Mark Smith on What It's Like to Be a Fighter Pilot

the jurogan experience i got a text from pete's brat the og that's why and pete spratt let me know about your background like i did not know you were a fighter pilot i did not know that you did you work at area 51 i cannot confirm or deny that i worked at nellis air force base which is okay in that general vicinity so so you can't talk about like experimental [ __ ] or anything like that you know what i did the first thing i did at nellis was when i flew into thunderbirds right and then i went away for a couple assignments and then when i came back i was an aggressor and if you remember the movie top gun you know viper and all those guys were in the camouflage planes they acted as the enemy forces and trained blue forces before they go off to combat that's what i did the second time around so the nellis ranges are probably up in that general vicinity but as far as being someone that worked at that now i worked at nellis air force base oh we flew in that okay in that general area i don't believe you i think you're lying now now i think you're holding back did you feel it jamie all of a sudden he's like smiling i don't know the answers of the question you guys don't want guys in dark suits and shades to come in here and be like uh mr smith we needed i already talked to those dudes they're good guys they're just trying to protect us from the aliens you know the crazy thing is in that area when people used to think they would see ufos and stuff like that you know there's a book that came out a couple years ago called red eagles that explained a lot of that stuff going on and what they thought were ufos or you know transportation planes that were landing at some of the bases and stuff up there yeah a lot of people see wacky [ __ ] yeah the first time i ever saw a stealth bomber i was uh i was filming fear factor in um palmdale which is uh near was it edwards uh right by edwards yeah and i saw a stealth bomber flying overhead i swear to god i thought it was darth vader when you see one of those things in real life you would think especially if you didn't know that the united states was developing one of those like when they were first developing them and flying them before they made it public that thing looks like it's from another world so as part of you say that so when i was on thunderbirds we do incentivize like media personalities and other people and i was out at our training area which is over death valley and we're talking to the navy controllers and they come over and say you know i was thunderbird too t-bird two i need you to fly straight and level for five minutes so there's gonna be aircraft off your nose i need you to you know diverge to the right and stay away from it i'm like what in the world is this so i threw my radar out there which should snag anything out there and i'm getting these intermittent hits and i go i don't see anything on the radar next thing you know i look up and i go what the [ __ ] has happened and i look up and it's a b2 that has you know an escort plane right next to it that comes right next to i looked at it for the first time and i go there's they're aliens out here this is some kind of space that thing yeah i mean look at that that does not look like it's from here yep that absolutely looks like it's from another world yeah like all those when people talk about seeing those triangular spacecrafts in the sky i mean maybe some of them are from another planet yeah so if you've never seen one of those and like for me as a pilot perspective i've never seen anything like that you know you hear about the f-117 from the gulf war and you see this big thing coming towards you and that's what everybody always reports too a triangular object with like a light on each corner i mean that is a stealth bomber yep that's a crazy looking aircraft man yeah so i had somebody in my back seat that was like oh my god what is that what is that thing coming by i mean if we thought that we were being invaded and then you saw things like that flying overhead that that is what i would imagine they would be flying they came from another planet that thing is out at whiteman air force base you know you see it flying out there all the time so there are folks here in the local area there to see it taking off are there some new ones that they haven't released yet i don't know so i retired about eight years ago right i heard a crazy story one day that someone was hunting up in montana and saw something similar to that that he had never seen before that like came out of the ground in like a vertical type thing and then took off which you know the f-35 and planes like that will take off some of them in a vertical stance and then go forward but to see something that size and that scale do something like that it kind of makes me wish i was still in the military just so you could be in the know that's right what so which one can do that and take off the f-35 yeah so there's a couple variants um so the air force one does traditional rolling takeoff but the marine one you know it's almost like a harrier so the the back engine will rotate so it'll take off vertical and then as it's going forward the engine will rotate back the other way to give it forward propulsion but man just technology wise the stuff that we're flying now so i will tell you this the first time i fought on the range against the f-22 raptor and i've fought against everything in the world so out of nellis with the aggressors everybody comes there to train to get prepared for combat there's no better plane in the world than the f-22 when that thing passed me and some of the stuff that i saw i could do i go there's no better plane in the world so as far as air superiority f22 is at the top of the food chain what is the difference it's f-22 is primarily air superiority you know so like air-to-air dog fighting long-range short-range missiles uh f-35 is you know a command and control platform it still has weapons on it can drop bombs shoot missiles etc but the role is a little bit different so yeah that's the f-22 you go to an air show and see that thing you're like is that a plane or a helicopter with some of the stuff that it does but fighting against that you know as a fighter pilot your average fighter pilot is the cockiest person that you would ever meet in the world just like top gun exactly that's all real we're better than everybody that's our philosophy but it's very happy to have that philosophy all right i mean look at that look at that that's insane oh my god that's insane it just shoots straight up in the sky oh my god i mean it doesn't even look like a real a real plane that that is a mean machine right there so i got friends that fly that plane and you know you see it hey it's designed in combat you know the united states is still going to be at top of the food chain as far as the personnel that we have the men and women that fly these airplanes and then the equipment that we're flying you're not going to find anything to match it that's incredible that turn that it just made in the sky so is that what the the maneuverability of it is that what's superior what the [ __ ] that's insane so thrust factoring on the back you know plus the flight controls i mean look he just flat plated that and wow the amount of thrust is coming out of it so you know internal avionics the stealth capability and the maneuverability of it nothing in the world is going to be that but they can't fly very long right you know uh it's it's a total package so whenever you go to combat or something you're going to have tanker support out there so you're going to meet a you know air refueler up at 20 000 feet and get gas nothing can carry external fuel tanks but the goal is to be able to plan a mission to be able to go in escort have guys drop your bombs or do whatever and get back out with tanker support you know there's always that philosophy without the gas you know no one is going to go so like when i was in iraq and stuff we take off in saudi arabia fly an hour up meet a tanker go fly a five hour mission come back to the tanker get more gas go out and fly for another couple hours and then go back to the base how long can that fly for you know i don't know it obviously depends on how hard you got the gas down right i think in the f-16 if we stayed in full after burner for you know five minutes you probably run out of gas five minutes or it could be quicker than that now the goal is endurance you obviously want to be able to stay out there to maintain the yeah you know go the length of your mission um but you look at the length of the mission and fuel capacity and the goal is obviously to have somebody there as a backup because you never want to be out there by yourself you always want to have that support you know so you may have guys that are sitting back here in a cap waiting for their turn to come in you run out of gas up front now you swap out those guys come back in so total protection so until they come up with something superior to internal combustion engines we're always going to be limited by the amount of fuel they can carry just because of the weight right so as far as endurance yes now capabilities are the plane most fighter planes have a g capability of nine g's and actually you know times a force of gravity do you wear a g-suit we did wear g-suits so in a fourth generation like a f-15 f-16 is a fourth generation fighter we wore g-suits on the abdomen and down on the legs and basically what that does as you pull g's you're going against gravity and blood starts to drain from your brain down into your lower extremities so the g suit is just a capability to help counter it it's really a tightening restriction of your muscles starting with your calves hamstrings buttocks all the way up and we do the hooking yeah the hook you hook and that's really to hold the oxygen in and what that does is lock everything down to hopefully hold the blood up in your brain as long as possible i told you i flew with the blue angels once and when i did that i i got to seven and a half g's before i couldn't take it anymore so did you start to gray out or yeah tunnel vision yeah it was like an elevator door was closing yeah and you know i'm doing that so it's weird because people think it's you know two g's would be one greater than one three g's is one greater than two but when you start to get above five it's not a plus one it's exponential oh so when you start to get to seven so six is ten oh yeah that's what it feels like and you can't explain how it feels but nine g's is absolutely i mean you get back home that night from straining and everything you know measles what it looks like little we call them jesus where your blood vessels will actually start to pop oh wow and you get these little specks on from straining so hard that you're popping blood vessels but the goal is obviously not to fall asleep we call it fall asleep in airplane glu uh yes of consciousness uh g-lock is what it's called if you do that and you're in the air it may take you 30 seconds to a minute to be able to come back to any kind of capacity and if that happens you know the majority of time is going to be catastrophic i uh made it through that and then i blacked out on the way back because i didn't hook on the way back because i thought i got cocky i thought we're good and we made a hard turn and i think i blacked out at like five like four and a half or five it wasn't even that much compared to seven and a half yeah if you're not ready at four you know people are like oh i can do g's you get on a roller coaster that's like a half a g or one g i blacked out exponentially and i threw up it was double embarrassing did they make you wear a g suit no no g suit see the reason they don't wear a g-suit is because in close formation if you wear a g-suit the g-suit is going to fill with air to help with that restriction on your legs and in the f-18 they have a center control stick and they rest their arm on their right leg and if that g suit is moving up and down it's going to move your control stick so the f-16 has a side stick controller where it doesn't touch your leg at all i mean it's like you recline back in the seat and the side stick controller so we can wear a g-suit so it won't affect precision you know moving your arm back and forth is there any other technology that they've invented to deal with gravity like that just the sheer force of the acceleration so not just a g-suit but you will have uh induced pressure breathing you know so you wear a specific kind of oxygen mask and that's gonna force air into your system because the one thing you would hate to do is just hold your breath it's like a three second count you know you do that hook and then it's a three second count exhale inhale right quick and as part of that pressure breathing would you exhale and open your mouth it's going to force air back in with that pressure breathing system so with the two of those together and then we combine it with you got to be in shape you know you got to lift weights you got to have some kind of cardio conditioning to be able to last because it's one thing to be strong enough to hold that you know g position but then you do a 45 minute you know dog fighting mission your body's going to get tired so you got to be able to sustain that the entire time so most fighter pilots are going to lift weights they're going to do you know extreme cardio exercises to be able to sustain but anything else other than that it was kind of weird back in the day it would be go drink a coke and a bag of doritos and get that sugar rust for that 45-minute flight and be able to sustain through it really it's more of a health conscious thing now you know the total package staying in shape i guess they're just smarter now about it probably a lot the blue angel guy that i flew with was a tank and the dude was swole he was like joelle romero he was jacked you know that was philosophy because when i was on the team i'm six one i probably weighed 230 to 35 that's large for a fighter pilot right the the cockpit was extremely tight usually they're smaller guys because is that a thing with the the the gravity it's easier to sustain gravity it is a it's a height limitation so you can't be so tall when your head is up against the top of the canopy oh that's all it is but you also can't be that short where you can't see over the dashboard but there's a weight limitation too you know you can't be below a minimum weight because if you ever had to eject and you're below let's say 125 pounds that parachute is going to drag you you won't be able to stop uh or if you're above you know whatever the weight is 250 265 you're going to come down in that parachute pretty hard and you're probably going to get hurt yeah they can't make custom [ __ ] for you nope no and it's the same basic fighter so the thunderbirds it's a you know it's a frontline fighter that they take someone they take the gun out and they put a smoke barrel in it but it's the same basic avionics the same basic controls and it's just painted red white and blue and all the professionals that are the maintenance guys for the thunderbirds the best in the world the finest in the world and i had four of the finance when i was on the team they take them off of active duty lines and bring them nellis air force base and do all the stuff on the planes but catch new episodes of the joe rogan experience for free only on spotify watch back catalog jre videos on spotify including clips easily seamlessly switch between video and audio experience on spotify you can listen to the jre in the background while using other apps and can download episodes to save on data cost all for free spotify is absolutely free you don't have to have a premium account to watch new jre episodes you just need to search for the jre on your spotify app go to spotify now to get this full episode of the joe rogan experience

Channel: PowerfulJRE

Views: 1,983,973

Rating: 4.9212761 out of 5

Keywords: Joe Rogan Experience, JRE, Joe, Rogan, podcast, MMA, comedy, stand, up, funny, Freak, Party

Id: lvbXUD9ZNKk

Length: 13min 55sec (835 seconds)

Published: Tue Feb 02 2021