Ryan Graves: UFOs, Fighter Jets, and Aliens

00:00:00.000 | How are these interacting with our fighters if they are?

00:00:02.400 | How are they interacting with the weather

00:00:03.760 | and their environment?

00:00:05.000 | How are they interacting with each other?

00:00:06.520 | So can we look at these

00:00:07.720 | and how they're interacting perhaps as a swarm,

00:00:10.520 | especially off the East Coast

00:00:11.520 | where this is happening all the time with multiple objects?

00:00:14.480 | - The following is a conversation

00:00:18.200 | with Lieutenant Ryan Graves, former Navy fighter pilot,

00:00:22.040 | including roles as a combat lead,

00:00:24.080 | landing signals officer, and rescue mission commander.

00:00:28.480 | He and people in his squadron detected UFOs

00:00:31.760 | on multiple occasions.

00:00:33.360 | And he has been one of the few people

00:00:35.960 | willing to speak publicly about these experiences

00:00:38.680 | and about the importance of investigating these sightings,

00:00:42.280 | especially for national security reasons.

00:00:45.520 | Ryan has a degree in mechanical

00:00:47.600 | and aerospace engineering from WPI

00:00:50.320 | and an interest in career roles

00:00:52.560 | in advanced technology development,

00:00:54.440 | including multi-agent collaborative autonomy,

00:00:57.560 | machine learning assisted air-to-air combat,

00:01:00.200 | manned and unmanned teaming technologies,

00:01:03.240 | and most recently, development of materials

00:01:05.840 | through quantum simulation.

00:01:08.200 | This is a Lex Friedman podcast.

00:01:10.280 | To support it, please check out our sponsors

00:01:12.440 | in the description.

00:01:13.800 | And now, dear friends, here's Ryan Graves.

00:01:17.160 | What did you think of the new "Top Gun" movie?

00:01:20.440 | How accurate was it?

00:01:21.720 | Let's start there.

00:01:22.960 | - I thought the flying was really accurate.

00:01:25.640 | I thought the type of flying they did

00:01:28.280 | and how they approached the actual mission,

00:01:30.440 | of course, had a lot of liberties.

00:01:33.400 | But one thing that seems to be hard to capture

00:01:35.480 | on these types of things are the chess game

00:01:37.520 | that's going on while that type of flying is happening.

00:01:40.400 | - The chess game between, like in a dogfight,

00:01:42.920 | between the pilots and the enemy,

00:01:45.520 | or between the different pilots?

00:01:47.440 | - I'll even speak to just that particular mission

00:01:49.520 | they flew there.

00:01:50.360 | And for that particular mission,

00:01:52.200 | it's kind of a chess game with yourself

00:01:55.000 | to get everything in place.

00:01:56.480 | So what kind of flight they flew

00:01:59.080 | is called a high threat scenario,

00:02:00.840 | which means they have to ingress low

00:02:02.920 | due to the surface to air threats,

00:02:05.120 | the integrated air defense systems that are nearby.

00:02:08.040 | And they have to ingress low and pop up

00:02:09.720 | like we see in the movie.

00:02:11.320 | And in that particular movie, that was a pre-planned strike.

00:02:13.920 | They knew exactly where they were going.

00:02:15.640 | But there's a scenario where we have to operate

00:02:17.640 | in that type of environment,

00:02:18.640 | and we don't know exactly where we're gonna strike,

00:02:20.720 | or we're gonna be adapting to real-time targets.

00:02:23.400 | And so in that scenario, you would have one of those fighters

00:02:26.000 | down low like that, operating as a mission commander,

00:02:28.760 | as a forward air controller.

00:02:30.320 | And he's out there calling shots,

00:02:32.160 | joining on those other players

00:02:33.560 | in order to ensure they're pointed at the right target.

00:02:35.680 | So that's a bit of the chess game that he'll be playing.

00:02:38.760 | - Can you actually describe,

00:02:39.800 | for people who haven't seen the movie,

00:02:41.600 | what the mission actually is?

00:02:43.440 | - Yeah.

00:02:44.280 | - What's involved in the mission?

00:02:45.120 | - So in this particular mission,

00:02:47.280 | it's kind of what we would call a pre-planned strike.

00:02:49.520 | So there's a known location

00:02:51.000 | that's in a heavily defended area.

00:02:53.360 | And the air crew, in this case,

00:02:55.520 | I believe it was four F-18s on the initial package,

00:02:59.520 | their job was to ingress very low down a canyon

00:03:02.560 | to stay out of the radar window of the surf to air threats.

00:03:06.200 | - What does ingress mean?

00:03:07.720 | - Ingress means that they're going to be pushing

00:03:09.720 | from a start location towards a target or the objective.

00:03:13.000 | So there's an ingress portion of the mission

00:03:15.040 | and an egress portion of the mission.

00:03:16.480 | - Oh, okay.

00:03:18.840 | Like the entrance and the exit type of thing.

00:03:21.160 | Got it.

00:03:22.000 | - But it changes our mindset tactically quite a bit, right?

00:03:24.520 | 'Cause when we're entering someplace,

00:03:26.000 | we have the option to enter.

00:03:27.880 | But when we go drop a bomb on a location we're exiting,

00:03:31.320 | we don't have that luxury, we don't have that option.

00:03:33.760 | So it actually changes our tactics and our aggression level.

00:03:37.440 | - Got it.

00:03:38.280 | And so they were flying low to the ground

00:03:40.360 | and then there's a surface to air missiles

00:03:43.840 | that force them to have to fly low.

00:03:47.160 | Is that a realistic thing?

00:03:48.600 | - It is realistic.

00:03:49.760 | So driving those aircraft in the clutter,

00:03:51.860 | all radar systems or most I should say

00:03:54.920 | are essentially line of sight.

00:03:57.280 | And so they're gonna be limited by the horizon

00:03:59.160 | or any clutter out there.

00:04:00.640 | And even a number of radars,

00:04:02.520 | if they are located up high and looking down

00:04:04.860 | towards that aircraft, the clutter,

00:04:07.400 | all the objects such as trees and canyons

00:04:11.460 | can have effect on radar systems.

00:04:13.520 | And so it can be a type of camouflage.

00:04:16.280 | - So that's the camouflage for the radar,

00:04:17.840 | but what about the surface to air missile?

00:04:21.160 | Is that a legitimate way to avoid missiles

00:04:24.240 | as flies solo, like fly I guess below their level?

00:04:29.240 | - As far as I know, you can fly under any radar right now.

00:04:34.440 | We don't have necessarily radars

00:04:36.160 | that can look through anything.

00:04:37.900 | So there is always gonna be the ability to mask yourself.

00:04:41.620 | But with a larger number of assets

00:04:43.400 | and distributed communication networks,

00:04:45.680 | where those radars are looking

00:04:47.520 | makes all the difference.

00:04:48.480 | And I said they're ingressing pass an IADS

00:04:51.000 | and that's an integrated air defense system.

00:04:52.940 | And that linking of air defense systems

00:04:55.560 | is what makes it so hard, so complicated

00:04:58.920 | is that the sensors and the weapons

00:05:00.540 | are disassociated from each other.

00:05:02.380 | So that if you took out the target

00:05:04.800 | that was shooting at you,

00:05:06.080 | it still has ability to intercept you

00:05:09.120 | from another radar location.

00:05:11.440 | So it's distributed and it's stronger that way.

00:05:14.920 | - You mean the surface to air missiles,

00:05:17.560 | like it's a distributed system

00:05:20.840 | in that if you take out one,

00:05:22.680 | they're still able to sort of integrate information

00:05:26.040 | about your location and strike at you.

00:05:28.280 | - Correct.

00:05:29.100 | And there's a lot of complication that can go

00:05:31.120 | once we start thinking about distributed systems like that

00:05:33.440 | and the ability to self heal and repair

00:05:35.520 | and adapt to losses.

00:05:38.600 | It's an interesting area.

00:05:39.880 | - Are you responsible for thinking about that

00:05:41.880 | when you're flying an airplane?

00:05:43.480 | - To some degree.

00:05:45.120 | When we ingress to an area like that,

00:05:47.040 | we're presented with information about targets,

00:05:50.080 | air to air or air to surface,

00:05:52.080 | or surface to air, I should say.

00:05:54.040 | And we can essentially see where essentially

00:05:57.680 | the danger zone, if you will, is located.

00:06:00.400 | And so essentially we would stay out of that.

00:06:02.320 | And so having a full picture of the environment

00:06:05.880 | is extremely important because at the end of the day,

00:06:08.440 | if we go in that circle, we can die pretty quickly.

00:06:10.480 | So it's absolutely crucial.

00:06:12.720 | - So there's regions that have higher and lower danger

00:06:16.280 | based on your understanding of the actual,

00:06:17.880 | whatever the surface to air missile systems are.

00:06:22.040 | So you can kind of know.

00:06:24.200 | That's interesting.

00:06:25.080 | I wonder how automated that could be too,

00:06:26.880 | especially when you don't know.

00:06:29.360 | It seems like in the movie they knew

00:06:30.800 | the location of everything.

00:06:32.120 | I imagine that's less known in most cases.

00:06:37.440 | And also a lot of those systems might be

00:06:40.120 | a little bit more ghetto, if I can use that technical term.

00:06:43.560 | Like I've gotten ad hoc maybe is the, I don't know.

00:06:48.560 | But having just recently visited Ukraine

00:06:52.320 | and seen a lot of aspects of the way that war is fought,

00:06:55.320 | there's a lot of improvised type of systems.

00:06:58.080 | So you take high tech, like advanced technology,

00:07:01.840 | but the way you deploy it and the way you organize it

00:07:04.200 | is very improvised and ad hoc and is responding

00:07:08.600 | to the uncertainty in the dynamic environment.

00:07:11.200 | And so from an enemy perspective

00:07:13.840 | or whoever's trying to deal with that kind of system,

00:07:16.720 | it's hard to figure it out because it's like me.

00:07:19.240 | I played tennis for a long time

00:07:22.040 | and it's always easier to play, this is true for all sports,

00:07:25.800 | play tennis against a good tennis player

00:07:27.360 | versus a crappy tennis player.

00:07:29.200 | 'Cause the crappy tennis player is full of uncertainty.

00:07:32.440 | And that's really difficult to deal with.

00:07:34.280 | It seemed like in the movie

00:07:35.400 | the systems were really well organized.

00:07:38.960 | And so you could plan.

00:07:40.880 | - And there's a very nice ravine

00:07:41.920 | that went right down the middle of them.

00:07:43.400 | That's how movies work, isn't it?

00:07:44.840 | - Yeah.

00:07:45.680 | But no, I absolutely agree.

00:07:47.320 | So what you say is a very good point.

00:07:50.560 | And as if we were to take a chunk of airspace

00:07:54.520 | and break it up into little bits,

00:07:56.360 | there'd be places that are better to fly

00:07:58.040 | or less good to fly.

00:08:00.240 | And we are seeing that now

00:08:02.640 | with what they call manned unmanned teaming.

00:08:05.280 | We see tactical aircraft or some type of aircraft

00:08:08.520 | or platform that's being automated.

00:08:11.160 | And it's not being automated in traditional sense

00:08:13.560 | where people think air crew are flying them around

00:08:15.520 | to conduct missions,

00:08:16.360 | but it's very high level objective-orientated

00:08:20.200 | mission planning that allows the air crew

00:08:22.600 | to act more as a mission planner, mission commander

00:08:26.520 | versus having to just pick the right assets

00:08:28.560 | or fly them around or manipulate them somewhat physically.

00:08:34.000 | - So actually going back to the chess thing,

00:08:36.000 | can you elaborate on what you mean

00:08:37.840 | playing a game of chess with yourself?

00:08:40.240 | What's, when you're flying that mission,

00:08:42.320 | what exactly do you mean by that?

00:08:43.720 | - Well, there's a few people you're usually fighting against

00:08:46.080 | in the air.

00:08:47.040 | There's the bad guys

00:08:48.160 | and then there's physics and mother nature, right?

00:08:52.320 | So when we're down at about 100 feet,

00:08:56.440 | it's a chess game to stay alive for the pilot

00:08:58.640 | and it's a chess game for the wizard

00:09:00.240 | to process the information he needs

00:09:02.600 | and then communicate it to all those other aircraft

00:09:04.840 | that were flying around to ensure

00:09:06.400 | that they're putting their weapons on the right target.

00:09:08.400 | - What's the wizard?

00:09:09.520 | - Wizard is a weapons systems officer.

00:09:11.320 | He's a backseater who is not a pilot,

00:09:13.560 | but they're responsible for radar manipulation

00:09:16.000 | and communications and weapons deployments of certain natures.

00:09:19.880 | - So the chess game is against physics, against the enemy.

00:09:23.180 | - Time.

00:09:25.720 | - Time.

00:09:26.640 | What about your own psychology, fear, uncertainty?

00:09:31.120 | - No.

00:09:31.960 | (both laughing)

00:09:33.240 | No, there's no time for that type of self-reflection

00:09:35.320 | while we're flying.

00:09:36.280 | I wanna get to that,

00:09:39.560 | but I don't wanna forget the point that you made

00:09:42.000 | about increased randomness being a tactical advantage.

00:09:45.280 | As you mentioned, you can introduce autonomy into there

00:09:49.800 | and when you bring autonomy in there,

00:09:51.960 | and my expectation would be as we bring different abilities

00:09:55.200 | and machine learning, as we gather more data,

00:09:57.560 | we're gonna be able to bring the tactical environment

00:10:00.720 | around that jet, that the war space that it goes into

00:10:03.120 | will almost be at a stochastic level

00:10:05.000 | from the enemy's perspective,

00:10:06.200 | where it'll almost seem like every tactical environment

00:10:09.320 | they go in will be random and yet very deadly

00:10:11.760 | because the system is providing a new tactical solution,

00:10:16.760 | essentially, for that particular scenario,

00:10:19.040 | instead of just training to particular tactics

00:10:21.960 | that have to be repeatable and trainable and lethal, right?

00:10:24.940 | But not necessarily the most lethal

00:10:26.320 | because they have to be trainable.

00:10:28.280 | But if we can introduce AI into that

00:10:30.400 | and to have a level of randomness

00:10:32.800 | or at least the appearance of randomness

00:10:34.120 | due to the complexity,

00:10:35.220 | I would consider it like a stochastic tactical advantage

00:10:39.160 | because even our own blue fighters

00:10:40.600 | wouldn't be able to engage in that fight

00:10:41.960 | because it would be unsafe, essentially, for anything else.

00:10:45.680 | And I think that's where we have to drive to

00:10:47.560 | because otherwise, it's always this chicken and mouse

00:10:49.360 | cat game about who's tactics and who knows what.

00:10:51.920 | But if knowledge is no longer a factor,

00:10:54.680 | it's gonna make things a lot different.

00:10:56.480 | - That's really interesting.

00:10:57.320 | So out of the many things that are part of your expertise,

00:11:02.320 | your journey, you're also working on autonomous

00:11:06.760 | and semi-autonomous systems,

00:11:08.280 | the use of AI and machine learning

00:11:09.640 | and manned-on-man teaming, all that kind of stuff.

00:11:12.160 | We'll talk about it.

00:11:14.000 | But you're saying, sort of, when people think about

00:11:17.080 | the use of AI in war, in military systems,

00:11:20.560 | they think about computer vision for perception

00:11:23.940 | or processing of sensor information

00:11:26.720 | in order to extract from it actionable knowledge

00:11:29.720 | kind of thing.

00:11:30.560 | But you're saying you could also use it

00:11:32.280 | to generate randomness that's difficult to work with

00:11:37.280 | in a game-theoretic way.

00:11:39.880 | Like, it's difficult for human operators to respond to.

00:11:43.520 | - Exactly.

00:11:44.440 | - That's really interesting.

00:11:45.460 | Okay, so back to Tom Cruise and Tom Gunn.

00:11:48.800 | What about the dogfighting?

00:11:51.440 | What aspects of that were accurate?

00:11:53.640 | - So dogfighting is kind of an interesting conversation

00:11:58.160 | because it's not the most tactically relevant

00:12:00.200 | skill set nowadays by traditional standards

00:12:03.680 | because the ranges with which we engage

00:12:06.080 | and employ weapons are very significant.

00:12:09.240 | And so if we're in a scenario where we're in a dogfight

00:12:11.940 | like that, a lot of things have probably gone wrong, right?

00:12:15.560 | And that's kind of how this mission was set up, right?

00:12:17.880 | It was a no-win type scenario, most likely.

00:12:21.680 | And so for a dogfight, the aircraft size and the ranges

00:12:24.720 | and the turn radiuses make it so it's not very theatrical.

00:12:28.000 | The aircraft looks small, and while it's intense

00:12:30.380 | with the systems I have and the sensors

00:12:32.520 | and what I'm feeling and all that,

00:12:34.160 | we've done it and we've done it, right?

00:12:36.480 | We take video of that and it's just like a blue sky

00:12:38.760 | and you see a little dot out there.

00:12:39.800 | So not very interesting.

00:12:40.760 | And so anytime it really looks interesting

00:12:42.960 | in dogfight arena, that's most likely fiction

00:12:46.560 | 'cause we really only get close for a millisecond

00:12:49.160 | as we're zipping past each other at the merge.

00:12:50.960 | - You're breaking my heart, right?

00:12:52.120 | - I know, I'm sorry. - You're breaking my heart.

00:12:54.320 | No, I understand.

00:12:55.160 | - In a dogfight, you can go out and have fun,

00:12:56.480 | but in a dogfight specifically.

00:12:58.360 | - Maybe that was more common in the earlier wars,

00:13:00.720 | the World War II and before that,

00:13:02.760 | where the, is it due to the sort of the range

00:13:06.720 | and the effectiveness of the weapon systems involved?

00:13:09.280 | - Correct. - Basically.

00:13:10.120 | - And the accuracy of the targeting systems at range.

00:13:12.720 | But there's also a train of thought

00:13:15.320 | that hasn't necessarily been tested out yet,

00:13:17.000 | which is with the advent of advanced electronic warfare,

00:13:21.640 | EW and or unmanned assets,

00:13:25.120 | the battle space may get so complex

00:13:27.320 | and missiles may essentially just get dropped

00:13:30.600 | out of the sky or wasted such that you're gonna be in close

00:13:34.360 | with either IR missiles or guns,

00:13:36.480 | if it's a no kidding, you know, must defend type scenario.

00:13:40.920 | - First of all, what's electronic warfare?

00:13:42.880 | - You know, it's basically trying to get control

00:13:44.520 | of electromagnetic spectrum for the interest

00:13:47.600 | of whatever operation is going on.

00:13:49.960 | So in the tactical environment,

00:13:51.480 | a lot of that is trying to deceive the radar

00:13:53.600 | or can we deceive the missile or just, you know,

00:13:55.920 | stop their guy and things of that nature.

00:13:57.960 | - Man, it's a battle in the space of information,

00:14:01.820 | of digital information.

00:14:03.920 | - Yeah, well, F-22 and F-35, right?

00:14:05.920 | F-22 is a big expensive aircraft

00:14:07.680 | and it was made to be a great fighter.

00:14:10.100 | But the F-35 is not as great of a fighter,

00:14:12.340 | but it's an electronic warfare

00:14:14.880 | and mission commander platform of the future,

00:14:18.600 | where information is what's gonna win the war

00:14:20.840 | instead of the best dogfighter.

00:14:22.200 | And so it's interesting dichotomy there.

00:14:24.080 | - What's the best airplane ever made, fighter jet ever made?

00:14:27.440 | - I know the aviators in the audience

00:14:29.520 | are gonna hate my answer because they're gonna want

00:14:32.080 | that sexy, you know, muscly F-14 Tomcat type fighter

00:14:36.320 | or maybe P-51 type aircraft,

00:14:39.120 | but the F-35 is maybe not the best dogfighter,

00:14:43.620 | but it doesn't have to get in a dogfight, right?

00:14:45.960 | It's like how you'd be the best knife fighters,

00:14:47.580 | not getting a knife fight sometimes.

00:14:49.380 | - Lockheed Martin F-35 Lightning II.

00:14:52.540 | It looks pretty sexy.

00:14:53.900 | - There's two real strengths you can have as a fighter.

00:14:55.740 | You can have the ability to kind of outmuscle your fighter,

00:14:59.300 | your opponent and beat them on Gs and power

00:15:02.540 | and raid around on them.

00:15:03.900 | And then there's the other side of that,

00:15:05.700 | which is you can be overly maneuverable.

00:15:09.260 | You can bleed energy quickly.

00:15:11.060 | And that's what the F-18 was good at

00:15:13.140 | because it had to be heavier to land on aircraft carrier.

00:15:15.820 | We had to give it extra bulk,

00:15:17.740 | but it also needs special mechanisms to slow down enough

00:15:20.460 | to land on aircraft carrier.

00:15:21.500 | And so it made it very maneuverable.

00:15:23.060 | And what that leads to a lot of times,

00:15:24.660 | the ability to get maybe the first shot in a fight,

00:15:28.460 | which is very good, but if you do make that sharp turn,

00:15:30.620 | you're gonna bleed a lot of your energy away

00:15:32.220 | and be more susceptible for follow on shots

00:15:34.180 | if that one's less susceptible.

00:15:35.660 | And so there's just kind of aggression, non-aggression game

00:15:38.220 | you can play depending on the type

00:15:39.600 | of aircraft you're fighting.

00:15:40.900 | - Where does the F-35 land on that spectrum?

00:15:43.560 | - The F-35 lands somewhere behind the F-22s.

00:15:46.640 | So there'll probably be a row of F-22s or F-18s

00:15:49.540 | and F-35 will be out back,

00:15:50.920 | but it'll be enabling a lot of the warfare

00:15:52.600 | that's happening in front of it.

00:15:53.440 | - Is it one of the more expensive planes

00:15:55.700 | because of all the stuff on it?

00:15:57.280 | - It certainly is, yeah.

00:15:58.520 | - In the movie, they have Tom Cruise fly it over Mach 10.

00:16:03.800 | So maybe, can you say what are the different speeds

00:16:08.080 | accelerations feel like Mach one, two, three, or hypersonic?

00:16:12.360 | Have you ever flown hypersonic?

00:16:14.400 | - No.

00:16:15.240 | - How tough does it get?

00:16:18.160 | - I'm just gonna call out the BS of ejecting at Mach 10,

00:16:21.080 | just for the record, 'cause in the movie,

00:16:23.440 | there's been, I think, at least one ejection

00:16:25.760 | that was supersonic.

00:16:27.520 | I'll just say, you know, it was not pretty,

00:16:29.000 | but he survived.

00:16:30.320 | So there would have to be some interesting mechanisms

00:16:32.560 | to eject successfully at Mach 10,

00:16:34.320 | but I'll digress on that for the moment.

00:16:36.100 | - Yeah, that seemed very strange.

00:16:37.480 | - And he just walked away from it.

00:16:38.960 | Anyway, so, you know--

00:16:40.240 | - He seemed disheveled.

00:16:41.400 | (laughing)

00:16:44.080 | Okay, it's Tom Cruise.

00:16:45.920 | It's like Chuck Norris or something.

00:16:47.840 | - Indestructible, yeah.

00:16:48.680 | - Indestructible. - That's what it was in age.

00:16:49.760 | - Yeah, but anyway, so what's interesting to say

00:16:54.760 | about the experience as you go up?

00:16:58.400 | Does it get more and more difficult?

00:17:00.560 | - In the end of the day, crossing the sound barrier

00:17:02.240 | is much like crossing the speed limit on the highway.

00:17:04.480 | You don't really notice anything.

00:17:07.160 | To cross that, at least in F-18,

00:17:08.960 | 'cause we have a lot more weight than most fighters,

00:17:10.840 | is typically we'll do that in a descent.

00:17:13.400 | We'll do that full afterburner,

00:17:15.400 | just dumping gas into the engine.

00:17:17.040 | And so that'll get us over the fastest I think I've gone,

00:17:20.400 | was about 1.28.

00:17:21.240 | But what's interesting, people don't realize,

00:17:23.600 | is that if I take that throttle in an afterburner

00:17:26.560 | and I just bring it back, just bring it back to mil,

00:17:29.140 | which is full power, just not afterburner,

00:17:31.680 | the deacceleration is so strong due to the air friction

00:17:34.720 | that it'll throw you forward in your straps.

00:17:36.680 | Almost, I would say, maybe like 70% as strong almost

00:17:40.560 | as trapping on the boat, it's pretty strong.

00:17:43.600 | So it's almost like a reverse car crash

00:17:44.920 | just for the deacceleration.

00:17:45.960 | So the acceleration is usually kind of slow

00:17:48.400 | and you don't feel anything of course

00:17:49.560 | when you're crossing through it,

00:17:50.800 | but the deacceleration's pretty violent.

00:17:52.980 | - The deceleration's violent, huh?

00:17:55.320 | Okay.

00:17:56.840 | But is there a fundamental difference

00:17:59.440 | between Mach 1 and hypersonic, Mach 5 and so on?

00:18:03.400 | Does it require super special training?

00:18:05.960 | And is that something that's used often in warfare

00:18:09.680 | or is it not really that necessary?

00:18:10.680 | - No, so hypersonic human flight, if it exists,

00:18:13.920 | is not something that's employed tactically

00:18:16.200 | in any sense right now that I'm aware of.

00:18:19.000 | So, you know, when I think of hypersonic technology,

00:18:23.240 | I think of missiles and weapon systems

00:18:25.960 | and delivery platform.

00:18:26.840 | I don't think of fighter aircraft necessarily.

00:18:30.040 | I can think of bomber or reconnaissance aircraft perhaps,

00:18:33.640 | but those would be more efficient, very long, long range.

00:18:37.000 | I imagine acceleration would be kind of gentle, honestly.

00:18:40.320 | - The thing you experience is the acceleration,

00:18:42.360 | not the actual speed.

00:18:43.640 | There's been just a small tangent,

00:18:46.520 | a lot of discussion about hypersonic nuclear weapons,

00:18:49.480 | like missiles from Russia, bragging about that.

00:18:54.320 | Is this something that's a significant concern

00:18:56.720 | or is it just a way to flex

00:18:57.920 | about different kinds of weapon systems?

00:19:00.720 | - Hypersonics, I do think, pose a challenge

00:19:03.520 | for our detection systems because there are,

00:19:06.880 | you know, there are design considerations

00:19:10.160 | in these sensor systems as always, right?

00:19:12.200 | When you build them and the technology progresses

00:19:14.480 | to a point where maybe it's not feasible

00:19:16.040 | to use that technology, you know, there's a problem.

00:19:18.000 | But with the, you know, the all domain

00:19:21.160 | and kind of cross domain data linking capabilities we have,

00:19:24.200 | it's less of, you know,

00:19:27.440 | it's more of a integrated picture, I'll say.

00:19:30.240 | And so the hypersonics are really,

00:19:34.320 | what it is is how fast can we detect and destroy a problem?

00:19:36.920 | And you're just shortening the time available to do that.

00:19:39.040 | We call something like that the kill chain, right?

00:19:40.880 | It's from locating a target and identifying it

00:19:44.960 | and, you know, essentially authorizing its destruction

00:19:48.200 | by whatever means, employing,

00:19:50.480 | and then actually following up to ensure

00:19:52.320 | that you did what you said you were going to do

00:19:54.280 | in some sense, right?

00:19:55.120 | Does it need another re-attack, something of that nature.

00:19:57.320 | And so there's an old dog fighting framework you could call

00:20:00.880 | and it's called the OODA loop that kind of made its way

00:20:02.920 | in the engineering of business now,

00:20:04.460 | but the old observe, orientate, decide, act

00:20:06.760 | was initially a fighter mechanism

00:20:09.320 | in order to get inside that kill chain of your opponent

00:20:12.240 | and break it up so that he can't process

00:20:15.320 | his kill chain on you.

00:20:17.160 | And so hypersonics are a way of shortening

00:20:18.760 | those windows of opportunity to react to that.

00:20:23.240 | - I wondered to what, like how much do you have to shorten

00:20:25.760 | it in order for the defense systems not to work anymore?

00:20:29.280 | It seems like it's very, you know,

00:20:31.800 | I'm both often horrified by the thought of nuclear war,

00:20:37.120 | but at the same time wonder what that looks like.

00:20:41.880 | When I dream of extreme competence in defense systems,

00:20:46.080 | I imagine that not a single nuclear weapon

00:20:49.080 | can reach the United States by missile

00:20:51.560 | with the defense systems.

00:20:53.040 | - Defense systems.

00:20:53.880 | - Defense systems.

00:20:54.720 | But then again, I also understand

00:20:56.200 | that these are extremely complicated systems,

00:20:58.960 | the amount of integration required.

00:21:00.800 | And because you're not using them,

00:21:03.760 | I mean, this is, there could be, you know,

00:21:07.080 | there's like an intern somewhere

00:21:08.760 | that like forgot to update the code,

00:21:11.980 | the Fortran code that like is going to be,

00:21:14.120 | make the different, because you don't have the opportunity

00:21:16.640 | to really thoroughly test, which is really scary.

00:21:21.640 | Of course, the systems are probably incredible

00:21:24.200 | if they could be tested,

00:21:25.440 | because they can't be really thoroughly tested

00:21:27.640 | in an actual attack, I wonder.

00:21:32.640 | - I guess one assumption there would be that

00:21:35.840 | these hypersonic missiles would only be launched

00:21:37.800 | and the case would attack.

00:21:39.100 | It'd be interesting if there were other hypersonic objects

00:21:41.960 | that we could use to flex those systems.

00:21:44.840 | - Another thing that actually happened,

00:21:46.280 | I just have a million questions I want to ask you,

00:21:48.200 | it's fascinating to me,

00:21:50.200 | is there's a bird strike on the plane.

00:21:52.520 | Does that happen often?

00:21:53.680 | - Yeah, it's a serious issue.

00:21:54.520 | - And it damaged the engine

00:21:55.840 | and they made it seem like it's a serious,

00:21:57.920 | exactly a serious issue.

00:21:59.220 | - I've hit birds.

00:22:00.560 | I know someone that took a turkey vulture to the face

00:22:04.480 | through the cockpit, right?

00:22:05.840 | Shattered the cockpit, knocked him out.

00:22:08.560 | I think that, actually, I don't know him personally,

00:22:10.640 | but as a story I know from the command I was at,

00:22:12.920 | and I believe the back seater had to punch out

00:22:15.520 | and punch them both out, 'cause he was unconscious,

00:22:17.480 | you know, in the front seat from the bird.

00:22:20.040 | It can kill you from hitting you.

00:22:21.280 | It's like a bowling ball going 250 miles an hour.

00:22:24.300 | It can take out an engine very easily.

00:22:30.440 | Every airport I've flown at in the Navy,

00:22:32.880 | I've had to check the bird condition, if you will,

00:22:36.080 | to see how many birds.

00:22:37.360 | We've had to cancel flights

00:22:38.520 | because there's too many of them around the airport.

00:22:40.800 | Some airports even have bird radars, military airports.

00:22:43.200 | - Is there systems that monitor the bird condition?

00:22:45.920 | - There is, yeah.

00:22:46.880 | There's actual radar systems

00:22:48.160 | and you can go in the certain bases,

00:22:50.920 | you have to call up and they'll tell you what it is

00:22:52.440 | for the day or for that hour,

00:22:53.840 | and other ones have it in their weather report

00:22:56.440 | that goes out over the radio.

00:22:58.760 | - What are some technological solutions to this?

00:23:00.880 | Or is this just because it's a low probability event,

00:23:05.880 | there's no real solution for it?

00:23:07.880 | - I would say it's not a low probability event.

00:23:10.280 | This is happening a lot.

00:23:11.840 | Although the hits themselves aren't necessarily that common,

00:23:14.960 | or I'll say a catastrophic hit,

00:23:16.640 | either a near miss or a hit,

00:23:18.740 | or the pilot having to actively maneuver to avoid it

00:23:21.880 | is pretty common.

00:23:23.040 | And in fact--

00:23:23.880 | - It seems stressful.

00:23:24.700 | - It is, it's so common in fact that we know

00:23:26.480 | that you never wanna try to go over,

00:23:28.240 | or you never wanna go under a bird

00:23:29.700 | if you see it in front of you.

00:23:31.140 | You always wanna try to go over it

00:23:32.240 | because what they'll do immediately if they see you is,

00:23:34.480 | and you startle them,

00:23:35.320 | is they'll bring their wings in and just drop straight down

00:23:37.880 | to try to get out of the path.

00:23:39.060 | It's interesting, I didn't know they did that.

00:23:40.600 | But so if you try to go under them,

00:23:43.280 | they're gonna be dropping into you.

00:23:44.240 | So you typically wanna try to go above them.

00:23:45.840 | - Is this something you can train for or no?

00:23:49.040 | - Is this one of those things you have to really experience?

00:23:50.940 | - It's a skill set that you somewhat train for

00:23:55.080 | in the duties of being a fighter pilot in a sense, right?

00:23:57.460 | Being able to react to your environment very quickly

00:23:59.460 | and make decisions quickly, so.

00:24:01.580 | - Is that one of the more absurd things,

00:24:04.340 | challenges you have to deal with in flying?

00:24:06.620 | Is there other things, sort of maybe weather conditions,

00:24:10.620 | like harsh weather conditions?

00:24:11.740 | Is there something that we maybe don't often think about

00:24:14.540 | in terms of the challenges of flying?

00:24:17.100 | - Birds in a way, aren't a ridiculous threat for us.

00:24:20.380 | It's a safety threat that, anything physical in the air,

00:24:25.380 | is it's something that we really have to be careful about.

00:24:27.440 | Whether we're flying formation off of the aircraft

00:24:29.500 | right next to us, or whether it's a turkey vulture

00:24:32.260 | at 2000 feet or a flock of 5000 birds,

00:24:35.340 | like at the runway and we have to wave off, you know?

00:24:37.620 | And although they're low probability,

00:24:39.760 | a lot of bases will have like actual

00:24:41.500 | environmental protecting agency employees

00:24:44.200 | that are responsible for safely removing migratory birds

00:24:47.760 | or different animals that may be in the runways

00:24:51.560 | or flying about.

00:24:53.320 | - Wow, I didn't know what a turkey vulture is

00:24:55.280 | and it really does look like a mix between a vulture

00:24:57.800 | and a turkey.

00:24:58.640 | - Yeah, they're huge.

00:24:59.480 | - And look kind of dumb, no offense to turkey vultures.

00:25:03.220 | In that movie, who was the enemy nation?

00:25:10.640 | Was it, I mean, I guess they were implying it's Iran.

00:25:15.080 | Or was it Russia?

00:25:17.040 | - I didn't think they were implying

00:25:18.120 | any particular nation state, frankly.

00:25:19.960 | I think they did a somewhat decent job

00:25:22.000 | of having some ambiguous fifth generation fighters.

00:25:26.220 | The location and the stockpile,

00:25:30.380 | like I get how the story kind of insinuates certain things,

00:25:33.240 | but they seemed to do a good job of not having anything

00:25:35.360 | directly pointing to another nation,

00:25:36.800 | which I thought was the good move.

00:25:38.880 | I enjoy these type of movies as an aviator

00:25:42.080 | and as an American, right?

00:25:44.320 | 'Cause it's a feel good movie,

00:25:45.460 | but we shouldn't be celebrating going to war

00:25:48.960 | with any particular country, China, Russia,

00:25:51.400 | whoever may have these weapons.

00:25:52.760 | It's fun to watch, but it would be an incredibly serious

00:25:55.320 | event to be employing these weapons.

00:25:57.840 | - Yeah, and we'll talk about war in general,

00:26:01.040 | because yeah, the movie's kind of celebrating

00:26:04.200 | the human side of things

00:26:07.000 | and also the incredible technology involved,

00:26:08.920 | but there's also the cost of war

00:26:12.400 | and the seriousness of war

00:26:13.840 | and the suffering involved with war,

00:26:16.040 | not just in the fighting, but in the death of civilians

00:26:18.640 | and all those kinds of things.

00:26:20.140 | Well, you were a Navy pilot.

00:26:23.840 | Let's talk a little bit more seriously about this.

00:26:26.800 | And you were twice deployed in the Middle East

00:26:28.800 | flying the F/A-18F Super Hornet.

00:26:32.040 | Can you briefly tell the story of your career

00:26:34.260 | as a Navy pilot?

00:26:35.400 | - Sure.

00:26:36.240 | So I joined the Navy in 2009, right after college.

00:26:40.000 | I went to essentially the officer bootcamp,

00:26:42.960 | officer candidate school.

00:26:44.320 | I applied as a pilot and I got in as a pilot.

00:26:47.300 | That was the advantage of going that way

00:26:48.920 | is that I could essentially choose what I wanted,

00:26:50.720 | and if I got in, great.

00:26:51.800 | If not, I didn't get stuck doing something else.

00:26:54.560 | - So you knew you wanted to be a pilot.

00:26:56.000 | - I did.

00:26:57.400 | I joined, I went through my initial training.

00:26:59.360 | I went through primary flight training

00:27:01.160 | that all aviators go through,

00:27:02.960 | and I did well enough that,

00:27:05.840 | you know, one of the first lessons

00:27:06.760 | they teach you in the Navy is that,

00:27:08.920 | you know, you can have a great career in the Navy

00:27:10.300 | and you can, you know, see the world and do what you want,

00:27:13.080 | but at the end of the day,

00:27:13.920 | it's all about the needs of the Navy and what they need.

00:27:15.640 | So, you know, they may not have the platform you like,

00:27:18.160 | or, you know, you may not necessarily get

00:27:19.460 | to choose your own adventure here.

00:27:21.680 | But I was lucky enough that there was one jet slot

00:27:24.920 | in my class and I was lucky enough,

00:27:26.920 | fortunate enough to get it.

00:27:27.880 | So.

00:27:28.720 | - It was a jet slot.

00:27:29.640 | - So, well, yeah, what that means is that

00:27:31.380 | I was assigned actually tail hook at that point,

00:27:33.760 | which meant I would go train to fly aircraft

00:27:36.440 | that land on aircraft carriers.

00:27:38.520 | And there's essentially three aircraft that do that

00:27:41.800 | at the time, it was the F-18 and the E-2 and the C-2.

00:27:46.800 | C-2 is kind of like the mail truck for the boat.

00:27:51.000 | E-2 is one of the big radar dish on top.

00:27:54.160 | And then there's all the F-18s.

00:27:55.640 | - So, E-2 is comms, is C-2 mail truck?

00:27:59.440 | - Yeah.

00:28:00.280 | - What's that?

00:28:01.120 | - C-2 basically is basically all the mail.

00:28:02.520 | They literally bring them to shore

00:28:04.480 | and they're the ones that bring supplies

00:28:05.700 | to the ship via air and people.

00:28:07.400 | - Sorry if I missed it, is it a plane or is it a helicopter?

00:28:09.960 | - It's a plane.

00:28:10.800 | - Okay.

00:28:11.920 | All right, and the F-18 is a fighter jet.

00:28:13.840 | - Correct.

00:28:14.680 | - Okay.

00:28:15.500 | - So, I selected tail hook, which meant I could get

00:28:17.600 | one of those other ones, but 80% or so are jets.

00:28:20.120 | So, I was in a good spot at that point.

00:28:21.880 | And that's when I went to Myrtie, Mississippi

00:28:23.520 | to fly my first jet, which was the T-45, "Gaashawk."

00:28:28.120 | - Cool, so what kind of plane is that?

00:28:30.200 | Is that what you were doing your training on?

00:28:33.160 | - That's the jet aircraft you get in

00:28:34.800 | before you actually go to the F-18.

00:28:37.520 | It is carrier capable, so go to the boat

00:28:40.400 | for the first time in it during the day,

00:28:42.560 | drop fake bombs, do dog fighting, low levels,

00:28:47.560 | formation flying day and night.

00:28:50.480 | - Well, it's a pretty plane.

00:28:52.280 | - Yeah, and it looks like a cone so that no one hits it.

00:28:54.880 | (both laugh)

00:28:56.400 | - Okay, so it's usually not used for fighting,

00:28:58.360 | it's used for training?

00:28:59.400 | - It's used for training how to fight.

00:29:00.960 | - Got it, so what was that like?

00:29:03.080 | Was that the first time you were

00:29:04.160 | sort of really getting into it?

00:29:06.200 | - Yeah, that was really interesting,

00:29:07.280 | 'cause before that it was a 600 horsepower prop plane.

00:29:10.320 | And going from that to the T-45

00:29:12.440 | is one of the biggest jumps in power

00:29:14.080 | in like Navy machine operation.

00:29:17.520 | - How much horsepower does the T-45 have approximately?

00:29:21.080 | - I don't know, like 15,000 or so.

00:29:23.000 | - So, it's a huge jump from 600,

00:29:24.920 | you said horsepower about?

00:29:26.280 | - Yeah. - Cool, so it's a big,

00:29:27.320 | big leap.

00:29:28.480 | But it's a jet, you know,

00:29:29.720 | so it performs differently, it's faster, right?

00:29:32.320 | What that means, not just 'cause it's faster,

00:29:34.240 | your whole mind needs to be faster.

00:29:35.400 | Everything happens faster in the air now, right?

00:29:37.240 | Those comms happen faster,

00:29:39.240 | your landing gear has to come up faster,

00:29:41.320 | everything just happens faster in a jet.

00:29:42.880 | And so it's a big jump.

00:29:44.240 | And I'll never forget going on my first flight

00:29:47.440 | in that aircraft, it was a formation flight for someone else

00:29:52.360 | and I was just in the back watching

00:29:54.040 | and there was an instructor in the flight.

00:29:55.700 | And so what that means is,

00:29:57.360 | instructor's in a single aircraft

00:29:58.880 | and then there's three or four other aircraft

00:30:00.680 | and they're learning how to do joins

00:30:02.480 | and they're learning how to fly in formation.

00:30:04.520 | And as a new student in the back, it's amazing, right?

00:30:06.640 | 'Cause, you know, photo op time and all this,

00:30:08.740 | like I'm seeing aircraft up close for the first time,

00:30:10.680 | it's awesome.

00:30:11.520 | And on the way back,

00:30:14.660 | we couldn't get our landing gear down, ironically.

00:30:19.240 | So, you know, to make a long story short,

00:30:22.160 | 'cause it's overall not that exciting,

00:30:24.000 | we couldn't get the gear down,

00:30:25.000 | we actually went to go do a control ejection

00:30:27.960 | to the target area where that is,

00:30:29.920 | about 15, 20 miles to the north of the base.

00:30:32.840 | - Wait, did you just say that's not that exciting?

00:30:35.540 | - Well--

00:30:36.460 | - 'Cause that to me is pretty exciting.

00:30:38.360 | First of all, I mean, that must be terrifying,

00:30:43.400 | like early on in your careers,

00:30:45.400 | having seen those things.

00:30:47.080 | Yeah, like how often does that kind of thing happen?

00:30:52.080 | - Decent, more than you would think.

00:30:54.480 | - More than you would think.

00:30:55.320 | - So there was no significant panic,

00:30:57.080 | this is like this understood,

00:30:58.640 | this is what has to be done in this case?

00:31:00.560 | - I think I was probably just too dumb

00:31:02.440 | to realize the significance of it,

00:31:03.880 | 'cause as a new student, you know,

00:31:05.400 | not really appreciating, you know,

00:31:07.040 | just what is ahead of me if we are ejecting.

00:31:09.200 | But at the time it was more, it was just like rote, right?

00:31:12.060 | 'Cause I was back there

00:31:12.900 | and then I went from a observer mode

00:31:14.560 | to a I'm gonna provide you the help that I can provide you

00:31:17.480 | as a member of this crew, you know, mode.

00:31:19.600 | And so it was less about, you know,

00:31:21.720 | on this 20 mile trip and thinking about my,

00:31:25.480 | how vulnerable I am, you know,

00:31:26.840 | we're going through checklists,

00:31:27.840 | we're talking to people, we're getting ready.

00:31:29.480 | So no, it wasn't fearful.

00:31:32.160 | And the whole time we were doing one of these

00:31:33.760 | to try to get the gear down.

00:31:36.080 | So we're unloading the jet and then loading it back

00:31:38.320 | to try to get the gear out with the stick.

00:31:41.080 | And it came down, it came down halfway there,

00:31:45.980 | just on its own.

00:31:47.360 | So it came back around and we did like a safety trap

00:31:50.320 | in case there was a problem with the gear.

00:31:52.240 | And that was my first flight, you know,

00:31:54.960 | a little bit of serendipity,

00:31:56.040 | but I'm gonna fast forward a bit.

00:31:57.800 | And I went back to the squadron as an instructor

00:32:00.320 | about five or six years later.

00:32:02.280 | And I was an aviation safety officer at this point,

00:32:04.760 | which meant I was responsible for investigating mishaps.

00:32:08.360 | And a student went in and he went in the back seat

00:32:13.200 | of a form flight, just like the one I went on.

00:32:17.000 | And he went out and he ended up ejecting on that flight.

00:32:20.200 | Exact same type of flight.

00:32:21.920 | They went out and they had a runaway trim scenario.

00:32:25.040 | And it caused the aircraft essentially

00:32:26.320 | just inverted itself almost 180 degrees

00:32:28.640 | at about 600 feet over the ground.

00:32:31.520 | And they punched out just slightly outside

00:32:33.720 | the ejection window at about 300 or 400 feet or so,

00:32:36.320 | but they were completely fine.

00:32:38.160 | So, you know, and then about two months later,

00:32:42.320 | we had another ejection.

00:32:43.320 | About three months after that, we had another ejection.

00:32:45.280 | So unfortunately, you know,

00:32:47.600 | it can be more common than people think.

00:32:50.040 | - What does it feel like to get ejected?

00:32:52.440 | - Thankfully, I don't know.

00:32:53.720 | I can describe it to you.

00:32:55.240 | I can tell you what it's like from what I've heard,

00:32:58.000 | but I truly think it's one of those things

00:32:59.560 | that you just don't understand until it happens.

00:33:02.480 | It's like instantaneous about 250 Gs,

00:33:05.280 | which is only possible because of inertia and our blood.

00:33:07.800 | Right, so you can actually get like 250, 300 Gs

00:33:10.160 | for like a few milliseconds,

00:33:11.520 | and then it backs off to like 40 or 50 Gs

00:33:14.200 | to get you away from the vehicle itself.

00:33:16.480 | And so, you know, you may lose consciousness if you do,

00:33:21.480 | you know, who knows where you wake up.

00:33:24.160 | You know, you could be in a tree,

00:33:25.040 | you could still be falling, you could be in the water, so.

00:33:28.160 | - The physics of that is fascinating,

00:33:29.520 | how they eject safely.

00:33:31.840 | - Do you know the story about how that was tested at all?

00:33:34.920 | I don't know the full story, but there was an airport.

00:33:37.000 | - I'm guessing nobody knows the full story.

00:33:39.000 | It's probably a lot of shady stuff going on.

00:33:41.480 | But you mean like in the early, early days, or?

00:33:44.400 | - They took a flight dock up to a rocket sled

00:33:46.840 | and just see how much their body could take it.

00:33:49.200 | And he turned a lot of his body into mush

00:33:51.520 | in the process of getting that science done,

00:33:53.600 | but he saved a lot of lives.

00:33:55.760 | - People used to be tougher back in the day.

00:33:59.000 | That's how science used to be done.

00:34:02.720 | So how did your training continue?

00:34:05.880 | So take me further through your career

00:34:08.760 | as you work towards graduating towards the F-18s.

00:34:13.360 | - So in VT-9, where I was a student,

00:34:16.040 | there's two phases, there's an intermediate and an advanced.

00:34:19.560 | Intermediate is getting very comfortable with the aircraft,

00:34:22.200 | and at that point, you truly hear,

00:34:23.800 | "All right, you're going jets now,

00:34:25.360 | "or you're gonna go one of the other aircraft

00:34:27.960 | "that land on the aircraft carrier."

00:34:30.240 | I was told I was going jets at that point.

00:34:33.000 | And then we go into same squadron, same aircraft,

00:34:36.240 | same instructors, but it's called advanced now.

00:34:37.960 | And now we're learning how to dogfight for the first time.

00:34:41.320 | We're doing what we call tactical formation,

00:34:44.360 | which is just like aggressive position keeping.

00:34:46.960 | We are doing dogfighting in low levels

00:34:52.320 | and all sorts of great stuff.

00:34:53.360 | So it's really that first introduction

00:34:55.080 | to that tactical environment

00:34:56.320 | and really putting Gs on the jet

00:34:58.440 | and on your body and maneuvering.

00:35:00.240 | - Is there a tactical formation,

00:35:02.120 | is collaborating with other fighter jets a part of that?

00:35:05.120 | - It is.

00:35:05.960 | - So flying in, that's what you mean by formation?

00:35:08.440 | So literally having an awareness?

00:35:11.080 | Is this done for you,

00:35:12.240 | or are you as a human supposed to understand

00:35:15.240 | like where you are in the formation,

00:35:18.200 | how to maintain formation, all that kind of stuff?

00:35:20.520 | - Yeah, it is.

00:35:21.360 | - Is it done autonomously or manually?

00:35:23.040 | - There's a great autonomy point

00:35:24.480 | on the end of this I've thought about.

00:35:26.000 | But what we do, it's all manual.

00:35:27.360 | So I'm looking at his wing

00:35:29.200 | and I'm looking at different visual checkpoints

00:35:33.120 | that form like a triangle,

00:35:34.680 | like an equal out triangle essentially.

00:35:36.320 | And then as that triangle is no longer equal,

00:35:39.660 | I can tell my relative position against that aircraft.

00:35:42.160 | - That's really cool.

00:35:43.000 | - And so that's what I'm staring at

00:35:44.760 | for sometimes hours on end,

00:35:46.640 | several feet away, doing one of these,

00:35:48.480 | if I'm in the weather, that's all it is.

00:35:50.600 | - So you get, it's almost like,

00:35:51.840 | is it peripheral vision or is it your focal?

00:35:53.320 | - No, we're staring directly at it.

00:35:54.840 | The peripheral is coming on my--

00:35:57.880 | - That's interesting.

00:35:58.720 | - Stuff, right, my sensors and all my instruments.

00:36:01.160 | And so he is my gyroscope at that point.

00:36:04.240 | - While you're flying, not looking straight.

00:36:06.640 | - Correct, I'm flying like this for hours.

00:36:08.600 | - It can hurt your neck.

00:36:09.700 | We don't like doing this as much.

00:36:11.280 | And I don't think it's just me, right?

00:36:12.980 | It's a weird thing where when you're like this,

00:36:14.800 | it's actually harder to fly formation slightly than here

00:36:18.460 | because being in line of your hand movement

00:36:21.700 | and of the aircraft somehow has an effect

00:36:24.620 | on our ability to be more precise and comfortable.

00:36:26.980 | It's strange.

00:36:27.820 | - But so there's a symmetry to the formation usually.

00:36:32.380 | So one of the people on the other side

00:36:34.440 | really don't like being on that side.

00:36:38.140 | - Does it, who gets the short straw?

00:36:40.460 | How do you decide which side of the formation you are?

00:36:43.180 | - The good question too,

00:36:44.020 | because there's kind of rank in some sense.

00:36:46.260 | So if it's a four person formation, right,

00:36:49.380 | you have the division lead

00:36:50.580 | who's qualified to lead a whole division,

00:36:52.340 | but maybe the other ones aren't.

00:36:53.180 | And he has a dash two, and that's his wingman essentially.

00:36:56.580 | And then in a division, there's two other aircraft.

00:36:58.620 | And then you have another senior flight leader

00:37:00.600 | that's the dash three position.

00:37:02.300 | And then you have dash four, the last one.

00:37:05.060 | And if you are all lined up on one side,

00:37:06.860 | like fingertip, one, two, three, four,

00:37:08.900 | that dash four guy is gonna be at the end of that whip.

00:37:10.860 | So if you're flying formation,

00:37:12.500 | each one's making movements relative to the lead,

00:37:15.440 | dash four is kind of at the end of that error.

00:37:19.220 | And so his movements are kind of like a whip.

00:37:21.140 | It's very difficult to fly in that position in close.

00:37:23.340 | - Can you elaborate, is it 'cause of the air,

00:37:25.100 | the air dynamics?

00:37:25.940 | So what's a whip?

00:37:26.860 | - If this is the flight lead and this is dash two,

00:37:28.980 | flight lead is rock steady and just doing his thing.

00:37:30.820 | And flight two is gonna be working that triangle

00:37:32.780 | moving a little bit, right?

00:37:33.980 | And he has this small air bubble

00:37:35.860 | that he's doing his best to stay.

00:37:37.380 | And then, but dash three is flying off dash two.

00:37:39.260 | And so his air bubble is dash two plus his own.

00:37:42.860 | And dash four-- - Okay, so it gets

00:37:43.700 | more and more stressful as you get farther out.

00:37:45.740 | - Yeah.

00:37:46.860 | - Okay.

00:37:48.300 | What's the experience of that,

00:37:49.620 | staring for long periods of time

00:37:52.180 | and trying to maintain formation?

00:37:54.820 | How stressful is that?

00:37:56.300 | Because like, you know, we're doing that when we drive,

00:37:59.860 | staying in lane.

00:38:01.700 | And that becomes, after you get pretty good at it,

00:38:05.100 | it becomes somewhat, it's still stressful,

00:38:07.780 | which actually is surprisingly stressful.

00:38:10.740 | When you look at like lane keeping systems,

00:38:13.140 | they actually relieve that stress somehow.

00:38:15.300 | And it's actually creates a much more pleasant experience

00:38:18.520 | while you're still able to maintain situational awareness

00:38:20.900 | and like stay awake, which is really interesting.

00:38:24.020 | Like, I don't think people realize how stressful it is

00:38:26.340 | to lane keep when they drive.

00:38:29.060 | So this is even more stressful.

00:38:31.100 | So are you, do you think about that?

00:38:34.860 | Or is this, yeah, I guess how stressful is it

00:38:37.380 | from a psychology perspective?

00:38:39.260 | - It's very stressful.

00:38:40.420 | So I taught students how to do this as well.

00:38:43.620 | And so at our feet, we have two rudders.

00:38:46.100 | And if I'm flying off of a flight lead over here,

00:38:48.900 | what you'll find a lot of times is you'll be flying,

00:38:51.540 | like if I'm the instructor and the student's flying,

00:38:53.460 | I'll start to notice that he's having a harder

00:38:55.180 | and harder time keeping position.

00:38:57.020 | What I'll notice typically is he's locked out his leg.

00:38:59.900 | They'll lock out the leg that's closest

00:39:01.780 | to the aircraft they're flying against

00:39:03.820 | and push on the rudder subconsciously

00:39:06.060 | 'cause their whole body's trying to get away

00:39:07.240 | from the aircraft 'cause they're so uncomfortable

00:39:08.740 | being close to it.

00:39:09.940 | And so I'll tell them, I can fix their form

00:39:12.280 | with just a couple words.

00:39:13.180 | I'll say, wiggle your toes.

00:39:14.940 | And they'll wiggle their toes and they'll realize,

00:39:16.540 | and they'll loosen all the muscles in their legs

00:39:18.180 | 'cause they realize they've been locked up

00:39:19.820 | and their formation flying will get a lot better.

00:39:22.420 | And so, you know, there's a lot of stress

00:39:24.580 | associated with that.

00:39:25.980 | There's some interesting psychological

00:39:28.980 | or visual issues such as vertigo as you're flying.

00:39:33.980 | So if you're flying with him

00:39:36.820 | and then you fly right into a cloud, right?

00:39:38.740 | That's when it's very stressful

00:39:39.740 | because you have to be very close

00:39:41.060 | in order to maintain visual.

00:39:42.060 | And you might be on a thunderstorm, right?

00:39:44.420 | And so you have to be very tight.

00:39:45.620 | You might start raining and then he's turning,

00:39:48.460 | but you might not even know that.

00:39:50.440 | You might not even be able to see that turn.

00:39:52.340 | And so all of a sudden you might look

00:39:54.120 | while you're in a turn thinking you were straight and level

00:39:56.100 | and you look just maybe back at your instruments very quick

00:39:58.780 | and you realize you're like in a 30 degree turn

00:40:01.060 | and your whole concept of where you are in the world

00:40:03.940 | starts getting very confused.

00:40:05.300 | And you immediately get this sense of,

00:40:08.360 | it's weird, like I look at the HUD

00:40:10.700 | and it feels, all my senses are telling me it's spinning,

00:40:13.320 | but it's not, you know?

00:40:14.160 | And so I have to trust my instruments

00:40:15.820 | even though it feels like it's spinning.

00:40:17.060 | And the same thing can happen

00:40:18.740 | when you're flying formation off of someone

00:40:20.420 | and it can be very dangerous and disorientating.

00:40:25.040 | - But the point is to try to regain awareness

00:40:28.960 | by trusting the instruments,

00:40:30.200 | like distrust all your human senses

00:40:33.800 | and just use the instruments

00:40:35.000 | to rebuild situational awareness.

00:40:37.500 | - Not in this particular case

00:40:38.980 | because our situational awareness is predicated

00:40:42.240 | off of our flight lead.

00:40:43.280 | So in a sense, I'm just trusting his movements.

00:40:45.480 | And so he's my gyroscope, but you're absolutely right.

00:40:47.500 | And if I was by myself, I would trust my instruments,

00:40:49.720 | but I can't just stop flying form and trust my instruments

00:40:52.120 | because now I'm gonna hit him.

00:40:52.960 | - Oh yeah, you have to pay attention to him.

00:40:54.400 | - So he's my reference.

00:40:56.040 | - So the instruments are not helping you significantly

00:40:58.640 | with his positioning.

00:41:00.080 | - Not, it's all completely manual.

00:41:02.540 | - So is there a future where some of that is autonomous?

00:41:06.120 | - Yeah, and I've thought about automating

00:41:07.800 | that flight regime, but when I started thinking about it,

00:41:11.960 | I realized that all the formation keeping that we do

00:41:16.400 | is designed to enhance the aviators'

00:41:20.600 | ability to maintain sight, right?

00:41:23.760 | So we fly very tight formation so that we can go in weather

00:41:26.320 | and to reduce groups of traffic coming into the boat.

00:41:30.420 | We fly in one particular position

00:41:33.120 | so that all of the flight crew can look down the line

00:41:36.900 | and see the flight lead.

00:41:38.120 | So everything has to do with the two air crew

00:41:43.000 | visually maintaining sight of each other

00:41:45.000 | and defending each other, right?

00:41:47.020 | In a combat spread, I might be looking,

00:41:49.640 | I may be three miles away from him flying formation,

00:41:52.040 | directly beam and looking around

00:41:53.840 | and make sure nothing's there.

00:41:55.160 | So as I'm looking into automating this process,

00:41:57.360 | I thought, well, you know, sure it's easy

00:42:00.160 | to get a bunch of aircraft to fly in formation

00:42:02.640 | off each other, right?

00:42:03.560 | It's trivial, but why?

00:42:05.160 | You know, what is the best formation?

00:42:06.720 | Why are they doing that?

00:42:07.640 | And that opened up a much more interesting regime

00:42:10.120 | of operations and flight mechanics.

00:42:12.480 | And that's when we get back to that kind of stochastic

00:42:14.480 | mindset where we can bring in aircraft close

00:42:16.860 | to do some type of normal flying

00:42:18.360 | or reduce congestion around airports.

00:42:21.100 | But when we consider formation in a tactical environment,

00:42:24.520 | we can be much more effective

00:42:25.820 | with non-traditional formation keeping

00:42:27.840 | or perhaps no formation keeping perhaps.

00:42:30.240 | - So autonomy used for formation keeping,

00:42:32.640 | not for convenience, but for the introduction

00:42:35.080 | of randomness that's smart to--

00:42:36.960 | - Like to a real-time mission planner, yeah.

00:42:39.000 | - And then that's where you also have

00:42:40.240 | some human modification.

00:42:42.480 | So it's like unmanned teaming enters that picture.

00:42:47.240 | So you use some of the human intuition

00:42:51.380 | and adjustment of this formation.

00:42:53.820 | The formation itself has some uncertainty.

00:42:56.060 | I mean, it's such an interesting dance.

00:42:57.860 | I think that is the most fascinating application

00:43:02.860 | of artificial intelligence is when it's human-AI

00:43:05.660 | collaboration, that semi-autonomous dance

00:43:09.260 | that you see in these semi-autonomous vehicle systems

00:43:12.340 | in terms of cars driving, but also in the safety

00:43:16.900 | critical situation of a airplane, of a fighter jet,

00:43:20.620 | especially when you're flying fast.

00:43:22.980 | I mean, in a split second, you have to make

00:43:25.460 | all these kinds of decisions.

00:43:26.600 | And it feels like an AI system can do

00:43:29.760 | as much harm as it can help.

00:43:31.220 | And so to get that right is a really fascinating challenge.

00:43:35.580 | - One of the challenges too, isn't just the algorithms

00:43:37.980 | of the autonomy itself, but how it senses the environment.

00:43:41.660 | That of course is gonna be what all these decisions

00:43:44.300 | are based off of.

00:43:45.140 | And that's a challenge in this type of environment.

00:43:48.060 | - Well, I gotta ask, so F-18, what's it like

00:43:51.340 | to fly a fighter jet as best?

00:43:54.020 | I mean, what to you is beautiful, powerful?

00:43:58.700 | What do you love about the experience of flying?

00:44:02.100 | - For me, and I think I'm an outlier a bit,

00:44:04.740 | it wasn't necessarily the flying itself, right?

00:44:08.580 | It wasn't necessarily the soaring over the clouds

00:44:12.220 | and looking down at the earth from upside down.

00:44:16.220 | I came to love that, but it wasn't necessarily

00:44:18.900 | the passion that drove me there.

00:44:19.940 | I just had no exposure to that.

00:44:21.940 | The only exposure I had was reading and going in the woods

00:44:26.060 | and science fiction and all that.

00:44:28.620 | And so what seemed to kind of drive me towards that

00:44:31.900 | was just a desire to really be operating as close

00:44:35.140 | to what I thought was the edge of technology or science.

00:44:38.720 | And that's the path that I chose

00:44:40.300 | to try to get close to that.

00:44:41.860 | I thought that being in a fighter jet

00:44:43.940 | and all the tools and the technology

00:44:48.300 | and the knowledge and the challenges

00:44:51.540 | and the failures and victories that would come with that

00:44:54.460 | just seemed like something that I wanted to be a part of.

00:44:59.060 | And it wasn't necessarily about the flying,

00:45:00.660 | but it was about the challenge.

00:45:01.900 | And like I said, as a person from a small town,

00:45:06.260 | a small high school, being able to get my hands

00:45:09.140 | or even just near something of such technological

00:45:12.140 | significance was kind of empowering for me.

00:45:15.500 | And that's kind of what bore the love of flight from there.

00:45:18.500 | Having some level of mastery in that aircraft,

00:45:21.860 | it really feels like an extension of your body.

00:45:24.020 | And once I got there, then the kind of love of flying

00:45:27.460 | kind of followed.

00:45:28.880 | - So you sort of, one is the man mastery over the machine.

00:45:33.140 | And second is the machine is like the greatest thing

00:45:35.540 | that humans have ever created, arguably.

00:45:38.180 | The things that Lockheed Martin and others have built.

00:45:41.940 | I mean, the engineering in that.

00:45:43.700 | However you feel about war,

00:45:48.940 | which is one of the sad things about human civilization

00:45:51.420 | is war inspires the engineering of tools that are incredible.

00:45:56.420 | And it's like, maybe without war,

00:46:02.420 | if we look at human history,

00:46:03.680 | we would not build some of the incredible things we built.

00:46:06.660 | So in order to win wars, to stop wars,

00:46:09.660 | we build these incredible systems that perhaps propagate war.

00:46:14.660 | And that's another discussion I'll ask you about.

00:46:17.420 | But this, to you, this is like,

00:46:20.080 | this is a chance to experience the greatest engineering

00:46:24.460 | humans have ever been able to do.

00:46:26.640 | Like similar, I suppose, that astronauts feel like

00:46:31.140 | when they're flying.

00:46:31.980 | - And I wanted to be an astronaut.

00:46:32.980 | I wanted to take that route.

00:46:34.580 | I was gonna apply to test pilot school.

00:46:37.120 | It just didn't work out for me.

00:46:40.200 | I ended up having a broken foot during my window,

00:46:42.400 | but long story short,

00:46:43.740 | I ended up after my time in my fleet squadron,

00:46:46.700 | and we can get back to the rest of the timeline if you want,

00:46:48.500 | but I went to be an instructor pilot instead.

00:46:53.500 | And then, I was talking about this

00:46:56.760 | with a squadron mate earlier today

00:46:58.800 | about how I certainly wouldn't be talking with Lex today

00:47:01.940 | if I ended up going to test pilot school.

00:47:04.420 | - Why is that?

00:47:05.260 | - I never would have had the,

00:47:07.660 | I wouldn't, maybe recklessness, I don't know,

00:47:12.180 | but the willingness to have a conversation about UAP

00:47:15.940 | while I was, you know,

00:47:17.900 | that led me to the decision to get out once I went there.

00:47:20.720 | And it kind of enabled me to talk about UAP more publicly.

00:47:25.720 | And if I stayed in the Navy,

00:47:28.020 | then I don't think that would have happened.

00:47:29.580 | I wouldn't have been able to if I went that route.

00:47:33.300 | - Well, as a small tangent,

00:47:35.020 | do you hope to travel to Mars one day?

00:47:37.180 | Do you think you'll step foot on Mars one day?

00:47:39.480 | - If you asked me that five years ago,

00:47:42.020 | I would have said yes, I want to.

00:47:44.580 | In fact, I would like to die on Mars.

00:47:46.420 | - Not today.

00:47:49.300 | - Now I have some hesitations,

00:47:50.980 | and I have some hesitations

00:47:52.140 | because I'm hopeful and optimistic.

00:47:54.820 | And I think that, you know,

00:47:56.580 | I think that we are truly like on the brink

00:47:59.060 | of a very wide technological revolution

00:48:01.980 | that's going to kind of move us

00:48:03.740 | how we used to move information and data

00:48:07.260 | in this last century.

00:48:09.220 | We're gonna be manipulating and managing matter

00:48:11.300 | in that next century.

00:48:12.140 | And so I think that, I think our reach as humans

00:48:15.660 | are gonna get a lot wider,

00:48:16.820 | a lot faster than people may realize, or at least.

00:48:19.860 | - Wait, are you getting like super ambitious beyond Mars?

00:48:22.660 | Is that what you're saying?

00:48:23.580 | - Well, I mean.

00:48:24.780 | - Like Mars seems kind of boring.

00:48:26.260 | I want to go beyond that.

00:48:28.940 | - Do you mean the reach of humanity

00:48:31.420 | across all kinds of technologies,

00:48:32.820 | or do you mean literally across space?

00:48:34.420 | - Across space, you know.

00:48:35.740 | So we're gonna be, I think that as artificial intelligence

00:48:39.460 | and machine learning start broaching further

00:48:41.340 | into the topic of science, or the area of science,

00:48:43.780 | and we start working through new physics,

00:48:45.780 | we start working through,

00:48:47.220 | or I should say past the Einsteinian frameworks,

00:48:50.300 | as we kind of get a better idea

00:48:51.620 | of what space-time is or isn't.

00:48:54.000 | We may have, we may find, you know,

00:48:56.900 | answers that we didn't know that we were looking for,

00:48:58.860 | and we may have more opportunity.

00:49:00.540 | And I'm not saying this is something

00:49:02.220 | I'm betting the farm on, of course,

00:49:04.100 | but maybe that's a road I want to explore on Earth

00:49:07.620 | instead of on Mars.

00:49:09.580 | Maybe there's technology that can be brought to bear

00:49:12.380 | with new science and harder engineering

00:49:14.520 | that is a road that doesn't go past Mars

00:49:16.660 | to get outside the solar system.

00:49:18.260 | - So there's different ways to explore the universe

00:49:22.340 | than the traditional rocket systems.

00:49:26.260 | If we can continue sort of your journey,

00:49:29.660 | you said that you were attracted

00:49:33.740 | to the incredibly advanced technologies of the F-18s

00:49:38.580 | and just the fighter jets in general.

00:49:40.640 | Let me ask another question,

00:49:44.760 | which seems incredibly difficult to do,

00:49:47.180 | which is landing on a carrier,

00:49:50.020 | or taking off from a carrier and landing on a carrier.

00:49:52.220 | So what's that like?

00:49:54.500 | What are the challenges of that?

00:49:56.300 | - Taking off is pretty easy.

00:49:57.860 | It's procedurally somewhat complex,

00:50:00.380 | where there's a lot of moving parts, almost like a clock.

00:50:02.760 | You know, you're almost in a pocket watch,

00:50:04.580 | so it's sense and you're a part of the machinery.

00:50:06.860 | And so long as you press the right buttons

00:50:08.600 | and do the right things,

00:50:09.440 | then you're gonna go shooting off the front.

00:50:11.020 | - So there's like a checklist to follow,

00:50:12.380 | and there's several people involved in that checklist,

00:50:14.380 | and you just gotta follow the checklist correctly.

00:50:16.460 | - Essentially, yep.

00:50:17.620 | Lots of ways to screw it up,

00:50:18.700 | but you'll know how to screw it up.

00:50:20.900 | But landing on the back of the boat

00:50:22.420 | is a whole different animal.

00:50:24.460 | There's a lot more variables.

00:50:26.820 | There's essentially one or two people responsible

00:50:29.340 | for the success of that.

00:50:31.620 | The landing signal officer,

00:50:33.580 | who actually represents a team of specially trained aviators

00:50:37.540 | who are responsible for helping that aviator

00:50:39.660 | land on the boat,

00:50:40.680 | and the pilot himself.

00:50:44.260 | And it is a hard task to actually fly precisely enough

00:50:49.260 | to be good at it.

00:50:50.340 | So to fly, quote unquote, the perfect pass,

00:50:53.620 | you essentially have to fly your head

00:50:54.820 | through a one foot by one foot box.

00:50:57.060 | That's essentially the target you're shooting for.

00:51:00.040 | Plus or minus probably about five knots on airspeed,

00:51:02.620 | although we don't really judge it by airspeed.

00:51:04.620 | It's something called angle of attack,

00:51:06.500 | but generally, pretty tight parameters there.

00:51:09.500 | And you can do everything perfect and still fail.

00:51:11.940 | So when we go to touchdown,

00:51:13.340 | we immediately bring the power up,

00:51:14.860 | and we rotate as if we were bouncing off the deck.

00:51:19.860 | And if we catch it, then we slow down,

00:51:23.580 | and then someone tells us to bring the power back,

00:51:25.180 | which we do, we don't do it on our own,

00:51:27.460 | 'cause it's such a violent experience.

00:51:29.780 | You can think you're trapped or not,

00:51:31.780 | or something breaks and you bring your throttle back.

00:51:34.260 | And that's a very serious thing.

00:51:35.740 | It happened to the best of us.

00:51:37.260 | I've done it once when I first got to the squadron.

00:51:39.920 | It's called Ease Guns Land.

00:51:42.700 | And so I came in the boat and I brought the power,

00:51:45.700 | I cracked the power back a little bit

00:51:47.060 | before I've been told to,

00:51:48.660 | or that my aircraft had finished settling in,

00:51:51.540 | and that was a big faux pas, right?

00:51:52.860 | So especially as a new guy.

00:51:53.940 | So it's a very serious business.

00:51:57.500 | There's a lot of eyes on you,

00:51:58.460 | and there's a lot of ways to screw it up.

00:52:00.100 | But the physical rush of having a great pass,

00:52:03.380 | and then there's just the crash into the boat,

00:52:06.700 | and all that, the physical sensation from it,

00:52:09.140 | when everything's going great,

00:52:10.620 | it's top of the world, it's a great feeling.

00:52:12.620 | - How much of it is feel?

00:52:13.580 | How much of it is instruments?

00:52:16.640 | How much is other people just doing the work for you,

00:52:18.620 | catching you, as long as you do everything right?

00:52:20.720 | - There's a few systems we use.

00:52:21.860 | One is called the BAL,

00:52:23.180 | and that BAL is External Tour Aircraft.

00:52:26.060 | And it's-- - B-A-L-L, BAL?

00:52:27.940 | - Correct. - BAL, okay.

00:52:28.780 | - It's a IFLOS landing system,

00:52:31.480 | which stands for something very long, convoluted.

00:52:33.420 | But essentially it's a mirror with lights on it.

00:52:35.580 | And you see the light at a different cell

00:52:40.540 | based on your position relative to an ideal glide slope.

00:52:44.580 | So if you're right on it, you're right in the middle,

00:52:46.260 | and if you're below, you're low.

00:52:48.100 | And as I add power and maneuver the aircraft,

00:52:51.260 | that ball, I see that ball rise, I see that ball low.

00:52:55.180 | It's a lagging indicator though, right?

00:52:57.100 | And your jet is a lagging engine too, right?

00:53:00.180 | It takes time to spool up the engine.

00:53:01.400 | So that adds to the complexity.

00:53:03.140 | You have to think ahead a bit.

00:53:04.640 | So you don't want to,

00:53:07.020 | you can't just bring the power up and leave it there.

00:53:10.500 | You have to bring the power up, touch it, bring it back.

00:53:13.040 | And oh, by the way, your landing area is moving

00:53:15.360 | not just away from you, but also on an angle, right?

00:53:17.940 | 'Cause we have an angled deck.

00:53:18.980 | And so you're constantly doing one of these

00:53:21.540 | to correct yourself as you go.

00:53:23.540 | - That's so stressful.

00:53:24.460 | - And every time you do one of those,

00:53:26.380 | maybe it's a 30 degree angle bank, right?

00:53:28.500 | I'm losing lift, right?

00:53:30.300 | And so I have to compensate with power each time I do that.

00:53:33.060 | So I'm doing another one of those--

00:53:33.900 | - 'Cause you have to maintain the same level

00:53:37.020 | you're always lowering.

00:53:38.420 | - It's a constant rate of descent that's increasing

00:53:40.320 | from about 200 feet per minute to about 650.

00:53:43.180 | - And every time you do this, that's messing with that.

00:53:45.820 | Okay.

00:53:46.660 | - So you have to compensate.

00:53:47.500 | - And you're doing that manually.

00:53:48.620 | - Do it manually.

00:53:49.460 | All right.

00:53:50.280 | And then of course, as you come down that glide slope,

00:53:52.940 | it becomes more and more narrow

00:53:54.300 | and you have to of course modulate your inputs

00:53:59.300 | such that they're smaller and smaller

00:54:00.780 | 'cause they have a bigger and bigger effect

00:54:01.940 | as you get closer in.

00:54:03.020 | And what happens too when you get in close

00:54:06.040 | is that right before you cross over,

00:54:08.220 | if this is the boat right here, your table,

00:54:10.180 | right before you kind of get your wings

00:54:12.060 | over the boat itself, this big wind

00:54:15.120 | from the main tower of the boat is where it dips down.

00:54:18.420 | So the wind actually goes down and it's called a burble.

00:54:20.500 | It'll actually pull the aircraft down

00:54:21.780 | and increase your rate of descent.

00:54:23.300 | So at that particular point, you need to increase your power

00:54:26.340 | and try to compensate against that.

00:54:27.620 | And so that's kind of a third variable

00:54:28.920 | that's trying to screw you up on your way down.

00:54:31.900 | - What's the most difficult conditions

00:54:34.060 | in which you had to land or you've seen somebody

00:54:35.900 | had to land?

00:54:36.740 | Because I think you were also a signal officer as well.

00:54:40.660 | - I was, yeah.

00:54:41.500 | I was the headlanding signal officer for my squadron.

00:54:44.060 | - So you've probably seen some tough landings.

00:54:46.900 | - I have.

00:54:47.740 | I've seen a ramp strike, which is when a part

00:54:50.900 | of the aircraft hits before the landing area,

00:54:54.900 | which is basically the round out of the boat

00:54:57.460 | that is before the landing area.

00:54:58.580 | So they basically struck the back of the boat coming in.

00:55:01.440 | It was just their hook, so it wasn't the aircraft

00:55:03.840 | and they were fine.

00:55:05.700 | That one was kind of ugly.

00:55:07.220 | - But it like rips that part of the aircraft.

00:55:09.540 | - Absolutely.

00:55:10.380 | - And then you land on your bellies, that kind of thing.

00:55:12.500 | - In this particular case, it hit and then it gave

00:55:15.660 | and it essentially dragged the hook on the surface

00:55:18.180 | after that, and so he was able to grab a wire at that point.

00:55:21.100 | - When does that kind of thing happen?

00:55:22.220 | Just a miscalculation by the pilot

00:55:24.020 | or is it weather conditions?

00:55:27.060 | - I wouldn't even call it a miscalculation.

00:55:28.820 | I mean, I'm gonna put the blame on the pilot

00:55:30.420 | 'cause he's the only one in the cockpit,

00:55:31.660 | but at the end of the day, he's reacting

00:55:33.360 | to the situations he's dealing with.

00:55:35.020 | And so it may be errors or he may be doing the best

00:55:37.740 | with the conditions that he's been given.

00:55:40.540 | On that particular one, he just got too high

00:55:42.940 | of a rate of descent.

00:55:43.780 | It's very common.

00:55:44.620 | And that's what you see with new pilots.

00:55:45.620 | It's the same thing too with older pilots, right?

00:55:47.300 | New ones and complacent ones.

00:55:49.300 | What you see is they'll try to make the ball go

00:55:52.460 | right where they want it in close.

00:55:53.940 | They think they can beat the game a little bit.

00:55:56.100 | And they try to, and so we have sayings,

00:55:58.300 | we teach pilots, as a landing signal officer,

00:56:01.460 | we tell them like, don't recenter the high ball in close.

00:56:04.000 | It's one of the rules to live by.

00:56:05.780 | And so when the ball's up high,

00:56:07.420 | don't try to bring it back in close

00:56:09.220 | to like the center point when you're in close

00:56:11.780 | 'cause what you're gonna do is you bring the power off

00:56:12.900 | and you're gonna crash right down.

00:56:14.420 | And that's what happens, right?

00:56:15.660 | 'Cause you got the verbal pulling you down.

00:56:17.980 | You might be correcting, which is decreasing your lift.

00:56:21.120 | And then you have that type of maneuver.

00:56:23.460 | - How are you supposed to do all of this

00:56:24.940 | in harsh weather conditions?

00:56:26.980 | - So that's the one I wanted to tell you about.

00:56:28.420 | That's the hardest one.

00:56:29.420 | And what you hear is if you hear 99 taxi lights on,

00:56:33.340 | that's a really shitty day.

00:56:34.820 | - 99 taxi lights on, what's that mean?

00:56:37.580 | - So everyone put your taxi lights on

00:56:39.860 | because you're about to land on the boat.

00:56:43.100 | - And you don't see the boat?

00:56:43.980 | - The weather is so bad that the landing signal officer

00:56:46.660 | on the boat can't see you either.

00:56:48.720 | And you can't see the boat

00:56:49.700 | and you won't be able to see it when you touch down.

00:56:52.560 | So we call that a zero-zero landing.

00:56:55.140 | And you turn on the taxi lights so that the LSO

00:56:57.940 | who has a radio in his hand that looks like a phone

00:57:00.260 | from 1980 is talking directly to the pilot.

00:57:04.740 | And he's looking at that little light in the rain

00:57:07.020 | and he's telling them you're high, you're low, power,

00:57:10.580 | things like that, come right, back to left.

00:57:13.280 | And literally talking him down

00:57:14.700 | to land on the boat right there.

00:57:16.020 | And the pilot, usually it comes as a surprise

00:57:18.020 | to the pilot to land

00:57:18.860 | because he's just listening to the voice,

00:57:20.100 | can't see the ball, can't see the boat.

00:57:21.820 | - And all of a sudden you just hit the boat.

00:57:23.380 | - You crash, I mean you crash.

00:57:24.820 | We're going about 1600 feet per minute descent at that point.

00:57:28.660 | - So you're going super fast.

00:57:30.940 | So all of this is happening fast.

00:57:32.580 | You don't know the moment it's gonna hit.

00:57:37.580 | So you're just going into the darkness

00:57:40.060 | and just waiting for it to hit.

00:57:41.860 | - Maybe not dark though.

00:57:42.700 | A lot of times it's white.

00:57:43.860 | - Into the light, you're going into the light.

00:57:46.700 | And then there's a voice from an 80s phone.

00:57:50.140 | I got it, this is terrible.

00:57:52.140 | But so you still have to, so this kind of thing happens.

00:57:58.940 | You still have to land.

00:58:00.340 | - Sometimes you just don't have a place to divert.

00:58:02.580 | But in a sense we're trained for that

00:58:04.260 | because we do the night landings as well.

00:58:06.260 | And I think you'll find this interesting

00:58:07.940 | but I always found that the night landings

00:58:10.300 | where in these particular cases,

00:58:12.660 | you're usually lined up behind the boat,

00:58:14.820 | maybe 10, 15 miles, whereas the other ones,

00:58:17.060 | it's like a tight circle, the landing pattern.

00:58:18.980 | And so we can potentially see the boat way out there

00:58:21.580 | if the lights were on, which they're not.

00:58:25.180 | But we can maybe see like the string of aircraft

00:58:27.020 | in front of us.

00:58:28.140 | But what's interesting is that it can take a while.

00:58:31.220 | You might be 15 miles out

00:58:32.420 | and your lights are turned down as dim as possible.

00:58:36.060 | You have a cloud deck maybe at six or 7,000 feet

00:58:38.820 | so that the starlight, there's no moon,

00:58:40.980 | but let's say the starlight's blocked out, right?

00:58:42.940 | 'Cause just the starlight alone, no moon,

00:58:45.260 | you can see the boat, you can see the water.

00:58:47.140 | But when that goes away, it's like closing your eyes.

00:58:50.540 | You can't tell anything.

00:58:52.060 | It could be upside down, it could be in any position.

00:58:55.620 | And for me, it was almost a meditative process

00:58:58.500 | that I had to snap myself back out of

00:59:00.580 | when I was on like a long straightaway

00:59:02.900 | and then I would see the light pop up

00:59:05.100 | in the sea of darkness, right?

00:59:06.660 | No lights anywhere.

00:59:07.620 | I can't even see the horizon.

00:59:09.140 | And I just see a light out there.

00:59:10.780 | My instruments were telling me,

00:59:11.820 | and they're turned down as far as they can go, right?

00:59:13.420 | So I can barely see them.

00:59:14.500 | So my eyes can adjust.

00:59:16.140 | And I'm just staring at this light in the distance.

00:59:18.580 | And it's just very meditative and it's the hum behind you.

00:59:21.660 | And then at like four miles,

00:59:24.300 | it's almost like, oh, the light is a little bit bigger.

00:59:26.820 | And you almost kind of have to snap back to it

00:59:28.340 | and be like, oh, I need to like kind of like

00:59:30.180 | look around a little bit and engage my brain,

00:59:32.260 | link it back to my body and like do this thing.

00:59:35.220 | - 'Cause you're gonna have to actually land.

00:59:36.780 | Well, is there just, you said you don't necessarily feel

00:59:40.500 | the romantic notion of the whole thing,

00:59:42.140 | but is there some aspects of flying where you look up

00:59:45.780 | and maybe you see the stars or yeah,

00:59:50.500 | that kind of thing that you just like,

00:59:52.420 | holy crap, how did humans accomplish all of this?

00:59:55.420 | Like, am I actually flying right now?

00:59:58.320 | - I used to have those moments on the boat

01:00:00.460 | when I was catching planes land.

01:00:02.060 | They would trap and it'd be nighttime

01:00:05.100 | and it's just all this chaos in the middle of the ocean

01:00:07.140 | and nothing.

01:00:07.980 | And I would have these moments where I'd be like,

01:00:09.340 | how the hell did I end up here?

01:00:11.180 | You know, this one moment in time next to an aircraft

01:00:13.740 | landing on a boat in the middle of the ocean, you know,

01:00:16.380 | where did my life, you know,

01:00:17.860 | how did my life go to end up here?

01:00:19.060 | How interesting.

01:00:20.460 | But what I did start to enjoy was the night vision goggles

01:00:24.180 | and putting those on and looking up at the stars

01:00:26.780 | flying around, especially over the ocean.

01:00:29.740 | - What do they look like?

01:00:30.580 | - There's just so many.

01:00:31.980 | There's just so many stars that, you know,

01:00:33.900 | you normally can't see, they're shooting stars all the time.

01:00:36.580 | Almost every flight you'd see them with the goggles on.

01:00:39.380 | So it was a great pleasure to take advantage

01:00:42.100 | of the lack of light pollution in some cases,

01:00:44.500 | especially on deployment to go grab some goggles at night,

01:00:47.460 | go out some quiet spot in the ship that no one can see me

01:00:50.980 | and just kind of look around, you know?

01:00:52.900 | - Yeah, it's humbling.

01:00:53.980 | Quick break, bathroom break?

01:00:57.180 | - Yeah, what am I, a quick stretch of legs.

01:00:59.860 | - You got a few cool patches.

01:01:00.980 | - I do.

01:01:01.820 | So this is a VFA-11 Red Ripper's patch,

01:01:05.940 | typically going actually on our arm.

01:01:08.280 | So this is actually what we call the Boar's Head or Arnold.

01:01:12.780 | So this is actually the Boar's Head

01:01:15.660 | from the Gordon's Gin bottle.

01:01:17.140 | In 1918, we were in London or the UK somewhere,

01:01:22.140 | and we apparently partied with the owner

01:01:25.220 | and founder of Gordon's Gin.

01:01:27.220 | We had a great time and there's a signed letter

01:01:29.060 | in our ready room that says we can use the logo

01:01:31.020 | in perpetuity.

01:01:32.180 | - Oh, nice.

01:01:33.020 | - Yeah, so I'd like to give you that patch.

01:01:36.420 | - I drank quite a bit of Gord, so this is good.

01:01:39.540 | - And I'd like to give you that coin from our squadron.

01:01:43.780 | - The Red Rippers, that's a badass name.

01:01:46.900 | Thank you, brother.

01:01:49.580 | - You're welcome.

01:01:50.400 | - So let's jump around a little bit,

01:01:51.660 | but let me ask you about this one set of experiences

01:01:56.620 | that you had and people in your squadron had.

01:01:59.020 | So you and a few people in the squadron

01:02:00.740 | either detected UFOs on your instruments

01:02:03.380 | or saw them directly.

01:02:05.140 | Tell me the full story of these UFO sightings

01:02:07.980 | and to the smallest technical details,

01:02:10.700 | 'cause I love those.

01:02:12.460 | - I'll do my best.

01:02:13.820 | So we returned from, and when I say we,

01:02:17.120 | I mean, not my squadron, but VFA-11, the Red Rippers.

01:02:21.220 | I was a somewhat junior pilot at the time.

01:02:24.460 | I joined them on deployment in 2012,

01:02:27.540 | where they had been already out there

01:02:29.380 | for about six months or so,

01:02:30.880 | operating in the vicinity of Afghanistan.

01:02:35.220 | I joined them and then we flew back

01:02:37.360 | and still as a relatively new guy,

01:02:39.080 | we came back and we entered

01:02:40.620 | what's considered a maintenance phase

01:02:42.020 | where we slow down the tactical flying a bit,

01:02:45.460 | kind of recuperate, do some maintenance on the aircraft.

01:02:48.340 | And our particular model of the F-18, the lot,

01:02:51.860 | the lot number was plumbed for the particular things

01:02:57.620 | that were needed to upgrade the radar

01:02:59.460 | from what's known as the ABG-73 to the ABG-79.

01:03:04.300 | And the ABG-73 is a mechanically scanned array radar.

01:03:08.960 | It's a perfectly fine radar,

01:03:12.740 | but the AESA radar is kind of a magnitude jumping capability,

01:03:17.060 | kind of an analog digital kind of mindset.

01:03:20.140 | - Got it, so it's a leap to digital.

01:03:23.100 | ABG-73, 79, are these things on a carrier?

01:03:26.740 | Like what are we talking about here?

01:03:27.980 | - This is our-- - How big is the radar?

01:03:29.540 | - Yeah, so this is actually the radar

01:03:30.940 | that's in the F-18 itself.

01:03:32.740 | - Okay, so when you say that we're chosen,

01:03:34.980 | this is to test the upgrade to the new, the 79, ABG-79.

01:03:39.980 | - Less of a test and more of just,

01:03:42.020 | hey, it's your turn to get the upgrade.

01:03:43.420 | Like we're all going to these better radars.

01:03:46.060 | They were building ones off the line with the new radar,

01:03:49.460 | but we were this weird transitionary squadron in the middle

01:03:51.900 | that transitioned from the older ones to the new ones.

01:03:55.060 | But it's not particularly rare to fly

01:03:56.660 | with different types of radar,

01:03:57.740 | 'cause in the, we call the fleet replacement squadron,

01:04:01.260 | essentially the training ground for the F-18,

01:04:03.700 | you have all sorts of F-18s with different radars.

01:04:06.140 | So you are used to having multiple ones,

01:04:09.460 | but in the actual deployable combat squadron, we upgraded.

01:04:14.460 | And when we upgraded, we saw that there were objects

01:04:17.700 | on the radar that we were seeing the next day

01:04:19.740 | with this new radar that weren't there with the old radar.

01:04:23.740 | And these were sometimes, you know, the same day,

01:04:25.460 | you might go on two flights.

01:04:27.020 | The one in the morning might be with the older radar,

01:04:29.060 | the one in the evening with the new radar.

01:04:31.580 | And you'd see the objects with the new radar.

01:04:34.540 | And that's not overly surprising in some sense.

01:04:37.380 | They are more sensitive.

01:04:39.140 | Perhaps they're not filtering out everything

01:04:41.260 | they should be yet,

01:04:42.100 | or perhaps there's some other type of error.

01:04:45.540 | Maybe it needs to be calibrated, whatever.

01:04:47.900 | It was relatively new,

01:04:49.180 | and we were somewhat used to there being software problems

01:04:52.340 | with these types of things occasionally,

01:04:53.780 | just like anything else.

01:04:55.340 | And so, okay, maybe this is a radar software malfunction.

01:04:58.980 | We're getting some false tracks, as we call them.

01:05:01.420 | - What were you seeing?

01:05:04.340 | - And so what we would see are representations of the object.

01:05:08.540 | So this is off of our radar.

01:05:09.700 | We're not seeing a visual image here.

01:05:11.140 | This is kind of like what's being displayed to us

01:05:13.500 | almost like in a gaming fashion, right?

01:05:15.140 | Like the icon, right?

01:05:16.460 | So the icon is showing us, hey, something is there,

01:05:19.540 | and here's the parameters I can understand about it.

01:05:21.620 | - So this is in the cockpit.

01:05:22.540 | There's a display that's showing some visualization

01:05:26.660 | what the radar is detecting.

01:05:27.940 | - Correct.

01:05:29.220 | And there's two different ways to do that.

01:05:30.700 | The first one is like the actual data,

01:05:32.620 | like the radar where it's showing me the data

01:05:37.620 | kind of as if it's in front of me,

01:05:39.820 | and I'm selecting those contacts.

01:05:41.740 | And there's another screen

01:05:42.580 | called the situational awareness page,

01:05:43.980 | and that's kind of a God's eye view

01:05:45.940 | that brings all that data into one spot.

01:05:48.580 | And so I'm gonna talk about this from the SA page,

01:05:51.860 | from the situational awareness page

01:05:53.060 | versus the individual radar ones 'cause it's easier.

01:05:55.300 | But--

01:05:56.140 | - Can you, sorry to linger on that.

01:05:57.380 | So the individual displays are like first person,

01:06:01.060 | and then the SA is, when you say God's eye view,

01:06:05.660 | it's like from the top,

01:06:06.940 | the integration of all that information

01:06:09.020 | as if it's looking down onto the earth.

01:06:11.740 | - Yes.

01:06:12.580 | - Is that a good way to summarize it?

01:06:13.400 | - It is, but for the aviator, it's slightly different

01:06:15.200 | because those two radar displays I talked about

01:06:17.540 | are at the bottom of that display

01:06:20.220 | is kind of representative of where I am.

01:06:22.460 | And so I see what's in front of me.

01:06:23.780 | - Got it.

01:06:24.620 | - Whereas the situational awareness page,

01:06:26.900 | the aircraft is located in the center of that.

01:06:29.340 | And then all around me, you know,

01:06:31.900 | based off of the data link

01:06:33.220 | and wherever I'm getting information from,

01:06:35.600 | I can see that whole awareness page.

01:06:37.800 | I can see all the situation.

01:06:38.860 | So I'm gonna kind of talk about this

01:06:41.500 | from the situational awareness page,

01:06:43.540 | which is a top-down view,

01:06:44.940 | just to kind of frame our minds instead of jumping around.

01:06:47.980 | And so what we would see out there

01:06:49.180 | is we'd see these indications that something would be there

01:06:51.660 | and they would have a track file.

01:06:53.540 | That track file, that thing that represents the object,

01:06:56.060 | has a line coming out of it.

01:06:57.260 | And that represents,

01:06:58.420 | it's called the target aspect indicator.

01:07:00.420 | - Mm-hmm.

01:07:01.260 | So there's some tracking from the radar.

01:07:03.500 | - Correct, so it's showing you where the object's going.

01:07:05.380 | - This is all pretty cool that the radar can do all this.

01:07:07.340 | So radar locks in on different objects

01:07:10.460 | and it tracks them over time.

01:07:11.820 | - Correct.

01:07:12.660 | - That's coming from the radar.

01:07:13.500 | So it's like a built-in feature.

01:07:14.940 | - Mm-hmm.

01:07:15.780 | - Okay, cool.

01:07:16.620 | - Out there we're seeing it.

01:07:17.440 | We don't have to necessarily pull things

01:07:18.900 | into our tracker in some sense, right?

01:07:21.980 | Like it's all out there

01:07:22.860 | and then we can kind of choose to highlight on stuff

01:07:24.820 | or to kind of focus in on it more so.

01:07:27.540 | But the information should all be out there.

01:07:30.020 | And so we'd see that target aspect indicator, that line.

01:07:33.460 | On a typical aircraft, it would kind of look like this.

01:07:35.740 | It would be coming out and it would go steady.

01:07:37.020 | And if they turn, it would be like,

01:07:39.020 | boop, boop, boop, boop,

01:07:39.860 | and you see them turn, right?

01:07:40.820 | Like it's not magic.

01:07:42.180 | But this object, the target aspect would kind of

01:07:45.340 | be like all over the place.

01:07:46.580 | Like kind of randomly in a 360 degrees,

01:07:49.220 | you know, from that top-down view,

01:07:50.940 | that line would be in any place.

01:07:52.780 | So kind of, you know,

01:07:53.620 | is it unable to determine the target aspect?

01:07:56.600 | Is it stationary?

01:07:57.820 | You know, and that's just how it puts it out

01:07:59.220 | and it's not used to seeing it.

01:08:00.260 | So I'm not saying that's necessarily super weird,

01:08:02.460 | but it was different than what we were used to seeing

01:08:04.500 | 'cause we weren't used to seeing

01:08:05.460 | stationary objects out there very much.

01:08:07.400 | And what was also interesting is that

01:08:09.700 | these weren't just stationary on a zero wind day, right?

01:08:13.380 | These are stationary at 20,000 feet, 15,000 feet,

01:08:17.020 | 500 feet, you know, with the wind blowing, you know?

01:08:21.140 | And so much like the sea, you know,

01:08:22.780 | when we're up there fighting, it affects everything.

01:08:24.580 | We consider the wind when we're, you know,

01:08:26.860 | shooting missiles, when we're flying,

01:08:28.460 | or fuel considerations, it's like operating, you know,

01:08:30.700 | in that volume of air, like the ocean,

01:08:32.220 | everything's going with the current.

01:08:34.020 | And so anything that doesn't go with the current,

01:08:36.140 | you know, is immediately kind of identifiable and strange.

01:08:38.900 | And that's why these were initially strange

01:08:40.340 | is 'cause they would be stationary against the wind.

01:08:42.460 | - So if you had something like a good drone

01:08:45.340 | in a windy conditions, what would that look like?

01:08:47.740 | Would it, it would it not come off as stationary?

01:08:50.340 | Would it sort of float about kind of thing?

01:08:53.260 | - No, I think with the drone technology we have today,

01:08:55.140 | they could stay within a pretty tight location.

01:08:57.460 | - Well, I meant like DJI drone, not like,

01:09:00.420 | I'm saying like generically speaking,

01:09:02.460 | not a military drone.

01:09:03.860 | - No, I have a DJI drone myself even,

01:09:05.820 | and you know, maybe not 100 knots,

01:09:07.940 | but if that thing's in 30 or 40 knot winds, you know,

01:09:11.060 | the amount of distance it's going to be kind of

01:09:15.380 | doing one of these, like that change

01:09:16.980 | is not something I'm gonna detect from maybe many miles away.

01:09:19.660 | - Interesting.

01:09:20.500 | - So it could look very stationary.

01:09:22.580 | But that wasn't necessarily,

01:09:24.140 | and what's interesting about this story

01:09:26.060 | is that there's not like the one smoking gun, right?

01:09:28.220 | You have to kind of look at everything.

01:09:29.820 | And that's what I don't like about the Department of Defense

01:09:34.260 | and just generally people's take on this

01:09:36.840 | is that everything is kind of based around a single image,

01:09:39.700 | you know, or that one case,

01:09:41.540 | but a lot of the interestingness comes from the duration

01:09:44.580 | or the time it's been out there,

01:09:45.600 | how they're interacting relative to other objects out there.

01:09:48.100 | And you don't get that information

01:09:49.540 | when you just look at a frame for a second, you know?

01:09:52.380 | Everyone kind of bites off on the shiny object, but.

01:09:54.800 | - So you yourself, from your particular slice

01:09:57.380 | of things you've experienced and seen directly

01:09:59.580 | or indirectly, you've kind of built up an intuition

01:10:02.380 | about what are the things that were being seen.

01:10:04.980 | - I wouldn't go that far.

01:10:05.900 | I've just been able to, you know,

01:10:08.040 | eliminate some variables

01:10:10.440 | because of how long I've observed it.

01:10:12.500 | So like you said, yes, can a drone stay

01:10:14.720 | in a particular position against the wind like that?

01:10:16.340 | Certainly, but I don't think it can do that

01:10:18.620 | and then go 0.8 Mach for four hours after that, you know?

01:10:21.520 | And so when you look at it outside of that moment in time,

01:10:26.520 | then it eliminates a lot of the potential things

01:10:28.960 | it could be, at least from my perspective.

01:10:30.720 | - So what kind of stuff did you see in the instruments?

01:10:33.560 | - We'd see them flying in patterns,

01:10:36.560 | kind of racetrack patterns or circular patterns,

01:10:38.560 | or just going kind of straight east.

01:10:40.460 | I occasionally see them supersonic, 1.1, 1.2 Mach,

01:10:46.120 | but typically 0.6 to 0.8 Mach,

01:10:48.040 | just for extremely extended periods of time,

01:10:50.820 | you know, essentially all the time.

01:10:53.440 | And this is airspace where there's not supposed

01:10:55.140 | to be anything else at all.

01:10:57.480 | And it's pretty far out there.

01:10:58.760 | It starts 10 miles off the coast, goes like 300 miles.

01:11:01.460 | - Can you say the location that we're talking about?

01:11:03.860 | - Off the coast of Virginia Beach.

01:11:05.660 | - Got it.

01:11:06.500 | And so nobody's supposed to be out there.

01:11:09.300 | - It's possible for people to be there.

01:11:10.520 | It's not necessarily restricted, but it's well monitored

01:11:13.940 | and we're out there every day, all day.

01:11:15.460 | And so, you know, people know to stay clear.

01:11:17.280 | If a Cessna goes bumbling in there,

01:11:18.620 | everyone's gonna know about it.

01:11:19.820 | FAA is gonna, you know, call them out.

01:11:22.140 | It's gonna tell us about it.

01:11:23.180 | So, incursions happen, not a big deal,

01:11:27.040 | but they're pretty rare, honestly,

01:11:29.060 | 'cause everyone knows the area

01:11:29.980 | and we've been operating there for decades.

01:11:32.100 | - And what are the trajectories at 0.6 to 0.8 Mach

01:11:35.940 | that these objects were taking?

01:11:38.660 | - Typically, they would be in some type of circular pattern

01:11:42.120 | or kind of racetrack pattern when they were at those speeds,

01:11:44.720 | or I just see them kind of,

01:11:46.380 | and it wasn't always like a mechanical flight description.

01:11:50.100 | And when I say that, I mean like an autopilot

01:11:52.220 | is gonna be just very precise, right?

01:11:54.540 | It's gonna be locked on straight.

01:11:56.500 | Whereas I could see an airplane,

01:11:57.740 | I could tell if the pilot's flying it, right?

01:11:59.220 | 'Cause it's not gonna be perfect.

01:12:00.940 | Computer's not controlling it.

01:12:02.300 | And these seemed more like that.

01:12:03.720 | Not that they were imprecise,

01:12:05.300 | but that they were even much more erratic than that.

01:12:07.800 | So, like, it wasn't like a straight line in a turn.

01:12:10.020 | It was just kind of like a, you know,

01:12:12.020 | weird drift like that in that direction, you know?

01:12:14.500 | - So, it wasn't controlled by a dumb computer,

01:12:16.980 | not disrespected computers.

01:12:20.060 | So, it wasn't controlled by autopilot kind of technology.

01:12:22.980 | - That's not the sense that I got.

01:12:24.660 | - So, how many people have seen them in the squadron?

01:12:28.860 | Sort of how many times were they seen?

01:12:31.780 | How many, were there times when there's multiple objects?

01:12:36.420 | - Once we started seeing them on the radar enough,

01:12:38.340 | and we would get close enough,

01:12:39.220 | we'd actually see them on our FLIR as well.

01:12:40.860 | So, our advanced targeting pod.

01:12:45.100 | It's essentially a infrared camera

01:12:47.320 | that we use for targeting,

01:12:48.500 | mostly in the air to surface environment.

01:12:51.040 | We don't use it in the air to air arena.

01:12:52.900 | It's just not that good of a tool, frankly.

01:12:56.140 | But we would see IR energy emitting from that location

01:13:00.460 | where the radar was dropping us off.

01:13:01.780 | So, you know, the radar, we'd lock onto the object

01:13:03.940 | and our sensors would all look there.

01:13:05.540 | And so, then we could see that it's looking

01:13:06.980 | at the right piece of sky,

01:13:08.060 | but there's energy actually coming from there.

01:13:11.100 | So, now we started thinking that, okay,

01:13:12.460 | maybe not radar malfunctions, maybe more,

01:13:14.700 | maybe something is physically here, of course.

01:13:16.660 | And then people started to try to fly by and see it.

01:13:19.100 | And at this point, you know,

01:13:20.740 | I would say maybe 80 to 90% of our squadron

01:13:22.980 | had probably seen one of these on the radar at this point.

01:13:24.740 | Everyone was aware of it.

01:13:26.300 | There was small communication, I think,

01:13:28.180 | between squadrons of the same area that had the same radar.

01:13:31.580 | So, I knew it wasn't just our squadron

01:13:33.120 | for whatever strange reason,

01:13:35.100 | 'cause other squadron would be out there

01:13:36.740 | and we would talk to them, be like,

01:13:37.780 | "Hey, like, careful, there's an object.

01:13:39.540 | Are you aware of that?"

01:13:40.380 | You know, so like, they would be aware of it.

01:13:42.740 | And then, of course, people would wanna go see

01:13:44.420 | what they look like, right?

01:13:45.320 | So, people would try to fly by.

01:13:46.740 | I try to fly by 'em.

01:13:48.220 | - I like how that's an of course.

01:13:50.220 | - Of course.

01:13:51.220 | - Of course you'd wanna fly by it.

01:13:53.260 | - Fair enough.

01:13:55.260 | - There's an argument against that kind of perspective

01:13:57.900 | that maybe the thing is dangerous, so maybe we don't,

01:14:00.620 | but perhaps that's part of the reason you wanna fly by it,

01:14:03.260 | is to understand better what it is, if it's a threat.

01:14:05.780 | - We have a lot of context now that we didn't back then.

01:14:07.740 | You know, and so, it was still a,

01:14:09.340 | "Hey, is this a balloon?

01:14:10.340 | Is this a drone?"

01:14:11.180 | You know, at a certain point.

01:14:12.380 | And we're also aware of, you know,

01:14:13.580 | potential intelligence gathering operations

01:14:15.300 | that could be going on.

01:14:16.980 | We're up there flying our tactics, we're emitting,

01:14:20.100 | we're practicing our EW, you know,

01:14:22.940 | we're turning at particular times.

01:14:24.380 | Like, there's stuff that can be learned.

01:14:25.620 | It's not a secret.

01:14:26.460 | And, you know, countries keep different fishing vessels

01:14:28.940 | and whatnot in international waters off there,

01:14:31.220 | so it's not exactly a secret

01:14:32.700 | that we're being observed out there.

01:14:35.340 | So to think that a foreign nation would want to,

01:14:39.000 | you know, somehow intercept information,

01:14:42.140 | whether that's our radar signals or our jamming capabilities

01:14:46.720 | to try to break that down or understand it better

01:14:49.900 | or be ready for that next fight.

01:14:51.740 | I mean, that's what scares me about this scenario

01:14:55.700 | because we didn't jump right to aliens or UFOs.

01:14:58.980 | We thought, you know, this is a radar malfunction

01:15:01.500 | we need to be aware of.

01:15:02.320 | It's a safety issue.

01:15:03.160 | And then, you know, this could be a tactical problem

01:15:05.940 | right here because everything we do is based off of crypto

01:15:09.940 | and, you know, locations.

01:15:11.980 | Everything's classified we do out there, right?

01:15:13.580 | And so over time, if you gather enough data

01:15:15.540 | about those fights and just monitor them forever,

01:15:17.860 | just like some nations do with other piece of technology

01:15:22.260 | or software, they could probably learn a lot.

01:15:25.500 | And so we have to be cognizant of that fact

01:15:27.100 | and defend against it.

01:15:28.180 | - So what can you say about the other characteristics

01:15:32.620 | of these objects like shape, size,

01:15:36.380 | texture, luminosity, how else do you describe object?

01:15:43.340 | Is there something that could be said?

01:15:45.180 | So you said, like, this is a tech town radar, step one.

01:15:47.900 | Now you have FLIR images that can give you a sense

01:15:50.980 | that that's actually a physical object.

01:15:52.940 | What else can be said about those physical objects?

01:15:55.700 | - So eventually someone did see one with their own eyeballs,

01:15:59.380 | multiple people.

01:16:00.620 | And they saw it in a somewhat interesting way.

01:16:04.700 | The object presented itself at the exact altitude

01:16:08.740 | and geographic location of the entry points

01:16:11.380 | into our working areas.

01:16:13.200 | So we enter at a very specific point at a certain altitude

01:16:16.200 | and people leave the areas at the same point

01:16:18.100 | at a lower altitude.

01:16:19.620 | Probably one of the busiest pieces of sky

01:16:21.500 | on the Eastern seaboard.

01:16:22.980 | So two jets from my squadron went out and they went flying

01:16:25.580 | and they entered the area where these objects

01:16:27.100 | went right between the aircraft.

01:16:28.540 | - So they're flying in formation

01:16:30.220 | and the object went between the aircraft.

01:16:32.300 | - They went between the object, I think.

01:16:33.660 | I don't think that the object was moving.

01:16:35.700 | I don't think it aggressively went at them.

01:16:37.300 | I think it was located still there

01:16:39.420 | and then they flew through it.

01:16:41.860 | But they didn't have it on their radar.

01:16:43.860 | And I think the radar might've been malfunctioning.

01:16:48.080 | I don't know that for sure.

01:16:49.000 | I would like to look into it.

01:16:50.320 | But my supposition is that if their radar was malfunctioning

01:16:53.560 | it would make sense that they wouldn't avoid the object

01:16:55.640 | that was there 'cause they knew these were physical

01:16:57.480 | at that point.

01:16:58.320 | And we would go up to these objects all the time

01:17:02.080 | and try to see them and couldn't see them.

01:17:03.800 | And we didn't know what it was.

01:17:05.360 | Was it that were they just not there or being fooled?

01:17:07.680 | Was something happening?

01:17:09.060 | Were they moving, dropping out to the last minute?

01:17:12.180 | We're going by pretty quick so it's difficult to tell.

01:17:15.640 | But perhaps if his radar wasn't working

01:17:17.020 | he wasn't receiving energy from the jet

01:17:19.540 | and the jet of course didn't know that it was there.

01:17:21.700 | And so whatever the case was, they flew right by

01:17:24.220 | and they described it just as a dark gray or black cube

01:17:28.340 | inside a clear translucent sphere.

01:17:31.820 | And the kind of the apex of the cube

01:17:33.460 | were touching the inside of that sphere.

01:17:37.740 | - That's an image that's haunting.

01:17:39.560 | So what did they think it is?

01:17:41.080 | What did they think at that moment?

01:17:43.700 | That they, is it just this kind of cloud of uncertainty

01:17:47.080 | that they're just describing a geometric object?

01:17:50.240 | It's not on radar so it's unclear what it is.

01:17:54.120 | Yeah, what was the main kind of other description

01:18:00.020 | they've had of it in terms of the intuition

01:18:02.640 | from a pilot's perspective?

01:18:03.920 | You know, you have to kind of identify what a thing is.

01:18:07.600 | - To answer the first part,

01:18:08.480 | they actually canceled the flight and came back

01:18:10.400 | 'cause they were, you know,

01:18:12.000 | it's like if there's one of these out here

01:18:13.200 | and we're almost hitting them and it's right there,

01:18:14.760 | then perhaps we need to get a different jet

01:18:17.760 | with better radar.

01:18:18.960 | So they came back and they're in their gear

01:18:20.440 | and they're talking to the front desk

01:18:22.560 | and talking to Skipper and like,

01:18:23.640 | hey, we almost hit one of those damn things out there.

01:18:25.760 | And this kind of was one of those

01:18:27.560 | kind of slight watershed moments

01:18:29.200 | where we all were kind of like, all right,

01:18:30.600 | this is a serious deal now.

01:18:32.520 | Maybe we thought they were balloons or drones

01:18:36.120 | or malfunctions, or maybe we thought it was spying,

01:18:37.960 | but at the end of the day,

01:18:38.840 | if we're gonna hit one of these things,

01:18:39.960 | then we need to, you know,

01:18:41.480 | we need to take care of the situation.

01:18:43.440 | And that's actually when we started submitting

01:18:46.120 | hazard reports or haz reps to the Naval Aviation Safety

01:18:50.760 | kind of communication network.

01:18:53.640 | And it's, you know, it's not like a big proactive thing

01:18:56.560 | where people are gonna investigate.

01:18:57.680 | It's more of a data collection mechanism

01:18:59.300 | so that you can kind of share the aggregate data

01:19:01.480 | and make sure that things are progressing.

01:19:04.760 | So it wasn't a mechanism that would result

01:19:07.000 | in action being taken,

01:19:08.460 | but we were hoping to at least get the message out

01:19:10.420 | to whomever was maybe running a classified program

01:19:12.840 | that we were not aware of or something like that,

01:19:14.560 | that, hey, like, you could kill somebody here.

01:19:16.340 | Like, you've grown too big for your britches here.

01:19:19.160 | Take a step back.

01:19:20.720 | So that was our concern at that point.

01:19:22.760 | That's kind of where we were thinking this was going.

01:19:25.080 | - What's the protocol for shooting at a thing?

01:19:27.380 | Was there a concern that it's a direct threat,

01:19:31.380 | not just surveillance,

01:19:32.480 | but a thing that could be, yeah, a threat?

01:19:36.320 | - At least from my perspective,

01:19:37.360 | like that never really crossed into my mind.

01:19:39.480 | I thought it was potentially an intelligence failure

01:19:44.000 | that could be being watched and information gathered.

01:19:46.600 | But I didn't think that it was something

01:19:48.400 | that would proactively engage me in a hostile manner.

01:19:53.040 | It wouldn't really make sense either to,

01:19:55.320 | it would be shocking to like have one of these objects

01:19:57.240 | take out an F-18,

01:19:58.080 | but there's no real tactical advantage

01:19:59.400 | other than fear perhaps.

01:20:01.680 | - Psychological.

01:20:02.760 | - Yeah.

01:20:04.000 | - I've learned a lot about the psychological warfare

01:20:08.080 | in Ukraine as a big part of the war

01:20:11.600 | in terms of when you talk about siege warfare,

01:20:13.960 | about wars that last for many years, for many months,

01:20:17.960 | and then perhaps could extend to years.

01:20:20.560 | But yes, it didn't seem,

01:20:24.760 | it didn't fit your conception of a threatening entity.

01:20:29.760 | - Correct.

01:20:31.680 | (sighs)

01:20:32.520 | - So looking back now from all the pieces of data

01:20:35.840 | you've integrated, you've personally added,

01:20:39.200 | what do you think it could be?

01:20:40.920 | - I don't know.

01:20:42.960 | I don't know what it could be.

01:20:44.120 | I think we've been able to categorize it successfully

01:20:47.080 | into a few buckets.

01:20:48.600 | We've been able to say that this could be US technology

01:20:51.880 | that someone put in the wrong piece of sky

01:20:55.920 | or perhaps was developed and tested in an inappropriate spot

01:21:00.040 | by someone that wasn't being best practices.

01:21:02.920 | - Is there, sorry to interrupt,

01:21:04.520 | is there a sort of modularity to the way

01:21:08.400 | the military operates to where it's possible

01:21:10.920 | for one branch not to know about the tests of another?

01:21:13.960 | - Yeah, I think it's perfectly reasonable

01:21:15.680 | to think that that could occur, right?

01:21:17.720 | And so if we just make that assumption,

01:21:19.840 | we can integrate that into our analysis here

01:21:21.960 | and just say, okay, but at the point we're at now,

01:21:24.680 | we have to assume that that's not the case, right?

01:21:26.480 | With everything that's been going on

01:21:27.840 | and the statements have been made and the hearings,

01:21:30.280 | I think that if it was a non-communication issue,

01:21:35.280 | we're in big trouble at this point.

01:21:37.280 | - What about it being an object from another nation,

01:21:40.480 | from China, from Russia?

01:21:42.680 | - Or even one of our allies, perhaps, right?

01:21:44.280 | Maybe that's, you know, I don't think it's controversial

01:21:49.040 | to say that our allies could be gathering information

01:21:51.320 | about us or anything of that nature,

01:21:52.480 | but that would be an extreme case,

01:21:53.980 | but I think it's just important to say, right,

01:21:55.720 | to not just say Russia or China

01:21:57.400 | and just call them the bad guys

01:21:58.680 | and assume that if they don't have it, no one can do it.

01:22:01.600 | And so from my perspective, you know, anyone else,

01:22:03.720 | anyone else, and it doesn't necessarily need

01:22:05.020 | to be a foreign power.

01:22:07.040 | It could be a non-government entity, perhaps,

01:22:09.380 | although I think that's very unlikely.

01:22:10.880 | But again, these are things you must consider

01:22:13.360 | if you kind of throw everything other

01:22:16.280 | in the US under scrutiny.

01:22:18.640 | But, you know, from what has been reported

01:22:21.440 | and the behaviors that have been seen,

01:22:23.960 | it would be, I would expect to see remnants

01:22:26.760 | of that technology elsewhere in the economy.

01:22:29.960 | There seems to be too many things

01:22:32.320 | that require advanced technology

01:22:35.680 | that would be beneficial commercially,

01:22:37.900 | as well as in other military applications,

01:22:40.160 | for it to be completely locked away

01:22:42.240 | by one of our competitors.

01:22:44.200 | Now, I could see us perhaps locking something away

01:22:46.340 | if we're already in the lead

01:22:47.560 | and having it to pull out as needed,

01:22:50.620 | but for someone that's perhaps in a power struggle

01:22:53.560 | and they're in second place,

01:22:55.120 | they might be more aggressive with the development

01:22:57.400 | of different types of technology

01:22:58.800 | willing to accept bigger risks.

01:23:00.680 | - Do you think it could be natural phenomena

01:23:03.440 | that we don't yet understand?

01:23:06.200 | - I think that there are a number of things

01:23:08.460 | that this is going to be, right?

01:23:09.760 | I don't think there's one thing at the end of the day,

01:23:11.400 | but I certainly think that that is part

01:23:13.400 | of what some of this could be.

01:23:14.620 | I don't think it's what we were seeing on the East Coast,

01:23:17.640 | and I don't think it is related to the Roosevelt incident,

01:23:20.400 | or I'll even go out and say the Nimitz incident, but--

01:23:22.960 | - What's the Roosevelt incident?

01:23:24.520 | - The Roosevelt incident, typically referred to as the Gimbel

01:23:28.040 | and/or the Go Fast video.

01:23:29.520 | - And then the Nimitz is from,

01:23:31.140 | what David Fravor has witnessed directly

01:23:34.600 | and has spoken about.

01:23:35.760 | We'll talk about that as well.

01:23:37.160 | I'd just love to get your sort of interpretation

01:23:42.020 | of those incidents, but yeah, so in this particular case,

01:23:45.560 | natural phenomena could be a part of the picture,

01:23:48.720 | but you're saying not the whole picture.

01:23:50.920 | - Yes, yes, and we can't discount it.

01:23:54.400 | Oh, the other thing is, what about the failure

01:23:57.440 | of pilot eyesight, like sort of some deep mixture

01:24:02.440 | of actual direct vision, human vision system failure,

01:24:08.800 | and like psychology, like seeing something weird

01:24:13.800 | and then filling in the gaps,

01:24:16.760 | because in order to make sense of the weird.

01:24:20.840 | I've tried to expose myself to scenarios like that

01:24:25.840 | that I don't necessarily think are right,

01:24:28.040 | but I've explored them to see if they could have some truth.

01:24:31.320 | And one example is, let's imagine a scenario

01:24:34.040 | where if we're seeing these objects every day

01:24:35.480 | off the East Coast, I can imagine a technology

01:24:38.720 | or an operation where you had some type

01:24:41.400 | of traditional propulsion system operating drones

01:24:44.540 | in order to gather data like we had discussed,

01:24:47.640 | and I could envision a clever enough adversary

01:24:51.600 | that could perhaps destroy or somehow remove these objects

01:24:54.600 | and replace them with new objects,

01:24:56.440 | essentially when we're not looking, right?

01:24:58.040 | And that accounts for the large airborne time.

01:25:02.440 | And so I explore options like that,

01:25:04.880 | and I try to see what evidence and assumptions

01:25:08.240 | need to be made in order to prove or disprove that.

01:25:11.420 | And you would need so much infrastructure.

01:25:14.640 | You'd need so many assets.

01:25:16.360 | And so I try to explore some of those fallacies

01:25:18.720 | and some of those concerns.

01:25:20.040 | And as aviators, we're trained into many actual physical,

01:25:24.280 | like eyesight and kind of illusion training.

01:25:26.800 | So like at nighttime flying,

01:25:28.520 | there's so many things that can happen

01:25:29.680 | flying with false horizons.

01:25:30.940 | And so we receive hours of training on that type of stuff,

01:25:34.900 | but this just falls outside the category

01:25:37.320 | from my perspective.

01:25:38.400 | - What was the visibility conditions

01:25:40.600 | in the times when people were able to see it?

01:25:44.360 | We just earlier discussed complete nighttime darkness.

01:25:49.040 | In this case, was it during the day?

01:25:53.040 | - It was a perfectly clear day that particular incident, yep.

01:25:56.040 | - In a world that's full of mystery,

01:25:59.040 | I have to ask what do you think is the possibility

01:26:02.720 | that it's not of this earth origin?

01:26:06.520 | - I like the term non-human intelligence in a sense.

01:26:11.280 | Because again, there's a lot of assumptions in there

01:26:16.080 | that may cause us to go down the wrong roads.

01:26:18.960 | These could be something that are weather phenomena,

01:26:23.600 | of earth, right?

01:26:24.440 | Or something else that is just something

01:26:26.280 | we don't understand and can't imagine right now

01:26:27.880 | that's still of this earth.

01:26:29.240 | If we consider extraterrestrials or something

01:26:33.200 | that came from a physical place far away in space time,

01:26:36.760 | that leads us to some detection assumptions

01:26:39.860 | that we would need to make.

01:26:41.000 | And so I just try to not categorize it under anything

01:26:43.800 | and just say, "Hey, is this demonstrating intelligence?"

01:26:47.040 | And start from there as a single object.

01:26:49.160 | What can we learn about it kinematically?

01:26:50.800 | How it's performing?

01:26:51.640 | What does that mean for its energy source?

01:26:53.560 | What does that mean for the G-forces inside?

01:26:56.040 | And then step it out a level and say,

01:26:57.640 | "Okay, how are these interacting with our fighters

01:27:00.120 | "if they are?

01:27:00.960 | "How are they interacting with the weather

01:27:02.080 | "and their environment?

01:27:03.280 | "How are they interacting with each other?"

01:27:04.920 | So can we look at these and how they're acting

01:27:07.000 | perhaps as a swarm?

01:27:08.600 | Especially off the East Coast

01:27:09.880 | where this is happening all the time

01:27:11.280 | with multiple objects.

01:27:13.120 | And so we might be able to determine some things

01:27:15.120 | about their maybe sensor capabilities

01:27:17.560 | or the areas of focus.

01:27:19.000 | If we can determine how they're working

01:27:21.240 | in conjunction with each other.

01:27:22.800 | But seeing one little flash of an object

01:27:25.200 | doesn't provide that type of insight.

01:27:27.040 | But we have the systems for it.

01:27:29.200 | But it's kind of, maybe not an irony,

01:27:31.480 | but it's a fact of life, the reality that many

01:27:34.840 | of these well-deployed, highly capable systems

01:27:37.440 | are held under the military umbrella,

01:27:40.120 | which makes it difficult to provide that data

01:27:42.440 | for scientific analysis.

01:27:44.480 | - So there's probably a lot more data on these objects

01:27:48.120 | that's not being, that's not made available,

01:27:51.600 | probably even within the military for analysis.

01:27:54.920 | - I think so, yeah.

01:27:55.960 | I think there's a lot of data that could be made available.

01:27:58.800 | And that's one of the reasons why I've been engaged

01:28:02.640 | with the American Institute of Aeronautics and Astronautics

01:28:05.720 | to build a large resources of cross-domain expertise

01:28:10.520 | so that if or when that data is available

01:28:13.120 | or that there's additional analysis needed,

01:28:15.800 | we can spin up those teams and make that analysis.

01:28:18.640 | - So there was a recently a house intelligence

01:28:21.680 | subcommittee hearing on UFOs that you were a part of.

01:28:25.120 | What was the goal of that hearing?

01:28:26.600 | And can you maybe summarize what you heard?

01:28:30.840 | - The hearings, from my perspective,

01:28:33.360 | seemed a bit disingenuous.

01:28:35.280 | It was kind of top level.

01:28:36.560 | I think-

01:28:37.680 | - Who was it run by, sorry to interrupt,

01:28:39.400 | like who were the people involved

01:28:41.400 | and what was the goal, the stated goal?

01:28:43.160 | - Congressman Andre Carson did chair the committee

01:28:46.080 | and he was, I think, ultimately responsible

01:28:48.160 | for bringing it all together.

01:28:49.760 | You know, I think the intent from Congress

01:28:51.440 | was to try to bring light to what has been happening

01:28:54.520 | with the Navy and to help show the American people

01:28:58.000 | that Congress is taking this serious

01:29:00.800 | because something serious is happening.

01:29:02.760 | But, you know, the sense I got seemed a bit disingenuous.

01:29:05.640 | They talked around it a lot.

01:29:06.880 | They, you know, advertised their love of science fiction,

01:29:11.880 | but they, you know, they didn't treat this,

01:29:14.640 | I would say, in the manner it deserved

01:29:16.320 | as a potential tactical threat

01:29:17.600 | if it's coming from a foreign power.

01:29:20.240 | And I get it though, at the same day,

01:29:21.560 | they have very specific objectives within the DOD, right?

01:29:25.840 | They have a very important job.

01:29:27.320 | Their job isn't necessarily to do exploratory science

01:29:29.840 | for no reason.

01:29:31.680 | So I applaud and I encourage their efforts

01:29:35.360 | on the intelligence side to help understand this.

01:29:38.280 | But my concern is that they play a role

01:29:41.400 | they're not well suited for, which is doing science.

01:29:44.400 | - And the Pentagon has opened a new office

01:29:46.160 | to investigate UFOs called

01:29:47.600 | All Domain Anomaly Resolution Office.

01:29:50.720 | What do you think about this office?

01:29:52.380 | Do you think it can help alleviate

01:29:55.000 | in the way which this hearing perhaps has failed

01:29:58.840 | to improve more the scientific rigor

01:30:01.920 | and the seriousness of investigating UFOs?

01:30:05.180 | - I think that remains to be seen.

01:30:07.680 | I think it's a step in the right direction,

01:30:09.400 | but it's a step that was taken

01:30:10.880 | because the previous step didn't happen, right?

01:30:14.060 | So the AOI-MSG was the progeny, essentially,

01:30:18.720 | of the AARO or ARO.

01:30:21.480 | And, you know, the name was changed

01:30:23.440 | because nothing was happening

01:30:25.900 | and it was essentially just a confusing mess of words

01:30:29.080 | that were created to make this topic unpalatable.

01:30:31.520 | The Airborne Object Identification

01:30:34.520 | and Synchronization Management Group.

01:30:36.720 | Quite the mouthful.

01:30:38.280 | I practice that.

01:30:39.960 | But the new All Domain Anomaly Resolution Office,

01:30:42.680 | you know, from my perspective at least,

01:30:44.360 | at least the perspective that they're putting out,

01:30:46.240 | they seem to want to be open.

01:30:48.240 | They put out a Twitter handle.

01:30:49.960 | They're going out on Twitter and communicating,

01:30:52.360 | saying they want to keep this open.

01:30:54.600 | But, you know, that's gonna run into a classification wall.

01:30:57.600 | - Well, so Dr. Sean Kirkpatrick

01:31:01.320 | seems like an interesting guy.

01:31:03.240 | - He does, yes.

01:31:04.760 | - So he's got a,

01:31:06.360 | I haven't looked into deeply,

01:31:08.960 | but he seems to have sort of,

01:31:11.300 | he's coming from like a science research perspective,

01:31:13.600 | like a background.

01:31:15.780 | So he might be, at least in the right mindset,

01:31:22.160 | the right background to kind of lead

01:31:24.000 | a serious investigation.

01:31:25.840 | - I think so.

01:31:26.680 | I'll just say generally, you know,

01:31:28.360 | the office has been receptive to AIAA reaching out

01:31:31.080 | in order to collaborate, which has been a positive sign.

01:31:35.040 | Also pass the same kudos to Dr. Spergel

01:31:38.560 | and NASA's effort as well.

01:31:42.040 | I see these organizations that are standing up,

01:31:44.760 | I do see them as good faith efforts

01:31:47.800 | that are coming about through a lot of difficulty.

01:31:51.920 | And negotiation most likely, right?

01:31:53.960 | And I see these as a small door opening

01:31:57.360 | that if we could take advantage of,

01:31:58.640 | can lead to a much more productive relationship

01:32:01.780 | between these organizations.

01:32:03.480 | - How do you put pressure on this kind of thing?

01:32:05.960 | Does it come from the civilian leadership?

01:32:08.280 | Does it come from sort of Congress and presidents?

01:32:10.760 | Does it come from the public?

01:32:12.460 | Does the public have any power to put pressure on this?

01:32:15.300 | Or is the giant wall of bureaucracy going to protect it

01:32:19.960 | against any public pressure?

01:32:21.920 | What do you think?

01:32:22.840 | - I think we've been in that latter state for a while,

01:32:25.840 | but you know, society seems to be a bit different nowadays.

01:32:29.000 | You know, we have the ability to communicate and to group

01:32:32.360 | and to form relationships in a way

01:32:34.560 | that hadn't been able to be present in the past.

01:32:37.480 | We've been able to do research, for better or worse,

01:32:40.160 | on our own, you know, in a way that hasn't been able

01:32:42.560 | to happen before.

01:32:43.880 | And so I sense that people are a bit less willing

01:32:47.160 | to kind of buy the bottom line statement

01:32:49.240 | from those in power as they used to be,

01:32:52.200 | back when they didn't have access to those tools.

01:32:54.760 | And so I do think there is a massive role

01:32:56.600 | for the general society, general populace to play

01:32:59.520 | to show that they are interested in this.

01:33:02.020 | Because it's not that I don't think the politicians

01:33:05.160 | or the leaders in the Pentagon,

01:33:07.880 | it's not that they don't like this topic necessarily

01:33:10.420 | or think it's toxic per se,

01:33:12.120 | but they exist in a culture where this has been toxic

01:33:14.960 | and they don't feel comfortable talking about it.

01:33:16.760 | And these are people that have spent their entire careers,

01:33:19.060 | you know, working towards a goal

01:33:20.320 | and getting to very high positions within government.

01:33:22.640 | And so this is very against their nature

01:33:24.480 | to take a stance on a topic like this.

01:33:26.760 | And so the fact that these are standing up,

01:33:30.640 | even if they do have a small budget

01:33:32.520 | or if they struggled a bit at first,

01:33:34.340 | I still think it's a massive change, you know,

01:33:36.640 | and it's a big step away from that stigma

01:33:38.760 | that has been pervading this topic for so long.

01:33:41.640 | - And you're actually part of alleviating the stigma

01:33:45.720 | for somebody that's as credible, as intelligent,

01:33:49.700 | as like varied in background,

01:33:51.580 | able to speak about these things.

01:33:53.140 | That's a big risk that you took,

01:33:55.200 | but it's extremely valuable

01:33:56.980 | 'cause it's alleviating the stigma.

01:33:59.820 | - I thank you for saying that,

01:34:00.740 | but it didn't feel like much of a risk for me.

01:34:02.900 | You know, I didn't come out about aliens, right?

01:34:05.940 | Or whatever.

01:34:06.780 | I had a safety problem

01:34:08.620 | that I started asking questions about.

01:34:10.080 | And, you know, I went down a road

01:34:12.220 | as a Navy trained aviation safety officer, right?

01:34:15.620 | That sent me to school for six weeks in Pensacola

01:34:17.640 | to be a safety officer, you know.

01:34:19.620 | We're almost hitting these objects

01:34:21.780 | and it's not something that happened in the past

01:34:23.900 | and we want to understand it.

01:34:24.940 | It's happening right now.

01:34:25.860 | Like these occurrences are still happening.

01:34:28.300 | Aviators are flying right now,

01:34:29.940 | are still flying by these things.

01:34:31.220 | And in fact, I mentioned I was a instructor pilot.

01:34:34.740 | I had a student call me about eight months ago or so.

01:34:40.220 | And he's like, "Hey, sir, you know,

01:34:41.620 | I made it to the fleet finally."

01:34:43.500 | You know, I had trained him how to fly

01:34:44.940 | and then he goes to F-18,

01:34:46.380 | he goes another year of training

01:34:47.900 | and then he gets out to his squadron on the East Coast

01:34:50.140 | and he's flying with a senior member of the base,

01:34:53.700 | NAS Oceania, where the fighters fly out of Senior 05, 06.

01:34:58.460 | And it was kind of a bad weather day.

01:35:00.300 | And so they said, "Hey, you know,

01:35:01.460 | if the weather's not good enough

01:35:02.380 | for us to do this dog fighting set,

01:35:04.240 | we'll go out and do a UAP hunt, you know,

01:35:06.700 | and see if we can't find any things

01:35:07.780 | or take a look at them, you know."

01:35:09.020 | I don't know if it was in jest or not, but, you know,

01:35:11.460 | this, they, I actually would say it's not in jest

01:35:14.260 | because there were notices that were being briefed

01:35:16.780 | about this being a safety hazard at this point.

01:35:18.860 | And so I, now that I think about it,

01:35:21.620 | it likely wasn't in jest.

01:35:23.060 | Long story short, they went flying,

01:35:24.540 | the weather was too bad,

01:35:25.820 | they did go on a UFO hunt and they physically saw one,

01:35:28.340 | you know, and he called me up and said,

01:35:30.020 | "Hey, sir, I saw a Cuban spear,

01:35:31.500 | they're still out here, you know, years later."

01:35:33.380 | And so it's almost like a generational issue,

01:35:35.420 | you know, for these fighter pilots,

01:35:36.660 | at least on East Coast.

01:35:37.960 | - But that's great that they can talk about it, right?

01:35:39.820 | - Exactly, exactly.

01:35:41.060 | They feel at least comfortable,

01:35:42.140 | they have a reporting mechanism.

01:35:43.860 | And so that was one of the problems that I noticed,

01:35:46.060 | that we have a lot of reporting mechanisms

01:35:48.660 | to take care of safety issues and even tactical issues

01:35:52.900 | when the time's right,

01:35:53.740 | in order to keep track of what's going on.

01:35:55.820 | But there's no way to communicate about this.

01:35:58.360 | Sure, we could submit a hazard report,

01:36:00.840 | but nothing's actually being investigated.

01:36:03.260 | And if this is a tactical vulnerability or something more,

01:36:07.180 | it deserves attention.

01:36:09.020 | - If I could ask your sort of,

01:36:12.640 | take your opinion of the different UFO sightings

01:36:17.260 | that the DoD has released videos on.

01:36:19.660 | So what do you think about the Tic Tac UFO

01:36:22.620 | that David Fravor and others have cited?

01:36:26.000 | - That's a truly anomalous experience.

01:36:28.800 | I can't do like mental models in my head

01:36:35.360 | to find potential solutions to discredit that, right?

01:36:39.580 | Like as much as I try, right?

01:36:40.780 | Just as a logical process, as a practice,

01:36:42.600 | I can't pick it apart in the way

01:36:45.180 | that we were just talking about a moment ago

01:36:46.460 | about thousands of drones being like sent up

01:36:49.260 | in very tricky manners, right?

01:36:50.340 | I can't really bring myself to a clever solution

01:36:53.540 | that other than just saying the pilots are lying

01:36:56.300 | or it was error.

01:36:57.140 | And I believe, I know Dave Fravor,

01:37:00.980 | I consider him a friend, we talk a lot.

01:37:03.220 | I have zero reason to disbelieve anything he says.

01:37:07.000 | - Yeah, I agree with you.

01:37:10.620 | But in terms of the actual UFO,

01:37:14.140 | is there something anomalous and interesting to you

01:37:18.460 | about that particular case?

01:37:19.960 | Maybe one interesting aspect there is

01:37:23.840 | how much do I understand about the water surface

01:37:28.360 | and underwater aspects of these UFOs?

01:37:30.560 | It seems like a lot of the discussion is about the movement

01:37:34.140 | of this particular thing that seems to be weird,

01:37:37.960 | anomalous, seems to defy physics.

01:37:40.380 | But what about stuff that's happening underwater?

01:37:42.120 | That's interesting to me.

01:37:43.800 | If I had advanced technology,

01:37:45.440 | I would certainly like to operate in part underwater

01:37:49.440 | 'cause you can hide a lot of stuff there.

01:37:51.660 | - You think it would be somewhat as easy

01:37:53.600 | as traveling through interstellar space, at least, right?

01:37:56.040 | - Yeah.

01:37:56.880 | - You know, I wish I had a great answer for that,

01:38:00.080 | but as an aviator, that's a kind of a black box for us.

01:38:04.880 | We don't have great,

01:38:05.760 | what I would call cross-domain tracking, right?

01:38:08.160 | I can't see something go underwater

01:38:09.840 | and then follow it underwater.

01:38:11.380 | - So it's literally not your domain.

01:38:12.840 | Like underwater, leave that for somebody else.

01:38:15.440 | - Yeah, and I use that terminology

01:38:17.500 | 'cause it's kind of important, right?

01:38:20.000 | Cross-domain tracking is something

01:38:22.120 | that we haven't had to necessarily worry about, right?

01:38:23.720 | 'Cause airplanes operated in the air

01:38:25.840 | and submarines operated underwater

01:38:28.400 | and space planes operate in space, right?

01:38:30.320 | But there's gonna be, that's gonna blur, I think,

01:38:34.240 | as we move along here, especially in the air and space regime

01:38:38.040 | and being able to perhaps transition my radar contact

01:38:41.840 | at 40,000 feet to another radar system

01:38:44.720 | that can track it up to 200,000 feet,

01:38:47.680 | you know, that might be a value.

01:38:48.800 | And so we seem to be missing that right now.

01:38:51.320 | - So what about the Go Fast and the gimbal videos

01:38:53.720 | that you mentioned earlier?

01:38:55.240 | Like what's interesting there to you?

01:38:57.920 | - So the gimbal, I'll talk about that one first.

01:39:01.120 | I was airborne for that one.

01:39:02.820 | The person that recorded it is a good friend of mine.

01:39:06.000 | But I mean, both air crew, I knew both of them,

01:39:07.520 | but the wizard himself, very close friends,

01:39:10.160 | went through a lot of our training together.

01:39:12.280 | We went to the same fleet squadron.

01:39:14.600 | He ended up transitioning to be a pilot

01:39:16.800 | and then came to where I was instructing.

01:39:19.440 | So I got to instruct him a bit on his transition.

01:39:21.960 | And, you know, the way that was,

01:39:25.880 | was we went out on a air-to-air training mission.

01:39:28.900 | So simulating a air fight against our own guys.

01:39:33.080 | They're acting like the bad guys

01:39:34.240 | and kind of go head-to-head against each other.

01:39:36.680 | And when we fly on those missions,

01:39:37.960 | we all fly out together, more or less.

01:39:40.520 | We set up and then we kind of attrite from the fight

01:39:43.300 | as we either run out of gas or something happens.

01:39:46.080 | And so people usually go back onesies or twosies.

01:39:49.060 | And so the air crew that recorded the gimbal,

01:39:51.720 | they were going back to the boat

01:39:53.000 | and we were on what's called a workup training event.

01:39:55.400 | And so this is like a month on the boat

01:39:57.700 | where we're essentially conducting wartime operations,

01:40:00.640 | more or less, to stress ourselves out

01:40:03.400 | and to kind of do the last training block

01:40:06.280 | before we go on deployment, essentially.

01:40:07.560 | So it's pretty high stress.

01:40:09.340 | They actually do send aircraft from like land bases

01:40:12.780 | to kind of try to penetrate

01:40:14.400 | and we're expected to go intercept them.

01:40:16.000 | And so we're kind of practicing like we play.

01:40:18.600 | And so he saw these objects on the radar,

01:40:21.680 | the gimbal and a fleet of other aircraft or vehicles.

01:40:27.240 | And they initially thought it was part

01:40:29.520 | of the training exercise that they were sending something in

01:40:32.080 | to try to penetrate the airspace.

01:40:35.160 | And so they flew over to it.

01:40:37.200 | And as they got close enough to get on the FLIR,

01:40:39.600 | I think everyone has heard the reaction

01:40:43.120 | and they realized that it wasn't something

01:40:44.520 | they were expecting to see.

01:40:46.120 | - Can you actually describe what's in the video

01:40:47.520 | and what's the reaction in case they haven't seen it?

01:40:49.920 | - Yeah, a lot of swearing.

01:40:51.520 | But so what you see on the FLIR footage

01:40:53.480 | is a black or white, depending on when you look at it,

01:40:57.160 | object that's somewhat shaped like a gimbal.

01:40:59.400 | It appears almost as if someone put two plates together

01:41:02.640 | and then there seems to be almost like a small funnel

01:41:05.800 | of IR energy at the top of the bottom of those plates

01:41:09.040 | in a sense.

01:41:09.880 | So almost as if there's a stick going in between two plates,

01:41:13.200 | but not that pronounced, right?

01:41:14.560 | So there's an energy field that kind of went to a funnel

01:41:16.840 | on the top and the bottom,

01:41:17.720 | at least that's how it was being portrayed on the FLIR.

01:41:20.400 | There's a lot of conversation about that being glare

01:41:23.240 | and things of that nature,

01:41:24.080 | but it was actually a very tight IR image.

01:41:26.520 | It just was nondescript shape, which was interesting.

01:41:30.440 | Typically we would see the skin of the aircraft,

01:41:32.840 | we can see the flames coming out of the exhaust,

01:41:35.040 | especially at those ranges.

01:41:36.400 | - But there was no flames or there's no exhaust here.

01:41:40.000 | - There was no exhaust,

01:41:41.040 | there was no outgassing of propellant in any manner, right?

01:41:45.600 | It was just an object that had nothing emitting from it

01:41:48.440 | that was stationary in the sky.

01:41:49.920 | Well, not stationary, but it was moving along a path, right?

01:41:53.800 | It wasn't falling out of the sky.

01:41:56.000 | And it continued along if we were to consider it

01:41:58.040 | from a God's eye view, again, on the SA page,

01:42:01.000 | it continued along in a path.

01:42:02.880 | And from the perspective, that top down view,

01:42:05.820 | it just went in the other direction.

01:42:07.160 | So no, just an instantaneous direction change

01:42:10.800 | from that perspective.

01:42:12.040 | You also hear them very excitedly talking on the tapes

01:42:16.120 | about whatever the heck this thing is,

01:42:19.000 | and look at the SA, there's a whole formation of them.

01:42:22.000 | And so with SA is a situational awareness page.

01:42:25.880 | And again, it's a large display

01:42:27.120 | that gives that God's eye view of all the radar contacts.

01:42:29.920 | - So the video is actually showing just one,

01:42:32.480 | and then they're speaking about many of them

01:42:36.000 | on the SA display.

01:42:38.040 | - Correct.

01:42:38.880 | And what they essentially saw was,

01:42:40.600 | if we were to consider above the object north,

01:42:42.920 | so kind of offset to the north of the object,

01:42:46.400 | there was a formation of about somewhere between four

01:42:48.360 | and six of these objects in a rough wedge formation,

01:42:51.680 | so kind of side by side like this.

01:42:54.520 | And again, not in a autopilot type manner

01:42:57.440 | where it was very stiff,

01:42:58.320 | it was very kind of non-mechanical,

01:43:00.680 | the flight mechanics again.

01:43:02.640 | And these objects were in that formation,

01:43:04.480 | and they were going along,

01:43:05.520 | and then they turned pretty sharply,

01:43:07.660 | but they still had a radius of turn,

01:43:09.700 | and then went back in the opposite direction.

01:43:11.560 | And during that turn,

01:43:13.320 | they were kind of like all over the place.

01:43:14.840 | It wasn't tight, they weren't even like super,

01:43:17.320 | they weren't flying in a way I would expect them

01:43:18.920 | to be flying in relation to a flight lead.

01:43:20.860 | They were flying as if they were flying close to each other,

01:43:23.480 | but not in formation, which was kind of strange, right?

01:43:26.200 | And then when they rolled out,

01:43:28.160 | they kind of tightened backed up,

01:43:29.280 | like so when they basically,

01:43:30.760 | they started that turn and then 180 degrees out,

01:43:32.920 | essentially they start flowing in the opposite direction,

01:43:35.560 | and kind of got back in that formation.

01:43:37.480 | And while that was happening,

01:43:38.800 | the gimbal object was proceeding,

01:43:40.480 | was it left or right?

01:43:41.780 | And as those, the formation kind of turned up to the north

01:43:45.840 | and was just passing back it,

01:43:47.320 | the gimbal just kind of went back in the opposite direction,

01:43:49.800 | so to follow it back in that direction.

01:43:53.040 | And in the FLIR itself,

01:43:55.920 | you see the object changes orientation quite a bit.

01:43:58.960 | So you see it more or less level,

01:44:01.400 | maybe candid about 45 degrees,

01:44:03.520 | and then you see it kind of moving around like this,

01:44:06.320 | almost as if it was a gimbal.

01:44:08.280 | I've come to learn after some,

01:44:11.980 | having seen some research online

01:44:13.640 | and people really looking into this,

01:44:15.860 | that it seemed that the object actually climbed

01:44:19.020 | during that maneuver.

01:44:20.000 | And so the reason it looked like it turned immediately

01:44:23.240 | is 'cause it turned like this,

01:44:24.560 | it turned in a vertical fashion like that,

01:44:26.740 | which is pretty interesting.

01:44:28.360 | That's kind of like another example of a flight mechanics

01:44:31.780 | that we don't normally operate

01:44:33.320 | because we don't change our directions

01:44:36.060 | by maneuvering in the vertical, if we can help it,

01:44:38.680 | it's, you're just killing the fuel, you know?

01:44:41.600 | And so if you're like a surveillance platform

01:44:44.820 | looking to spend as much time around something,

01:44:46.680 | you're not gonna climb 500 feet every time you make a turn.

01:44:51.240 | - Unless you're Tom Cruise.

01:44:53.480 | - Unless you're Tom Cruise, naturally.

01:44:55.000 | - Okay, so is that one of the more impressive

01:44:57.080 | flight mechanics you've seen in video forms

01:45:00.360 | or not the direct eye sight reports,

01:45:03.040 | but like in terms of video evidence that we have?

01:45:05.640 | - I think so.

01:45:06.840 | We were seeing a lot of these,

01:45:08.600 | but we weren't just going and recording them all day,

01:45:10.840 | we just kind of put them in that safety bucket,

01:45:13.040 | be like, all right, there's objects over there,

01:45:14.280 | we're just not gonna go near it, you know?

01:45:16.200 | And so we weren't putting our sensors on them that much.

01:45:19.040 | We were gathering the data kind of secondarily,

01:45:21.360 | but we weren't primarily focusing on it

01:45:23.280 | to see all the details, so.

01:45:24.760 | - That's so fascinating 'cause you have a busy day,

01:45:27.400 | you have a lot to do, all right,

01:45:29.220 | well, there's some weird stuff going on there,

01:45:31.320 | we're just not gonna go there.

01:45:32.680 | And that says something about sort of the,

01:45:35.120 | about human nature, about the way that bureaucracies function

01:45:40.360 | the way the military functions.

01:45:41.960 | It fills up your day with busy, important things

01:45:44.840 | and you don't get to, I mean, that is something

01:45:48.000 | that I'm in a sort of absurd way worry about,

01:45:52.160 | which is like, we fill our days with so much busyness

01:45:56.800 | that when truly beautiful things happen,

01:45:59.560 | whatever they are, truly anomalous things,

01:46:01.820 | we just won't pay attention

01:46:03.240 | 'cause they don't fit our busy schedule.

01:46:07.760 | - Beautiful, I think that's right on the nose.

01:46:10.320 | And it's on my nose because, you know,

01:46:12.360 | I didn't give this topic the attention it deserved

01:46:15.240 | until I left, right, until I left

01:46:16.880 | and I went to be an instructor pilot

01:46:19.440 | where I had more time, you know,

01:46:21.800 | I had more downtime to kind of process and think

01:46:24.800 | and get out of exactly what you just described.

01:46:27.440 | And that's kind of what broke me out of it

01:46:29.320 | and got me thinking more about it.

01:46:31.320 | - Why do you think the DOD released these videos?

01:46:34.600 | - It's a great question.

01:46:36.080 | Did the DOD release it or did they kind of get out

01:46:38.280 | on their own in some sense?

01:46:39.520 | So I don't know the answer to that question,

01:46:41.180 | but my understanding of the situation

01:46:42.920 | is that the DOD talked about them so much

01:46:45.840 | because they're already out there in a sense.

01:46:47.760 | And so, you know, they could,

01:46:49.480 | they had a choice where they could have just straight up

01:46:51.040 | lied and said it wasn't theirs or it was fake.

01:46:52.920 | But again, I think our culture now is too open

01:46:56.260 | and the information moves too freely to do things like that.

01:46:59.560 | And it kind of left them in a pickle

01:47:00.740 | that they had to respond to.

01:47:02.680 | - So what was the role of Pentagon's

01:47:05.480 | Advanced Aerospace Threat Intelligence Program, AATIP?

01:47:09.200 | From your perspective, from what you know,

01:47:11.260 | maybe your intuition, is AATIP a real thing that existed?

01:47:14.940 | - I was in a position as an aviator

01:47:16.820 | that never would have exposed me to anything like that.

01:47:20.140 | But I was curious about what people knew.

01:47:22.500 | And I think in my mind maybe hoped or, you know,

01:47:26.120 | hoped someone was looking into this in some sense.

01:47:27.860 | But on the day that Gimbal was recorded,

01:47:31.020 | I heard that they caught something extra interesting

01:47:34.140 | on the FLIR and I went to the Intel debrief space.

01:47:39.300 | To go see the film and, you know,

01:47:42.420 | everyone's gathered around watching it, very interesting.

01:47:44.300 | And I heard the Admiral was coming down.

01:47:46.020 | And so I was like, I'm gonna hang out back, you know,

01:47:47.820 | quietly, mind my own business and see,

01:47:49.580 | I just wanna see his reaction and try to read it

01:47:51.060 | to see if this is brand new or if it is something

01:47:53.740 | that they've been dealing with, you know.

01:47:55.680 | And, you know, he came in and he watched a video

01:47:57.780 | for like five or six seconds and went, hmm.

01:47:59.900 | And then like turned around and walked out.

01:48:01.220 | And I, you know, I was like,

01:48:02.340 | he's definitely seen these before.

01:48:04.340 | There's no way that you only watch that for a few seconds

01:48:06.340 | and don't have more interest.

01:48:08.220 | It was, you know, too bizarre.

01:48:09.920 | So kind of going back, does the office exist?

01:48:12.960 | Well, you know, I've heard that the Admiral essentially

01:48:17.260 | reported back to the Pentagon about that case real time,

01:48:22.700 | essentially, after he left, right?

01:48:23.960 | So he basically went back and I was told he reported that

01:48:26.540 | to either AATIP directly or to other, you know,

01:48:29.460 | somehow the information got there.

01:48:30.720 | So from my perspective and from what I've experienced,

01:48:33.960 | it seems like, yes, it was a thing.

01:48:36.820 | But, you know, as an aviator, I wouldn't know either way.

01:48:40.220 | Right, that's just my experience from what happened.

01:48:41.940 | - But it seems like there's somewhere to report to.

01:48:45.580 | - At the time, it seemed like there was at least

01:48:48.220 | some place to complain to, if not report to.

01:48:50.580 | - Let me ask you about sort of people that are taking

01:48:54.940 | a serious look at the videos and just the different

01:48:57.660 | UFO sighting reports.

01:48:59.940 | So there's a person named Mick West who is a skeptic

01:49:03.860 | and tries to take a skeptical view on every single

01:49:06.660 | use of evidence on these UFO sightings.

01:49:09.020 | What do you think about his analysis?

01:49:11.100 | He tries to analyze in a way that debunks some of these

01:49:14.700 | videos and assign probabilities to their explanations,

01:49:18.620 | sort of leaning towards things that give a very low

01:49:23.620 | probability to alien, extraterrestrial type of

01:49:29.220 | explanations for these UFOs.

01:49:31.340 | What do you think about his approach to these analysis?

01:49:35.600 | - Well, two parts to his approach.

01:49:37.340 | One, I commend him for all the good work and effort

01:49:39.860 | he put into it.

01:49:41.260 | I've seen him build some models and things of that nature.

01:49:44.100 | And so I think that's something that's absolutely needed

01:49:46.980 | in this environment.

01:49:47.820 | No one's asking anyone to believe anyone here, right?

01:49:50.620 | Trust but verify should certainly be the mantra.

01:49:55.140 | But where I have a disagreement with his approach

01:49:58.260 | is that he's approaching from a debunker standpoint,

01:50:02.820 | and from my perspective, not speaking for everyone,

01:50:06.160 | but when I hear that, that tells me that you're driving

01:50:09.960 | towards a particular conclusion,

01:50:12.320 | which has been a very safe process for the past X years.

01:50:16.560 | Right?

01:50:17.400 | It's been a very safe business to be in to tell people

01:50:19.960 | that they haven't seen aliens,

01:50:21.400 | but times have changed a little bit.

01:50:23.940 | And the tactics I've seen to try to retain that view

01:50:31.120 | on reality has included things such as completely dismissing

01:50:35.420 | what the air crew are saying.

01:50:36.780 | And I think that is a fallacy to think that we have to take

01:50:40.780 | the human outside of that analysis.

01:50:42.780 | So those are the two things I disagree with.

01:50:45.460 | - When you put the night vision on and you look at the stars

01:50:48.700 | and you look out there in the vast cosmos,

01:50:51.500 | only a small fraction of which we can see,

01:50:53.660 | how many intelligent alien civilizations

01:50:57.540 | do you think are out there?

01:50:58.860 | Do you think about this kind of stuff?

01:51:00.220 | - I do.

01:51:01.660 | You know, I'm of the theory that we are not

01:51:03.320 | the only people out there.

01:51:04.160 | I think it would be a statistically silly comment

01:51:06.960 | to assume we are, although I get that we are

01:51:09.280 | the only data point that we currently have.

01:51:11.180 | Although I'm willing to jump over that fence and say that,

01:51:14.580 | yes, there most likely is intelligent life elsewhere.

01:51:18.160 | Although I'll concede that it is a possibility

01:51:20.000 | we are early or it could be limited,

01:51:22.000 | or it could be in a manner that we don't recognize

01:51:25.520 | or can really understand.

01:51:27.120 | I spend so much time thinking about

01:51:30.160 | how we anthropomorphize things on this UFO topic.

01:51:34.080 | And we've done it to ourselves with media in a sense, right?

01:51:36.320 | We've trained ourselves what to think about,

01:51:38.680 | what we think is true or what this would be like.

01:51:41.900 | And by doing so, I think we're closing ourselves off

01:51:44.800 | to a lot of what the possibilities could be

01:51:47.800 | and the things that we could miss.

01:51:49.500 | - You beautifully put that the thing that drew you

01:51:54.560 | to fighter jets is the technology.

01:51:57.160 | So if you were to think, to imagine

01:52:00.400 | from an alien perspective, what kind of technologies

01:52:04.840 | would we first encounter as human beings

01:52:07.600 | if we were to meet another alien civilization

01:52:11.220 | in the next few centuries?

01:52:13.180 | What kind of thing would we see?

01:52:15.840 | So you're now at the cutting edge

01:52:17.560 | and you see the quick progress that's happening.

01:52:20.100 | That was happening throughout the 20th century,

01:52:21.880 | that's happening now with greater degrees of autonomy

01:52:24.760 | with robots and that kind of stuff.

01:52:26.560 | What do you think we will encounter?

01:52:28.960 | - I think we're gonna see the ability to manipulate matter

01:52:32.640 | like we used to manipulate information.

01:52:34.640 | Like I think that's what, whether that means

01:52:38.080 | being able to pop something on the table that didn't exist

01:52:41.400 | or to influence a chemical reaction somewhere,

01:52:45.360 | but being able to manipulate and treat matter

01:52:49.340 | as if it was information.

01:52:51.080 | And so being able to design specific materials,

01:52:53.720 | being able to move past a lot of the barriers

01:52:57.600 | that seem to limit our progress with things

01:52:59.660 | such as miniaturized fusion or even just fusion in general,

01:53:03.080 | is a lot of it is matter-based, is material-based

01:53:07.040 | and our ability to not manipulate,

01:53:11.000 | we can only discover materials in a sense.

01:53:13.480 | And so I think that a complete mastery

01:53:15.540 | of physical reality would be one of the key traits

01:53:18.540 | of a very intelligent species.

01:53:21.140 | - Well, you're actually working on some,

01:53:22.960 | maybe you can correct me,

01:53:23.940 | but sort of quantum mechanical simulation

01:53:26.020 | to understand materials.

01:53:28.000 | So is that, do you see sort of the early steps

01:53:31.260 | that we're doing on quantum computing side

01:53:33.780 | to start to simulate, to deeper understand materials,

01:53:37.180 | but maybe to engineer and to mess with materials

01:53:39.820 | at the very low level that aliens would be able to do

01:53:43.460 | and hopefully humans would be able to do soon?

01:53:46.500 | - Yeah, I think that's, you know,

01:53:48.300 | so if we think about how, what materials are made of,

01:53:52.260 | it's just a collection of atoms,

01:53:53.860 | but each one of those atoms

01:53:54.760 | has a lot of data associated with it.

01:53:56.340 | So if we wanna kind of calculate

01:53:57.840 | how they interact with each other,

01:53:59.900 | it requires a massive amount of computational resources,

01:54:02.460 | so much so that it can't be done in a lot of cases

01:54:04.620 | with classical computers.

01:54:06.140 | And that's where quantum computers come in.

01:54:09.100 | Although we don't have a perfectly functioning

01:54:10.860 | quantum computer at this point,

01:54:13.100 | one of the things that we're working at

01:54:14.620 | at Quantum General Materials is to essentially bridge

01:54:17.020 | that gap between what a classical computer can do

01:54:19.620 | as far as simulating materials,

01:54:21.340 | and of course, what a fully functioning quantum computer

01:54:23.700 | would mean for being able to design materials.

01:54:26.380 | And so, you know, having the ability to study matter

01:54:29.860 | at a very fundamental level

01:54:31.140 | and unleashing artificial intelligence

01:54:32.900 | to machine learning on that problem,

01:54:35.180 | I think is, you know, in a sense, you know,

01:54:37.800 | alien in a way that we're able to advance our science

01:54:40.780 | using, you know, a process

01:54:42.460 | that we may not fully understand

01:54:43.740 | with a perhaps a non-human based intelligence

01:54:46.340 | in some sense.

01:54:47.180 | And so we may find patterns in the processes, right?

01:54:50.260 | How does our machine learning output, you know,

01:54:52.380 | can we match behaviors with what we're observing

01:54:56.020 | with what may be a machine learning algorithm with output,

01:54:58.060 | right?

01:54:58.900 | Can we try to classify the intelligence

01:54:59.860 | in that manner perhaps?

01:55:01.140 | And so, you know, at GenMath,

01:55:03.420 | we're looking at these materials,

01:55:05.300 | we're considering what these algorithms

01:55:06.820 | could have used for later on.

01:55:08.260 | Could we perhaps reverse the process

01:55:10.740 | and determine what a unique or anomalous material,

01:55:14.060 | what type of properties it potentially could have?

01:55:16.820 | - And you said GenMath, right?

01:55:19.460 | - Mm-hmm.

01:55:20.380 | - What is GenMath?

01:55:22.620 | - GenMath is a quantum generative material.

01:55:24.540 | So it's the company I work for.

01:55:27.120 | We essentially are working on a couple of verticals.

01:55:31.700 | One of them is our quantum chemistry work

01:55:33.980 | where essentially we're bridging the gap

01:55:35.840 | between essentially physics and chemistry.

01:55:38.260 | We're working on those problems

01:55:40.380 | and again, implementing artificial intelligence

01:55:42.700 | and machine learning into that process

01:55:44.220 | so that we can design those materials from the ground up.

01:55:47.100 | Additionally, we are what we consider

01:55:50.540 | a vertically integrated material science company,

01:55:52.620 | which means we can generate our own data.

01:55:55.340 | And so within the next quarter coming up,

01:55:59.500 | we are launching a satellite in the space.

01:56:02.500 | They'll have a fairly advanced hyperspectral sensor in there

01:56:05.620 | which is intended to be the first launch

01:56:08.220 | that will help us detect different types of materials

01:56:11.940 | using our advanced knowledge of quantum chemistry.

01:56:15.980 | We're gonna be leveraging that experience

01:56:17.420 | in order to better analyze that data.

01:56:19.580 | - Oh, interesting.

01:56:20.420 | So materials that are strange or novel out there in space.

01:56:25.420 | - Not necessarily, but we'll be looking back at Earth

01:56:28.540 | to be able to detect mineral deposits on Earth.

01:56:30.860 | - Got it, got it.

01:56:31.860 | Getting the greater perspective from out in space

01:56:34.340 | to do analysis of different materials.

01:56:36.420 | Interesting.

01:56:37.420 | Yeah, I was really impressed by the DeepMind.

01:56:40.220 | I got to hang out at DeepMind recently

01:56:41.780 | and they really impressed me

01:56:43.420 | at the possibility of the application,

01:56:45.660 | as you were saying, of machine learning

01:56:47.420 | in the context of quantum chemical simulation for materials.

01:56:51.560 | So to understand materials.

01:56:53.500 | It's really, really, really interesting.

01:56:56.340 | So manipulate matter, huh?

01:56:59.820 | - I would say the next thing is forces, right?

01:57:02.260 | Or maybe fields.

01:57:03.100 | So manipulating or managing gravity.

01:57:07.540 | Can we maneuver within fields in some manner

01:57:12.300 | that allows us to perhaps move propellant-less

01:57:16.060 | or in other manners, right?

01:57:17.020 | And so I think essentially having a deeper understanding

01:57:21.140 | of different fields and being able to interact with them,

01:57:25.140 | I think would be a potential avenue for travel,

01:57:29.660 | advanced travel, right?

01:57:31.140 | Propellant-less travel.

01:57:32.500 | Can we quantum entangle gravity fields together

01:57:36.220 | in a propeller ship via the gravity field of a planet,

01:57:39.100 | the mass of a planet, in a drive on a ship?

01:57:41.620 | There's all sorts of interesting things.

01:57:43.060 | - Yeah, people look back at people like you

01:57:46.820 | and say, "Wow, they used to fly

01:57:48.620 | "with this kind of propellant.

01:57:51.220 | "It seems like to be a very antiquated way of flying."

01:57:54.140 | And they were very impressed with themselves,

01:57:55.740 | these humans, that they could fly like birds.

01:57:58.580 | It's like so much energy is used

01:58:02.020 | to fly such short distances from that perspective.

01:58:05.180 | - We can only throw so many rocks at the back.

01:58:07.060 | - Yeah. - There needs to be

01:58:07.900 | a better way. - Exactly.

01:58:09.020 | It just seems dumb, like these...

01:58:11.300 | (both laugh)

01:58:12.740 | It's like Flintstones or something like that.

01:58:14.460 | - We're getting good at it, but there's a limit, right?

01:58:16.420 | Like we need to do science. - Getting extremely good.

01:58:18.180 | I mean, that's an interesting sort of trade-off,

01:58:21.860 | how much do you invest in getting really good at it?

01:58:24.820 | I tend to believe the reason why it would be very important

01:58:29.820 | and very powerful to put a human on Mars

01:58:32.140 | is not necessarily for the exploration facet,

01:58:35.540 | but in all the different technologies that come from that.

01:58:39.380 | So there's something about putting humans

01:58:42.460 | in extreme conditions where we figure out

01:58:45.260 | how to make it less extreme, more comfortable,

01:58:48.300 | and for that, we invent things,

01:58:51.540 | like the DoD sort of helping invent the internet

01:58:55.340 | and all the different technologies we've invented.

01:58:58.020 | It's almost like an indirect consequence

01:59:00.060 | of solving difficult problems,

01:59:01.840 | whether that problem means winning wars

01:59:05.160 | or colonizing other planets.

01:59:07.300 | And so I don't think Mars will help us figure out

01:59:10.460 | propulsional systems or to crack open physics

01:59:13.520 | to where you can travel close to the speed of light

01:59:16.220 | or faster than the speed of light,

01:59:17.780 | but it will help us figure out

01:59:19.820 | how to build some cool technology here on Earth, I think.

01:59:23.240 | So I'm a big proponent of doing really difficult things,

01:59:27.020 | really difficult engineering things

01:59:28.620 | to see what kind of technologies emerge from that.

01:59:32.680 | But let me ask you this.

01:59:34.800 | Do you think US government is hiding some technology,

01:59:39.600 | like alien spacecraft technology?

01:59:42.580 | - I have no information either way.

01:59:46.160 | - And if you did, you probably wouldn't tell me.

01:59:49.080 | - But my assumptions, you know,

01:59:51.200 | like what does my heart tell me?

01:59:52.640 | My heart tells me something's going on,

01:59:54.760 | but I have no evidence for that.

01:59:56.700 | Maybe that's me wanting something to go on.

01:59:58.600 | Maybe that's a human feeling to want to know

02:00:01.640 | that my government's in control

02:00:03.000 | of what some strange unknown thing is.

02:00:05.340 | - What's your sense, if such a thing happened,

02:00:09.840 | would this kind of information leak?

02:00:12.760 | Would this kind of information be released by the government?

02:00:15.640 | I mean, that's the worry that you have

02:00:16.940 | is because when you don't understand a thing

02:00:18.800 | and it's novel, you wanna hide it

02:00:20.680 | so that some kind of enemy doesn't get access to it

02:00:25.080 | and use it against you.

02:00:27.240 | - I wonder if that is the underlying assumption.

02:00:29.840 | It's the one people always jump to,

02:00:31.600 | that it's for to maintain secrecy of technology,

02:00:35.280 | and I assume that's part of it.

02:00:36.680 | I wonder if there's any other reasons

02:00:38.080 | that we would want to not talk about it.

02:00:40.440 | I imagine that such information would have a shock

02:00:43.400 | to the social economic system of any country,

02:00:46.720 | if not the world.

02:00:48.120 | And so I wonder if perhaps that was part

02:00:50.240 | of the concern as well, how society can react to it.

02:00:53.800 | Maybe we're anti-fragile enough now

02:00:56.040 | with everything that's going on

02:00:57.780 | and with our communication networks that,

02:00:59.840 | why not now?

02:01:02.760 | I don't know, but that's something I think about as well.

02:01:06.140 | - Yeah, the effect on the mass psyche

02:01:10.160 | of something like this,

02:01:12.600 | that there's another intelligence out there

02:01:16.880 | who had trouble enough to deal with a pandemic,

02:01:23.440 | to have something of this scale,

02:01:25.180 | basically having just an inkling of a phenomena

02:01:30.880 | that we have no understanding of

02:01:32.520 | and could lead to complete destruction of human civilization

02:01:35.400 | or a flourishing of it.

02:01:38.040 | And what do you do?

02:01:39.880 | What does a bureaucracy of government do with that?

02:01:42.320 | - Yeah, especially when they're the ones

02:01:44.320 | holding the reins of power,

02:01:45.700 | and such a communication would relinquish that power,

02:01:48.480 | essentially, to some degree.

02:01:52.320 | - Since you think there's aliens out there,

02:01:55.240 | and you're somebody that's thought about war quite a bit,

02:02:01.200 | do you think alien civilizations,

02:02:05.320 | when we meet them, would want war?

02:02:07.240 | Would they be a danger to us,

02:02:10.560 | or would they be a friend to us?

02:02:12.180 | What's your intuition about intelligences out there?

02:02:16.960 | - My intuition tells me that when two people

02:02:19.960 | like yourself and myself or anyone get together,

02:02:23.480 | often the output is greater than the individuals.

02:02:26.860 | And when we work together, we can typically do things

02:02:30.520 | that are more impressive and better

02:02:32.000 | than if a single person works alone.

02:02:33.800 | And now, I know that war has driven technological progress,

02:02:40.680 | but perhaps there's other mechanisms that can do so.

02:02:46.320 | But regardless, I wonder if we truly think

02:02:50.360 | about advanced society that has been perhaps

02:02:53.240 | thousands or millions of years ahead of us,

02:02:55.920 | I would imagine that same truth to be there,

02:02:59.560 | that people working together, creatures working together,

02:03:02.720 | is a good thing for society or its society as a whole.

02:03:07.720 | And if we consider that,

02:03:09.760 | as we imagine a society growing and expanding,

02:03:14.360 | in a sense, the ultimate output of a planet

02:03:17.000 | could only be achieved in some senses

02:03:18.600 | if everyone was working towards the same goal.

02:03:21.040 | And there might be wonders and secrets

02:03:24.320 | and things that we can't imagine

02:03:25.640 | just simply because of the timeframes

02:03:27.280 | that we live under and we think in.

02:03:30.280 | But if a planet has a single unit,

02:03:33.520 | and it almost is as an entity itself at a certain level,

02:03:36.440 | if everything's working towards the same output,

02:03:38.720 | I could almost imagine an intelligent species

02:03:40.920 | that approached us planet to planet

02:03:43.320 | instead of person to person

02:03:44.720 | because that's how they've evolved

02:03:46.000 | and they've assumed any intelligent species

02:03:47.760 | would understand that working together is better than not.

02:03:51.100 | And so, my heart tells me that at a certain point,

02:03:55.480 | love and caring and desire to work together

02:04:00.280 | is much more powerful than the technological progress

02:04:03.880 | that war would bring.

02:04:04.920 | - I hope so as well.

02:04:08.000 | Well, let me jump to the AI topic that you've done.

02:04:10.880 | So you've done research and development efforts

02:04:13.080 | focused on multi-agent intelligence

02:04:14.920 | for collaborative autonomy,

02:04:16.880 | machine learning AI stuff

02:04:18.480 | that we've been talking about for combat,

02:04:21.440 | for air-to-air combat,

02:04:23.120 | manned-unmanned teaming technologies,

02:04:24.920 | all that kind of stuff.

02:04:26.160 | What's some interesting ideas in this space

02:04:28.520 | that fascinate you?

02:04:30.260 | - Randomness.

02:04:32.080 | Being able to not predict what the enemy's doing

02:04:35.560 | almost no matter what,

02:04:36.880 | 'cause there's a level of randomness

02:04:38.160 | that's within the tactical envelope.

02:04:39.960 | - Utility of randomness.

02:04:42.400 | - The utility of randomness.

02:04:43.840 | - Sounds like a book you should write.

02:04:46.160 | (both laugh)

02:04:48.120 | - That'd be a good title.

02:04:49.280 | Name my band.

02:04:50.480 | - Name your band, yeah.

02:04:52.020 | So yeah, can you elaborate that?

02:04:55.360 | So like trying to deeper understand

02:04:57.600 | how you can integrate randomness through AI

02:05:02.320 | in the context of combat.

02:05:03.920 | - In order to make yourself,

02:05:06.200 | in order to take away the enemy's ability

02:05:07.920 | to try to predict what you're gonna do,

02:05:09.840 | to disrupt their technological progress cycles

02:05:12.680 | so that they don't have a clear target to aim at.

02:05:16.160 | And if you don't have a clear target to aim at,

02:05:17.720 | it's hard to hit it.

02:05:18.880 | Additionally, more distribution of assets and capability.

02:05:23.300 | So imagine being able to digitally model

02:05:26.120 | your weapon or your system

02:05:28.120 | or your entire tactical engagement or scenario,

02:05:31.100 | or allow a machine learning to help you

02:05:33.040 | better understand the technology

02:05:35.240 | that you need to build

02:05:36.120 | in order to defeat a particular scenario, right?

02:05:38.760 | And I'm talking hardware now, not just the tactic itself.

02:05:42.560 | And being able to use large amounts of simulation

02:05:46.560 | and machine learning to build individual assets

02:05:49.240 | that are small boutique

02:05:50.760 | using advanced manufacturing techniques

02:05:53.920 | for a mission or for a particular battle, right?

02:05:56.120 | Instead of just having these large things against an enemy,

02:05:58.260 | you're building systems and technology for individual cases.

02:06:02.100 | - What about manned and unmanned teaming?

02:06:06.000 | So man and machine working together.

02:06:09.000 | Is there interesting ideas there?

02:06:10.720 | - I approach it from the position that

02:06:13.880 | the human should be commanding

02:06:18.000 | from the highest level possible, right?

02:06:19.540 | So mission objective based targeting.

02:06:23.200 | And so if, just for an example,

02:06:25.480 | if there's a building here

02:06:26.900 | and I want that building to go away,

02:06:28.200 | that's the message I wanna communicate.

02:06:29.760 | I don't wanna tell certain vehicles

02:06:31.440 | to be in a certain spot.

02:06:32.400 | I don't wanna know how much fuel they have.

02:06:33.960 | I don't even wanna know what capabilities they have,

02:06:35.960 | necessarily.

02:06:36.780 | I just wanna know that I have the ability

02:06:39.440 | to select from a cloud of capabilities

02:06:41.760 | and the right assets are gonna arrive

02:06:43.600 | such that they deal with the contingencies

02:06:46.280 | around the target such as protection systems or EW,

02:06:49.380 | and then can prosecute the target

02:06:50.920 | to the high enough probability of satisfaction

02:06:53.480 | that's needed by the mission.

02:06:54.680 | - And that's the power of the human mind

02:06:57.200 | is it's able to do some of these strategic calculations,

02:07:00.600 | but also ethical calculations, all that kind of stuff.

02:07:03.360 | - Exactly.

02:07:04.200 | - That's what humans are good at.

02:07:05.340 | - Does it worry you a future

02:07:08.440 | where we have increasingly higher autonomy

02:07:11.960 | in our weapon systems, in our war?

02:07:14.440 | So you said building.

02:07:15.620 | What about telling a set of fully autonomous drones

02:07:21.620 | to get rid of all the terrorists in the city?

02:07:25.760 | So you said multiple buildings, region,

02:07:29.840 | that kind of, so greater and greater autonomy.

02:07:35.160 | - So that's a fear, right?

02:07:36.920 | You're viewing it from a we can cover more perspective,

02:07:41.420 | which is fair.

02:07:44.220 | And a lot of, I don't approach it from that topic.

02:07:48.460 | At least I don't think of it that way, at least morally.

02:07:51.060 | I think that with the advancement of warfare,

02:07:54.140 | assuming we have a just and moral leadership,

02:07:57.900 | if that's the case,

02:08:00.220 | then I am an advocate for increased autonomy and technology

02:08:04.580 | because I see it as an ability to be more precise.

02:08:08.980 | And if we trust the moral leadership of our government,

02:08:13.980 | then we would want to be as precise as possible

02:08:17.460 | in order to mitigate effects that we don't want.

02:08:21.100 | So I know that's not a satisfying answer

02:08:24.460 | and it leaves us maybe with bad feelings, but.

02:08:27.140 | - No, because having experienced sort of

02:08:32.720 | directly seen what it looks like

02:08:36.240 | when deliberately or carelessly

02:08:40.720 | war leads to the death of a large number of civilians

02:08:44.480 | as it does currently in Ukraine,

02:08:46.680 | the value of precision,

02:08:50.060 | given ethical leadership, becomes apparent.

02:08:54.200 | So there's something distinctly unethical

02:08:57.320 | about the murder of civilians in a time of war.

02:09:01.920 | And I think technology helps lessen that.

02:09:06.000 | Of course, all death is terrible,

02:09:08.480 | but there's something about schools, hospitals,

02:09:13.480 | being destroyed with everybody inside being killed.

02:09:17.500 | It's particularly terrible.

02:09:21.280 | - It is.

02:09:22.480 | And you approached it from the angle of

02:09:24.720 | more autonomy enables a wider swath of destruction.

02:09:30.000 | And that's where we get back into,

02:09:32.480 | who's making the decisions based off of this?

02:09:34.960 | And my hope, again, would be that

02:09:37.680 | we would have the leadership that would use these things

02:09:39.640 | when needed in the precise way as possible to minimize that.

02:09:42.960 | And I've seen that firsthand.

02:09:44.520 | I've seen that in country.

02:09:45.800 | I've seen, not blue forces,

02:09:49.400 | but I've seen truck bombs go off on school buses,

02:09:53.080 | driving around Afghanistan while escorting convoys.

02:09:57.840 | And it wasn't easy then,

02:09:59.700 | and I'm sure it's not any easier now,

02:10:01.800 | especially after what you've just seen.

02:10:03.880 | - Do you have thoughts about the current war in Ukraine,

02:10:07.200 | maybe from a military perspective,

02:10:09.560 | maybe from the Air Force perspective?

02:10:11.340 | So I could just mention a few things.

02:10:13.760 | There's the Baraktar drones that are being used.

02:10:17.880 | They're unmanned.

02:10:18.980 | I think they have capability to be autonomous,

02:10:21.560 | but they're usually remotely controlled.

02:10:23.880 | They're used for reconnaissance,

02:10:25.460 | but they're also used by the Ukraine side for reconnaissance.

02:10:28.560 | And I think also to destroy different technologies,

02:10:33.440 | tanks and so on, different targets like this.

02:10:36.200 | So there's also on the Russian side, the oil and tan,

02:10:40.040 | there's the fighter jets,

02:10:41.960 | MiG-29 in the Ukraine side,

02:10:44.440 | and the Su-25 in the Russian side.

02:10:46.420 | Is there anything kind of stands out to you

02:10:48.080 | about this particular aspects of what this war looks like

02:10:51.600 | that's unique to what you've experienced?

02:10:54.760 | - Maybe not unique,

02:10:55.600 | but it's just been absolutely incredible

02:10:56.780 | to see the footage.

02:10:59.240 | I mean, we're watching war on Twitter, essentially,

02:11:02.740 | and to see these aircraft flying down low,

02:11:06.180 | spitting flares out, getting shot down,

02:11:08.920 | it's incredible to see this happening

02:11:11.080 | live for everyone to see.

02:11:13.500 | So that's just kind of a quick meta comment.

02:11:16.220 | But as far as the actual,

02:11:18.580 | I think these small form factor UAVs

02:11:20.740 | where they're just like strapping weapon to it

02:11:22.900 | and flying over and trying to drop it at the right time,

02:11:25.360 | or any of these type of commercial applications of technology

02:11:29.880 | into this ad hoc warfare area is incredibly interesting

02:11:33.160 | 'cause it shows how useful that technology can be

02:11:36.500 | outside of the military, especially like DGI.

02:11:40.120 | There's obviously a lot of technology in there

02:11:41.680 | is being leveraged for other capabilities

02:11:43.640 | within PLC military, or at least we would assume.

02:11:47.800 | What happens if that is more widespread?

02:11:52.560 | What if we were creating our own drones

02:11:54.520 | and they were being used against us?

02:11:56.040 | Would we want to have some type of kill switch

02:11:57.680 | or something like that?

02:11:58.760 | So I think governments are gonna have to consider

02:12:01.680 | all these tools that are gonna be easily available

02:12:04.420 | to just any person could be turned into a tool of war.

02:12:08.040 | How do we stop that from being turned against us?

02:12:10.480 | Especially as we look at 10 years from now

02:12:12.960 | when we have a large number of autonomous UAVs

02:12:15.480 | delivering packages and doing everything else

02:12:17.640 | over our country, and any one of those

02:12:19.520 | could be potentially a weapon

02:12:20.760 | if we don't have the proper security.

02:12:22.500 | - Well, we're now in Texas, and Texas values its guns

02:12:27.060 | and it sees guns as, among other things,

02:12:30.160 | a protector of individual freedom.

02:12:33.480 | You could see a future perhaps where,

02:12:35.480 | and I've certainly experienced this

02:12:37.240 | in the empowering nature of this in Ukraine,

02:12:41.440 | where you can put the fight for independence

02:12:45.940 | into your own hands by literally strapping explosives

02:12:50.140 | to GGI drones that you purchase on your own salary.

02:12:54.240 | I mean, one of the interesting things

02:12:55.560 | about the Voluntary Army in Ukraine

02:12:58.240 | is that they're basically using their own salary

02:13:01.080 | to buy the ammunition to fight for their independence.

02:13:04.160 | That's the very kind of ideal that sort of people speak

02:13:07.640 | about when they speak about the Second Amendment

02:13:11.200 | in this country, that it's interesting to see

02:13:15.960 | the advanced technology version of that,

02:13:18.920 | especially in Ukraine, sort of using

02:13:21.360 | computer vision technology for surveillance

02:13:24.680 | and reconnaissance to try to,

02:13:26.800 | and integrate that information to discover the targets

02:13:31.120 | and all that kind of stuff,

02:13:32.820 | to put that in the hands of civilians,

02:13:35.420 | it's fascinating to see.

02:13:36.480 | So to sort of fight for their independence,

02:13:38.600 | you could say that to fight against authoritarian regime

02:13:43.600 | of your own government, all that kind of stuff.

02:13:45.360 | - It shows you how complicated the war space

02:13:47.360 | in the future is gonna be, invading a land like that

02:13:50.440 | where people have that many different types of resources,

02:13:53.440 | it's gonna absolutely change warfare.

02:13:55.720 | - I mean, hopefully that creates a disincentive to start war

02:14:00.720 | to go to war with a, yeah,

02:14:04.400 | sort of it changes the nature of guerrilla warfare.

02:14:07.080 | - It does, yeah.

02:14:08.320 | I don't think Putin was expecting to be in that engagement

02:14:11.480 | quite as long as he has, of course,

02:14:14.060 | but it can show you how you can get caught up.

02:14:16.480 | If land wars turn into an inescapable quagmire each time

02:14:21.480 | due to the complications around the society's ability

02:14:26.520 | to access interesting tools,

02:14:28.760 | it could be a huge demotivator for aggression.

02:14:33.980 | - Well, let me ask you about this.

02:14:38.600 | Do you think there will always be war in the world?

02:14:41.160 | Is this just a part of human nature?

02:14:45.940 | (silence)

02:14:48.100 | - I think so.

02:14:51.540 | I think it is.

02:14:53.620 | Until we move past resource limitation,

02:14:58.080 | there's always gonna be at least that one particular cause

02:15:03.220 | of conflict.

02:15:04.980 | And then we can also consider all our psychological,

02:15:09.320 | lizard brain emotions that cause us to act out.

02:15:14.940 | Although, hopefully we have enough things in place

02:15:18.860 | to stop that from rising to the level of war.

02:15:22.200 | But we have our own biology,

02:15:23.420 | our own psychology and evolution to combat.

02:15:25.560 | But there are pragmatic reasons

02:15:28.320 | to exert violence sometimes, unfortunately,

02:15:30.400 | and one of those cases could be resource limitations.

02:15:33.520 | And so while your question was,

02:15:34.780 | do I think there'll always be war in this world?

02:15:37.100 | My unfortunate answer is perhaps yes,

02:15:39.540 | but once there's more than one world

02:15:41.620 | and we're less resource constrained,

02:15:43.060 | then perhaps there'll be a valve of sorts for that.

02:15:45.780 | - I talked to Jocko on this podcast.

02:15:50.900 | I told him about a song called Brothers in Arms

02:15:55.540 | by Dire Straits.

02:15:56.940 | And the question I asked him,

02:15:59.720 | I'd like to ask you the same question,

02:16:01.460 | is like the song goes,

02:16:05.020 | do you think we're fools to wage war

02:16:07.140 | on our brothers in arms?

02:16:09.260 | And Jocko said,

02:16:10.860 | our enemy is not our brothers in arms,

02:16:14.180 | they're the enemy.

02:16:15.220 | And so this kind of notion that we're all human,

02:16:21.220 | that's a luxury you can have.

02:16:25.140 | But there is good and bad in this world,

02:16:28.100 | according to Jocko.

02:16:29.620 | I hear that anger and hate,

02:16:32.860 | when I was in Ukraine,

02:16:34.940 | amongst some people,

02:16:36.860 | where there was a sense

02:16:40.900 | where you could be brothers and sisters,

02:16:42.400 | you can have family,

02:16:43.300 | you can have love from Ukraine to Russia.

02:16:47.220 | But now that everything's changed

02:16:50.140 | and generational hate for some people have taken over.

02:16:54.880 | So I guess the question is,

02:16:57.540 | when you think about the enemy,

02:16:59.180 | is there hate there?

02:17:02.260 | Do you acknowledge that they're human?

02:17:04.420 | - I had never had any hate or discontent,

02:17:06.660 | when I was doing my job, I'll say.

02:17:10.300 | But I was also never in a true life or death situation

02:17:14.660 | where they were gonna kill me if I didn't kill them.

02:17:17.260 | But I think that environment isn't one born out of hate,

02:17:22.500 | being in that type of scenario,

02:17:25.460 | since it's how to be alive, right?

02:17:27.340 | I mean, our natural state is be fighting

02:17:30.020 | for survival in a sense.

02:17:31.820 | And so I think there's great power and strength

02:17:35.180 | and clarity perhaps in that.

02:17:36.860 | And it's not always born out of hate,

02:17:39.060 | but out of necessity.

02:17:40.140 | And we can't always control that.

02:17:42.340 | And I think as we focus on ourselves so much,

02:17:46.540 | we only dance on that pinhead

02:17:48.220 | when we find ourselves fighting for things that we need.

02:17:51.940 | And we're always taking from someone else at this point.

02:17:54.700 | And so as someone that's been in combat

02:17:57.500 | and very high above it, I'll say, right?

02:17:59.540 | Where I didn't feel like I was in particular danger.

02:18:02.180 | I rationalized it and I made my way through it

02:18:07.860 | knowing that there were people on the other side

02:18:09.540 | that were going to die that were on our side than not.

02:18:13.380 | So it was always a very human thing.

02:18:15.860 | It was never a reaction, emotional reaction of any sense.

02:18:20.860 | - So you were able to see the basic,

02:18:25.860 | it's human versus human.

02:18:28.020 | There's some aspect of war that is basically

02:18:31.260 | one people fighting each other.

02:18:34.740 | - Yes.

02:18:37.300 | At the end of the day, especially I would say in aviation,

02:18:42.360 | tactical aviation, there's almost a kinship

02:18:44.500 | with your enemies in a sense,

02:18:46.340 | because you know them in a sense, right?

02:18:49.100 | You know what they've been through.

02:18:51.660 | You know what training they've been through.

02:18:52.900 | You know where they've failed.

02:18:54.660 | And you know what type of person they are,

02:18:56.540 | 'cause there's a very unique person that does that job

02:18:58.300 | and usually can spot them.

02:18:59.900 | - I guess it's the kind of respect you have

02:19:02.500 | for the craftsmanship of the job that's taken on.

02:19:06.900 | - Certainly.

02:19:07.740 | And that person didn't come out in his $100 million jet

02:19:10.100 | because I pissed them off.

02:19:12.220 | It's not an emotional response.

02:19:13.940 | We're both there, maybe because we chose to be in some sense,

02:19:17.940 | but at the behest of someone else

02:19:20.780 | and outside of our control and power.

02:19:22.980 | So in a sense for me, it's almost a challenge

02:19:25.940 | that we've engaged upon agreeably,

02:19:28.140 | but that's such a romantic version

02:19:29.740 | that I have the luxury to have being high in my castle

02:19:33.260 | in the jet up there, not on the ground.

02:19:35.580 | So I understand that it's a bit more romantic

02:19:37.680 | than perhaps someone on the ground

02:19:40.940 | experiencing all the horrors down there,

02:19:42.860 | 'cause everything looks very small from above.

02:19:45.160 | - And that's another aspect of war with greater autonomy,

02:19:50.180 | when you're controlling the mission versus

02:19:53.380 | you know, have a Genghis Khan type of intimacy

02:19:58.380 | in terms of the actual experience of war

02:20:01.700 | where you directly have, you murder with a sword

02:20:05.260 | versus a gun versus a remotely controlled drone

02:20:09.460 | versus a strategic mission assignment

02:20:12.060 | to an autonomous drone that executes.

02:20:14.900 | - Abstracted away until it's just a small decision.

02:20:18.500 | And my worry is the people without a voice

02:20:23.220 | are completely forgotten and silenced

02:20:29.140 | in all of these calculations.

02:20:31.020 | I spoke to a lot of people, poor people,

02:20:34.840 | they feel like they've never really had a voice

02:20:37.740 | and they're too easily forgotten,

02:20:40.260 | even within the country of Ukraine.

02:20:42.500 | It's the big city versus the rural divide, you know.

02:20:48.420 | It's easy to forget the people

02:20:49.820 | that don't have a Twitter account

02:20:52.300 | and that their basic existence is just trying to survive,

02:20:57.100 | trying to put food on the table

02:20:58.500 | and they don't have anything else.

02:21:00.640 | Anything else and they are the ones

02:21:03.540 | that truly feel the pain of war,

02:21:06.100 | of the supply chain going down,

02:21:08.300 | of the food supplies going down,

02:21:10.100 | of a cold winter without power.

02:21:12.900 | You're still young, but you've seen some things.

02:21:18.940 | - So let me ask you to put on your wise sage hat

02:21:22.620 | and give advice to young people.

02:21:25.840 | Whether they're fascinated by technology

02:21:29.180 | or fascinated by fighter jets,

02:21:31.860 | whether they're fascinated by sort of engineering

02:21:35.220 | or the way the stars look at night,

02:21:38.060 | what advice would you give them?

02:21:40.100 | How to have a career they can be proud of

02:21:42.060 | or how to have a life they can be proud of?

02:21:45.420 | - I'd suggest that they don't fear looking foolish.

02:21:49.780 | I spent a large portion of my life

02:21:52.220 | considering the laughter or the comments at my statements

02:21:58.260 | as indication that I shouldn't pursue that.

02:22:01.000 | And so, I kind of woke up to that fact a bit later,

02:22:05.900 | but I would encourage, I would advise

02:22:08.900 | that people trust in themselves

02:22:11.000 | and trust in the things that they care about.

02:22:12.920 | It doesn't matter if they're good at it.

02:22:15.560 | All that matters is that they find something

02:22:17.440 | that they can apply love and care to

02:22:20.400 | and they will grow better at it

02:22:22.240 | and then most likely make the world better because of it.

02:22:25.080 | - And don't be afraid to look stupid.

02:22:27.420 | - Don't be afraid to look stupid.

02:22:29.080 | - Yeah, that's one of the things that I think

02:22:31.480 | as you get older, you're expected to be,

02:22:34.880 | to have it all figured out

02:22:36.000 | and so you are afraid to take on new things.

02:22:39.040 | But I think as long as you're always,

02:22:40.800 | okay, looking stupid and having a beginner's mind,

02:22:43.400 | you can get really, really far even later on in life.

02:22:47.000 | So this isn't just advice for young people.

02:22:48.760 | This is really advice for everybody.

02:22:52.460 | Maybe a dark question, but has there been

02:22:58.720 | a difficult time in your life,

02:23:01.480 | a really dark place you've gone in your mind

02:23:03.640 | that stands out that you had to really overcome?

02:23:08.520 | - I would suggest that I've been

02:23:11.080 | pretty firm ground for most of my life.

02:23:14.120 | I haven't had too many personal tragedies, I'll say,

02:23:18.840 | that have really defined me.

02:23:21.580 | Certainly none that I would think are outside the norm.

02:23:25.760 | - So there is no truly low point?

02:23:29.000 | - Actually, I have one and it's tough for me

02:23:30.640 | because I've spent most of my life beating emotions

02:23:33.880 | and high emotional responses out of my system,

02:23:38.640 | 'cause that's what flying is.

02:23:40.040 | It's keeping a steady line and doing what you need to do.

02:23:43.400 | In fact, there's been studies that have shown

02:23:45.880 | reduced adrenaline production in fighter pilots

02:23:49.440 | for a number of years after they get out.

02:23:50.720 | But getting out of the Navy was difficult for me

02:23:54.360 | and I wasn't expecting it to be.

02:23:56.080 | A lot of bravado and machoism, of course, in the military,

02:23:59.480 | especially in the fighter community.

02:24:01.520 | We all have our plans made up to get out

02:24:03.600 | and none of it really accounts for any type of mental health

02:24:08.080 | or anything like that.

02:24:08.920 | It's all very much, where am I gonna get my paycheck from?

02:24:11.560 | Where am I gonna move to?

02:24:12.680 | And whether it's the Navy or just individuals,

02:24:16.400 | truly understanding the difference that makes.

02:24:18.320 | And when I got out, it was difficult for me.

02:24:21.040 | I think a lot of guys in that job, when they get out,

02:24:23.160 | they almost, at least I had anxiety when I got out

02:24:26.280 | because I was so used to being highly involved

02:24:29.920 | in something that, just was I was always involved with

02:24:34.920 | that when I got out, I didn't know how to fill that space,

02:24:37.680 | essentially, you know?

02:24:38.780 | And while I wouldn't say it was

02:24:41.320 | an overly traumatic experience,

02:24:42.720 | I think it's one that's not accounted for enough

02:24:45.160 | that people that are getting out,

02:24:46.880 | so I would encourage them to take it serious

02:24:49.160 | and actually think about it and respect the change

02:24:51.680 | 'cause it is a big one.

02:24:53.480 | - Well, if I may say, you found a place in nature currently,

02:24:58.480 | a home, is there, can you speak to that

02:25:01.960 | being a source of happiness for you?

02:25:04.080 | - Absolutely.

02:25:04.920 | - An escape from the world?

02:25:06.240 | - Certainly, very much is.

02:25:08.080 | - Was it deliberate that you found it there?

02:25:10.280 | - That's home for me.

02:25:12.120 | So, you know, I moved back up to the Boston area

02:25:14.920 | and my wife and I had an idea after moving

02:25:18.440 | about eight or nine times in the Navy

02:25:20.280 | of kind of what we wanted just generally.

02:25:23.560 | And it was all really about the land

02:25:25.760 | and not about the house, you know?

02:25:26.920 | We just wanted privacy and to be nearby.

02:25:29.520 | And so we ended up finding a lot of land,

02:25:31.680 | you know, a parcel of land, we put a house on it

02:25:34.200 | and it provides me with a sense of peace

02:25:36.560 | that I think I can only get when I'm in nature.

02:25:40.240 | A sense of clarity that helps me think, helps me relax,

02:25:44.680 | maybe it's the relaxing that helps me think, I don't know.

02:25:46.640 | But being surrounded by nature and birds and animals

02:25:50.640 | for me has always allowed me to, I don't know,

02:25:54.920 | feel most in touch with my own thoughts in a sense.

02:25:59.320 | It just provides clarity.

02:26:01.280 | And so this little sanctuary you could say I've built

02:26:04.640 | allows me to, you know, interface via a fiber line

02:26:08.480 | at my house, but also feel like I'm a million miles away

02:26:11.080 | sometimes, which is the best of both worlds.

02:26:13.880 | - And you can just walk outside to escape it all.

02:26:16.280 | - Yes.

02:26:17.120 | - To experience life as hundreds of generations

02:26:21.480 | of human species have experienced it.

02:26:23.520 | - Maybe it's the dichotomy.

02:26:24.640 | My desire for the vastness of technology and experience

02:26:28.520 | compared with the most basic baseline that we have.

02:26:31.360 | - Isn't that strange?

02:26:33.120 | How do you square that?

02:26:34.880 | - I don't know.

02:26:36.080 | - How drawn you are to the cutting edge

02:26:38.080 | and still the calm you find in nature.

02:26:41.360 | - I think it makes sense.

02:26:42.480 | Nature is vastly superior to almost all of our technology.

02:26:45.720 | - From a technology perspective?

02:26:46.560 | - Yeah, it is.

02:26:48.080 | And so in a way it's being surrounded by perfection

02:26:50.200 | in a lot of senses.

02:26:53.280 | - In the military and in general,

02:26:55.120 | have you contemplated your mortality?

02:26:57.200 | Have you been afraid of death?

02:26:58.960 | What's your relationship like with death?

02:27:01.040 | - I was willing to accept an oversized amount of risk,

02:27:06.120 | I'll say, when I was younger as an aviator.

02:27:08.480 | Not in the jet, but just that was my life.

02:27:10.560 | You know, I felt like I was gonna live forever.

02:27:13.560 | And going out in the war, you know, strangely,

02:27:15.720 | didn't really change that because, you know,

02:27:18.400 | as an aviator, again, we're riding up high

02:27:20.240 | on our horse up there, so.

02:27:22.600 | There were times when I was in situations

02:27:25.680 | that could have resulted in death from flying

02:27:28.240 | or from emergency in the aircraft, but I'll be honest,

02:27:33.240 | I never really kind of sat down to think about

02:27:36.560 | the mortality of it afterwards.

02:27:39.280 | I feel like I kind of signed a check at the beginning

02:27:41.920 | and it was my job to perform as well as I could.

02:27:44.240 | And if something happened in that,

02:27:46.000 | then I better damn well be sure

02:27:47.640 | I would do my best at the time then.

02:27:50.480 | So, you know, I maybe didn't personally reflect on it

02:27:53.680 | as much as one would think, you know,

02:27:57.240 | 'cause once you get in that machine,

02:27:58.800 | it doesn't give you a lot of time to sit back

02:28:01.280 | and philosophize on your current situation.

02:28:04.960 | And the same, just like we weren't seeing these,

02:28:06.800 | or when we seen these objects off the coast,

02:28:08.520 | we weren't necessarily examining them every day, right?

02:28:10.800 | We'd put them into that bucket because it wasn't something

02:28:12.760 | that was gonna kill us right away.

02:28:14.800 | And thinking about death when you're so close to it

02:28:17.760 | all the time would be debilitating.

02:28:20.440 | - It would probably make you worse at your job.

02:28:22.480 | - It would.

02:28:23.320 | - Well, maybe you can think about death

02:28:26.720 | when you look out when you go out into nature

02:28:28.320 | and think like the fact that this whole ride ends,

02:28:32.880 | it's such a weird thing, and the old makes way to new.

02:28:37.800 | And that's all throughout nature.

02:28:39.240 | And if you just look at the cruelty of nature

02:28:42.080 | or the beauty of nature, however you think about it,

02:28:44.600 | the fact that the big thing eats the little thing

02:28:49.280 | over and over, and that's just how it progresses.

02:28:53.440 | And that's how adaptation happens.

02:28:55.680 | - Death is a requirement for evolution.

02:28:59.500 | And whether evolution allows us

02:29:02.560 | to see objective reality or not,

02:29:04.600 | it still gives you some interesting thoughts

02:29:06.600 | about perspectives of death,

02:29:08.320 | and especially concerning its biological necessity

02:29:11.720 | as far as evolution is concerned.

02:29:13.760 | - Yeah, it's weird.

02:29:14.600 | It's weird that there's been like 100 billion people

02:29:18.520 | that lived before us, and that you and I will be forgotten.

02:29:22.120 | This whole thing we're doing right now

02:29:23.920 | is meaningless in that sense,

02:29:25.920 | but at the same time, it feels deeply meaningful somehow.

02:29:28.760 | I guess that's the question I wanna ask.

02:29:32.880 | When you go out to nature with family,

02:29:36.000 | what do you think is the meaning of it all?

02:29:38.720 | What's the meaning of life?

02:29:40.080 | Or maybe when you put on the night goggles,

02:29:44.360 | the night vision goggles and look up at the stars.

02:29:48.060 | Why are we here?

02:29:49.340 | - I can't speak for everyone,

02:29:51.880 | but at least the way I interpret it,

02:29:54.520 | or at least I feel like I interpret my way here,

02:29:58.560 | my job is, I feel like my role is just to be curious

02:30:02.280 | about the environment in a manner that allows us

02:30:04.640 | to understand as much as possible.

02:30:07.040 | I think that the human mind,

02:30:09.640 | whether it's just the mass inside our skull,

02:30:12.360 | or whether there's some type

02:30:14.520 | of quantum interactions going on,

02:30:16.720 | our mind has incredible ability to output new information.

02:30:21.440 | And in a universe that is somewhat stale of information,

02:30:26.440 | our minds are somewhat unique in that we can imagine

02:30:30.960 | and perceive things that could never, ever

02:30:33.280 | have possibly naturally occurred,

02:30:35.240 | and yet we can make it happen.

02:30:36.320 | We can instantiate that with enough belief

02:30:38.960 | that it's true and it can happen.

02:30:40.880 | And so for me, I feel like I just need to encourage that,

02:30:44.480 | to encourage interaction with reality such that it leaves us

02:30:48.480 | in newer and grander interactions with this universe.

02:30:52.640 | - And all that starts with a little bit of curiosity.

02:30:55.480 | - Exactly.

02:30:57.120 | - Ryan, you're an incredible person.

02:30:59.080 | You've done so many things,

02:31:00.320 | and there's so much still ahead of you.

02:31:03.520 | Thank you for being brave enough to talk about UFOs

02:31:06.680 | and doing it so seriously,

02:31:09.220 | and thank you for pushing forward on all these fronts

02:31:11.460 | in terms of technology.

02:31:12.840 | So from just the fighter jets, the engineering of that,

02:31:17.720 | to the AI/ML applications in the combat setting,

02:31:21.040 | that's super interesting, and then now quantum.

02:31:24.440 | I can't wait to see what you do next.

02:31:26.600 | Thank you so much for sitting down and talking today.

02:31:28.360 | It was an honor.

02:31:29.200 | - It was my pleasure.

02:31:30.020 | Thank you, Lex.

02:31:31.360 | - Thanks for listening to this conversation

02:31:33.080 | with Lieutenant Ryan Graves.

02:31:34.920 | To support this podcast,

02:31:36.320 | please check out our sponsors in the description.

02:31:39.080 | And now, let me leave you with some words from Buzz Aldrin.

02:31:43.120 | Bravery comes along as a gradual accumulation of discipline.

02:31:47.240 | Thank you for listening, and hope to see you next time.

02:31:51.360 | (upbeat music)

02:31:53.940 | (upbeat music)

02:31:56.520 | [BLANK_AUDIO]

Ryan Graves: UFOs, Fighter Jets, and Aliens | Lex Fridman Podcast #308

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