Ep 2 - Chris Vosper | British Army Apache Pilot & Founder of V-Force Training | No Excuse Podcast

[Music] well we're back episode two of the notes podcast and we're here today at max events this is one of the episodes all the the podcast supporters they've given us access to some land some quads some shotguns so this is pre-film we're gonna have a little bit of a giggle on the quads and then we'll get into filming the podcast today today's episode i introduce you to a former military helicopter pilot he flew three operational tours of afghanistan as a british army apache attack helicopter pilot which i think just happens to be one of the coolest jobs in the world he's also flown the puma helicopter for the world air force after 17 years military experience he left the military to start his new company v force training providing high octane adrenaline fuel driving experiences for members of the public with a sort of a military and a police theme outside of that he has a degree in mechanical engineering he's a former member of the war marines reserve and he's also a qualified rally driver and rally instructor and when he has the time he's also a husband shares his time between living in reading and then the brecons so today episode number two and i'm very excited to introduce you to our second guest mr chris vosper [Music] [Music] [Music] so before we go any further i just need a minute of your time so i can share with you my thanks to some of the supporters of the podcast first and foremost we're here today at max events max events is one of the south's leading providers of outdoor activities and corporate team building and challenge events if you visit their website at max events dot co dot uk they very kindly offered us a 10 discount mention the discount code no excuse 10 during any telephone calls and hopefully that discount should be coming your way so big thanks to max events the quads the shooting everything today is provided by max event so thank you very much secondly triple 9 coffee they're pioneering the way of the coffee in the bag and they've been founded by serving emergency services personnel visit their website at triple nine coffee dot com use the discount code no excuse 10 for your 10 set discount there also finally sm fsf strength easy for me to say if you remember in episode one we interviewed tony hayes he's the founder of the sf1 and sf strength if you visit the website there strength dot com once again the discount code no excuse 10 when the website's up and running and he'll honor a 10 discount if anything you buy there so that's it onwards the podcast [Music] so [Music] well it's official we're back for episode two of the no excuse podcast and i'm over the moon to be sat across the podcasting table from none other than former british army apache pilot mr chris vosper i know i that's missing a round of applause then or like a drum roll wasn't it i'd do my own applause yeah i'm saying welcome like we've just met but this has been a day-long affair isn't it what we started this morning at what time seven seven o'clock and now we are at almost quarter to five in the afternoon so just to give some context around this prior to the podcast we we spent a little probably a little bit too much time actually out on some quads having some fun um doing some shooting so it was a great icebreaker did you enjoy it thoroughly yeah great deal i'm a happy man um but it doesn't mean now we are warmer and we have been drinking coffee so i'm good to go like we're all set yeah what i say though chris before we get into your conversation there are just a number of admin points that i want to square away uh some of which maybe i should have clarified during episode one the first one actually though is just prior to recording the podcast today i did record a quick video thanking some of the podcast supporters one of which was tony hayes which you may remember as being the guest from episode number one and tony's company sf1 strength tony's very kindly um stepped on board as a supporter for the podcast now very much aware that i don't want a former sbs veteran hunting me down and showing me the error of my ways i did get tony's company wrong during that thank you so just to clarify tony that your company's sf1 strength and your website is sf1strength.com so anyone listening take a look at that website next up i will say um two points i think probably fueled more by questions i've received since episode one um but i think it's a good time to talk about it now it's part of the conversation i think so one of those relates to how do i interpret the the tagline almost of leading a no excuse life and that sort of carries into what was the motivations behind creating a podcast like the no excuse podcast and i'm very much aware though at this stage that you are here listening to chris's story so i don't want to take up too much air time but i do think it's important that i at least talk about this for a few minutes um leading the no excuse life is more i think than a tagline for me it's more than a hashtag it's more than a a social media post or an instagram post it's for me it's real life and i know this is going to mean different things to different people but leading a new excuse life for me really is it's the daily grind it's the it's the the daily slog of every day trying to make the best of the circumstances that you're in now we're all going to be in a different stage of our life uh we would have seen different things we've experienced different things we have different goals and ambitions but i think the one important thing is that we can all have an opportunity to live by a set of principles that we set ourselves and for me i think one of those principles is to lead a no excuse life and now i'm not saying i'm perfect at that by any means but it's something that i i intentionally introduce into my life every day as a means of really holding myself to account it's a way that i can remind myself every day that i can do better but there will be some days when i fail miserably there'll be some days that i do better than others but for me it evolves around i think associating one what we're doing today on a podcast the conversation that we can have with people the value that we can draw from a conversation but how over time i think us as a society and the world we've lost that connection with conversations and i think it's now it's easier to send a text message than it is to to send an email or it's easier to send an email than it is to telephone and vice versa it's far easier to telephone someone today than it is to go meet them face to face and so we lose that connection we lose those little moments in a conversation that are that are important to us they could be moments of reflection they could be moments that are motivational or there could be moments where we we stop and we take stock about our lives and i think that's the powerful thing of conversations and and part of this this podcast for me about leading that no excuse life is making the decision to really step into as many of those conversations as i can because i draw huge value from these conversations and as many of you did during episode one with tony i think a lot of people connected with tony and tony's story and i think that is a way of of reaffirming for us here on the podcast that we're going in the right direction and we're doing the right thing so i'm not sure how well that probably squared away leading a no excuse life but i think people will always make a judgment call as to taglines for me though it's real it's real life and it's a it's a principle that i try to leave my life by every day now before i move on there are some other things i need to do thank you i must spend some time thanking some people firstly for those of you really who showed support following episode one we've been bowled over really by the amount of support that tony and tony's story received um but i'd also like to pass some thanks from everybody here to those of you that found the strength and the honesty almost to to direct message us and to talk about where you are in your life right now and now we didn't ask for that and i wasn't expecting that but nonetheless you did that and it was humbling i would say to be able to listen to some of your stories and to hear where you currently are as difficult as some of those circumstances may be i hope that we're able to help a little bit in the messages that we gave back to you but i must emphasize that i i and others here we're not trained we have no qualifications when it comes to counseling or or giving advice on mental health or the dark times but nonetheless we we have lived a life and we are more than happy to try and share those experiences where we can or try and connect people with other people who may be able to help so to you i say thank you to everybody um and i'm already getting too tired of my own voice chris so i think it's gonna be about time for you to start talking but for those of you then who have just tuned in and have ignored the last five minutes of me talking today's guest chris vosper a good friend of mine former british army apache pilot and you already know chris but you know you can talk to me about helicopters all day so i'm a bit of a helicopter uh train spotter if that even makes sense i'm the sort of person as you're walking around and i see a helicopter no matter who i'm with i have to tell them what sort of helicopter that is but you're the real deal i'm the one that just pretends to like helicopters so um again welcome to the podcast chris it's um it's a real pleasure that you're here and i'm glad that you get an opportunity to share your life and some of your life experiences and what you've done and what you're doing currently so i think one thing i'd like to sort of ask you and take you into a time thinking about being a pilot can you remember the exact time all there abouts when sitting in the cockpit of an apache attack helicopter as the pilot was what you wanted to do yeah uh i i think you can trace that back to age 13. that's that's when i joined the air cadets and i very quickly realized that uh i'd for sure i wanted to be a military pilot and i'd made that my burning ambition in life but prior to that i guess i was just a pretty ordinary kid um if you'd have asked me what i what i was gonna end up doing when i was older or what my life ambition would have been i'd probably have said something revolving around cars because i'm big petrol head love cars so either racing driver rally driver or pilot or maybe a soldier those were probably my three big um things i was interested in but i never really had a burning desire i never necessarily saw myself uh as as being focused and channeled into doing those things that just seemed like something way off until a friend of mine suggested that i join air cadets with him so up to that point i was probably going to join army cadets and you know eventually gone to join the army but he uh suggested convinced me it was worth going along to air cadets with him and very soon you know by the time i was getting the chance to go and fly in the back of helicopters and flying chipmunks and bulldogs and learn about learn about planes and flying i was absolutely sold on the idea that i wanted i desperately knew that one day i was going to become a military pilot and that just became an all-consuming burning ambition for me so you know from 13 onwards i i completely threw myself into everything i needed to do to become a pilot and that was a complete fixation so it was actually on the horizon at that point though the apache wasn't on the horizon so i i was interested in helicopters and jets not not really interested in uh in big transport planes but i had a fascination for uh for helicopters and a fascination for jets obviously probably watching top gun watching airwolf um you know all those influences as a kid probably listening to my my grandfather's stories uh as a kid so he trained as a pilot during the war so i guess all these things kind of had a big influence but um what really shaped it was not long after joining me air cadets at 13 i kind of i knew that's what i want to do and the yes the apache wasn't necessarily on the horizon but i wasn't specific to what type i was going to fly uh i just knew i wanted to be a military pilot and at that time to me raf seemed to make the most sense so i worked as hard as i could applied myself and threw myself into into my studies and then did as much as i could with air cadets so that by just after my 16th birthday i applied to the air force and did uh the full officer and air crew selection process to to get an rf6 form scholarship and then i was going to finish my levels and then go straight into the air force as a pilot so passing that would have would have given me a place immediately after school straight into officer training and then on to flying training so what happened was though obviously i did the best i could prepared as well as i possibly could for it but i was unsuccessful and that was a really good thing in hindsight because that really that was the making of me because if i'd have got that that would have been an easy ticket straight into flying training and as it was that kind of forced me to regroup it taught me a valuable lesson early on of yeah you might fail at some stuff but that doesn't necessarily mean that that's over it's actually an eventual you know success is gonna be uh preceded by several failures potentially it doesn't matter you just push through it you deal with it you learn the lessons and you keep on going until you've achieved your goal so it's pretty pretty wounding at the time because i really wanted it and i guess people wouldn't necessarily realize how much of a burning desire somebody could possibly have aged only 16 but yeah that was that was for me it became an obsession and then to be denied it took a bit of a regroup and a rethink uh and so had a bit of a sad on for a while but just you know took charge of myself got a grip realized that the next thing i needed to do to still achieve that the end goal of becoming a military pilot uh was i was there were various options but the probably the most appealing was to go to university get sponsorship at university then get a place at the end and roll straight into flying training at the end of that so in order to give myself the best possible chance obviously i wanted to finish off my levels do as well as i could there um decided that i would uh i would take a couple of years off before going to university because i was young in my age year group so i was yes 16 uh at that point i was the youngest um in my in my age group for that year meant that i could afford to take two years off and do three years at uni and then still be well within the age limit of 23 and a half ish which is what the rf pilot limit was at that time so it worked all that out and it meant that by taking two years off prior to university and filling it full of as many good things as i could many interesting use of character developing things um so i could then be more impressive to a board to then subsequently get an raf sponsorship through university that to me seemed worthwhile so i then i went on an air cadet camp which is it was actually an army army cadet camp for for more senior cadets but i was lucky enough to get a slot on it and and i had a royal marine officer as my platoon commander and it's funny it's funny how all these you know just chance meeting with certain people certain events in your life kind of can have an enormous impact and this was definitely one of those occasions because that was my first sort of exposure to the royal marines at that stage and that just meeting and being under the training of uh of this guy for for just that week-long course had an enormous impact on my life because uh i know suddenly i knew what a professional um tough fit uh you know charismatic guy you know that uh that he was was representative of of what the royal marines is like what how um you know what incredible ethos and culture it is and also it it um enlightened me to the fact that you could become a pilot in the royal marines and i didn't realize that so that opened up a whole avenue of additional things which led led shortly after to me joining the royal marines reserves and spending the two years prior to going to university focused in and around that sole pursuit of of getting my green berry doing the recruit and commando training finishing up getting my green berry and and then focusing all the other activities in to fit around that so i spent all those two years prior to university doing a number of interesting and enjoyable things and uh and actually i think by the time i i got to got to university just turned 20 i've done i've done a lot and i felt that i was able to i had the confidence to go to a board having you know full justification i think yes at 16 i hadn't really had much to offer for you guys i'd imagine you weren't going to accept me at that point but now i think things have changed and i've i've done a lot and in amongst um all the the physical effort um and so the the you know just absorbing the thrashings and the beastings of of you know royal marine recruit training the the big thing was the quality of the people so the quality of the staff the instructors you know were ptis and uh you know mountain leaders there was an ex sas guy a couple of sbs guys and you know guys who'd seen action the falklands at 17. these were tough professional guys and what what the privilege to be trained by those guys but also the peers that you know the muckers i've still got really good mates from those days uh as a as a young kid getting getting thrashed in my spare time voluntarily uh because that shared adversity build some some really good really good friendships as well as kind of helping you to grow as a as a person and fully stretch you right i was right on the outside of my my comfort zone doing that it was a a real step into a new dimension um and and it served me really well and the sense of pride and accomplishment i got from getting getting through commando training and earning my green berry was was immense like you know for some guys they probably didn't have to work quite as hard or dig quite as deep as i did but that was yeah it was so much on the limit of of my physical um capabilities my physiological capability as well as how much sort of effort disciplines you know determination it kind of tested that the the reward once i once achieved it was it was incredible but alongside that i i went to i went to namibia and spent three months in operation rally uh on now called rally international just doing some ecological work and adventure work and um helped build a school in a little village stuck out in in the sticks in africa and getting there you know getting the opportunity to go and visit that village see the little mud huts and and the stick huts and yeah that was in itself a great life lesson because where else would i've had the opportunity to do that and perhaps you know if i've had to join the air force straight away gone straight into pilot training all these things i was embarking on would never have come to be i also so i i studied a lot i i did a philosophy and a psychology course at university uh just during those two gap years so not full degrees but just modules of degrees uh and then i read a lot i just i in every in every possible way so as i was beasting myself physically and trying to get as fit as i could i was trying to get as knowledgeable and develop myself in that sphere as well but equally you know just in terms of character and leadership skills so i did i did ta officer training running in parallel to that i you know did flying scholarship um worked uh in a leisure center briefly so i did lifeguard training and i did some voluntary work as well which is which was extremely rewarding and i would wouldn't have done that before i wouldn't have even considered to have done that but that gave me an opportunity to see just another aspect of of life so helping to look after teenagers with with learning difficulties during eastern and summer breaks so council-led initiatives and all these things led to by the time i started uni i really felt i'd gone from being you know just a pretty wet behind the ears ordinary average kid to actually having accomplished some really um you know don't say impressive not being arrogant about it but just real life changing and i've definitely grown as a as a person and this is this is always the age of 20. yeah so i just turned 20 by the time i started i started uni and if i had gone straight to uni smash that and joined up straight after again i i think i'd have missed out on a lot of these elements as well i think so because listening in you know from the age of 16 through to 20 to have achieved all of that in itself is impressive so certainly not something you should step back from you know you're not being arrogant by talking about in that way that's as a reflection on maybe the the career paths that people take of today as you leave school and you're looking through to college and university and can you really squeeze this in and around education i mean you've you've you've cut kept out of a green beret with the raw means reserved during this time yes you've studied sub-courses after university you've volunteered you've i mean you're ticking boxes now that i imagine a lot of people would probably sit back and think fly me i haven't done that in the last 10 15 years and you've managed to do all of this in those four years what was the real driving force i mean was there was there an influence in your life at that time that was maybe pushing you in that direction or was this single-minded this was just what you wanted yeah it was i think being from yes of relatively humble origins being from a pretty ordinary average background and and not being a particularly you know spectacular guy uh as a candidate to go and join join the uh the air force in the first place and being knocked back was a real a real motivation to actually up my game and it was all things that were entirely available to to most people if they so wish to commit themselves but the trade-off is that you've got to work hard and you've got to put the effort in and nobody's telling you what you have to do it's nobody's nobody was making me rock up on a every single friday night to go and spend the entire weekend getting thrashed or in uh would be common or dark more or whatever that was entirely on my own efforts but all because i was really motivated to achieve that one single aim of becoming good enough to get accepted into flying training but so the interesting thing though was that by the time i started i started uni uh i'd originally in intended up until um i did that leadership course and had had that exposure to um to the royal marines which actually opened my eyes to go not just from the raf but to consider the marines and the army as options uh to fly uh and and have a subsequent career so um by the time i by the time i turned up to uni i'd i was actually more interested in joining the marines as a pilot or joining the army as a pilot because now the apache was fully on the horizon um i was more interested in those two than i was joining the raf because i had uh i'd written uh written off to then to the to the air force to then go and get a uh university um sponsorship and go through that the whole selection process and while i was waiting for them to to reply i just started uni and i joined the royal marine reserve in in manchester so when went to manchester university it made sense to just keep keeping handy i was so proud of the fact i just worked my tail off to get my green lid um i that actually spurred me on to keep that trajectory of you know if i've just done that what's the next thing i can achieve this is amazing so it wasn't long after that i decided that actually i'm gonna i'm gonna have a crack at uh sbs reserve selection in parallel to do my degree and that's not a decision i took lightly because the the knock-on from that was that that was basically i was going to have to do that expensive any kind of social life so that was going to have a massive impact on i wasn't going to be you know just coasting through union and party central i knew if i was if i was to to take on that challenge that was going to consume pretty much all my spare time and i was going to have to work really hard at the degree in order just to you know crack a reasonable pass not even starring in it but it was going to take all my effort to achieve both those things in parallel but i still want to just you know have a reasonably good time at uni what why not you don't just go there to get a qualification but um in in parallel with that i i then applied to to the army and i'd already done my regular commission's board past that and had a place at the end of university for sandhurst and i spent all my spare time pretty much running up and down hills getting as fit as i could get hills fit um and there was a a good group of us all royal marine reservists uh who all decided together we would go and have a cracker sbs reserve selection so uh and we pretty much went through a series of you know all the modular training sections um and i spent the entire three years at uni pretty much with all my spare time um committed to learning some skills getting beasted and and he was yeah formidable confidence builder by the time i actually turned up the sandhurst i i knew i could i was comfortable i could cope with almost anything they were going to throw my way because i'd had to work so hard to to get to that level of of soldiering competence of physical endurance and then equally the academic rigor of of knuckling down and beasting myself through uni uh which you know that didn't come easy i'm i i wanna go and i'm a sort of action orientated guy i didn't necessarily wanna be spending all my time doing academics i want to go and didn't want to be in the classroom and be out doing stuff so you know i look back i was in i was so incredibly focused and disciplined that's what got me through but it meant that by thomas started scientists i was really in a as best a possible shape to to go there and do well and the the reason why that became so important is because so once the army air corp decided that uh it was going to go for him or get me apache i decided that that's what i really wanted to do and it i'd uh i then applied to the army air corps after i already got my place uh at sandhurst and the air corps selection board i went down the middle up to did a few interviews and and yeah met the guys had a few uh went through that sort of additional selection process to be accepted into vehicle prior to sandhurst and i was unsuccessful again again so uh the only way that i could then get in to the air corps as an army as an army officer was to do so well at the first half of sandhurst or the first two thirds of santos that by atomic got to your choice of arm selection interview board that um i had to have done sufficiently well up to that point so my report at santos was really good and performed well at that interview so i really joined with a bit of a gamble that that i could actually i had to back myself to say that i'm gonna throw himself into it so much to the extent that i can uh get a reasonably good report good enough to pass and thankfully that that's what that's what came to pass but other guys most other guys i'm sure didn't have to work quite as hard as i did to get that place but actually yeah i'm thankful for that because i had to dig so deep and worked so hard to achieve that that these are these are great life lessons and then actually when you work hard for something when you achieve it it feels so much better it's so much more of an accomplishment especially when you i suppose you've as you say you've not met the grade on a number of occasions now what sort of feedback were you getting at that point because you know if you fail at something if you don't know know what you've you've failed for that's a very difficult obstacle to overcome isn't it you know if you're giving your feedback were you working on feedback yes absolutely so the the feedback from their call was that the board were impressed with my accomplishments of what i've done and yeah i think i think that's probably fair enough i'd done it you know a fair bit to look good on paper um that doesn't necessarily mean that in person i was coming across as exactly what they wanted also it's a really popular choice of arm so lots of people want to become more miracle officers and and get to go and fly helicopters and they can choose who they want they can be afford to be pretty yeah pretty picky and i just wasn't good enough so the feedback was you know just you're not bad you've done a lot on paper but we've got other better candidates who yeah we'll choose them over you so it's like okay fine then that then falls to me to perform and do better um going forward to then demonstrate that i i'm committed i can make i can make the grade i can i can do well enough and thankfully that that is that's how that's how it worked out so uh it as i say didn't make it easy and i guess for a lot of guys who just been sort of given and said right you're good enough here's a place on your crack would have probably coasted a little bit but that was there was no guarantee even if you'd been accepted into the airport before going to santos that you were still going to get your place so happened to a good friend of mine and he um he got an air cooled place a pass prior to going into santos went to sanders we're in the same platoon um and didn't perform well enough frankly sanders didn't he didn't make the cut so they didn't offer him a place and so he wound up not going to the air corps even though he'd kind of been sponsored by them um thankfully three years later as a cavalry officer he reapplied and then did get the chance to to go across the air court on secondment then eventually um did enough flying that he left and became a sevi helicopter pilot and still is so it worked out well in the end but even getting that place beforehand is no guarantee you're gonna necessarily uh get off of the place on the on the pilot's course so be accepted yeah i'd have been 23 by the time i started sandhurst so i graduated i was 22 just turning 23 so then um we're talking halfway through sandhurst by the time we came to our choice of onboard so yeah 23. so pretty much in those you know what's that seven and a half years since being uh yeah given the no you're not gonna have an rf uh six four scholarship i'd know come about a lot of learning a lot of stuff had happened since i suppose then looking at a lesson even at that age if if someone was listening to this right now thinking that they're determined to become an apache pilot it's everything they want to do yeah they're 16 they're 17 they're just leaving education or they're thinking about their options now what what advice could you give them at this point looking back in hindsight how could they best prepare themselves what could they do they think to present themselves in the best light yeah that's a good really good question it's be absolutely crystal clear that's exactly what you want and if it is then you've got to throw yourself at it fully and you've got to absolutely be completely committed to doing everything that's required to make the grade and that means working hard at school that means you if you want to join the the raf just and you're only interested in flying and there's nothing wrong with that i'd thoroughly recommend joining the cadets you don't have to but that will give you a huge uh advantage in terms of understanding um some of the basic ground school getting the experience of flying getting either a gliding scholarship uh see at 16 you get to go go gliding and go solo and all these things are still available so i'd recommend thoroughly recommend and advise doing that um if you're super keen then you go to an air experience flight where you get to go and fly on the tutors so i volunteered as a as an air experience flight pilot late a lot later on and spent five years uh teaching and and flying air cadets so that was that for me it was a great way to to give something back because i knew what it was like being you know that 13 year old kid or that 16 year old kid who really wanted to be a pilot um and and be able to offer that advice on a case-by-case basis and then you can tell so most most cadets don't necessarily have that burning desire but some do and i could totally resonate with that and totally understand where they where they were coming from and i would deliberately spend extra extra time giving as much uh of my you know advice and support as i possibly possibly could even to the extent of trying to encourage them to when when the time was right in their life to come back to the air experience flight and do extra flying volunteer as a staff cadet learn as much get get a book on private flying learn as much as they can about that apply for a flying scholarship and try and develop and spend as much time in around an aviation environment excuse me as possible um and then on top of that you've got to you're going to understand what is required to pass the board and what you need to do to prepare for that and there are i guess there's probably a lot more information available online though but uh at the time the a great source of um of that knowledge of what what the board the interview questions they were going to ask and what you needed to do to prepare for it was available from from some of the staff in in air cadets and other mates of mine so uh guys who i'm still really good mates were the guys that that i that was sort of in our clique in their cadets some of whom most of whom actually went on to become uh in one service or the other went again not just aircrew but went on to military service and uh you know having peers are a little bit older who've gone through the process and been successful i would say link in with those guys and get the information and see what they're doing and see what they had to go through and what prep they had to do because that's extremely current information then and that would read across there i guess anything that you want to apply yourself to find some mentors find the right group of people that have already demonstrated success in your area of what you're trying to achieve but i think just putting in the preparation is vital if you really really want to do something and you and you're smart about what preparation you need to do then you just knuckle down and work as hard as you can then accept if if it doesn't work out that's not the end of it you just keep going and going and rattling through the failures until eventual success i think it's really worth noting then at the end of the podcast we'll get our heads together and think about maybe some links that people might want to follow if they're interested in becoming a pilot we'll put those at the end of the podcast but yeah so we're 23 years old now i say well you're 23 years old you've been accepted into what would you refer to as flight school is that right or yeah so flying training or the flying training system so the the army air corps then so i guess we had about 280-ish people in my in my intake and september intake at sandhurst and i think seven of us got accepted into the army air corps i think one guy did a flying grading uh an easter flying grading and was unsuccessful on that so he had to then go to another regiment so that i think that would have left six of us who then were about to go and embark on flying training but for myself included a couple of us had to still go through flying grading which is the sort of the prerequisite to being awarded a place on your pilot's course so uh it's three weeks down at middle one up flying uh i think it's tutors not pretty sure it's tutors now at the time it was firefly but a basic um fixed-wing two-seater prop um prop plane and it's a condensed version of the of the first part of pilot's training of the pilots course and they are just assessing your learning curve and your aptitude to bring you know acquire the information and um yeah the pressure is on because that's a one-shot deal if you don't perform well enough of that then as this other poor lad that had been accepted in the air court didn't do well enough on grading got chopped and been off even before he started the pilot's course that had happened to him so i'd properly knuckled down prepared for that red as much as i could uh try to think through yeah because a lot of it's about cramming and memory retention is is monkey see monkey do to a good to a good degree but they're assessing your capacity to learn and learn at the right rate so yeah i just thoroughly committed myself to it passed it and then that meant i was now in a position to start my pilots course but for me i had and all the guys from my from that era um had six months or so on attachment to an infantry or cavalry regiment so i got the chance to go to paris i mean i asked if i could go to the paris in in my uh in my interview because it was my my other choice of arm you get a few a few options of where you want to go and uh luckily enough i was maybe a bit necky but i uh i asked general jackson in my parachute regiment interview if um even though i'd accepted my air corps place because i did that interview beforehand uh and i said look you know i love the idea of just doing an attachment to the parachute regiment for a few months would that be okay and he said yeah you know we can make that happen that's a good idea because actually i spent the next nine years in 16 air assault brigade of which so obviously the parachute regiment is fundamental but uh the army echo three and four regiments um which i served with were also part of 16 air assault brigade so it was the sort of the premier fast response brigade of the time and and yeah general jackson himself said in the interview it makes perfect sense if you've got a set of parachute wings up because when when you're sat in that 16 air assault brigade headquarters you've then got at least a little bit of um kudos or a little bit of an appreciation from all the other staff don't just use a fly by at least you've actually had you know spent some time seeing what it's like in a parachute regiment platoon so i got the chance to do pea company and do my jumps course and then go to to um northern ireland uh to south ammar and just pretty much spent you know a bit of time seeing what it was like just patrolling around northern ireland uh with with the parachute regiment suit and see what it's like from from that side like kind of building on everything i'd learned in sandhurst and all the lessons and all the leadership and infantry um development and then actually seeing it for real i was great great lesson uh and did you let on interestingly to any of the powers there that you had a green berry in your locker i do you know what i didn't i didn't think they i don't think they'd care interesting they um the culture is it's probably it's it works so well they are everybody is so proud of being uh an airborne warrior that's all they're interested in and no matter how good a bloke you are if you haven't got your your power wings up they just they will not give you the time of day so luckily i i've done p company and done my jumps course by the time i went and did my did my attachment and uh other you know guys have really high caliber buddies of mine from from sanders i remember one guy he uh he came down and visited us in uh in bes brooke um best brook mill where we're based in so he went on to become a a colonel in the sas really high caliber guy hadn't done his jumps course hadn't done p company and the blokes just would not even give him the time of day i was like guys yeah because at this stage he was obviously a lieutenant with having only justin sanderson with another regiment and he just happened to be visiting and it's like guys i appreciate you got your culture is is brilliant and i appreciate you the pride in the spree esprit de corps for having done something really gnarly makes you and that makes this arrangement and that's brilliant but you can't just write off somebody as you it's so black and white you're either in that culture and you're awesome or if you're not in that there and nobody so take every individual in their own mirror and this guy is actually going to go on to do some pretty impressive things and he's a really good bloke but don't just mug him off so that was that was something i found quite interesting and you probably see that in every little tribal unit all around not just not just around the military you probably see that in in all sorts of walks of life absolutely i'm sure you've seen that from your you see a lot of it in the in the police certainly right yeah and certainly within areas of specialist operations there's always less clicks there's levels of elitism and of course there are those that think they're you know due to the level of training or experience they're different or better than others but sometimes i think that does promote um a level of you know ability that that is is useful at times is that that self-confidence isn't it but uh i certainly yeah i certainly can relate to that maybe not as strongly as it might have been in in the military in that sense yeah i mean to know at this point how close were you having now got to the stage that you're at how close are you to becoming a pilot in an apache is that still quite a long journey yeah so i luckily i i joined at a time where i knew that they were going to get the apache into service relatively soon but it wasn't an option to go straight from pilot training on to the apache you had to go and do that 18-month pilots course and then go on to another type and then very soon like within a year or two then if if it all worked out well you'd then be in a position to to get on the next apache course and so at that point having just finished my attachment the paris i was three years away from starting the apache course so i finished finished my attachment to paras went on my pilot's course went that's a three phase process pretty much three gusting four the first bit is is just a tri-service elementary flying training flying uh the basic fixed wing that we'd already done um a bit of timing and that flying grading but it was that elongated over about four months the ground school and just some general handling skills and then that sets you up nicely to then go to the next phase on helicopters where uh you kind of you're covering similar ground but you've got the added complexity of having to you know learn how to hover a helicopter that just just trying to learn how to hover to start with is i mean it's hilarious it was but it was brilliant at the same time but it was hard graph you just the first sort of hover lesson dedicated to doing nothing other than trying to just keep this machine in the same bit of space and you're you're pouring with sweat you're working as hard as you can instructors just sat there it's so easy as soon as you have a bit of a pilot-induced oscillation you can just instantly take control bang helicopters back solid uh in a fixed position and then he can hand control back to you and the thing is just you know wobble about all over the place and you're trying to get used to coordinating everything was that overland that's what i take it you're hovering over that surfaces yeah yeah so just in a massive field with nothing to hit to start with but uh it's not long before you can actually get comfortable with being able to do that hover hold position do it cross wind and have gradually a bit more spare capacity to think about answering radio calls or being aware of other air traffic around you and you know later on the course you you'll be in a position where you're hovering uh with you know your disc this is the edge of where the rotors are a few feet away from trees landing in a confined area chatting as you go in and you know thinking about tactics but it's all a gradual progressive process and it at no point do they chuck you in at the deep end to start with and expect you to do loads all building blocks all really sensibly done but what there isn't time to do is to revisit anything significantly you'll get taught a skill you'll then be expected to kind of nail that to the point that you don't have to be taught it again once you've taught something you need to be able to do it reasonably well and then you need to then be able to learn the next new skill and so on and so on and just keep compounding and building it so by the very end of the course then you can fly you know in cloud you can fly at night you can fly as a formation you can think not just about physically piloting the aircraft but commanding it operating in a battlefield context but so that so that second phase of learning the basics of uh operating and flying a helicopter moved on to the third phase at middle wallop which is the same helicopter as it was at the time the squirrel and it's now been replaced but um it's again that's the operational element where there was lots of night flying so he introduced him like flying goggles and night vision goggles spending a lot of time going out uh as either individuals pairs with more than just a flyer route you've now got things to think about in terms of tactical consequences on where you've got got a target you've got to go and put some reconnaissance on so it's not not massively scaled up all the way to full apache tactics but it's giving you a hint and it's starting to think beyond you're not just driving this thing around the sky you've actually got a battlefield purpose towards it so that 18-month process culminates in getting wings and for me it was the first two modules um at fixed wing and basic rotary fine no problem i was pleasantly surprised i was doing reasonably well working really hard but um doing reasonably well and then the third phase at middle wallop i had a bit of a stinker on one trip and then as everybody does everybody's gonna drop a clanger at some point and it you just you then have to get you get a resit and effectively if you pass that reset then you're good to go if you fail that reset then you you then get put down the air warning system so you go from air warning to you to the air winning sorry one if you fail one trip if you then fail that reset you then get pointed air wanting to now this is a bad thing because you then get a bit of a bit of time to regroup consolidate and then and then do a re-test effectively but the pressure is now on because if you screw that up you're then pretty much one trip away from being chopped if you get chopped that's you off the course never the fly again so there isn't really scope to to not keep up that whole learning curve the whole way through without a penalty and even if you if you [ __ ] up go into air one in one re-fly the trip pass and then crack back on you're slightly flagged to the instructors you're on you're on the radar a bit more than all the other guys on the course who haven't had a a bad trip because it's like well if you've no coc that went up the microscope is out what else what else are you going to struggle with so that made it quite hard so i failed the trip got an air one in one you know redid it but i then felt the pressure significantly after that so all self-induced clearly but if you don't if you don't want it you don't care well no big deal i really wanted it and as you you know as you probably tell i put so much effort just to get on the the course in the first place uh i really really wanted it so yeah i felt that pressure quite a bit but thankfully got through got my wings uh and then at the end of that i made a strategic choice to go to a three regiment um through a regiment army air corps because they were going to get rid of their gazelles and links and then they're going to re-roll to apache because it was at that point in time they're only just bringing the apache in um to front to frontline regiments so i knew if i went on to gazelle and i spent a few months flying flying gazelle in there in waddersham then that would go out of service from that squadron and then they get re-rolled onto apache and then by default there was a good chance i could leverage my way onto an apache course also of interest for me was the fact that it was part of 16 air assault brigade and i wanted to be part of that that you know main spearhead brigade so having done um particles gone got on the gazelle conversion uh turned up at the at the squadron uh and the regiment watership that was just on on mac's throttle the whole time just is so busy it was really good but it was just busyness all the time so rocked up straight to germany for a couple of weeks in the headquarters exercise came back straight on the flying exercise uh came back to the promotion the captain's course back off that and then we're prepping for another exercise but i got the opportunity then and this is this was cool go on an eight-week skiing package regimental uh scheme package which is which is tough but if if i'm completely honest if i had would have had the choice i probably would have carried on flying instead of doing that eight weeks ago i'd probably done like a couple of weeks of ski holiday and spent the rest of that time flying because i spent all that time learning to fly now i wanted to just just consolidate and and enjoy it without the pressure of knowing that every single flight that you do you're getting assessed and there's a risk you could get chopped out of it forever so but anyway that was still all the great thing to go and do eight weeks straight skiing came back from that and then on to another flying exercise and then the apache was due to come in the gazelle was due to go out so at the end of that they were like right you're not on the next apache course even though there's no gazelle cockpit for us on the squadron anymore so you're going to go into links and i'm like okay not ideal but no worries what do i need to do to get onto the next available apache course and what do i need to do to do that well quite simply go on the links course and do as well as i can get an apache recommendation from my time on the links course spend a little bit of time consolidating my flying on links still still within the same regiment three regiment and then that should be enough to eventually get me on the next available apache course in duke in due course and um but no guarantee but no guarantee so yeah i then did the links course uh worked hard did well got that apache recommendation but concurrent to that so uh i had i had the additional pressure of somebody very close to me having that absolute stinker in life and getting suicidal and pretty close to committing suicide and i was probably best placed to to be that support and help to eventually talk them out of it and give them more all the support that they needed to avoid um being that low again and that was that took a lot of my spare capacity um and of course that was a priority over over above passing uh the passing links course and passing it well enough to get um to get an apache recommendation because i knew i could revisit that if need be or you know i'd already proved to myself there are multiple multiple ways to achieve your objective um so but i've been willing to obviously clearly been willing to sideline that because it puts in perspective what's really important were they somebody that you work with uh no close family member so uh absolutely vital to me that it it just obviously yes i love my work i throw myself into it but it puts things in the perspective so thankfully that worked out um and you know they're still here today so which is great but we as a result of of having got through that and and doing well enough on the links course i then got posted to a link squadron uh kind of spread the rumor that i was going to be on the next apache course uh and pestered the accident like relentlessly to the point that he he's like look just just to get you off my back i'm going to put you on the next apache course a couple of the fact obviously that i managed to perform well enough for the links course to get that recommendation meant that i was on the next available course so only literally six months after that so i'd spent that period of time uh as a as a flight commander on the links done a series of other sort of promotional um or um enhancing qualifications to become a better operator and culminating with becoming an aircraft commander then a total of 18 months later pretty much after i got my wings i was then on the next apache course and as i say most of the guys who are on the course with me are probably from my sort of era they hadn't gone straight from from wings onto the course so i knew a load of the guys in the course already and we all kind of uh you know it was a good course spirit and it was yeah it was great the first six months first actually wound up being about seven months a bit of a delay with various things but that the first half of the apache course is about learning to fly the aircraft and operating as a singleton initially and then up to a pair the second half is another six months again maybe seven months which is all about the tactics and weaponeering because that is extremely um a significant part and you could do so much training on the impact you could do a degree on just the apache it's a pretty complex piece of kit so the first half at middle wall up just learning how to fly it um it was quite quite a privilege to be at that sort of that early stage of apache days because i was only on conversion six so only five courses had gone before us and then prior to that the guys had been learning in america and then coming back and taking what they learned on the american apache out there and developing the course from scratch over in the in the uk because our aircraft was pretty similar to the american one albeit just slightly different better engines but very similar in most respects but that that first course i mean you know the middle wall up had kind of the infrastructure was significantly improved you know we had a really nice um nice new symboling the resources thrown that we were appropriately um swept up and it was so so nice to be part of that i was like eventually after years of graft i'm now finally starting uh on on the beast um and getting to fly the apache for it for the first time so lots of ground school because it's a pretty pretty complex aircraft and it's not just about learning everything else that you learn on a a normal uh aircraft conversion ground school about um how all the systems work big emphasis on the weapons um is that's the kind of the new thing because up to that point flying gazelle and flying links obviously prior to that squirrel and fixed-wing there was there was no weaponing weaponeering or any of that element to it and this is all about flying uh as a as a flying weapon system was all about the weapons so that took a took a substantial amount of uh of learning and they gave us folders that were about you know three or four inches thick and about four or if not five of them so when when stacked up it was literally a couple of foot high and that was information that we were pretty much taught that was supporting everything that we learned on that commercial and uh yeah it was a long and thorough course but but really rewarding again step by step start with just the basics of flying that aircraft by day um and learning the handling skills and just how the thing flies and then you progress through to flying uh in cloud all instruments and then eventually you build up to the night flying and by the end of the course you're flying pairs on a similar sort of tactical profile and doing various maneuvers learning how to respond to emergencies and you spend a little bit of time in the simulator doing doing weapons just you've got an understanding but all that is still to come in depth on the next part of the course on the conversion to roll but uh so that went well to start with and the notoriously hard bit halfway through the course is the bag phase which is where they put a cockpit blackout system in place so your day flying but it simulates from your point as the pilot in the back it's a completely pitch black knight and the instructors sat in the front with no cockpit blackout with full visibility what's going on for safety and for lock for lookout but the purpose of it is for you to use the helmet mounted display that you've got projecting an image from a thermal camera to your right eye and it's got symbology and you need to use a combination of the video image from the thermal camera and the symbology and all the information that symbology has given you is everything that traditional old-school dials and gauges would give you but all presented quite ergonomically in your eye but you've got to know where to look for it for that information and you've got to know it and it takes a period of time to build up to getting used to that it's the same information you'd have in a head-up display on a fighter that's fixed there in front of you very similar that green symbology all the flight information you possibly need but it's just because it's presented in front of your right eye as you move your head around wherever you look the information is there and as you move your as you move your helmet around obviously the the thermal camera on the nose the aircraft moves in a corresponding motion so you always get an image in your eye of where ever you've turned your head wherever you're looking then the camera will point that takes a lot of getting used to because it's the the thermal camera is mounted ten foot ahead of you three foot below on like a five degree tilt and it's a slightly different magnification about 1.1 1.2 magnification and there's a delay as you move your head if you move your head really quickly the camera can't turn quite as quickly so if you move your head and come back it there's a lag in the speed at which that's going to move so the image in your eye kind of doesn't fully correspond with what you're expecting to see if you don't compensate for that and also you've got to compensate for the fact that because it's on a slightly tilted um camera access or sorry um where it's mounted on a five degree difference in when you're sat on the hover you have to turn your head and tilt your head at the same time to compensate for the fact that uh as the camera rotates if you don't do if you don't do that tilt of the head at the same time it will appear from the the image that you're seeing that you're drifting backwards so these things take a long time for the brain to calibrate so yeah if you're as mint as i am it takes a long time for it to uh to calibrate and i to me i was working on the outer edge of what i thought my um you know psychology my uh my brain capacity was able to to compensate to tolerate and to work with but i think everybody found that hard and the the bag phase is the notorious chopping ground for uh for that part of the first half of the course and you know other mates of mine had come acrop on that and been chopped on that um subsequent to to my course and uh yeah you can kind of feel the pressure but thankfully i got through that fine no problems at all and i was pleasantly surprised and pretty feeling pretty confident about it um but again not gifted to me i was working really hard for it and you know you studying in in your spare time even on weekends and thrown as much effort as i could because it still meant a lot to me got through the end of that course as the course kind of wore on though as the night flying came came to um to creep in i found that hard found a real challenge and uh you know i was kind of right on the on the sort of the limit of having to potentially resit a sortie or two never it never got to that point but i was quite close to you know being under the microscope again so to get to the end of that course relatively unscathed was was good but came a lot of effort um so did you find times when you genuinely thought i can't do this anymore not at that point no but in the next phase yeah i think so because so that was one of the hardest things i've ever done in my life including some pretty gnarly fizz some gnarly academia at uni uh all that taken into account the first half of the course was was up there but by far the way the hardest thing probably the hardest thing i've still done in my life was the second phase the conversion to roll which is all the all the weapons and tactics stuff because i was going through that as a flight commander as a front seat mission commander and that was incredibly difficult and that pretty much that took all my capacity all my effort i was having after drawing every bit of every ounce of self-discipline to work as much as i could on that i think potentially with a little bit less pressure by not having been a flight commander um with all that sort of extra administrative responsibilities by not being um an aircraft commander being responsible for that aircraft i think that might have allowed me a little more capacity to just absorb just the the flying instruction but because i had those extra responsibilities and extra duties that i had to perform on on top of um of simply just being on the receiving end of learning a vast volume of information all that was right at the limit of my capacity to learn and extremely hard there were times i was like well what more can i do but uh yeah did that make the fact that when you finally i take it there's a point where you are you are fully qualified and not necessarily passing out parade but there's a there's a point where you're told chris foster you're now a pilot here's the handshake off you go yeah uh and and the freeing the feeling what did it feel like yeah absolutely right freedom is that's the optimum word i mean so the final phase of that conversion the role because afghan was wasn't pretty much um had been going for about a year or so apache has been deployed for uh uh probably at least a year by by that stage the final phase of the conversion of role had been adapted from generics of russian doctrine fighting against tanks to go out to arizona and preparing as thoroughly as possible for the next um afghan deployment so we spent a couple of months out in the in the desert doing live firing and doing you know pretty much everything is representative of pre-deployment training um for afghans as possible at the end of that that was not just conversion to role finished and me now qualified in apache but also that was a good chunk of our pre-deployment training for our next tour but to know that i finished that course and passed it and been successful the the amount of relief and uh and the sense of accomplishment satisfaction was incredible and that yeah enough nothing i don't think i'd come close get get my degree get my green lid probably came reasonably close to that but i've i've never had to put so much energy and so much focus and effort into doing into passing one thing uh as that and then you feel incredibly confident when you when you've passed that and great now the implication that is i can now consolidate and do so with with a lot less pressure and actually get good at doing this job without the pressure of constant assessment and i never that you you're never not assessed you there's always a degree of of assessment there's periodic six monthly checks and various other standards checks annually and certain currency checks you have to do so never the the pressure of being tested never goes away but it significantly reduces after you've become qualified and there's there's more than enough non-pressure or low pressure flying to consolidate your skills so it ups your game that i never had to go through that rigor and that pressure again um not on a course so yeah do you think um because i'd like to touch on on operations but before we move to that point looking back then so how long did that take from nature 16 through to age so i'd have been 20 27 so yeah we're talking that's 11 years of graph together and if you look back now i suppose with hindsight is a good thing but to look back during those 11 years what was the biggest lesson what was the biggest takeaway you could probably take from that and even give you know relate to people now as to what you learn yeah it's um it's entirely possible to achieve something that is extremely tough extremely difficult if you really want to do it and you apply yourself and that i think that can read across to so many things because if you've got that you're willing to push through the failures learn from that move on to the next thing and keep on playing on if you really really want if you've got a fixated um and you know if you're fixing on achieving a clear-cut objective it is possible in the vast majority of cases if you really apply yourself so that's that's the lesson do you think that your life today that even the lessons from then do they play a part in who you are today yeah very much so so having the confidence to start my own business from scratch and knowing that it's not going to be an easy process knowing that there'll be inevitable multiple failures on the way to success but knowing that by keep keeping with it keep plugging away keep working hard that inevitably you're going to achieve success eventually so yeah there'll be there'll be times where it would potentially get really tough but i've i've endured hardship before and if i if i dig down deep then you can get through that so i think that gives you a certain confidence certain resiliency you know you can you can achieve i can see that in you as well and from the conversations we've had you know it's it's sometimes it's it's difficult to even relay what you went through i think to become an apache pilot because you know as i'm saying here as you're talking about i know it's condensed it has to be because we're on a time limit i think most people majority speaking don't go through that level of i think commitment and focus on a role i i don't think that exists in many environments today to have that level of commitment over such a long prolonged period of time just to reach what you want to do before you even start doing it so i mean huge hats off to you let's just touch on operations for a little bit because you you flew three operational tours of afghanistan yes as an apache pilot yeah looking across those three those those three tours that would have been how long that was pretty much one a year so zero seven zero eight zero nine uh so a four month tour roughly space status over over those three years uh one one tour per year but it was a little bit more condensed than that but we pretty much brought straight from finishing the conversion to roll course probably june july 0 seven and then we were we'd done part of the pre-deployment training as the final bit um of the conversion role because we did that out in arizona and that was that was a really good first half of the pre-deployment training the rest of that was lots of time in the simulator and lots of time on exercise doing live firing and also the forward air control of course so confused did that and a brilliant a brilliant course and really enjoyable to do a high pressure course which for most people would have been pretty high pressure but being able to do that with without anywhere near the same degree of pressure that i just i just experienced on on qualifying's apache it was really cool uh to be able to do the course and just and actually just enjoy it because yeah ultimately if i'd have to fail that course it didn't didn't matter it wouldn't have stopped me going out to afghan and and it wouldn't stop me being a qualified apache pilot it was just a really nice additional qualification to have because of that for the first time in a long time i could actually just enjoy learning a skill with a lot less self-induced pressure um and then that rolled into as i say a series of other um deployments and exercises and you had to work with various other ground units you do combined arms life firing exercises because it was it really is vital for uh a lot of the the guys who are going to be deploying um and being out on the ground on foot or vehicles to to live fire with apaches overheads who literally would rock up to a range where they'd be doing company level attacks and we'd be sat and hover firing 30 mil live rounds over their head you know into a tree line a couple hundred meters away because that was as as much benefit from from the apaches crew weaponeering and training point of view as it was for the guys to be able to say that they've integrated with all these different aspects of life right so it would be mortars and big artillery guns and you know all other things involved which they needed of course you know the apache was was in big demand in theater and every other unit you know dotted around the you know the army or military at large wanted to get involved with with the apache so they were ready to be able to use it and deploy and operate with it when they actually went out for their turn in afghan so that was really cool but i know seven um that i i remember so i flew i was flying uh airborne on the 11th of november zero seven zero eight and zero nine so every remembrance day for those for those three tours that i did and that was that was pretty poignant so every time i look back on on a remembrance day on um on the 11th and reflect i know i did three back-to-back years flying apache out in afghan and physically being airborne on those days so that that's pretty special thing to have do you think looking back that people um people's lives were saved as a direct result of your actions yeah i think so uh i mean yeah all of us were a massive a massive team i think the thing about the the apache is it's a team effort that is not just co-pilot and pilot or co-pilot gun and pilot in that aircraft you'd normally be operating as a wing uh or you know as a two ship so before the airborne but then to get that thing airborne you've got refuelers reamers and signalers and i.t or the mission mission planning station um information technology guys and you've got the reamy mechanics so airframe technicians avionics and um yeah airframes and and propulsion system guys have got to get that that thing serviceable and it's a complicated beast so they're working extremely hard to produce serviceable aircraft and maintain them between flights and obviously it needs to be re-armed and refueled so it's it's a massive team effort to get the thing airborne in the first place then once you're up and you're overhead and supporting ground troops and troops in contact and they're coming under fire by uh various you know um enemy force action uh then yeah without without a doubt you you there were numerous times where all of us um every single apache air crew knew that by putting putting accurate fire down and quickly and by being as as good as we could be at our jobs we were saving lives for the guys who are suffering down there getting getting pinned down and shot up by taliban so yeah without without a shadow of doubt lots of lots of time over all three of those tours uh were in uh that level of that privileged position but with that responsibility to be as good as we could do to to get quick fire down to uh you know either destroy destroy the enemy um or at least give even if we weren't in a position to be able to do that you're in constant radio communication to to the jtacs so the the guys who are trained to control jets and apaches who'll be on you know on the shoulder of the um officer commanding of whichever ground unit was was operating that area and would be in constant communication to the to the jtac and explaining what's going on and giving the benefit of you know that three-dimensional surveillance that we've got available to us that they can't see any more than a couple hundred meters they can't see the other side of walls and tree lines and buildings we can or even at night because because we've got really good thermal cameras we can we can see activity that it just isn't possible to see from ground level so even providing that battlefield awareness to the to the guys that in itself without touching the trigger just by being savvy and slick with your communication you're helping to shape where the guys are going to root or get them to suggest and where they might want to reposition so they're not going to get out flanked by by some taliban so on many many occasions of that where i'm sure every single apache operators experienced the uh responsibility and i guess to accept the pressure of making those right calls to save lives but yeah without without a doubt and then the other the other big thing the huge responsibility is getting the either the medical evacuation chinooks which are properly well um kitted out and uh and they've got highly qualified medic staff and and doctors and uh and personnel on board to go and extract casualties and the responsibility more often than not was if it was a it was a yeah a pretty hairy hot um danger zone then the patches would accompany that uh that manufacturer neck and then you'd therefore be responsible for ensuring that that was able to fly in through a safe route and then um be on the ground for a minute or two while the casualty is loaded up and then extract through a safe route and all the while being extremely vulnerable to being attacked on the ground you need to be as right on your a-game be as good as you possibly can be to to help uh to anticipate where the firing points might be to suggest alternative routes to uh be you know very quick on the radios to to get the approach to be broken off so you can reposition and hold off to to a safe area just while you rethink a routine if that initial route was was compromising the rocket-propelled grenades being fired or heavy machine guns um so yeah all these things contributed to helping to save lives yeah no no doubt about it and incredibly rewarding to get to do that i bet yeah you know really privileged really lucky to get to do that that responsibility and pressure how did you deal with that personally though when when you're out of the cockpit now you're back at base the adrenaline's worn down slightly what what was life like for you then lots lots of fizz wherever i could and yeah obviously just a basic level that really really helps well certainly it helps it's helped me uh deal with any kind of stress is just go and do some a really hard fist session and that and that takes the sting out of it straight away and then chat and share any any concerns and thoughts but i think you're kind of wound up for that entire four or five months you're out on tour you kind of you spool up and you and you just reach a level that you maintain for that entire tour and you only really sort of come down off that a couple of weeks into your post tour leave and uh because it's fairly relentless so there's no really um there's no sort of days off as such there's just some less busy days some days where you're on duty and you're on quick reaction alert but you never actually get airborne so by by default mine i think that you you're never massively burnt out but you're on the on the cusp of burning out after the end of four months but how do you deal with individual things i i don't know i remember so one of my relatively early on engagements and on my third tour it was it was a night mission that was just it was a relatively simple thing of just going and escorting a chinook into a more dodgy area but um in and out simple packs or a personal move and then as the as the china was heading back off to the safety of being out the threat zone and back to to bastion we were as we would typically do and all other crews i'm sure would do exactly the same is you'd be in dialogue with the the jtacs at various places just to offer up any any support that you could um just to be efficient with that airframe because when you're when you're a few thousand feet you can actually you can speak to many different regions uh only a few minutes flight time away but they might that might be you know 10 miles or so because you can actually your sensors you can zoom in with you your camera from from a way back and you can offer something even if it's not hang around right over the top for two hours even just by doing a little bit of a detour on your on your fly by route back to the base just by being a little bit creative with what you've got available to you you can give some support so if it's a case of you check in speak to a jtac or all the adjacent ones do a bit of a dog leg root back have a sweep through with all the cameras and uh it just so happened we got we got chatting to a guy who was saying that he had suspected um ied layers so a roadside bomb being laid at night and we we got the rough area and sure enough the guys were there there's a whole whole bunch of i don't know maybe a dozen or so all all laying uh or very demonstrably laying um a roadside bomb and so we just circled that and radioed that back to headquarters said right actually you know rather than just doing a sweep and there's not much going on and a bit of a reassuring uh heads up to the guys actually this is this is something we're going to need to loiter for a bit longer and put an engagement in so i set up for a gun engagement because it was absolutely fine you know it was ripe for that so pilot um bill he'd set us up for a perfect run-in i'd action the gun and i went to pull the trigger dead gun fail oh you're kidding me reset try to you know de-action the gun switch it off switch it back on the game which obviously like any system the default is even with a 30 mil cannon switch a switch off and switch on again can sometimes clear it went through that cycle again line back up for a trigger pull and it wouldn't go so we did that one or two more times and i radioed in and said i'm having problems with the gun i'm not entirely happy to put missiles in can you spool up their very high readiness and get them airborne that they can they can kind of switch out from us i'll give them a full handover but at least they're going to get airborne quite quickly because bastion wasn't too far away they can come in take over from us and they can engage with a gun and in the meantime i'm just going to keep reporting recording verbally telling the the jtac on the ground that we're still seeing you know whatever it was upwards of a dozen fighters reporting that back to the headquarters getting all the video evidence which we could then subsequently show the guys and then i'll just keep action and deaction the gun and trying to make make the thing work but i didn't want to put a miss island didn't want to put rockets in for sure i'm pretty sure we didn't even fly with rockets for that tour because they're indiscriminate and you can only fire rockets sensibly if you've got a big vast open amount of space because of the collateral damage implications because they're not anywhere near as accurate as a missile even though the missile's got a far bigger bigger bang to it so my concern about putting a missile in into that group of guys was that there were adjacent compounds which were inside the the frag the fragmentation envelope of you know where a missile impact bang on target would have potentially caused damage if not a low probability of kill but nevertheless a probability of kill of the occupants of those of those compounds so i didn't i didn't fire a missile into it the gun didn't actually work the vhr aircraft came and took over by which time annoyingly those guys would start to melt away because they'd done their bit so went back to base debriefed the whole thing with the boss and he got everybody in to that debrief from the squadron and he's like right guys what should he have done there he should have put a missile in shouldn't be all right um okay from my point of view that was not worth risking the collateral damage implications of the frag envelope um overlapping where they were were there adjacent compounds which would have you know normal people you don't know they could all have been just taliban occupied buildings but you don't know that from that area all you can say is you're looking at a tv screen you can see very obviously fighters digging in a roadside bomb therefore law of arm conflict rules engagement you're entitled to engage those guys because what's going to happen if you don't do that is somebody's going to drive over in a vehicle on their next patrol and they're going to get killed so that's it's fair game that you you're going to engage with a 30 mil cannon you know destroy that target but not affect all the adjacent um buildings and the people that they're in so i actually i wind up getting in trouble not in trouble but getting kind of almost chewed out for not putting a missile in i was like i'm actually struggling with this morally now because i don't think that's right to do i think we've got the intelligence we know where those those guys are we know to we've marked and avoid that route and just until that is dealt with you know guys can just when they're on patrol drive around it and avoid knowing that that's the spot and yes we didn't we didn't go and kill that 12 taliban fighters that night but they you know the time will come i in my judgment it wasn't worth risking the adjacent compounds because you don't know what's in there but that wasn't within the spirit of the level of sort of um aggressive posture that that the oc at the time wanted to have and i didn't agree with that and that was one of several things that started getting me thinking that okay i've probably done my time now and actually i'm ready to to move on at the apache force so i i can imagine that the uh you know that that threat posture and and the response as you say you know led by the oc at the time that would have fluctuated throughout the conflict and depending on circumstances and other things that was happening in the theater so i think that the takeaway when i listened to everything you've been saying though certainly up until that point it's still down to you ultimately still your personal decision isn't it's no different to coming from a police background from a firearms background this it all comes down to you with all of that training the decision making is squarely on your shoulders well as for decision making then what was that really coming up to the end of the third tour that you're deciding i think now it's time i know there was a promotion we can talk about quickly that you're going to move on to the puma force within the royal air force that's something we could talk about um but hold that thought because one thing i'm just interested to know is during that time those three tours where where did family come into that yeah interesting so that was uh a big game changer for me is just before my third tour i met my now wife at snetterton race circuit on a motorbike track day and she was on her bike wow this is the woman for me i think it wasn't very very long after that uh that i went away on my first tour sorry my third tour um but uh that was a game changer because i i was for the first time i'd properly fallen head over heels in love with this uh amazing woman and and thankfully you know we subsequently got married but um yeah that was a pressure i didn't have for the first two tours i actually i thoroughly enjoyed those those first two tours of being fully committed consolidating on my on my flying skills knowing i was making a big difference getting to do some low pressure flying where there wasn't much on and just getting slicker and better at operating the aircraft and on the times where things were properly kicking off knowing i was making a real difference with all those things without any any pressure of a family at home that some of the the guys from the older guys um were married and and had kids and that really heavily plays in your mind so for me by the time i met met my wife gone out on the third tour and realized actually this is an another reason that i want to be moving on because this is a young single man's job in my eyes and i wanted to you know all of a sudden not necessarily expecting but i just now knew i was going to get married and we were going to try and start a family and uh it was time to to move on couple with the fact that the end of that third tour that was going to be probably my last bit of flying um for some time i would have gone into a staff job non-flying for a short period staff college into another uh couple of years of non-flying and then potentially come back as a squadron boss where you'd still get to do some flying but you're you're in charge of squadron you're going to be busy with administrative and command duties so uh so the consequences of that were going to be lots of moving around working pretty hard doing things that wasn't particularly um enjoying the idea of and being mostly out of the cockpit so the the best plan that we could come up with between my wife and i was that if i transferred across to the air force to carry on flying helicopters we could go and have some stability live in the nice part of the world in in south oxfordshire and have a lot more capacity for life because you could probably tell i was running hot that whole time i was working really hard no spare time through everything at the military almost all my weekends you know i'd volunteer to be an authorizing officer on a weekend i'd be doing weekend air testing um or i'd be away on exercise or be deployed so i remember like 2008 i was away for 10 months of the year for example it's i just felt by the time i i'd met met my wife done that third tour i felt right actually it's no time for a bit of a step change it was really cool flying apaches really cool opera in it um in afghan but i've done that now and i would actually like to have a bit more of a work-life balance actually well actually have a life so what would be what would be great would be going to some lower pressure flying on a different type a bit more fun bit more interesting and actually having enough time to live enjoy being in a nice relationship having evenings and weekends off and having some stability and then living in a nice part of the world and all that was was the case and it was and it was really nice but the trade-off was um it was a lot less cool i found it really really hard to motivate myself to get through the puma course and and be on puma having done all the awesomeness that you know the chance to go and do on apache one of the main things for me was was going from apache on ops as a relatively like experienced and seniorist captain and then going straight to the bottom of the pile on on the lesser aircraft i don't want to say that uh necessary on camera but that's that was the point is the drop off from you just actually just did to puma sorry but i understand you're not slagging off the graph i can certainly understand i can i can understand that the feelings of having been involved in one thing moving across to something else that is just as important in its own right but it just doesn't carry the same you know either excitement or feelings of achievement maybe as with without a shadow of doubt i i felt a significant difference in um level of motivation and the sort of the responsibility of the kudos the i'd i'd worked so hard um and then i had the privilege to then fly uh an awesome machine in the apache and then and to get to operate here on those three tours and actually spend enough time on it to go from novice to reasonably competent at it and then the step change in going from that to starting right at the at the start again as a junior uh puma pilot in the air force a different culture but a bit older um so i was then in a all my peers were kind of young early to mid 20s just starting out on their on their air force career and of course i was yeah in my early 30s now about to get married and you know hopefully and have a family was the plan and uh yeah also i'd gone from already having done something really cool to then doing something was a little a little less inspiring i felt a bit underwhelmed and it was that was i was extremely hard difficult to explain to people because people if you took it in isolation so well you're getting to get paid a reasonable salary have a nice lifestyle to learn how to fly and be taught how to fly uh to a really good standard and get to enjoy flying around yes that's one way of looking at but at the time i felt it it was quite a struggle culturally because i'd gone from completely immersed in a really high profile job to doing something which i felt was quite backward in terms of technology and capability and i felt the priorities were all a little bit to [ __ ] i'd come from operating um a fighting system a weapon system where i could actually really make a difference on the ground to then being back in a sort of quite dry academic environment where the priorities were all completely skewed in my mind and suddenly you know losing 10 foot on a quick stop maneuver was was more important than you know be able to put down accurate fire and give a really good situational report on the on the radio to a jtech which might save lives and that was that was tricky i had to dig really deep for the first time ever i've been so motivated to achieve all the other things i've done up to that point but now here was doing something i really wasn't that focused on that fast on so that was a real struggle but the trade-off was of course i was now getting the chance to to spend time with my wife and or you know we subsequently um got married and then uh you know enjoyed uh a nice married life together but uh it wasn't as clear-cut as perhaps you know it it would first appear from the outside and also at the same time we were i made this made that decision to come across the air force to have a more stable and and easier life so we could start a family so we um were trying for kids soon soon after we got married uh and then after a while sadly you know no no success there so we tried ivf and then the first round didn't work so we then tried it again and no success and then um pretty much the you know the doctor said sorry that's that's it yeah you guys aren't going to be having kids so that was that was a really tough time because my my life direction completely changed i was no longer doing just what i wanted and then and entirely going off and only thinking of how i was going to live my life it was all about how can we live a nice life together and start a family together and and sadly that you know it didn't work out having kids um but you know you count your blessings i'm extremely lucky we still we've got a a you know lovely happy marriage and uh it's how you respond to external factors that are beyond your control nothing we could do about it we did you know everything we could um some things don't go quite as you as you'd want but so that was a tough time but i think a combination of things led me to think actually my time in the in the military is done because if i want to go and do something that's really cool and high tempo and i really enjoy and i want to get my teeth into that's going to come at enormous cost of effort and being moved around and you know and claire wouldn't wouldn't enjoy that actually i think i've got a better plan here i'm going to leave i'm going to set my own business up and i'm going to do all the things i really want to do mainly focused around motorsport but they are still bringing all the best elements and the cool things that i've been lucky enough to do in the military and then put that into just one awesome package that and i get to do it on my terms and uh and i get to you know retain the the harmony of a nice marriage and you know loving marriage so uh and that was by 2014 i then spent the next six years really up to this point kind of gradually building up my company and building up v force and building up the skill set and the network and putting all the groundwork so i was lucky to be able to phase out air force life as i was starting to blend in all the things that that i subsequently took as fundamentals for v force starting with with motorsport so i i got a rally car got my rally license um and same for racing uh and then i started competing and then after a few years of competing i became an instructor as both a rally and a racing instructor at two different areas and then and then got part-time work still as i was blending out of my raf career uh and then in parallel to that so i did a uh combat karate maga instructor course i did a close protection course um and then i was just trying to network in and up skill as as much as possible to to make this package um that that i felt that that v force could be which is everything i'd love to do and none of the drawbacks um and thankfully that's that's all taking shape really nicely so i left the air force a couple years ago i've been full-time committed to developing v-force now and uh as i say part of that has been uh associating with with some really high caliber people who've then come as as part of the team to to support me and uh part-time instructors and are able to uh be available to help me shape some really good driving skills courses and uh and then that i'm sure will expand out into further coolness where we're gonna involve aviation uh and other great um flying machines um well you've sold me on the concept already i must say in this stage as i as i was guilty of in episode one uh we are we have run out of time uh i think we were both agreed as well though that in the future we're looking at an episode two where we're gonna certainly concentrate more on i think maybe some of the transitions out of the the air force as well into business life and focus heavily on v force training but we can certainly just summarize now i think um what is v force training if you were to talk to me now as a complete you know i have no idea what you're talking about yeah your business i'd summarize it by saying it's advanced and tactical driving experiences that are mainly focused on experience day customers so any member of the public can do it like a red letter day but also it's for corporates um and uh for uh professional close protection guys uh even police or military uh who want to upskill their their tactical advanced driving i've arrived at four different courses each of which will will teach and then consolidate on uh specific driving skills so i've got an evasive driving course which works around ordinary cars so i just use ford focus so front wheel drive manual cars doing j turns and handbrake turns and then the the final exercise that consolidates and brings everything together is uh has a tactical overlay so you're actually going on a simulated um undercover undercover surveillance operation where you get bounced you've got to react to threats you've then got to apply all those uh evasive maneuvers under pressure that's evasive driving fast one the next one is rapid response driving so you're using a slightly more powerful rear wheel drive manual car and you're learning how to power slide and or drift for one of a description and handle a rear-wheel drive car at and beyond the limit and then the the tactical element of that is to uh then go into a sort of hostile environment and extract a wounded operator so one of you is driving obviously with an instructor in the passenger seat and in the back you've got a second operator to then rescue the wounded operator and conduct any kind of medical treatment whilst extracting that operator to safety and add some little spice into it you're being followed and chased up by an aggressor in another car or whatever other vehicle just to add some pressure then we've got a third which is uh rally interceptor driving so interceptor skills using a four wheel drive turbocharged subaru and you're working that a high performance vehicle on the loose and driving that as well as quickly as you can using rally driving techniques to there to chase down hostile vehicles so we combine the two so you're chasing down the uh the bmws are being driven to go and extract the uh the wounded operator and then you then got the option to dismount and then potentially put down some simulation paint rounds um as a as an aggressive force and then we have a separate fourth course which is which i call vehicle gunnery and that is suv based but we can pretty much operate between various different vehicle types it's mainly suv or 4x4 vehicles and that is all about operating from the gunnery perspective so you get given simulated uh weapons or m16s and and pistols that are paint firing and you're shooting a variety of targets instructor does all the driving the emphasis is on be able to engage targets as you're driving around either static targets or simulating a car chase and culminating uh in a foreign car chase where guys are firing back at you and you're firing at them so that's also the standard day at the office i think standard at the office yeah so if they create this right now and they're desperate to jump on board one of your courses where would they find you so vforcetraining.com so just a google search vforcetraining.com and that'll take you straight to the website and then all the course details are there dates prices different types of course really easy or you can find us on instagram and uh so v-force um driving experiences but we're also on facebook as v-force training but any of those routes will take you through and i heard a little birdie told me that there was a 10 discount up for grabs for anyone listening to the podcast is that right that's correct yeah absolutely right and how do you like how does somebody go by getting a 10 discount yeah so just apply um no excuse 10 to the to the booking and that's really easily done and really easy seen on the website turn testing that's brilliant um episode two does mean that i might be behind the wheel we do realize that i'd be delighted if you want to yeah come on let's let's go let's gonna have a fun day out yeah right a few hours doing a podcast for the rest of the day we're going to do some driving yeah yeah it's been a great pleasure uh chris look for everyone listening chris wasper former army apache pilot i could talk to you for days which might be a problem because i failed then to ask the question so it's been a great pleasure to listen to to your story so far really keen to talk about that transition that you had from leading the world air force into military life and some of the things and experiences around that but for now um thank you very much indeed it's been a pleasure i look forward to seeing you again thank you jamie how else to say something to say goodbye yeah goodbye thank you so much thank you mate [Music] you

Channel: NO EXCUSE PODCAST

Views: 8,933

Keywords: jamieclark, jamieclarkuk, noexcuses, noexcusepodcast, noexcusefilms, podcast, ukpodcast, policepodcast, militarypodcast, inspirationalpodcast, longformpodcast, interviewpodcast

Id: EQKuVyjmMP8

Length: 115min 42sec (6942 seconds)

Published: Thu Dec 31 2020