your chin strap properly seats.

• 3:21:05Speaker 05

  Okay.

• 3:21:06Speaker 04

  Which that, that was the first issue.

• 3:21:07Speaker 05

  Right.

• 3:21:08Speaker 04

  The, the pull on the filter is purely for particulate. So it's just for the dirt, the dust, the aluminum, the lead, those things that are, it is not.

• 3:21:20Speaker 05

  It's not a gas mask, like filtering it down to the smallest micron or whatever.

• 3:21:24Speaker 04

  Right. So when you, when you start going after gases and vapors, you start needing to get activated charcoal in this. When you start getting more material into this. Filter, it starts to become more of a burden to breathe.

• 3:21:35Speaker 05

  Right.

• 3:21:36Speaker 04

  And so by breathing heavy, we now can't perform optimally.

• 3:21:41Speaker 05

  Right.

• 3:21:42Speaker 04

  This is the lightest pull on the market. It's the only CE certified, uh, you know, system out there. That's the uh, European version of NIOSH, right? And it's designed so that when you breathe, you don't get the hulper, hulper because the mic is actually offset from the breathe port. And so you're breathing over the filter to protect your lungs. But your mic connects directly to the outside in a push to talk. So that it's not being impacted. And so we have some teams that wear these for helicopter operations like, you know, off little bird platforms because they can get assured comms. Because they can simply talk into it without the wind getting them. It's meant to be used when you want it.

• 3:22:26Speaker 04

  So like a fighter pilot's mask, I put it on when I'm coming off the X. And I've got mud dust and rust going everywhere. And then when I get back into a cleaner environment or I need less pull, I take it off. I'm on the catwalk. I can wear it to protect myself below.

• 3:22:43Speaker 05

  Right.

• 3:22:43Speaker 04

  From the particulates that are coming from explosions and nine bangers and lots of ammunition, not even talking about simunition yet.

• 3:22:50Speaker 05

  Right.

• 3:22:50Speaker 04

  Right? All of that is protecting me, but I don't want to wear my helmet.

• 3:22:54Speaker 05

  Right.

• 3:22:55Speaker 04

  Okay, you can do that.

• 3:22:56Speaker 05

  Right.

• 3:22:56Speaker 04

  And so it's designed to be integrated with how the soldier or the operator shoots right now. So a good cheek to cheek to weld is is allowable. Uh, communication, it's assured communications through whatever, you know, system you're using and it's clear. Uh, and then your ability to move in it is it's the lightest burden or pull on the market for sure. And the trade off is it's not a MOP three and four system.

• 3:23:23Speaker 05

  Right.

• 3:23:24Speaker 04

  It's meant for MOP zero to two, which is where we find ourselves, at least in my career. Ninety nine point nine nine nine nine nine percent of the time.

• 3:23:33Speaker 05

  Right. I mean, in in, I mean, even outside of the preventive measures of it. The communication ability.

• 3:23:42Speaker 04

  Right.

• 3:23:43Speaker 05

  When, like you say, in a Hilo, where nobody can hear what's going on.

• 3:23:47Speaker 04

  Right.

• 3:23:47Speaker 05

  You know, you know, in an open air vehicle running across the desert where there's dust flying, everybody's trying to yell about what's happening.

• 3:23:54Speaker 04

  Exactly.

• 3:23:55Speaker 05

  It works in a number of environments.

• 3:23:56Speaker 04

  Exactly, and we have, you know, some additives to this. We were just at SOCOM's research, development and acquisitions experiment this last week. And we have a voice projection unit that goes onto this. It's about an eighth of an inch thick so that when you speak, it'll project like a bullhorn so that you don't have. I can't communicate with you. Right. I can control a room. I don't have muffled. It comes out like a bullhorn. And then I can connect it to my ATAC.

• 3:24:24Speaker 05

  Yes.

• 3:24:24Speaker 04

  With a downloaded language program. And when I speak into the mic in English, what comes out the speaker is whatever language you've selected.

• 3:24:31Speaker 05

  That's incredible.

• 3:24:32Speaker 04

  Mandarin, Russian.

• 3:24:34Speaker 05

  Yeah.

• 3:24:34Speaker 04

  Pick the language. And you can also, there's two ways you can do it now on the return, and we haven't built this prototype yet, but you can either have your silencer, which means the return gets translated right back into your silencer, your earpiece. Or there, I've seen some heads up displays now, some ARVR stuff that you could do text. So that I would just read, just like a subtitle, if I'm talking to someone in a different language, if you wanted to do an ARVR.

• 3:24:59Speaker 05

  Man, that is incredible.

• 3:25:00Speaker 04

  It's impressive. And so what I keep saying is all of the technology to change the way we protect our service members respiratory systems is there. We simply need to decide how to deploy it.

• 3:25:12Speaker 05

  Right.

• 3:25:13Speaker 04

  And so instead of simply presenting a problem to the United States military.

• 3:25:17Speaker 05

  Right.

• 3:25:18Speaker 04

  Solutions 21, in conjunction with Ventus Respiratory Technologies, is building the solution. And whether you want to adopt it or not, that's up to the military.

• 3:25:28Speaker 05

  Right.

• 3:25:29Speaker 04

  We're using these right now with a lot of first responders, a lot of SWAT teams. Fentanyl is an issue. A lot of, you know, Customs and Border Patrol agents are starting to look at this because they can speak fluently.

• 3:25:41Speaker 05

  Right.

• 3:25:42Speaker 04

  With anyone they encounter. ODAs and SEAL teams that are doing J-sets.

• 3:25:47Speaker 05

  Yeah.

• 3:25:47Speaker 04

  This is the perfect tool for you to protect yourself from those environments that are not as environmentally clean as we might be in the United States or another developed country, and still be able to cleanly communicate.

• 3:26:00Speaker 05

  That's incredible.

• 3:26:02Speaker 04

  Thank you. There's an amazing team that's been working on this and I'm simply an advocate for it.

• 3:26:07Jack Murphy?

  Where can people go to find Ventus and Solutions 21 if they're interested in this?

• 3:26:11Speaker 04

  Yeah, so if you're interested in leadership development and us coming in and teaching the way that we build teams inside of the military in particular and how we align vision to execution, then solutions21.com, www.solutions21.com, you know, tell them Jason sent you, and then Ventus Respiratory Technologies. So VentusRT.com and you can just Google any of that, put it in perplexity, put it in ChatGPT and it'll bring up the links.

• 3:26:39Jack Murphy?

  Any final thoughts before we get going? Anything we failed to cover that you'd like to hit up?

• 3:26:44Speaker 04

  I think the only thing that I do want to reinforce is this was a once in a lifetime opportunity for me. And so, you know, thank you, gentlemen, for letting me come in and tell the story of, you know, some of the amazing heroes that I got to work with. I was simply standing amongst giants. I definitely was not one and I'm only 5'9" with my shoes on. So when you're standing next to some of these guys, they are definitely the giants and deservedly so. But more importantly, this was a really unique opportunity to have my 19-year-old daughter, who grew up in the global war on terror, who I deployed when she was 15 months old.

• 3:27:23Speaker 04

  I really didn't come back until she was about 16, maybe 17, and giving me the opportunity to have this experience with her, to just tell her why, maybe, we did this or why it was important, at least to hear the story, the things that I don't think we do a great job of. And so I think I'd love to raise some awareness around our military brats and what they went through and the support that they need. And I hope that this is the beginning of that conversation. And it was a pleasure for me to be able to sit here with my daughter, who I know is partly paying attention and partly talking to her friends at college about what they're going to do tonight, but maybe one day she'll think back to one of these stories and it'll mean something to her.

• 3:28:05Jack Murphy?

  It means, we were talking a little bit before the show and I was, you know, telling you about how I hear a lot from the children of Vietnam veterans and their dad has been dead now for 10, 20 years in some cases. They come to me asking, you know, how can I find out about what my dad did? And, you know, you can FOIA some documents, but it's not going to give them

• 3:28:25Speaker 04

  Right.

• 3:28:25Jack Murphy?

  experiential

• 3:28:26Speaker 04

  Right.

• 3:28:27Jack Murphy?

  information that, you know, you shared with us today. And that's why, I know going on a podcast isn't for everyone, but I really encourage veterans to at least pen 10 to 20 pages, put it in a shoebox for their for their kids and grandkids. Um, doesn't have to be public, it's for the family, right? Because your kids and grandkids will have these questions.

• 3:28:46Speaker 04

  Yeah. Captain, Captain Joe Thomas, uh, Special Forces, uh, E7, who became a lieutenant in the 101st Airborne with me, told me to keep a journal, uh, at every combat tour, and I have followed his advice to this day.

• 3:28:58Speaker 05

  I, I wish I had. I, I, I really wish I had, um, you know, kept it like, it's all just one big blur to me now. You know, one big green

• 3:29:09Speaker 04

  Right.

• 3:29:09Speaker 05

  uh, experience that I, I have a hard time separating things.

• 3:29:13Speaker 04

  Yeah. No, it was a powerful, powerful mentorship from you.

• 3:29:16Jack Murphy?

  Yeah. Guys, thanks for joining us for this, uh, Christmas episode. Our next one is going to be our year in review. We'll talk about all the shows we had in 2024. Uh, it'll be nuts. Um, and we're looking forward to going into 2025. We're scheduling, we're done, January is filled, February is almost filled. We're, we're looking at March now, so.

• 3:29:38Speaker 04

  Are we going to talk about a new format?

• 3:29:40Jack Murphy?

  Uh, on this one?

• 3:29:42Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 3:29:43Speaker 06

  Sponsored by GSK, the makers of Extenture, Depomocamab ULAa. If your asthma keeps interrupting, it may be time to try something else. Extenture is an ultra-long-acting prescription maintenance treatment for severe asthma, eosinophilic type, ages 12 and older. It isn't for sudden breathing problems. Extenture is the first and only add-on treatment that can help deliver protection from asthma attacks with two doses a year, just one dose every six months. That's a lot of time for everything in between. Serious allergic reactions can occur. Get help right away for swelling of face, mouth, tongue, or trouble breathing. Don't change or stop medicines, including steroids, unless told by your doctor.

• 3:30:24Speaker 06

  Report if you have a parasitic infection, common cold, sinus infection, inflammation in the nose, flu or fluke-like symptoms, joint pain or sore throat may occur. Carry on with fewer attacks and ask your doctor about Extenture. Learn more at extenture.com or call 1-833-393-3678.

• 3:30:43Speaker 03

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• 3:31:08Jack Murphy?

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• 3:31:13Speaker 01

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• 3:31:43Speaker 05

  We'll talk about it on the next one. Next one.

• 3:31:46Jack Murphy?

  Um, cool. So, yeah, thank you, Jason. Appreciate it. Thank you for coming in, being here in studio.

• 3:31:52Speaker 06

  Sponsored by GSK, the makers of Extenture. Depamocumab ULAA. If your asthma keeps interrupting, it may be time to try something else. Extenture is an ultra-long-acting prescription maintenance treatment for severe asthma, eosinophilic type, ages 12 and older. It isn't for sudden breathing problems. Extenture is the first and only add-on treatment that can help deliver protection from asthma attacks with two doses a year. Just one dose every six months. That's a lot of time for everything in between. Serious allergic reactions can occur. Get help right away for swelling of face, mouth, tongue, or trouble breathing. Don't change or stop medicines, including steroids, unless told by your doctor. Report if you have a parasitic infection.

• 3:32:35Speaker 06

  Common cold, sinus infection, inflammation in the nose, flu or fluke-like symptoms, joint pain or sore throat may occur. Carry on with fewer attacks and ask your doctor about Extenture. Learn more at extenture.com or call 1-833-393-3678.

• 3:32:54Speaker 03

  Oh, I have had no luck lately. Wait, lady luck?

• 3:32:58Speaker 00

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• 3:33:11Speaker 03

  10 bucks for 30? I'm heading over to Spinquest.com right now.

• 3:33:15Jack Murphy?

  Spinquest is a free-to-play social casino. Void where prohibited. Visit Spinquest.com for more details.

• 3:33:23Speaker 01

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• 3:33:51Jack Murphy?

  And we'll see all you guys next time.

• 3:33:53Speaker 05

  Merry Christmas. Merry Christmas.

• 3:33:59Speaker 06

  Sponsored by GSK, the makers of Extenture, Depamocumab ULAA. If your asthma keeps interrupting, it may be time to try something else. Extenture is an ultra-long-acting prescription maintenance treatment for severe asthma, eosinophilic type, ages 12 and older. It isn't for sudden breathing problems. Extenture is the first and only add-on treatment that can help deliver protection from asthma attacks with two doses a year. Just one dose every six months. That's a lot of time for everything in between. Serious allergic reactions can occur. Get help right away for swelling of face, mouth, tongue, or trouble breathing. Don't change or stop medicines, including steroids, unless told by your doctor. Report if you have a parasitic infection, common cold, sinus infection,

• 3:34:44Speaker 06

  inflammation in the nose, flu or fluke-like symptoms, joint pain or sore throat may occur. Carry on with fewer attacks and ask your doctor about Extenture. Learn more at extenture.com or call 1-833-393-3678.

• 3:35:00Jack Murphy?

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• 3:35:30Speaker 06

  OnDeck is built to back small businesses, like yours. Whether you're buying equipment, expanding your team, or bridging cash flow gaps, OnDeck's loans up to $400,000 help make it happen fast. Rated A+ by the Better Business Bureau and earning thousands of 5-star TrustPilot reviews, OnDeck delivers funding you can count on. Apply in minutes at ondeck.com. Depending on certain loan attributes, your business loan may be issued by OnDeck or Celtic Bank. OnDeck does not lend in North Dakota. All loans and amounts subject to lender approval. Sponsored by GSK, the makers of Extenture, Depamocumab ULAA. If your asthma keeps interrupting,

• 3:36:15Speaker 06

  it may be time to try something else. Extenture is an ultra-long-acting prescription maintenance treatment for severe asthma, eosinophilic type, ages 12 and older. It isn't for sudden breathing problems. Extenture is the first and only add-on treatment that can help deliver protection from asthma attacks with two doses a year. Just one dose, every six months. That's a lot of time for everything in between. Serious allergic reactions can occur. Get help right away for swelling of face, mouth, tongue, or trouble breathing. Don't change or stop medicines, including steroids, unless told by your doctor. Report if you have a parasitic infection. Common colds, sinus infection, inflammation in the nose, flu or flulike symptoms, joint pain or sore throat may occur.

• 3:36:57Speaker 06

  Carry on with fewer attacks, and ask your doctor about Extenture. Learn more at Extenture.com, or call 1-833-393-3678.

• 3:37:07Jack Murphy?

  The holidays are my favorite time of year. And after a day of shopping, crowds and chaos, there's nothing I'd rather do than cozy up to my favorite casino-style games on SpinQuest from the comfort of my own phone. Thousands of fun slots and live dealer games. And in the spirit of the holidays, as a gift to you, a $30 coin pack for 10 to all new users. Unwrap the fun at spinquest.com or download the app today. SpinQuest is a free-to-play social casino. Void where prohibited. Visit spinquest.com for more details.

• 3:37:37Speaker 01

  OnDeck is built to back small businesses like yours. Whether you're buying equipment, expanding your team, or bridging cash flow gaps, OnDeck's loans up to $400,000 make it happen fast. Rated A+ by the Better Business Bureau and earning thousands of five-star TrustPilot reviews, OnDeck delivers funding you can count on. Apply in minutes at ondeck.com. Depending on certain loan attributes, your business loan may be issued by OnDeck or Celtic Bank. OnDeck does not lend in North Dakota. All loans and amounts subject to lender approval.

• 3:38:05Speaker 06

  Sponsored by GSK, the makers of Extenture, Depamocumab ULAA. If your asthma keeps interrupting, it may be time to try something else. Extenture is an ultra-long-acting prescription maintenance treatment for severe asthma, eosinophilic type, ages 12 and older. It isn't for sudden breathing problems. Extenture is the first and only add-on treatment that can help deliver protection from asthma attacks with two doses a year. Just one dose every six months. That's a lot of time for everything in between. Serious allergic reactions can occur. Get help right away for swelling of face, mouth, tongue, or trouble breathing. Don't change or stop medicines, including steroids, unless told by your doctor. Report if you have a parasitic infection.

• 3:38:48Speaker 06

  Common cold, sinus infection, inflammation in the nose, flu or fluke-like symptoms, joint pain or sore throat may occur. Carry on with fewer attacks and ask your doctor about Extenture. Learn more at extenture.com or call 1-833-393-3678.

• 3:39:06Speaker 03

  Oh, I have had no luck lately. Wait, lady luck? Brett, see, I got you. I've had so much luck on spinquest.com.

• 3:39:14Speaker 00

  They have all of my favorite games, slot games, live blackjack, craps and bubble craps. You can even get a $30 coin pack for just 10 bucks.

• 3:39:24Speaker 03

  10 bucks for 30? I'm heading over to Spinquest.com right now.

• 3:39:28Jack Murphy?

  Spinquest is a free-to-play social casino. Void where prohibited. Visit Spinquest.com for more details.

• 3:39:36Speaker 06

  Cash flow crunch? OnDeck's small business line of credit gives your business immediate access to funds up to $200,000 right when you need it. Cover seasonal dips, manage payroll, restock inventory or tackle unexpected expenses without missing a beat. With flexible draws, transparent pricing and control over repayment, get funded quickly and confidently. Apply today at ondeck.com. Funds could be available as soon as tomorrow. Depending on certain loan attributes, your business loan may be issued by OnDeck or Celtic Bank. OnDeck does not lend in North Dakota. All loans and amounts subject to lender approval.