Combat Story (Ep 12): Cesar "Rico" Rodriguez - F-15 Eagle Figther Pilot | Three Air-to-Air Victories

i'm at 500 feet moles up at 23 000 feet and so we we're in a perfect bracket formation to find the mig and uh and then prosecute the next attack and so from 500 feet up i pass off the left wing of the mig about 50 feet off of his left wing so i roll my airplane to the left we go into what is considered a classic two-circle fight and and very quickly after about 180 degrees a turn i am now behind his 3-9 line i have a lot of heading crossing angle but i'm behind this 399 and i can drive the fight to my advantage welcome to combat story i'm ryan fugit and i serve war zone tours as an army attack helicopter pilot and cia officer over a 15-year career i'm fascinated by the experiences of the elite in combat on this show i interview some of the best to understand what combat felt like on their front lines this is combat story today we hear the combat story of cesaro rico rodriguez retired air force colonel and former fighter pilot from the cockpit of an f-15 charlie rico placed himself in rare company by being one of only three pilots with three air-to-air kills since vietnam his story begins as a kid from puerto rico takes him to the citadel and combat operations in panama desert storm in kosovo i hope you enjoy his story as much as i did cesar thank you so much for for taking time to share your story with us uh truly my pleasure ryan and thank you and please call me rico okay you got it now i interviewed another 810 pilot vince shearer and the first question i asked him was about his call sign but i think that we need to ease into that one from what i understand because it can be a little sensitive or close to home so maybe we'll we'll tee up where rico comes from a little bit later perhaps yeah well we we can definitely do that mine is not a hard one it's not a it's it's not a politically unset uh uh incorrect one either so it's a good thing well let's start there then if you're okay with it let's hit let's hit uh the call sign rico and then the aircraft behind you sure so uh rico came when i got my first operational assignment um i graduated from pilot training in 1981 or 82s when i graduated started in 81 uh went through fighter lead and then went to the 8-10 and then went to korea and so part of the the the what we would call the green bean experience in korea was upon arrival you would you would that the squadron would greet you you got to meet the squadron and then that afternoon after the flying was over we would start running to the different bars in the bill as we moved around and uh it just so happened that probably about the fourth or the fifth bar uh one of the uh the the owners of the restaurant of the the bar that we were at um she came up to me and she says so uh you know tell me what's your name and i said well my name is caesar and and caesar um could could sound like it like he'd like the uh like the roman caesar with an ea or it could be cesar which is how i generally use it but in into my american friends and english speakers i would use caesar and so she she could not enunciate caesar it was too hard for her to do that and she's going okay i don't like caesar i'm sitting here going hold on a second my mother gave me this name how could you not like see that's not an option it's not an option and she says well where are you from and i said well i'm from puerto rico and she says i'm gonna call you rico from here on it and so for my entire military career um even you know the naming ceremony is a very uh big tradition in the fighter squadron and it's kind of extended to other weapon systems uh in the military but uh caesar turned into rico and and ever since then everybody's always called me rico and even now in industry uh you know i have my business card that says caesar rodriguez and they're like going who is this because i know you as rico but i know who cesar rodriguez is so rico has stuck and uh and and and it works out but that's how rico came to be on the spectrum of zero to ten with how how um touchy or personal a call sign can be is rico like on the on the low end of that compared to what some people might have i presume it can be a slightly different context for for other call signs yeah yeah there there would be others that would probably use the initials rico as as a as a short version for something that somebody really did bad but they would they would give them the the cover story of rico but all of the people who were in the know would say oh we know why they call you rico but mine is truly it was associated with my hometown got it okay that's great um and so rico before we hop into the aircraft here you you can't believe everything you read online so you can fact check me on this yeah but you're in rare company right i mean from what i understand you're one of less than five i think it's three americans who have three air-to-air combat victories if that's what you would describe them as since vietnam that's correct it's you in a very small group of people um right place right time i would imagine is part of that and then a lot of skill that goes along with it yeah i would say right place right time uh the right level of training the right level of equipment uh and definitely lady luck was on my side i would take it one step further and again not part of the bragging club but of the three of us who have three kills since vietnam i'm the only one who's done it in two different combat environments so i'm even in another group so i like it i like it all right um so i want to hear about how you how you found your way to the air to the air force but i would love to hear about the aircraft behind you first all right so the aircraft that sits behind me is uh is 114. um she was uh i flew her in desert storm in 1991 and actually both of the kills that i had in desert storm i was actually flying 114 and we generally never flew the same airplane uh on any given sequence of sorties obviously you never knew when there was going to be a big opportunity or anything like that but it just so happened that on the 19th and then on the 26th of january 1991 i was flying her and uh and so that's what uh her first two stars are mine the only two stars on that jet are mine well they're not mine they're hers because the star stays with the jet it doesn't it doesn't fly with the pilot uh when so when i transferred to other bases i i didn't get to put two stars under my name the stars stay with the jet that's air force history um and so uh and so this summer uh in the middle of the the covid pandemic um i have a tradition with the with the squadrons that are flying 114 that generally at least once a year the squadron sends me a picture a note from the crew chief and a note from the pilot whose name is on uh on the jet and so this is the picture that the pilot sent to me because she was flying over saudi arabia again so this was her return back to the aor and and of course she's gone through some significant modifications luckily a lot of those modifications are raytheon modifications she's got a new radar uh she's got a new electronic warfare systems solution on her obviously flying a very different set of missiles than what we flew in desert storm so that you know the airplane the frame is probably i'm going to say 70 percent the same frame that i flew but the other 30 percent are upgrades that she's been getting every year or every cycle uh so as to remain relevant in the battle spaces that she's having to operate under amazing and that's a f-15 charlie is that right at the time that's correct yeah 15 charlie and uh and so they've done a great job the squadron and the crew chief uh you know they're all part of the the collective family of keeping the jet uh in the air and uh so be you know there's there's there's a bond and uh um and so they're keeping her flying and uh you know i i hope that at some point uh one of those uh guys or gals who's flying her has the opportunities that i had to engage a mig and take them down yeah oh man and it's a sexy looking aircraft too so it is it's pretty badass um take take me back to your life as a kid i understand your father was an nco you moved around a lot as an army brat i would assume what got you into flying tell me about your old man yeah so part of the uh the fact checking is uh my dad was an officer he was an army officer he was an air defense uh officer served in vietnam and uh i did not know it until very late in his life uh that he actually had a desire to fly when he was at the university of mayaguez he saw the thunderbirds come to raymie air force base down in puerto rico and you know we found a picture of him posing next to the thunderbirds and uh and then little by little we i was able to connect the dots but you know my uh my aviation piece really kind of came by uh um i would say both luck and um and just chance uh when i went to the citadel i started out with uh in the army rotc program at the citadel and then halfway through my sophomore year the school announced to all of the sophomores that the flying qualification exams for air force navy marine corps and army were coming up and they all happened to be on the same day uh so um my roommate he was he was a was continues to be a gung-ho marine um now he's actually a chaplain in the navy uh gungho chaplain wow which is a another cool story but so he he grabs me and he says dude let's go take the tests and i said all right and and we both agreed that we were going to take all the tests uh all all four services or and uh and go do the the for the air force it was called uh the afo qt and um so uh you know we went and you know just like uh you know sats and acts in high school you know about an hour into it you just want to jam pencils in your eyes because you're ready to kill yourself um but you know we went through all of them and then about two or three weeks later uh different results started to come back and it just so happened that i scored very high on the air force side and the air force uh very quickly their rotc program knocked tapped me on the shoulder and said hey dude you know how about uh you know to come in and join the air force uh we'll give you a two-year scholarship for the rest of your time here at the citadel so of course funds being a the challenge that they were i i jumped on that and uh and the main thing i had to do was uh stop uh my my athletic side of the the citadel uh and and because the the air force said if you encounter any injury you know while in college that that either you know causes a surgery or whatever then you'll lose your your flying slot uh at pilot training so they're very selective about that so uh stopped the sports uh went into intramural sports stayed active in that arena but started to uh trying to figure out what i got myself into i'd never flown before except on a commercial airline um you know i'd never really been you know a uh i wasn't chasing aviation since being a little kid it was it just happened and uh i saw my senior year you know part of this uh qualification to fly is they want you to to at least get some some civilian flying time under your belt and uh the program included going down to the local beauty in charleston and uh you did six sorties to go solo um and then after you solo you you had about another 10 sororities that you could fly by yourself and um so i was kind of lucky i had a great uh initial instructor he you know he he he took the time to explain you know this whole concept of uh departing terra firma uh on the whim of a little motor and a couple of wings in the tail and and he you know after the third sortie he goes dude you know i can solo you right now and then you're done and i go well does that mean i lose sorties he goes well yeah then your clock starts to count for your solo time and i say well let's just keep flying so i flew the full six sorties and then got my solo sorties and i would just you know leave the school head down to the muni check out an airplane go fly along the charleston beaches uh the charleston low country and just kind of get an appreciation for it i go okay this is cool but it definitely was not enough to prepare me for pilot training because uh pilot training was uh you know i always tell folks that pilot training is is kind of like training for a marathon physically because flying a jet is a physically demanding activity and it's also like cramming a a four year bachelor's degree into 11 months it seemed like every every week you were getting a test you were getting a simulator evaluation and so needless to say my first half of my pilot training experience was not very good matter of fact my one of my instructors said uh you know you got to think about something else because i don't think you're going to be a very good pilot wow and that's it's kind of like going holy smokes so this is not what i wanted you know i've committed to it but i was also not that good and so i i really had to find you know other ways of uh of covering and it really was more about a little more of a personal commitment to the to the art of flying uh recognizing that i didn't have the the natural quote skills uh so um yeah i upped my game you know i spent a lot more time in the simulator uh we used to call it and i think the kids still do today call it chair flying where you know you kind of simulate where what are you doing with your hands and your eyes and your feet and and the second half when we transition from the t37 to the t38 things like formation flying pulling high g maneuvers things like that that was that was kind of like more into my uh my wheelhouse and then i moved back up up the ladder enough to to qualify to fly fighters uh coming out of pilot training what just out of curiosity why was that more in your wheelhouse what what did you notice at that time that told you like this is where i should be when you got into the t-38 side it felt more like a team sport there was a flight leader like a quarterback there was a wingman you know like a tight end or you know it felt like a team sport and so i could relate to that aspect of working as a team um and and of course in pilot training you're not officially uh quote the aircraft commander because you always have an instructor you know either on your airplane uh in the back seat or in the other airplane doing instructor duties but the the instructors would start to give you more rope more rope to show leadership in the air and then that started to kind of play out like a sports event where you know you know the coach wants you to to take on more responsibility besides the position you're in you know can you be thinking about other things um you know can you audible uh those are the things that started to kind of feel right when uh when i was making the transition from 237 to t38s it felt more like uh like a team sport um and uh and so uh that you know i i kind of it felt more natural yeah and so you kind of alluded to it sounds like maybe you were recruited to play a sport at the citadel initially maybe yeah yeah right but i played yeah played sports played football and baseball you know played those sports all my life uh you know the the yeah you're right so you you get into the citadel you get to a great school you're playing sports you get aviation air force you're in training and then one of your flights the instructor is like you may want to think about something else because this isn't right i assume you didn't have a lot of times where people were telling you you weren't good enough so like how did that affect you going forward that it forced me to to kind of rethink this uh this this whole commitment that i've i've jumped into you know um and so again it goes back to what i would call uh personal reflection can you debrief yourself to the level that forces yourself to uh to to make a change and and for me uh part of that change was i spent more time in the simulator complex uh you know uh there might be times when i'd you know head off to the bar and have a couple more drinks or head to the gym and lift more weights well boom took those things kind of i didn't take them completely out of the picture but i i moved them in the in the priority list of of what i wanted to be doing um and started to look at the air force uh as a as flying as a career not as a hobby yeah out of curiosity what did your dad say when you switch from army rotc to the air force track well interesting it was uh are you sure you know what you're doing uh and i said yeah dad i think this is this is my this is where i want to go and he goes okay then uh you know don't screw it up [Laughter] [Music] few words yeah you know so i you know i was the first of my family to to leave to go to college in the states um you know so that was a big deal uh obviously uh you know you know coming from uh from puerto rico small little town i was lucky uh in the sense that i was raised you know bilingual all my life and so i could go from spanish to english without quote an accent you know i have a lot of my friends who who couldn't do that and some of them came to pilot training later on you know they would wash out because of their language skills um because again it's it it's it's different but it's the same and so uh but yeah so it was a big responsibility to to to go to college as the first um and then ultimately to you know now i'm going to flight school another semi first my dad was already an officer i was following in his footsteps from the standpoint of being commissioned uh but again um i didn't know it at that time that you know he was that was one of his uh goals so i'm glad i did okay yeah oh geez um tell me so you end up going with a10s at the time was that what you were gunning for was a10s were there other options out there what made you go to that aircraft actually the the my class drop had uh had f-15 number one um had f-111 as number two and a-10 is number three and and so i wanted the f-15 but i wasn't the number one guy in my class and i really had no idea what the f-111 was all about mission-wise i could sense a slight alignment to you know to kind of supporting the army from an a10 perspective and um and then again one of the things i realized when i was going through this t-38 phase my instructor wheels wheeler he was a former f4 driver he says dude you know you are you can do single seat fighter mentality work you you your your your thinking your hands your physical all that is you know you you can do a single seat fighter and so i really was kind of triggered towards uh you know going to the single seat world at the time so the 111 i i didn't it wasn't what i wanted to do so i i went after the a-10 wow okay what a what a different trajectory i assume now you mentioned you were you know you followed your your old man as an officer there could not have been many people from puerto rico in the air force or in your class at the time how did you even notice it at the time what was that like i assume at the citadel as well probably aren't that many people from puerto rico there yeah there was uh we called ourselves the latinos unidos at the citadel and there was probably about 10 of us from from different latin countries uh i think there was five of us from puerto rico um and then in my pilot training class yeah i was the only uh the only kid from puerto rico so uh but you know the the truth was uh at this stage and and mostly because of sports um i feel that you know sports sports doesn't care about the color of your skin uh it just cares that you're sweating your butt off you're trying hard and you're willing to be a team player and uh and those are just kind of the skills that i uh you know i i kind of took everywhere i went you know i was going to try hard i was going to be giving it my best and if i wasn't my best then someone's gonna you know debrief me and help me get better hopefully but uh but but uh you know some of the other kids uh you know i know a couple of the guys who ended up washing out a pile of training in the class behind me uh because of their uh language skill yeah you you literally couldn't um when you were in the air uh flying and you could hear people on the radio you know these guys you go what do you say and that you know that that was always one of those things where my instructor said if you if you're not sure what somebody said you better get your head on a swivel because they're liable to hit you they might be somewhere in the pattern and you don't know where they're at so start looking so uh yeah okay um as we transition into you getting into operational flight what um can you give us some context for what it was like being a pilot in the early 80s right so it's going to be height of the cold war 10 years after not 10 years exactly but vietnam has passed you're probably training with a lot of vietnam vets um did you feel like all right we might get into dog fights in the next 10 years or how did that feel for you guys or what did it look like going forward that's a great question uh i would say first about um we did get trained by a lot of uh of the vietnam era pilots that was you know they were they were now the senior elders in flight school or pilot training uh fighter leading and places like that um one of the things that it was a myth it wasn't there was no valid truth to it but uh you know every all of us young lieutenants believed it was uh if if they were if they got you to wash out in in a particular program then that instructor had a chance to go to a new generation fighter remember this is a generation that flew you know the f4 for the most part and a6 is uh a4s things like that and and my group here we are we're going to the f-15 f-16 uh a-10s so we're going to new jets and so there was a there was a uh there was a myth out there that if they if you washed out somebody would get your jet you definitely didn't want uh to give anybody a chance so you know there was a lot of go go get em isms uh to to do good and that caused to a certain degree a lot of uh what i call washouts uh the number of students that made it through pilot training was generally less than 50 percent of your class wow really yeah and again the floodgates opened up for applicants but the the the requirement bar also went up too and so things that might well things that did wash people out back in the 80s today they might say we'll give you a medical waiver for that we'll try and find something you know something else in aba you know so you know it was a little bit of a a little bit of a i don't want to call it a bloodbath but there was tension in the air about making sure you passed your program there was also uh you know the the the post-vietnam era you know they were your mentors so they're the ones who taught you some of the new air force traditions so party suits you know long friday nights at the club uh you know things things that you know probably weren't uh uh i guess the the healthiest for your for our livers at the time uh you know that became part of the the day-to-day you know dialogue and so i you know i know for a fact and i've been blessed you know my wife stuck with me and and she put up with a lot of fighter pilot crap but i know a lot of guys and gals most of the guys who uh you know they they started their air force career with uh with one spouse and they've been through three or four because of those some of those fun traditions as we would say so there was uh there were some interesting times in the 80s but i will say that it was also awesome because as we were getting new uh new hardware new new jets and new capabilities then things like red flag came up you know where you had these massive flying exercises with what multiple weapon systems and you really did uh get to learn from some of the guys who who experienced the vietnam flying you know close to what it was like to fly combat and uh and i my personal uh testimony is that you know the opportunities that i got to go at to nellis and at cope thunder in the philippines uh those opportunities that i did i got to do multi-weapon system exercises and training was ultimately what made going the real war for me when it was as a storm i'm not going to say it was easy because i can guarantee you that the color of my shorts was different every time i landed but uh but uh it was it was calming because what you were seeing happen in the air uh everything from large force communications to radar discipline to things that that saved lives uh those were the same things that we learned and we debriefed when we were at nellis and uh you know in the f-15 community uh one of the things that we uh prided ourselves was in in not having a blue on blue frat matter of fact that if you were in red flag and you had a blue on blue frat that was usually a hundred dollar fine that you had to put into the pot uh you know so it was economically a a reason an incentive but it also drove the behavior that ultimately you got to follow the rules of engagement and you can't be shortcutting those rules um and and i i attribute that that and other exercise training activities of nellis to what made us uh as successful as we were uh in desert storm and then eventually in the kosovo campaign what is red flag so red flag uh was is a program that's is is flown out of nellis air force base okay nellis is uh used to be called the home of the fighter pilot now it's uh the home of the warrior because all the all the warriors come there and they earn their phd in in the this in the flight in the program that they're flying uh everything from tanker pilots to bomber pilots to raptor f-22 pilots everybody in the air force and then now air force and navy and now coalition they go there and they they go through a two-week period where the aggressors the flying aggressor squadron uh they they start to develop scenarios where you are you you start to fight against the third generation fighters fourth generation fighters and then now fifth generation fighters and then you start introducing all of the other complexities of the battle so you generate the fog of war without anybody ever shooting a real missile unfortunately there have been a lot of guys and gals who have died because of some of the things that they were doing right or wrong but the consequence was you know midair or uh you know collision with the ground or something like that so nellis is not a vanilla environment but it the goal of nellis and red flag was to give everybody the feeling of what the first you know four to six days of combat might feel like yeah and uh and they and they did a damn good job in my opinion they got it and they continue to do it you know nowadays you know they're adding synthetic uh targets into this scenario they're having uh displaced uh simulators playing with real fighters i mean it is leading-edge technology helping you to prepare for uh when you strap it on and and you go master arm hot that's that's the key if you never go master arm hot your heart rate is always going to be pretty calm i can tell you every time i went master arm hot there's no way that that i could have registered you know i wear a fitbit mouse to to make sure that my i keep my heart rate down low there's no way that my fitbit would have even been able to track my heart rate if uh on day one of of combat ops i mean i was i was my heart rate probably probably none of the doctors would want you to be flying under those conditions is it literally when you say master arm hot is it literally a flip of a switch yeah and every it's it's game on at that point yeah that's your main one master arm hot means all your weapons are hot you hit that pickle button and something's coming off the jet oh yeah so yeah all right it's literally that easy and so just i don't know if it's even worth diving into but you move from the a10 to the f15 eventually pretty early on it seems like hard transition or no it seems like maybe maybe you were looking for that f-15 all along no it was a it was a another again another hard transition it took me two years to get to be pretty good uh and credible in the hog um and then uh and then when i you know you gotta remember the a10 is a visual airplane everything is done by looking outside you know different dynamics as far as the flight environment now in the f-15 you strap on a big huge radar that's the size of a volkswagen and you can see out beyond 100 nautical miles and you're trying to process four inches of of glass into you know 100 miles of radar view and then fly formation you know you're flying at supersonic speeds you're pulling nine g's i mean it was a different world and and again same thing you know about two or three sorties into the f-15 i didn't need my instructor to tell me that i wasn't cutting the mustard i could feel it already as a fighter pilot i could see that you know you know my my great sheets that i used to have in the in the 810 as i was getting better were all threes and fours now my great sheets were ones and twos i'm going oh you know so i better get my game going so i did a lot of sim time again a lot of sitting down with you know some of the legacy the older heads in the f-15 um and uh and so it was again very different mission 810 to f15 so even the mission thinking uh was was part of my uh part of my you know learning um the the biggest challenge too was you know now i'm a senior captain you know mid-level captain so they're gonna start giving you responsibilities as an officer in that arena when you really want to be let me just study and get better at what you what my job is well you know you you have an officer job and you got a fighter pilot job and you better do them both pretty darn well or you're going to be as my as my squadron commander would say you'd be flipping burgers at burger king i i got to say in the army aviation community it's very rare for somebody to switch airframes in that case do people look down on someone who's come over from another airframe from like an a10 to an f-15 is there any of that stigma oh yeah and that happens and happens in in weapon systems uh you know you gotta prove your you know you gotta prove your wear and uh and so uh you know and you don't want it any other way you you really can't take the you know your your experience and your laurels uh from flying an a-10 and then walk into an f-15 squadron say okay guys i'm the best thing since sliced bread you know you're just asking for for an [ __ ] right there and so but you know i would say that uh throughout that journey uh once you and and this is very typical of i think of all aviation uh once once the you know there's a there's a bar that gets you is your start point everybody sets to that first bar but the minute you start to bump that bar a little bit they're not going to just leave it there someone's going to move it up and they're going to move it up and they're going to move it up and then ultimately that's where you get a squadron of 28 type a personalities that can literally you know you know go anywhere and get the mission done bring everybody home you know and then and ultimately have some fun too and uh and and that's really the uh the the mentality uh of of of what i see when people say well what's it like to be a fighter pilot i go it's not about the jet you're flying it's about your your willingness to to to go to that first bar and prove that you could stay there and then without you noticing it someone just keeps moving the bar up and they keep moving the bar up and you just keep performing and keep performing and and when you don't meet that standard someone's tapping you on the shoulder and saying hey dude um are you okay because you didn't do real well in that last sorority um and and you have to have that kind of uh what i call thick skin uh most people don't do well in the in the fighter world i think it's because they don't bring thick skin to the table and again i i tie this all back to the sports arena you know when you went to your first peewee football game or little league baseball you know you didn't hit a home run you didn't turn a double play you didn't kick a field goal you had to learn from the basics yeah but the minute your coach saw you doing a little bit more okay maybe you maybe you're not going to be the tackle anymore they're going to move you in to be the center or maybe maybe you're going to be the full you know something is the next challenge based on what you're what you're bringing so the sports played out a lot in in my psyche um and helped me uh help me to get to where where i got to to find that extra gear to work work a little harder to to try and get it right uh yeah and and again you you have to realize that you're not many guys get it right and keep it right their entire career you're going to have great days in the air and you're going to have bad days in the air you just hope that those bad days don't cause you know a midair or something something tragic where you really do regret it for the rest of your life yeah so maybe now if i read you gotta fact check me on this rico it looked like your first experience in combat may have been panama in fact well yeah it was the panama campaign um we were sitting at uh at eglin air force base and then the f-15s were tasked to sit off the coast of cuba and cap there allowing the american uh strike packages uh to to fly into into panama so it was the panama operation um you know it's the first time that we uh loaded live weapons on the jet is the first time we opened up an air tasking order we carry classified crypto all the things that you train and yeah that was the that was our that was my first uh first hoorah if you will and again from that day to night one and desert storm to night one and kosovo uh you know the same experiences of uncertainty excuse me you know uncertainty doubt you know confidence cockiness all that stuff has jumbled into you know uh who you are and you've got to find a you've got to find a way of grounding yourself and for me the grounding was really um once you did the normal habit patterns that you're used to that that helped me ground you know kind of get back to okay let's let's calm this down a little bit yeah did did you end up flying during panama were you actually up in the air with the aircraft fully loaded was that the first time you did that was that a weather storm no it was panama yeah and so we capped off the coast of cuba and and we waited and you know there was never any activity by any of the cuban migs to even you know get airborne or try and intercept us and so and again it kind of felt uh both exhilarating but at the same time you're kind of wondering okay you know if the cubans did fly what was i gonna do you know yeah how was i gonna respond and that's you know uncertainty is always there um you know in all phases of life um but you know this is kind of one of those times when you go okay this is my super bowl do i do i get to suit up coach okay i got i got the suit up i got to strap on the jet um it just just so happened that the the other guys said i'm not going to play in this game i mean seriously rico i mean you were there for panama desert storm and kosovo like i'm sure not everybody who was there at the time got to suit up for all of those so i would imagine like um just being able to be one of the people that was there probably said a lot i'm curious at the time i guess looking back you would think there's no way the cuban air force could could handle what we're doing like a cuban make did you have that feeling at the time like we are superior to this other air force potentially um so i i'm gonna answer that question what i would call uh we trained day in and day out to a very high level as a united states air force marine corps navy every time we you know i don't think we you know i i'm going to say that i mean collectively our training level was a pretty high high level uh and we tried to always replicate the the the biggest baddest threat within the boundaries of what's going on um i have to believe and i've always believed this in my in my flying career that there's another rico on the other side doing the same thing and and that he or she uh the last thing they want to do is is you know just do a belly flop on the on the little kid pool this wasn't the little kid pool this is the big kid pool and and nobody wants the belly flop um and but i i'm a firm believer that uh of you know for every rico on this side there's a rico on the other side trying to do the exact same thing and so i i never took that uh uh for granted yeah it makes total sense i i get to see the equipment now you know in my business here at raytheon and i and and even when i was on active duty i you know obviously had all the equipment um and you could easily say okay on any given day you know this jet versus disc jet got it okay but it's really the that human element that becomes the tie breaker and it just may be that you know you're going up to against the uh the red bearing and you just don't know it and if you're not if you don't have your a game you know he might take you out with with his little you know two-piece shooter so so i guess if we transition to desert storm um take it any direction you want i i want to hear about the uh the air-to-air um but was there a time before you had your first um shoot down did did you go up against another aircraft prior to that or was that the first time you were air to air with another aircraft and the reason i ask i'm interested in how it felt the first time you were doing what you had been trained to do whether that was your your air-to-air shoot down or it was just you had an engagement and broke contact yeah that was the first uh hostile uh contact on my radar scope that i was master arm hot in desert storm um you know the the night of the 16th of january the guys uh you know that went out on night one um i was coming back landing on the last quote desert shield sortie um and then of course you know we were trying to see if there was uh anybody was paying attention to us um and then but the guys who went out on night one uh we didn't get it we didn't get a chance to sit down and debrief with each other because you you know basically uh you know we were flying at such a high ops tempo that uh you know you in my case we we broke up wing uh roommates so you weren't both on the same flying window and so when you went to your room you could sleep and then you know so there was minimal disturbance um but yeah there was no uh that was my first encounter and you know again a lot of it uh a lot of it was because i had a a recording device in the airplane i was able to put a lot of the story back together but you know mentally or physically some other the things that my hands did uh going into afterburner when i did punching off the jettison the jettison button to jettison the tanks when i did uh things like that i can't tell you that i did it uh but i can look at my video screen from the from the mission and go okay there's the signal okay you obviously reached up here you hit that button and now all of your tanks came off which oh by the way it just so happened you know you your next maneuver you know you pulled ten and a half g's so you wouldn't have been able to do that with those tanks on there so you knew this was happening yeah um and so it validated in a major way uh all of the training that we had done both in real flying against other other weapon systems or in in the simulator because in the simulators the only place that you actually get to hit you know the pickle button uh and watch the synthetic missile fly off the airplane you know you get to hit the jettison button and all of a sudden the airplane feels a lot lighter and you can pull my g's all those kind of things only happen in certain environments and it i was you know very happy um at the end of that mission when i could finally sit down you know and calm down and and kind of go through as many of the memory bits that i had then i go you know this this really was about everything that i had trained to do can you walk us through just what that that engagement was like and i i was a an army aviator so i have no idea the speeds what it was feeling like i'm just super interested to hear especially like it had been years i'm sure since somebody had been in an engagement like that so i can't imagine the heart rate at that time but just talk me through what was happening you had a wingman i presume was it just two of you was it four who were you going up against and how did it play out yeah so uh the actual engagement it's two of us uh my wingman craig underhill his nickname his call sign was mole so you can figure out mole underhill blah blah there you go uh but again another one that was very politically correct yeah that's tame yeah very tame but um so mull and i were were flying we were southwest of baghdad uh we had migs in front of us uh who had kind of came they came at us and then they they did a drag and a beam maneuver to basically pull us uh continue to pull us into into baghdad and basically that part of the trap was what we would call a sam trap a surfaced air missile trap because now as we get into a certain point all of a sudden the air the surface launch radars light up your your radar warning receiver looks like a christmas tree and next thing you start to see is telephone poles flying all around you that's that's the trap luckily we didn't make it into the trap but we made we didn't make it in the trap for one reason one one of the awax controllers who was my original controller uh six hours ago in that in my in the flight in the in the period of that flying day uh he was he was monitoring western a-wax the western aor that controller uh was the one who called on guard frequency to my flight that says hey we have a pop-up 3-3-0 for sick for uh three three three zero for eight which was almost off of my left wing so we could not see that threat anyway on on radar and so when he said that and i realized where three three zero was you know i i really had not not very many options this is when i selected jettison i rammed the jet to a 330 heading put the radar in a position to find the threat found the threat and now i realize he is eight miles in front of me and when you're both going at 450 500 miles an hour eight miles is literally seconds um but you know it is what it is uh when when i start that maneuver and find that threat um you know part of the rules of engagement um uh required several steps to make sure you weren't firing against a friendly and one of the rules that was written at the time was anything inside of 10 nautical miles had to be visually identified because the f-15 had some unique capabilities and there were other platforms in the in the coalition that uh didn't want to be detected but we could so without getting classified that was a that was a standing rule uh so by default i was i was not cleared to shoot um and you know i i guess i could have declared um defensive i'm hot this guy is committing a hostile act against me but the real truth was is i still had an out and i and so i took the out which was from 30 000 feet down to about 500 feet i split s the jet and went straight downhill uh and then my one s if i can ask a split s is if if if i'm going east to west okay all right and then i roll the airplane upside down and then pull down and now instead of pointing west i'm now pointing east again that's the split s got it so okay it looks it looks like a uh it's it's a half it's a half a circle okay but i i turned it around the other way um and then i not only did i turn it down the other way i actually stopped and then went straight down so i could get below the the enemy's plane of motion his radar field of view okay again all of these things are tied to what you learn at red flag what you learn about uh the the threat the weapon systems capabilities of all the jets that are out there and then as i'm doing that maneuver i'm handing i'm handing off that threat to my wingman through a radio call says hey there's a guy off my nose blah blah blah he locks into that guy and now he starts to do the id matrix to make sure it's not a hostile make sure it is a hostile not a friendly and then in the process of that handoff now my job is to defend keep that enemy from shooting at me and my wingman's job is to complete the matrix and then take a shot against that guy and make sure that his shot doesn't include me and his field of view so it's a little bit of a it's a little bit of a ballet with uh playing the piano and pulling nine g's at the same time uh it's it's it's kind of hard quick just before you keep going it's so you hand the target off to your wingman was that hard to do because you probably don't get many of these opportunities or is it just you knew you had to do it this is how how you were trained this is the handoff and that's how it goes yeah we we have a very firm contract and roles and responsibilities in the air uh we know when you are the supported fighter and when you are supporting um you know and so we make sure that that part is is a hundred percent crystal clear before we strap the jet off so that's what the briefing is all about to understand the roles and responsibilities um so there was never a doubt and again uh now that i am i've i've gone from offensively potentially offensively looking at the threat to now i'm defensively reacting there's a different role uh i'm defensive he's still offensive he's got to do that job get this guy off of me and uh and go from there the the kicker is is i'm trying to get below his plane of motion i'm trying to get down as low as i can in the dirt if you will so that his radar has to look through the ground clutter environment to find me of course i got my electronic warfare system uh lighting up the sky i'm pumping out a bunch of chaff in the in the air to keep to try and decoy his radar off of me and his radar actually does a pretty good job because i can see on my radar warning receiver uh that the guy still locked me wow so it's still a threat valid threat for me and so now i got to do two things one i i have to make sure i don't hit the ground and two i need to find this guy in the air with my eyes so that when i see the smoke trail come from his jet then i can start to fight against the smoke trail as well as the jet um and so um uh it took me it took me quite a while to to find him the the truth is the way i found him was as i'm going straight down uh you know passing from 30 000 feet down to 500 feet when my wingman completes his id matrix and he calls fox fox is the indication that he's hit the pickle button i look up over my left tail um on my jet and i see him the missile come off of his airplane and it starts to generate a smoke trail that smoke trail goes between my tails and comes all the way to about my right five o'clock high now as i'm looking at five o'clock and seeing that trying to keep from hitting the ground the smoke the missile stops burning so it's it's now in the coast mode all right and so it's not generating a smoke trail but i follow that that that little last bit of smoke in the sky i follow it i follow it i follow it and sure enough off my right wing at three o'clock at about three miles off my right wing i see the mig-29 pointing straight at me so now i have a visual that helps me fight this now fight the fight because originally you know before that i'm using all my external my sensors that are you know focused on the outside but the one that i need to use the most is my eyeball um and so now as i'm i see the mig i know exactly what i need to be doing to keep him from taking a shot at me and then sure enough my wingman's missile hits him uh and it looks like a huge giant sparkler in the sky you know not much of a fireball but a sparkler and then as as that event happens i call splash one uh on the on the radios um and then the aywax controller comes back and says hey citgo there's another guy 10 miles in front of you off your nose and so now i have a decision to make do i look in front of me 10 miles and find this guy or do i turn around and run away um the decision to stay and find the guy was based off of the problem the error of what the distance was that aywax gave me a wax can give you a number okay he can say that the threat is 10 miles in front of you that number can be plus or minus three miles depending on where you're at and so i said if that threat is at seven miles and i decide to turn around it's gonna at his speed he's gonna be three to four miles behind me and now he has the offensive advantage because i don't have any missiles that shoot backwards i can only shoot forward so i tell mole stay stay north i'm at 500 feet moles up at 23 000 feet and so we we're in a perfect bracket formation to find the mig and uh and then prosecute the next attack we both lock them up we find them we both lock them up i get hostile mole gets friendly indications on his uh on his uh systems that he has on board um the reason mull ends up getting a friendly is in his infinite field of view for his radar there is a friendly in his field of view but he's getting a he's getting an iff return uh interrogation into his system that says whoa i don't know where it is but there's a friendly out here so i'm gonna give you an unknown so that guy that friendly wasn't in my field of view that's why i was getting a hostel so i declared for the formation that we were going to do a vid and then i was going to be the eyeball of the vid maneuver and so from 500 feet up i pass off the left wing of the mig about 50 feet off of his left wing i can confirm 50 feet rico yeah close okay we we cross close um he he kind of continues straight as i'm going almost straight up he's still going to the north to the south so i roll my airplane to the left we go into what is considered a classic two-circle fight um you know the red baron always said if you turn towards your enemy's tail then it's a two-circle fight if you turn towards his canopy then it's a one circle fight um and if you think about it if i do this there's two circles that intersect so we start a two-circle fight initially it's horizontal which is the longest of the flight paths but when i realized that he's staying horizontal then again i convert mine into an over the top and under maneuver so i use a smaller turn circle than he does and and very quickly after about 180 degrees a turn i am now behind his 3 9 line i have a lot of heading crossing angle but i'm behind this three nine line and i can drive the fight to my advantage and that fight starts around eight thousand feet six thousand five thousand or so we start to get lower and lower and lower so that the point where he's at about five or six hundred feet above the ground and i'm about a thousand feet above the ground i pull to the inside of his turn circle one more time to try and sweeten up a shot that i'm trying to take with one of my missiles visually that looks a lot like i'm pulling for a gun shot which i wasn't at the time i was just purely trying to to tighten up the the weapon shot and then he tries to do a split s kind of like what i did at 30 000 feet he tries to do it at about 600 feet and he doesn't make it so he hits the desert almost purely perpendicular and he is in a big huge fireball tumbling to the north northwest of our formation but he never got out of the jet so i i was given credit uh by the kill board for for maneuvering him into the ground man just quickly i want to go back to the first mig that's taken out so as you describe it you do the split s your wingman fires by following his his shot you identify the mig but it's pointing right at you was that a moment of you were in a you felt like you may have been in a compromising position i knew i was in a compromising position because my radar warning receiver kind of gives you a rough estimate of how far he might be based off the energy that his radar is transmitting to my jet so his the nose of his little synthetic uh airplane was on top of my jet on the rwr so i knew he was close um so i knew you know my pucker factor was way high it had to be hot so high yeah and so now at that point i i know that the the only solution is to see the missile fly off his jet because if i can't beat his mother radar and i can't beat his jet then then my last course of action is to see his missile come off the jet and then try and try and defeat that missile by literally ripping the wings off of my jet almost so that's kind of your thought your calculus basically if if the missile doesn't hit him which you don't know for a couple seconds this is this is my this is my course of action yeah wow yeah and then why when you have that element of surprise would you come up within 50 feet of the uh the target on that second bird so one of the things that you learn in in peacetime dog fighting is that turning room okay the lateral displacement between the two jets um is whoever owns that turning room that turning room belongs to the only the person who uses it all right and so he didn't see me he he never knew i was down here below him okay he's up here he never knows that i'm here until i cross his his so the minute i cross his line and that close to him okay he's forced to do one or two things if he goes up i'm already up if he goes straight i can catch him pretty quick if he goes level okay i can go i can turn radial god's g to my advantage to stay smaller inside of his turn circle if i if i go out here and i give myself a mile separation wing tip the wingtip and all of a sudden he sees me out there and he starts to maneuver now that turning room is his yeah and i gotta and i gotta take him back to square zero so square zero in a dogfight is as close to each other's wingtips without hitting each other wow so that's the mentality of taking away turning room that's the most advantageous position you could have been in at that point is getting real close and then starting that process on your terms basically yeah because i couldn't shoot him pre-merge because my wingman was identifying him as an unknown possible friendly got it so the the only way to know that i i was going to have all the advantage is to come up undetected and then take away as much turning room as possible and that when i crossed the extension of you know his flight path going up i could see the brown and green camouflage with the iraqi flag dang okay so i i want to hear about kosovo but just real quick i mean i think there were 33 close to that shoot downs in the gulf war right you had two i believe at that time i had i had two in desert storm and my squadron had 16. so we were the highest squadron of of air-to-air victories in desert storm can you can you just kind of give some context to what that was like going coming out of desert storm pretty short window of when that took place like not many people were able to do what you did did it just give you incredible street credit going forward career-wise at that point like between then and kosovo i would imagine that that had to have been something special and no doubt uh from the special standpoint yeah it uh it offered me some unique opportunities it gave me the chance to go before the uh the senate armed services committee and and testify about you know the value of red flag training and going to war uh gave me the opportunity to go to a company that i now work for raytheon and and talk to those engineers about what would the next generation missile need to do to to help me the fighter the war fighter you know do my job better um it also gave me the opportunity which is one that i considered to be the the most important which was to help those who would come and follow in my footsteps to prepare for their first night one because red flag did did that for me but now i could connect red flag to my first night one and so i i tried to go out and uh and talk to all the young fighter pilots and the old ones too because everybody learns from it the minute you stop learning you you ought to get out of the business because it's a pretty dangerous business um but uh gave me the opportunity to just to kind of explain and think and give them in my words uh what i uh what i experienced and the example that i use for them is you know when we were in the war uh all the captains got together and we wrote our lessons learned from the war and then of course we we had a lot of f-bombs in our notes we had uh we we were all i think for the most part we were all very genuine in admitting where we had made mistakes um you know what could have gone better uh what we what were we not getting that we needed things like that we were pretty blunt about uh our debrief well uh just like any staff action package the captains get the you know put it together then it goes to the majors and the majors start to look at the spelling and then they start looking at it through the lens of an english major uh not to connect majors but they wanted sentences to sound like sentences as opposed to fighter pilots you know putting crayon to pencil it's a paper and then it went into the colonel's hands and the colonels were going well we we really don't want to tell anybody that we didn't had any mistakes so all the mistakes started to get out of the debrief and then of course when the briefing went to the general you know everything was perfect yeah we go whoa whoa whoa time out it wasn't perfect okay there was a lot of good things that happened okay there's a lot of things that we need to learn from and not repeat those mistakes and so i kind of considered my my give back and i still do today uh to to those who invite me to to give them the opportunity to give back and say listen it wasn't perfect um but it was pretty damn good um but if you don't take advantage of certain opportunities then you're not going to be ready for a real night one if you don't go to red flag and take red flag to the to the level you need to you're going to screw it up uh if you don't train hard in your own squadron you know if you don't train those who follow in your footsteps you know there can't be a a differentiation of a team and b team in a squadron that is all supposed to be a team and go forward and so uh that's kind of been my one of my crusades i guess i could say wow and then can can you talk me through the kosovo experience because it seems like it's a bit different and i don't want to take up a ton of your time here rico but it just i mean that's a nine-year eight-year difference right yeah um what was that engagement like so that engagement had the benefit of several of the the things that i got to touch post desert storm i got to talk to the training community about how do we take a young fighter pilot at the training level and demand that they become a better fighter pilot before they get to your flying squadron so training check mark we learned the lesson we made it better we were the beneficiary of a great training we had a great lieutenant cadre on day one of kosovo that was rock solid glass kicking uh you know they were a killing machine uh the weapon systems you know when we came out of desert storm we were the first squadron to operationally fly the amram missile the a120a okay by the time we got to desert to kosovo we were all already flying the c model version of this of this weapon system and it had a lot of the things that we asked for coming out of desert storm because this was the evolution of the of the battle space how do we play in that domain um and then of course uh the you know i think the third thing was that you know when we got to desert storm uh or excuse me to kosovo um that the coalition that was with us although they had a variety of different platforms they all carried amram so they all spoke the same airman language in the air amram is one of those weapon systems that um not only is it the most lethal beyond visual range weapon system on the market today anywhere um it revolutionized not evol it revolutionized the air-to-air domain because amram could be used in a dogfight it can be used in extreme long-range shots but in order to use it you had to speak the language of of of how to employ an active missile and communicate that to everybody who's in the air so single-handedly much like what a machine gun did in in world war one uh amram revolutionized the war so our coalition partners were also on the same sheet of music uh as we were flying so if i was talking about a contact off of bullseye x y and z distance in altitude and azimuth everybody understood what i was saying because it was driven because of how amram uh that single missile uh drove uh a common common uh script amongst all the players so the coalition partners not only did they all fly amram but they'd also been to nellis and we started to do coalition uh coalition training so going to kosovo i was the beneficiary of several of the initiatives that my team that my colleagues you know my squadron mates that we kind of said to other people and they took it and they ran with it and they delivered it so it was it was pretty badass from that's perspective of seeing that come together in such a short amount of time um but you know it was it was it was it was a beautiful scenario my wingman uh while bill denham was a brand new lieutenant you know he had gone through the training uh showed up at lakenheath in late jan in late uh november when the weather is terrible so he didn't get to fly the next thing he knows it's you know it's the middle of february and we get a marching order to deploy for combat ops down in italy so boom we fly down to italy now it's the first time he's actually getting to fly and not not in the middle of clouds so he's still doing his training as we are preparing uh for for combat ops you know by the time i think it was i want to say the third week of combat ops he had more combat time than he had total f-15 time uh on his on his card so you can imagine what that introduction was like but you know he he he came prepared because of how tyndall prepared them through through the training he wasn't he wasn't mesmerized he he was as rock-solid as a 500-hour you know wingman wow and so that was the bonus of of how we got to fight the kosovo campaign what was that engagement like there was it it sounds like in uh the gulf war it was daytime was it day or night in kosovo for that engagement so for my engagement i was the i was the first kill of the war um and so it was a night kill um it was um it was everything that i had trained to do in a simulator except when i hit the pickle button uh one of the things that you know you you read in the in the dash the dash the manual for weapons employment it says at night do not look in the direction of where the missile is coming from and so when i when i hit the pickle button and i looked over my left the left canopy rail the entire piece of the airplane over there was lit up by the rocket motor and of course now my night my night vision is completely and so i'm trying to to get my night vision back uh not you know not do anything stupid with the jet you know see how things are going and the whole time my wingman is solid he's he's in position he's tracking uh once i get kind of get back into normalcy i can reference the weapon system on the weapons display i know the missile's still flying i can almost barely see a little little cigarette butt out on the horizon so i know where it's generally going and then of course at that point now the enemies knows we're there uh the sams are starting to fly the sam radars are tracking us and everything so now we're starting to try and maneuver away uh from from from the the yugoslav sam's and and then let the missile do its job and so um it was a you know it was beyond 37 miles when i when i took the shot um and so when when the missile impacted the mig um the separation between the mig and i was in excess of 15 nautical miles so it's a completely different uh spectrum in in desert storm the longest shot was 11 or 12 miles it was an aim seven you know and so here we are in kosovo putting a new weapon system into the game and it was it was pretty much out there um and of course when that missile hit that that uh that particular mig um all the mountains in in that area it was winter time so they were all covered in snow so when the fireball hits you know the fireball is generated it it pushes all this light down and then the right the light reflects up wow one of the f-15e guys who as the crow flies from my jet to where he was at he was about 150 miles away from me and he could see the sky light up from that from that fireball god yeah so it was a pretty amazing view uh as as the one who was closest to that fireball uh it kind of i tell people that what it looked like to me was you know we you can imagine what you go to these cities where you have five or six small baseball fields all next to each other and it's a no moon night you get everybody on the radio and say i when i count to three everybody turn the lights on and that's how it it lit up the sky just like wow amazing so i have like a million questions i could ask i got three more for you one is one is about the last flight you had in an aircraft um it can be pretty memorable for people i'm curious what yours was like um the last flight that i had in an f-15 was when i left mountain home um i was the deputy ops group commander up there and then so i took the youngest kid in the squadron on my wing and then the the adversaries were four other f-15s that were simulating uh a fourth generation fighter uh there was two f-16s um and then um and then so when i built the scenario uh i built uh every everybody on the red air side had to draw from a hat what their weapons loadout was gonna be okay and and some of them uh they one they couldn't they were not supposed to tell each other uh what their weapons loadout is but when you use fighter data link and you connect the data link together i did let them use datalink when you connect the data link together you can see what other people's loadout is so by by that time they kind of knew what they had but some of the guides had uh beyond visual range missiles and and but no medium range or no ir missiles some guys had ir missiles some guys only had the gun but my wingman and i we were a full up f-15 4x4 uh and uh and and the goal was to kick their ass and we did and so yeah very memorable that's cool is that is that customary to have the youngest guy in the squadron on your wings no you just did it was just the way i wanted to do it you know i was the oldest um i was a colonel at the time so i was the oldest f-15 uh highest ranking f15 guy on the base and uh i was going to a non-flying job and so i said well i'll just take the youngest kid with me and if you guys beat us then so be it and but you know it was it was the it was it was the combination of the old and the young against uh a very other a very skilled group uh on the other side very cool and then was there was there anything you always made sure you had with you when you were flying like a souvenir something somebody gave you that you always carried with you i i didn't do that in desert storm uh until literally the last couple of sorties which weren't really you know they weren't contested sorties um but when i did the kosovo campaign i carried us a series of of coins with me and so i i would always you know when i when i got my kill i gave the my crew chief a coin um you know that coin flew with me on that sorority uh so there's those are some of the things um you know i was honored to be able to carry the flag um but yeah that's pretty much you know the extent of it uh yep yeah and then the last question i think i know the answer to this one but i i try to ask everybody this looking back over that career that you had um being pushed down like when you were going up through flight training and being told maybe you need to take a different path and a-10s to f-15s and and near-death experiences you had would you do it all again yeah i would definitely do it all over again um but you know i would offer to you that um you know the the kids i call them kids but the kids that are flying the jets like the f-35 and the f-22 today those kids those kids are a thousand times more talented than i ever was um in my best days um they they bring a higher pedigree of intelligence of commitment to to their skill set um you know they they've been every generation is told by the one before them that uh well you guys are getting it easy we had it harder you know we had to go to school climbing the hill both ways barefoot in the snow oh you know that's a typical story of but but i i i'm a firm believer and i've seen these kids uh you know i teach at the at the uh heir to air amram school here at raytheon that is uh for all uh the u.s uh usr air force army navy uh folks who you know are flying fourth and fifth gen fighters um and you know the caliber of questions and the and the and the and the calculus that they're making in their chairs to eventually translate that to taking it to the jet um it's just amazing uh so uh i'll be honest with you i'm not sure i could pass the test today uh the way these kids are you know the caliber of these kids that are coming in and you know i tell them i said hey uh you got to trust what you put into training um you know i'm sure that if i had a chance uh and i've had the chance to talk to aces uh from korea and vietnam i've never had a chance to talk to a world war ii ace but i'm sure they would say things like trust um if you if if if you commit to you know always giving it your best in your training then trust in that training and that's kind of where i tell these kids is uh yeah you're gonna be scared if you're not you should worry about that uh you know this is not uh this is this is not uh the nfl this is a real sport uh where people die nfl gets paid a lot of money to sit on their butt uh and every once in awhile throw a nice pass but you know combat is is very different and but it's it's like a sport in that you've gotta practice it you gotta train to it um and you gotta study and and you gotta study the enemy you gotta study his his behaviors uh and you know you gotta you gotta do all that before you strap on the jet um there's a handful of guys and gals out there that can uh that that comes very natural to it wasn't me um but uh these these these you know some of these kids you know they'll they they are going to do well then and we are in good hands as long as we keep giving them you know the equipment that they need to to out uh to outperform what the what the enemy is getting and the enemies doing out there and it's that part as as you probably remember very well is not yeah i would say we're we're seeing an enemy force today that is i'm not going to call them a near pier yet but they are very close to near pier status in uh in what they're doing in the air domain especially as we start to introduce uh ai and all these others different sources out there so uh um but yeah i'd do it again if if i was good enough and and i lied i just had one more if you're a 13 or 14 year old kid and you want to fly one day you hear you hear this story what advice do you give them to be prepared or or to set up for a successful career knowing how hard it is now the way you described the the level of training and the caliber of this class of people um i tell them that you need to be all in to the development of your brain and to the development of your body um i i would say that the physicality of flying a single-seat jet and pulling 9gs and and and doing the piccolo drill on the on the hands-on training system um there was times when it when eight in a training scenario uh it was just my pure brute physical aspect that allowed me to gain that extra edge over somebody because uh you know i mean as you can see i don't have much of a neck uh i i can pull a lot of g's and uh uh so i i use that to my advantage i i would take guys to you know when we would do our basic fighter maneuver fights i'd take them to the floor of the airspace where the air is thick and the jet really performs and i'll just hold nine g's and say come on bring it on and you know and sometimes that was good enough but that's not the one you can't guerilla your way into flying uh flying a victory role as i would say so you got to develop your brain and you got to develop your body um and and you got to do that at high levels of both then academically you know you got to be into your in into the you know the academic side of it and then physically you got to you know develop it uh in i you know i think sports is a natural way of doing it it was for me but there's other ways you know there's other physical ways of developing your body and then you know it it's not about sitting in front of the tv screen and playing video games that is not flying a fighter jet that's a video game and and what you do in the air might look the same in certain aspects but it's not uh it's not what what's going on in the air and so uh i think those are the two areas that i would tell kids uh you know do you again uh read you know part of the part of that that mental aspect is is read about aviation understand where we came from because if you know where we came from then you have a pretty good idea how you're going to play a role in taking us to the next level well rico i can't thank you enough fascinating stories from uh an army aviator to hear what it was like up there so thank you very much for the time uh truly my pleasure and you know i i enjoyed this as part of my way of of giving back i hope you enjoyed this combat story if you want to tell your own story go to combatstory.com if you know someone we should interview send me their info at ryan combatstory.com hearing these stories can be tough or bring back your own memories if you're battling ptsd please call the veteran crisis line at one eight hundred two seven three eight two five five two seven three 273-8255 stay safe

Channel: Combat Story

Views: 21,879

Rating: 4.9039998 out of 5

Keywords: air force, pilot, MiG, F-15, Strike Eagle, DFC, Rico, Cesar Rico Rodriguez, ROTC, military, veteran, Desert Storm, Gulf War, Kosovo, Bosnia, Yugoslavia, Raytheon, Split S, Dog Fight, Aerial Combat

Id: -QagxRxnXt4

Length: 93min 0sec (5580 seconds)

Published: Fri Nov 27 2020