Inside the Special Forces Military Free Fall School

[Music] what's up everybody I am out here in humid Arizona at the military free vault this is where the US Army and as well as all the other branches said most of their Special Operations folks will you get a wide variety of riggers and other folks out here this is where they set up to learn how to jump out of airplanes in freefall no satified nothing there's something out everywhere from 5000 to 25,000 feet here at the military freefall school there's four different classes that we're going to be taking a look at there's the military freefall parachutist course which this is where they're learning how to get out of the airplane for the first time most of our very inexperienced or I've never done it before period and then after that we look at the military freefall jump master course that's where it's the next level you got to have at least 50 jumps to come to that they're learning how to put jumpers on an airplane safely and perform a mission effectively so from there we're going up to the advanced tactical infiltration course this is where real freefall ninjas go they're learning how to put an entire full mission profile together with a focus on high altitude high opening navigation techniques they're using technology they're taking all the considerations that one would need to look at if they're gonna do an actual real world combat mission after the Advanced Tactical infiltration course otherwise known as ADAC the next level the final level that somebody can take on is the military freefall instructor course these guys are the most experienced instructors in the world three fault absolutely incredible guys really excited take a look at the arduous process that they go through to earn the coveted eye rating so really excited about this week you have hopefully get some good weather out here in the you might and it's going to be going up in the bird some cool guys doing cool guy [ __ ] [Music] physics don't change right falling through the sky is generally falling through the sky however when you're falling through the sky at night with large pieces of equipment and a number of objects that could potentially inhibit your ability to pull or fly that makes things far more complicated military freefall is a combat oriented capability where we like to put a lot of weight on an operator on Ranger on Special Forces operator on a Navy SEAL put them out of the plane at the dead of night with very little to look at and fly to a drop zone with nothing to orient him on skydiving is very different it is a sport it's generally done during the daytime with a much smaller parachute system and control mechanisms that would prevent any sort of accidents from other jumpers or environmental controls or the enemy threat the mission military freefall school is to create a tactical capability that can be used by geographic combatant commanders towards their strategic objectives bottom line we make parachuters here [Music] all right so we're here with the military freefall basic course guys these are all guys that are new to jumpin freefall they're prepping their chutes right now they just did their first freefall jump ever and they're getting ready to go back up for their second one I'm gonna go up with them get them going out of the bird hopefully it goes well for everybody sounds like everybody's in pretty good spirits I took some of the instructors and they said you know some of these guys pretty scared some pretty confident range of emotions run through overall pretty cool to see all this in action and you know these are the next batch of freefall jumpers that are gonna be heading out into the course so what's going through your head when you get ready to go up there and jump out there's like a million things I'm trying to go through all so you nervous when you jump you know I feel like last time I jumped to the first time I just I thought I'd be you get up there and it doesn't you feel like you're that high because you can't realize it and then just kind of like probably that's good this is my first job this is your first um that was my first time this better than my second Serena's fasten seatbelts Don helmets water yeah we'll get out super pretty quick [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] all right so just went up in the bird with them and put on a lot of jumpers they go out with their instructors and pretty cool got right out on the ramp there they're going up in these like smaller versions of c-130s I think they're called see 27s basically not a lot of room to move around in there but definitely have to get out there those things climb you can really feel the pressure change and it's great to see the confidence of students you can definitely tell some of them they're on there they just did their second jump ever so they are you know some of them definitely nervous some of them more confident than others but overall pretty good job first if you land out further you gotta walk back over here so the goal is to kind of land right here put your arm a little bit further out you know we're still here above our helmet we want to control this how we stay on our heading right so bigger put bigger control arm or counter [Music] alright guys so we're over at the military freefall jumpmaster course all these guys are already military freefall qualified this is where they come to be able to learn how to safely inspect a jumper make sure that they're good going out of the aircraft make sure their equipment is good make sure it's a safe jump altogether so these are all experienced jumpers now they're kind of going to the next level in their process of military freefall operation we tell the students like you turn around and face your jumper state the profile you have which would be combat equipment go to PDB and they start off I tell them pick up the TV with by both fashion shops they folks in the gate with their video on the right hand everybody friction adapter push back the excess overall serviceability come all the way down the strap look at the triangle look and we're looking for black white red this particular class has 230 students they're doing their JMP I test today 19 have failed that test last week today's the retest so they can't have any major gigs that means they can't miss anything that could potentially be a life-threatening malfunction or equipment mix-up and that my left hand stays place inspection picks up on the mask at the no it further a few rumors are certainly ensuring that I have proper fit throughout the masculine side travel I'll see the times I jump around this is kind of a you know a tense thing obviously jumping out of an airplane is you know an adrenaline full experience this is where they make sure that the people that are going out on the force to conduct these freefall operations are able to conduct them safely no good so this is the George Banner vertical wind tunnel we got a sixty and a half foot diameter tunnel where we conduct basically brushstrokes of the militarization sort of training here basic specs of this there's four or five hundred horsepower of fans up top that suck the air we're going to passenger jet that you see the engines on absolute jets up to here up and just recirculate output both sides comes back up and it's redirected through what we call turn names cool little fast here six and a half foot diameter column we can push at a hundred percent on our on our fans we can push about 166 miles an hour with the wind [Music] as for our basic course students is good for teaching fundamentals of body position fundamentals of movement basically we get them into proper body position we show them the position we correct them and then we teach basic the basic six axis of movement where it's up down forward backwards and then a right turn on the left turn so it's basic skills that they need to know for jumping out of airplanes it's not just kind of a fire-and-forget set commission it's actually a little bit of a thinking manage to be able to control and fly your body up there in the air and they're also graded on that so this is very good tool for that the good thing about this is get a lot of good feedback it's almost microscopic to me to a degree but you can show them the basics here and actually show them exactly what's going on with recording systems get live feedback they get two-and-a-half minute rides which is thirty seconds of freefall you get a little bit more time to actually develop skills particular with body position being relaxed in the air little things like that that kind of play off [Music] all right so get ready to go hop in the vertical wind tunnel I'm all suited up sounds like it might be a little bit complicated but hope they'll figure it out we got an awesome instructor in there so we'll see how it goes all right so we just got out of the wind tunnel absolutely incredible it's a totally different sensation what you think you're doing when you're actually doing you're very different your body awareness your body position it's just it's all totally different totally new respect for what these guys do at night with combat equipment nods on just absolutely incredible [Music] what good night boy currently there's about 850 military freefall instructors dating all the way back to 1962 military freefall instructors come from a variety of backgrounds all the services like the students are represented here and many of them have that 10,000 jump area which you can't buy talent and experience like that it doesn't exist you have to build it so the military freefall instructor rating is one of the lowest intensity ratings that you can gain in the Department of Defense I liken it very similar to the number of folks that are too many unknown soldier guards there's very few it is a rating that takes a long time to earn and it's it's kept by those who have earned it before them the military freefall instructor is the number one safety mitigating factor here at the military freefall school and probably the most serious thing so the instructor Cadbury here at the military freefall school join us with at least 50 jumps most up to about a hundred jumps coming from the operational force once we receive them we immediately put them into the military freefall instructor force it's a bit of a misnomer what we're actually doing is reteaching them how to fly from the instructor perspective versus the military freefall jumping perspective so over a period of about nine weeks we'll want to jump a hundred and fifty to two hundred times riding as an instructor with students who are actually evaluators playing student throwing the different dynamic body positions that a typical student might put at them as a challenge at the end of that nine weeks we then introduce them to the military called basic parachutist course where they'll become a shadow as a shadow they're riding on the reserve side let's say the passenger seat of a student helping out and learning how in a advanced military freefall instructor or a shadow master might teach they'll do this for a period of three to six months at the end of that three to six months they'll earn the coveted military through for instructor rating [Music] this is the jump brief for today if the jump goes drop zone we're gonna be using today will be Philips e27 we are going to be doing a wall Locker jump a jeo one jump ok so it is five o'clock in the morning we're out on the airfield here and with the ADA course today that stands for advanced tactical infiltration course basically these are the guys who have all been through the military freefall basic course they've been through the military freefall jump master course they're experienced jumpers many of them have you know been serving on a military freefall team in Special Forces or other places didn't put it in the shorts probably 2.5 k away but normally you guys know we planned for a cutaway right at the dip we usually have a couple shorts in the flight path and we'll have a long past the big emphasis is on high altitude high opening and then navigating under canopy to get to a target area these guys can travel upwards of 25 plus kilometers it's pretty impressive on the west side of the drop zone you get the power lines on the right side of the drop zone you got the Iraqi village up north okay and pretty much around the whole drop zones like terrain is uneven okay this is definitely a lot different vibe than the military freefall basic course you know they're not jumping you know a one-to-one student to instructor ratio here it's one instructor goes up with six guys they'll even have complete OTAs come through here so really cool they're going to be doing what they call wall Locker jumps they're gonna have all of their equipment on and I'm hoping that we get to go see them do their thing over nice beautiful Arizona sunrise military freefall capabilities are indispensable in the arsenal of Special Forces having the ability to insert small teams into denied enemy territory gives that flexibility that is unmatched by any other infiltration mechanism whether it be terrain that's not allowing us to get in there or potentially advanced detection capabilities that could pick up our forces as they come in military freefall offers that commander a way to bring in a Special Operations team military freefall operations have been used in combat as early as Vietnam but more recently in the Global War on Terror and actually here at the military freefall school we're fortunate enough to have that level of expertise and a soldier that conducted one of those operations I'm a cadet member here at the military freefall school and in 2009 I was fortunate lucky enough to be in the right place right mission set to conduct a real-world military freefall operation so I was in Afghanistan and given the skill set that my team possessed we were tasked to conduct a mission we at that time gave several courses of action but the most prudent for us safest was a clandestine insertion through military freefall you know in the hand and arm signals start going it's 20 minutes you don't really think all that much about it and ten minutes you start prepping up while this is really gonna happen then you know when you get down to those last few minutes when you're actually gonna get out of the aircraft obviously we're not getting any winds on the the DZ but as we got the move to the rear the rit lilo buddy went to go lower the ramp and you know much like anything you try to do that this actually comes times things just don't always go to plan so the loading tried to open the ramp and the ramp only opened a few inches and then he put it up again and then down again and only a few inches and then he we got to the point where we were at one minute and still wasn't open and we're getting down to about a 30-second mark and he looked a little panicked but he kept working the ramp and finally it opened so we got to stand by which is the 15-second mark and I stepped over to the ramp and I remember looking out seeing that it was the most black pitch black thing that I've ever seen in my entire life and we thought wow we are actually doing this so as I turned my head back forward I saw my teen surrogate or assistant team starting go I just bawled with [Music] we all landed up DZ together and you know we dreg didn't linked up relatively quickly and I can't say that I'm surprised that it that it went as well as it did because we were properly and well trained to do the job being able to conduct that military freefall mission is exactly what it was designed for but the task that we were given getting into a space that was fairly difficult to get in without a signature clandestinely infiltrating that area was absolutely military fault was used for and should have picked a better time using [Music] [Music] [Music] you

Channel: Coffee or Die

Views: 1,836,141

Rating: 4.9257841 out of 5

Keywords: Black Rifle Coffee Company, Black Rifle Coffee, Coffee or Die, America's Coffee, Mat Best, Evan Hafer, Logan Stark, Marty Skovlund Jr., Coffee, Travel, Journalism, Adventure, Adventure Travel, Military, Military History, Special Operations, SOF, RLTW, Airborne Ranger, Navy SEAL, Marine Corps, Force Recon, Special Forces, Anthony Bourdain, Veterans, skydive, skydiving, BASE jump, wing suit, green beret, military training, U.S. Army, U.S. Air Force, U.S. Navy, U.S. Marine Corps

Id: JTNPvE4vvII

Length: 23min 35sec (1415 seconds)

Published: Fri May 01 2020

Reddit Comments

[u/AtTheToyShop]

Instructor course - fuck and no.