US Air Force Special Reconnaissance: Everything You Need to Know (SR)

[Music] [Music] as well as a decade of selection instructor experience if you're tired of settling and you want to do something you truly believe in you're in the right place now here's your host pj team leader jiu jitsu lover meme enthusiast and dad joke aficionado aaron love what's up everybody welcome back to the tea room you are here with trent brian and myself we've got it we heard you you finally online bullied us in to the very thing that we're gonna do we're gonna talk about everything special reconnaissance from soup to nuts from cradle to grave we are going to lay it out to include the new cf etp that's the trading plan to include all those new changes so this is it step one what do you want to know about sr we're going to get into it first we always start with gratitude and this time is no different we just want to say thank you to everybody that likes subscribes comments engages on the post retweets whatever it is your social media of choice put us out there thanks for helping us reach as many people as we have we can only uh thank you guys for for how popular we have gotten our mild popularity we're almost to 10 000 subscribers on youtube so hop over there you can see me fail at hanging flags up you can see brian get mad at me when my flag falls down for the fourth week in a row and you call me on the comment section he really doesn't like it but you can only see that failure if you go to the youtube channel so check it out and then as always go over to onceready.com the partners link so if you go through the website you can check it out it's the partners link or just onesready.com partners you can see a whole bunch of people that we partnered up with military veteran leo owned operated by businesses before here i had to get these luscious pj locks down and tamed so i went to my outer eggs pomade stash and i put some pipe header in the hair and got ready to go so there's a ton of them over there black friday sales are coming up check out all of our friends at eberly stock at outer eggs pomade alpha brew all of those people check them out and you'll get 10 off of the code once ready so hop over there all right that was a way better intro than trent trent always screws the intro up and we were talking about that before we got on but he's always he literally said before we got on today he was like man i'm glad i'm not hosting because i always screw it up true i just like to do it live yeah i just jump on and say whatever comes to my stupid brain it's big if true and in this case it is it is huge it's huge because it's totally true so we should say peaches isn't here because uh sr is so hot right now that peaches was not able to stand the fact that the spotlight wasn't gonna be on him for an episode and he was like listen what are we talking about i'm i'm out i am gone we uh we talked about it earlier man and i i wanna i wanna put this out there we're gonna we're gonna hit this piece by piece right but the cfetp that's the trading plan for special reconnaissance that just dropped it just got signed you can get it on the military sites like this is this is a real thing and i want to deep dive into this because it changes everything it changes the pipeline it changes the progression after you get out of the pipeline possibly affects deployments in the future i think everybody needs to hear this thing i know i'm super excited about it i know you are because you're so close to it so we're just gonna be battering you with questions uh i'm gonna no softballs like this one i hope you're ready for a stout interview here my guy because you're you're getting it i'm either excited or i've been working on this thing for like two years and i'm just worn down it's one of those two things if i seem grumpy i apologize but i'm actually excited yeah and just so you guys understand the gravity of this thing the cftp stands for career field education and training plan that means when you get in the career field these are the line items that you have to go through like we talked about like pjs you know we have 300 and whatever line items you know trent's been working his butt off to get this thing rolling and trying to figure out like what exactly is the career field going to need know in order to execute this mission that we're talking about being able to do so this is pretty much the holy grail of what you need to know about sr stuff right now to help make your decision 100 yeah no pressure so so trent let's start off with this the logical starting point here man so just as concisely as you can is clearly for us what is special reconnaissance in the air force i'm going to ask a bunch of follow-on questions but if if somebody you know what's your elevator pitch what is special reconnaissance it's we are a multi-domain data collection right and so we uh through our processes we are able to identify identify uh relate and exploit information like that's what we do and the ways that we get there and the way that we identify the information the way that we exploit the information is is across the all spectrums right as we move into this near pier environment so really that's what it is and at the baseline it's the the low-tech reconnaissance version that we've all seen and we're all fairly familiar with from you know hollywood or annoying people that do reconnaissance in the military and then after that we go into the um technological aids and then all the things that we're looking for and all the things all the objectives that we're trying to get after in the in the near pure environment so i guess that's my my elevator pitch right and i think something that people get hung up on is they're like well what is everybody already has recon and the technological advances and being able to leverage some of those capabilities i think that's probably what sets you apart as a you know hey okay all recon is recon like listen you can stalk in a ghillie suit for two miles and take some pictures and do some close recon and come back and provide me a sketch sure but what if you could leverage all these other pieces of technology to have a more holistic picture of an entire battle space i feel like that's what you guys provide as opposed to that old school mentality of of recon just sneaking and staying out in in hide sites for days on end yeah there's definitely some advancements and think about the last two big conflicts that we think of we think of iraq and afghanistan and the uh the air uh the air situation right the air power situation in those environments was not very contested right when we first went in in 91 uh everybody's worried about it and we swapped all those dudes and all their all the iraqi planes that everybody's worried about and it wasn't even a contest so as we move into this environment we move up against foes that may actually have uh be able to contest air superiority not just through your your traditional means through like you know f-35 versus migs but when you start talking about swaths like the drones and everything else like that and some of that tech that's readily available to these people um that's when we come into play and we help to identify you know and uh and overcome those challenges to ensure that the air force is successful at our objectives yeah 100 and yeah yeah absolutely and i would describe it to people because i'm not nearly as smart on on sr as you are but i'm like hey like there are there are missions that i need that data collection i need that information gathered from whatever i can think of a million ways like you always want it's part of your troop leading procedures make reconnaissance is its entire own step as we're planning for mission it's actually engaging you you were you were 1 8 of the troop leading procedures trent congratulations sr you made it but that's such an important part to everything that we do why wouldn't we have people that are specially trained to provide us like a marine recon guy i know them they're my friends i have a couple of them on on the phone that i've gone to schools with or that i know but like having an air force guy that already knows all of those like you could take the slack out of the communication because you're wearing the same patches i am and you can provide that recon to our mission and to our force i think that's extremely valuable yeah yeah i mean those are the things that we're trying to get after and and on that note i actually wrote down some notes before we started this uh and and taken out it's just us blink three times if someone's there the cfm is actually here like making sure i don't fluff this right he's like you wrote notes down this is this is as we talked about this is very important to me i am so proud of you this is a big step i'm so glad we're doing this live years of my life down this rabble it away hole it away man go but it says sr operations can support the execution of any soft principle task for example fid uh foreign internal defense direct action unconventional warfare um and then we're talking to that the aerial-minded uh reconnaissance right and that's what we're getting after so any mission that you're doing sr can play a key role in setting that mission up for success or executing success on the back end so that's really what we're all about man that is straight fantastic i'm so glad you wrote that note down so let's not have it i know next time we talk about combat control i'm just gonna be flying by the side of my pants that's it so i mean that's what you that's what you do right so the natural question is like okay well who can do it and i mean obviously this is our focus the entire time but what type of people in your mind because you have the you have the whole plan right in front of you and we're going to deep dive every single step of the way but you know at the end state this is what a special reconnaissance man or woman in the future looks like what does sr look like and like specifically what type of people that are out there listening right now what type of people are you looking for to come into this career field you know when when i i used to talk to the the south southeast candidates and there's things i said right and i said i want the nerds that won't quit and this has not changed i want the nerds that won't quit no matter what uh physical fitness and preparation all that stuff is is uh obviously very important um but with the roads that we're going down and i'm not just talking about computer technology and all this other stuff but some of the techniques that we're going to ask you to learn and implement you can't be a dummy like brian said don't be a dummy um so i need you to prepare but like at the end of the day i think we're all looking for the same person because it's not like medicine is is uncomplicated it's not like being a good jtac or or setting up a survey correctly and landing airplanes as an easy task i think we're all looking for that same person i want to say nerd i'm not trying to you know degrade anybody it's a term endearment you're already canceled on that same vein i do want to clarify there is like a upper limit deliver everything listen the asthma score can't be too high we all know we all know there's a limit there's a ceiling you know i'm going to come up with a i'm going to come up like event horizon or the hershberg's horizon like i'm going to come up with a name for where for where the scale tips to where you're too smart for your own good and you won't actually make it through assessment selection we'll call it silver line but [Laughter] it's okay to like star wars but maybe if you go to like all of the comic-con things and you dress up in your basement like don't share it or something if you're if you're going into selection i don't know all right so just want to throw that right there the nurse the nerds that won't quit that's who you're looking for continue before brian so rudely interrupted you yeah i think those are the things that we're looking at like at the end of the day you need to be a good person you need to be open to learning right and that's what assessment selection is all about is finding that person that's not only going to not quit and be smart enough but be a good teammate and a good person and i can drop you out in the middle of nowhere with strangers and tell you to execute a mission and you're going to do it because i think that's really what separates soft from uh maybe some more conventional forces you know like our 18 or i'm sorry are 11 bravos probably not going to find themselves out there with strangers you know by themselves unless everything has gone terribly wrong very often but on a regular basis you know as a pg they're like hey you're going on this like commando mission in afghanistan ready set go go support go do this we have been doing this podcast for a year that's the that is one of the best description of a difference that i have ever heard my entire life have you been holding that gem back this entire time that's it when people ask us the difference between air force special operations and another branch i've never thought to be like yeah when was the last time you heard of a random green beret that went attached to a seal team just for a couple months just to go do some stuff that doesn't happen i mean maybe it does like in a one-off sort of scenario but that is that is bred into who we are like we we are able to go and and work with other teams um you know both as forced multipliers or as part of those teams for for deployments and we just accept that as a thing that's that's actually uh i learned something today trent you got it yeah i think that's super important to point out though like you know we're all interoperable we're not only with each other but with everyone else out there and it's just that kind of attitude the person that shows up and we've mentioned another podcast before and the team gets along with them at the very least you know the team is able to trust them and their skills and that's kind of the person that we breed and you'll find that you know like trent said the the nerdy doesn't quit um for sr and then for guys that are going pj you know a lot of times it's having that innate that others may live type of mentality where you just you know do everything for the job for the person that you're going out to save so everyone kind of has their own little purpose but i want to get into some of that training aspect talking about the cfatp and talking about how the pipeline is going to change we know if you guys don't know what the swelw thing is go ahead and check out the other video that we have out on youtube and get caught up on that you can pause this leave the other go to the other youtube video come back it'll still be in the same place so go check that out and then we know that's going to be kind of still across the board type of thing so let's talk about some of the stuff that's going on uh more inside the pipeline as far as you know any changes that are going through from ans and forward is there any uh anything you guys are looking at i think uh swole v is pretty set um if if you're curious about it we'll just do the quick breakdown uh the four afscs tacp pararescue combat control and sr they all come in together with the same requirements in the front end attack p's have to pass the swim or tac be candidates coming in the front at the end of prep tacpees go one way so it's a large portion of the class go to their um their prep course and their uh apprentice course and then the other three fscs prior rescue cct and sr go to the assessment selection course and upon graduating and upon selection we are divvied out into percentages uh for the the afscs that and as far as i'm tracking everybody's getting about what they want so and and the better you perform the more likely you are to get what you want so that's pretty set in stone now and it's a a process that they've been working on they pretty much have it down yeah and like brian said for for everybody out there that is like you you happened upon this video which is the point to find out what special reconnaissance is check out the channels we have we've covered this process and how you get selected and assessment selection and what instructors are looking for check out the candidate mindset playlist to check out the ones ready youtube channel we go in depth into all this stuff so just check it out we if you're if you're not picking up something or if you're not understanding we got you so go check it out brian back to you all right so pj cctsr going through selection together once you graduate from selection um sr's gonna be going to dive school or what's the rest of the pipeline look like yeah for repair rescue combat control and sr it's all the same through the employment phase you get selected pre-dive dive and then airborne sear and free fall and that before we all break out into our specialty schools to go to our uh you know air traffic control or or out to kirtland for y'all and my guys will go up to pope to start their shoe move communicate phase before the uh the sr apprentice course so okay yeah and still doing the ccsc or what's going on with that thing which well so ccsc was the selection course so okay it was very confusing so a long time ago when we stood up this it pipeline because it didn't exist we just kind of jumped in with combat control because we both went to uh our schools at kiesler right so we went to the same selection course went to keisler my guys went to weather school their guys went to their traffic control then we all went out to pope together for combat control school or the special operations whether it prints course and that's why no one calls it soak because it's really long it doesn't make any sense and it's been combat control school forever um but my guys will go through uh the shoot with communicate phase with their combat control cohorts uh they're they're guys that are going through the pipeline with them because it doesn't make sense for our guys like as a combat controller you can go through air traffic control school before you do shoot move communicate it makes sense because they don't rely on each other necessarily in fact you need some of the air traffic control stuff to do the uh to land the plans and stuff like that that you do in combat control school my guys need to shoot move communicate first before i'm gonna you know phase them into reconnaissance the the ground-based reconnaissance so that's the way we do it so my guys go through about two-thirds of that course and then they break off into a stand-alone special reconnaissance apprentice course okay so for us if you're familiar with the pj pipeline you know it's going to kirtland doing all those things piece are going to diy to all the other schools that you go to so for you guys uh how long is the pipeline going to be in total is it going to be 18 24 um like once you finish how about the apprentice course how long is that going to be 86 training days training days this guy knew what was up the cree has already happened you already know how to say that it is it is 86 training days and i need exactly this much for the smooth flow what's like so it doesn't count holidays and weekends the weekends that you actually get off and all that other stuff so okay do some adventures you know for us we do kind of an integrated thing where we go mock missions and all that kind of stuff field training exercises and everything that kind of encompasses the basics of what a pj should do for our course for you guys i assume it's going to be the same thing you're going to be spit out from the pipeline and you're going to be like a brand new guy you know still need to brush up on everything but you know enough to let you squeak by what kind of stuff are you going to be are they going to be expected to know when they get into the apprentice course and what kind of integration as far as you know ftx is whatever they end up doing so i'm going to put so you're going to go through your shoot move communicate land nav portion of the course first and so every mission that i'm going to put you on in the apprentice course the special reconnaissance apprentice course i'm still going to expect you to do those things right so i really want to bake in those those basic skills into you because i'm going to start asking you to implement reconnaissance techniques right but you still got a land nav then i'm going to start implementing in some long-range target interdiction which is just shooting really far but it's not sniper so don't get confused yet and then i'm going to start integrating sorry don't you get it twisted don't you get it that's what you wanted to say right there but you're in work mode right now i don't like i don't know if i like work trent he's a distraction he's trying to be real professional right now listen he knows he's like listen i'm gonna get there's gonna be a lot of eyes on this not like this not the redacted but some actual eyes and treads like listen i'm minding my p's and q's dawg yeah there's just a lot of information you know then i'm gonna drop one of the big questions always is do you guys still do uh weather right but if you look in the uh the socom guidance uh which you probably don't have access to yet environmental reconnaissance is part of the special reconnaissance skill set so i'm going to drop that on top of you and then i'm going to drop swash the the drone technology on you and so we're going to drop a skill set on you and then you're going to conduct a mission again and we're going to teach you another skill set and you're going to run a mission again and then at the very end we're going to do an ftx type event we're going to be expected uh to be able to shoot uh probably about 800 meters and playing steel you're going to have to use swas as part of your your mission planning and during the op you're going to have to do your environmental reconnaissance your classical reconnaissance and then you know on top of you know below all that i guess is your uh land navigation shoot move communicate skills and uh your all that kind of stuff so and then we're gonna have an event at the end just like i think every school has we're a little bit of a gut check uh so you can earn the funny hat i'm i can't be any more motivated number one because we found the video that we're gonna use for the youtube clip because thanks that was it that was an easy one but number two dude that is that's legit and that's all up until three level right yes and then and then bam you you you hit it you hit graduation and you're a no kidding sr dude and dudette and you're out of the schoolhouse right and then you go to herlbert for an additional you know period of training solid well let's talk about it so you you get out of the three level right so we're talking like holistically cradle to grave so we got in we got the right person we got through this you know 18 to 24 month pipeline for sr we've got a dive qualified free fall qualified shoot move communicate with knowledge of integrating swas um you know longer distance engagement what's the term that you're using it's a long uh i'm sorry uh target interdiction long distance start long range target interdiction yeah now you lost me yeah well i should have already should have once should have went to your notes man it was so clean the first time we'll edit that out it's like a designated marksman-ish type capability right that's something that we had too but so from there you're not you're not done yet you're going to go and you're going to get additional training and you're going to go down to herbie and you're going to go to the special tactics training squadron or stts and you're going to go through advanced skills training to get you a bulk of your next training what what does that training look like so that's where we're going to start delve into more of the when we talk about uh rns reconnaissance surveillance we're going to start talking about some of the surveillance techniques that we use and that's more of what you think of um like with your your long range photo lens cameras in like an urban environment or or listing devices in an urban environment um so we're gonna we're gonna get into surveillance then we're gonna get you a level level one asot and that's all i'm gonna say about that and we're going to evaluate some potential paths for you in the future based on your your performance through that and then we're going to get more swaths right so the drones so there's multiple different kind there's multiple different kinds yeah i'm super professional today so fixed-wing you're doing it you're really doing it buddy fixed-wing and rotary wing uh so you're going to get qualified and you're going to get your certifications uh to operate swash in a you know combat environment or theater and then um yeah more shooting more moving and then we're going to go into some of the preparation the environment type stuff too so a little bit of a little bit of everything so building on the skills that you already have and then mixing in a little more that um uh non-conventional unconventional warfare type flavor on top of it if that makes sense yeah well the the thing that i'm excited about for you guys is that this has been a this has been a capability that you've been moving toward everybody's like oh the rebrand is totally new the rebrand is totally new no it's not you've been doing these things like southea before sr had had been moving that way but in order to make that next level you had to take a big step and the rebrand was a part of that big step forward so i'm just excited to see that it's formalized at ast that training is you're no kidding going there to do these things um you know not like on the bro to bro level i feel like sauteed for a long time was doing things like on the bro to bro level because it made sense and it supported the capability that we needed but now it's it's formalized you're like no we do these things for the team and that starts at ast i i think that's a super awesome thing out of those capabilities that you kind of just mentioned which one are you the most excited about being formalized well i'm they all kind of go together right and one of the things i didn't really talk about yet was like electronic warfare and we talk about electromagnetic emissions and that the same words like identify uh relate and exploit when we talk about cyber and ew um that's kind of where we're going and then when you bring in asa and swas like i i know from the outside it might be hard to see how all these things relate to each other but it's all kind of related right and then it all comes into this like weird fusion of of intel and the the guys that go forward and then you know making that plan to to execute our objectives so um the ew and cyber stuff is going to be a big piece of it um as we move past the five level stuff well the most exciting you know kind of part of that is like you're going to fold all of those skills and you're bringing the capability real time out on target with me so i get to look at you like you know i i did this you know a couple weeks ago with my guys i'm like hey you need to tell me what's over that wall right there what is it can we do is anybody like there were a bunch of things that i looked at my ass r guys and i'm like help me figure this problem out and they were on it you know it's not just the information is okay but the information in real time from a professional that knows how to interpret it and give me the no kidding like i don't need to know your assessment of the information i need you to look at me and go this is what it is you should do this and i go okay thank goodness somebody has a plan because i'm terrible in pressure scenarios yeah i was just thinking like to myself because this is also the first time that i've heard all these things said together in a sentence or in a professional manner like trent's doing and uh i'm thinking like you know what other career field out there really does all of these things in one career field and is you know free fall dive everything else qualified in the military like i'm sure you based some of this training off of the training that's already up in the military like you know other reconnaissance type squadrons and stuff like that but there's not i don't know anyone that i could think of that does every single thing that you're bringing up right now or am i wrong here no one can compare yourself to nobody um i don't know it was so it was so fast it was so fast who did you compare yourself to i no next question who do you compare next question slide well i think one of the things to remember is we're not we're not the analysis guys right and there are certain things under uh certain um uh permissions that we're gonna have that we're not gonna be able to do and there's gonna be limits uh but we should have like the the 80 solution before even moving out because somebody else within the team the teams that we're working with uh should already provide it should already know what's kind of happening and so the guy on the ground doesn't have to do like a bunch of analysis on uh the emissions or the data that he's getting back for the the team that's actually on the ground when we go kinetic uh to make the proper decisions uh it's more like just locating and and um confirming what we we think we already knew right yeah that's yeah it's fine fix finish like i can already hear where you you live inside of that space man like that's that's awesome and if you don't know on the outside i mean make it through selection you'll figure out what that means later i guess so so we get done there like and now we're paused we kind of get through that advanced skills training at the special tactics training squadron and herbie and now the guys are getting ready to go to their units first of all like i'm asking this question almost rhetorically but i will ask you for an answer so training is over there right like they're good oh yeah no trending stops you're signed off um actually when you when you read some of the just classical reconnaissance publications they are very very clear like this is just like everything else right this is a perishable skill set and if you do not practice and practice the right way often um you can't do it anymore like we're not going to sign you off if you don't have refresher training so you can't work in the enjoying environment if you're not practicing these skills yeah so you're going to get to a troop just like or you know to a flight now you're going to get to a flight as a shoot move communicate right because we all do four basic things shoot move communicate we lead those are four things that we all do and then from there we have our specific skill sets like for for pjs it's technical rescue and it's medicine it's gold standard trauma medicine for the controllers it's airfield seizure and joint terminal attack for the sr guys you know we have their own specific skill set as well which we've now fleshed out so when they get to the team what are they going to be focusing on kind of that you know hey i finally got you know i've made it to the pinnacle of the mountain i've graduated our own course which has never happened before and now i'm on team what do they expect to do you know they hit that team room door and they're like all right how do i fit inside of st what does that look like in the team room so it depends on it depends on the commander's direction right and what your deployments are on where you're going but like i said they can support any of the missions that we have downrange and um you know the the environments they talk about is the permissive uncertain and hostile environments and you can uh perform it overly covertly or clandestinely um so anything that we've got going on and depending on the skill sets that your guys have but like when you're moving from your five to your seven level excuse me uh there's a couple things that you're gonna have to do for now you're gonna have to go to a sniper school uh to make yourself like your army sniper oh oh no i'm gonna have to go to sniper school and honestly one of the reasons that we're so concerned about sniper schools is the shooting is secondary but it's the uh the way that you move through the environment and the amount of glass work that you get in that course um that's that's very very important to us and being able to uh get to the target identify the target and and make assessments from there and then the other thing that we're going to be focusing on for seven level is like the close target reconnaissance uh so getting close to something and your surveillance techniques and all that other kind of stuff is uh one of our focus items uh and as we think this thing develops uh the cfhp is not a dead document it's a living document and so there's some things that we just don't have the resources to get after just yet to make them actual requirements you know some guys will be able to get it and we can't make them you know standard requirements for everybody but after as we go after the ew and cyber stuff uh you should be getting after those on the the asot qualifications uh that's where the sun level guys should be heading so nice yeah i know for us you know part of the seven level upgrade for pararescuemen was uh doing jump master upgrades and rescue jump master those kinds of things are you guys looking into also doing that kind of stuff or are you gonna stick it to leave it to the cctv pj guys to to do that stuff then we're going to leave it to the unit commanders to decide how many jump masters they need oh get it dang and the other thing is you know back when we were you know the first sts squadron back in 2008 when aaron and i first got to england it was like we used to jump on each other's training and it was like all right we're going to swiftwater trip south tea guys you want to hop on this because you don't have like any formalized training or that kind of stuff back then and it's just like ah sure i don't really know what else to do um it sounds like some other guys are going to want to jump on some of the training that you got going on just you know with the cool stuff that you get to do are there any other cool schools that you're looking at uh trying to implement into the pipeline or later on upgrade training type of stuff yeah i mean we're talking to uh a lot of different people from from different places uh to nail down the the correct uh courses you guys need to go through let's get let's get more and more vague as we go along like you've done such a good job like we get the biggest input of people are like just tell us what it is be like bro we're waiting on things to flesh it out like trent's being vague he won't pop the lid on sr just to start getting real look we're talking to some people we're doing some things it's gonna be huge best pipeline out there i'm not saying it people are saying it smart people i mean people are saying it um i mean that is facts though that's big if true dawg um but i mean there's just a few things that that we still need to flesh out especially as we move into the seven level requirements so we still have avalanche it was a seven law requirement we couldn't take that away from our guys because you know going out there and getting that avalanche level two cert that's that's money and if i'm asking guys to you know overland in certain areas of the world it's it's an important skill set to have and i think when we talk about i'll tell you as i'm sorry like on the avalanche thing i'll tell you as a guy that went to the norwegian allied officers course with weather dudes they make their money in that like they really are smiling they've they've always that's been a thing like it's the nasa mission for us people kind of like we forget to sometimes talk about that because we do it we've done it so long like we forget to tell people that it's interesting for you guys one of your legacy capabilities that people kind of poo poo but you guys are really really good at it it's moving in that avalanche terrain you guys are highly trained that's been a part of your your training for a long time like recognizing that terrain how to move in it getting avalanche level 2 certified is no small task and you the sr back then it was southea but those sr dudes were right next to us doing that training brian and i you know in norway at that allied officers course and man that's i'm i'm glad to see that you guys kept that as both as a legacy item for your history but also because you guys have such institutional knowledge in that environment like it's really really useful right yeah like the the avalanche the understanding the atmosphere to a certain extent you know it's because we're air minded reconnaissance we're not getting rid of all of that and um just based on the the drones the swast things that we're going to be doing and our history and the fact that we work for the air force it would be i think irresponsible to not have a little bit of that capability sprinkled in there and then when we talk about guys jumping on each other's training when we talk about cyber and ew and a few of the other things and some of the asos stuff if if the the combat controllers and the js and attack peas are not getting involved in that stuff like they should be i think they're going to right it's already happening um yeah that's that's where we're all going yeah from ground level we are like it's a big push and i credit to you guys for leading that charge but yeah it's it's happening yeah i mean we're all going to end up in the same environment going after the same objectives and so it's just like i go through a fair amount of medical training but i'm not i'm obviously not a pj right but it's it's it helps me not only to potentially save someone's life in a traumatic uh environment but it helps me to understand what it is that the pj does right and some of the the time hacks and and these other things uh how to set up a room for mass casualty event you know and then one once i understand what what you're dealing with when the the team pj team leader tells me something to do you know during one of these exercises i don't question it i'm not like this dude doesn't know what he's doing i know what he's doing and i can i'm already like halfway there by the time he says something so that interoperability amongst just us is hugely valuable right so speaking of interoperability you know uh traditionally ccts and pjs i mean like aaron and i when we were down in england again we would get farmed out to whoever else because it was kind of a mission set kind of thing to go with the green berets seals all that kind of stuff and i'm sure that all those people that are listening out there are like are you guys going to go with those girls are you going to attach what are the opportunities out there for you know branching out so to speak so where you got from so this is this is anecdotal based on my own experience but the the green berets get into the the gray to black world pretty well and use um some of the extra so so the military uh operates mostly under a single title and so when you start operating under different titles oh let's go let's we're diving so deep we're diving so deep i like it i'm excited the green grays are a good conduit for access to certain places because they've already you know broken the code on a few different places and that's kind of what they do with the foreign internal defense mission um so i could see us working a lot with them because traditionally we've worked with them a lot i've worked with green brides more than any other branch so because they're usually where we want to be uh you know when we first went to africa as and you know my career field went to africa a long time ago because we we've kind of entrenched with the green berets um like that that's that's the way it is you know they're always where we want to be and they provide access and an unknown quantity or a known quality of team that you're going to be in bed with and they know who you are and you can kind of go after your separate mission sets and uh and help each other out so yes yes sorry that was a really long answer to yes yeah just for all you guys that are listening out there if you sure to answer but again yeah the reason why is like why wouldn't you and like you are the subject matter expert again like you were the person that is going to go in there and go okay here are some vulnerabilities you're not thinking of because i think about this literally from 180 out you're on the ground here doing these things and i literally think about building myself from the from the air down i can provide you at least a different perspective like it may be valuable it may not be but it's always going to be a different perspective and that's one of the great reasons why like i think you guys are going to be more included i think this is good the can of worms is going to be open on this one and people are going to be like oh wait you can integrate how many systems you can provide me what sort of real time you can oh and oh by the way i don't have to worry about you going and getting into some like no kidding problems because you you have the tools shoot move communicate lead to solve those problems man that's that's a pretty easy sell to somebody else right mission planning purposes it's invaluable to have all that type of information and every single asset out there is doing their mission planning process daily so you're going to be just you know there in the middle of everything but as far as challenges and other things that you guys are going to have to set up obviously there's you know the integration and you know just introducing yourself as i'm this new asset i have these capabilities look what i can do so that would be number one challenge is just stepping into the scene and saying you know backing up all things that we're talking about because it is a new career field what other kind of challenges do you think might be presented for this career field well i think that's the big thing and um so so our entire career field is under appsock which falls under socom right and so from the very beginning we've been speaking to the correct people to make sure that we're setting this up in the correct way to get that uh interoperability that joint interoperability check mark you know like that blue check mark that says yes you are good for this um so com follows trent but if you don't have that under socom that that's everything is that interoperability standard and so we're moving in that direction we've we've been uh working together with them since the very beginning to make sure that uh they get the warm fuzzy from us and uh and they know our capabilities right it's a two-way street and that way when you when you move into like a theater paperwork it's something that we don't typically think about but uh when when a commander is like who do i who do i have that can do this he's got like a binder of people that he can choose from and if that binder has incorrect information which we've run into in the past uh he's not going to send you or he's not even going to know that you're capable of performing that mission so we're working out all those wickets yeah because i mean just like everybody you know we have there's we feel questions just on the internet of like what is it that you guys do brian have you ever been on a deployment where somebody you haven't had to give the capabilities brief where you've been like hi i'm a people hi my name is brian and this is what i do i'm a pj do you know what a pj is here we go i can imagine for you guys it's going to be the exact same thing if i'm going to put you on the spot again so elevator brief give me your your 30 second pitch for i'm an sr guy here's what we get because this is what people want to be right you want to be the guy that steps into a room and says this well it depends on the team but you're going to start with the basics always right hey let's go to the range and i'm going to outshoot your guys or i'm sniper qualified just like your guys are they're like oh cool and it's like oh check out this little guy he can fly and he has all these cameras and sensors on them and i can tell you what's over that ridge line they're like hey that's cool it's like check this out i also have this box that can tell you a lot of other stuff about these you know like you just walk through your capabilities but every step of that way you're gonna have to prove what you can do but you find that common ground first be a good person be a good teammate help out with the stuff that they're working on and then you prove your capability uh through action you know like you can show up with all your badges and you can say all this stuff and you can be like i'm a pair rescue guy or a comic controller and sr guy uh in my experience and maybe it's because i was a south guy you know like showing up to an oda and be like this is what i can do it doesn't it doesn't really matter you know like that gets you like a 10 solution the rest of it is proven through action and uh capability well now i'm mad at you because now i don't know which video to pick either that one or the one from before because that was we didn't practice that either anybody like that that was trent off who was this new guy well trent may have practiced it with this notes writing thing that he's been doing this new you're so different trent i've had it with you i've had it you're your computer screen's up it's weird you're writing notes now you've got two screens you obviously said that to yourself in the mirror changed your background too you change it to the one cartoon it's just the one thing that's the only thing that matters it's the only thing we all float down here i love it it's my favorite cartoon dude that's you just crushed it for for where it is that you guys are gonna go and like that's the end state so man to to tarantino it we're gonna bring it all the way back to the beginning because that's that's who we're talking to so for me again i've said it multiple times we're going to put together a youtube clip of me saying this on wax take me back 20 years tell me what sr is going to be you you give me that description of sr 20 years ago and i have a hard time figuring out what it is that i want to do because that mission sets me i'm like wow man that mission set speaks to me a lot like i love medicine a lot it's always been something that drew me to the pararescue career field but the thing you just described that gives me a hard decision to make as a young man or a young woman that's getting ready to try to try this thing out so man let me hit you with it okay i'm sold what do i need to do is the first step what's the first thing that i need to do to figure out how to be an sr dude go see a recruiter on trent how do i find them but how do i find them trent let me tell you how do i find them geez you got to enter what you're you're hitting me up on instagram obviously it's not that hard um let me go back to one of the other things you've said though because i'd like to talk to the guys at prep about this because they'll be like hey i don't know if i want to be pararescue tech psr or karma control right and i always tell them the same thing i say if you work hard and you say yes to all the opportunities that come your way and i think we've all seen this at a certain point we all end up in the same place and you everybody ends up where they want to be working with all the people doing the same things to a certain extent yeah um so like just because i'm like hey we do ew and all this other stuff and you're like oh i really want to do that but i also like pararescue i'm telling you that if if if you're like 51 para rescue like do it because if you work hard and you keep saying yes and you just move through your career um you're all going to end up in the same situation on the same teams doing the exact same stuff with a ton of overlap so there's no reason to to spend more time than is necessary fretting over which afsc you're going to choose if you're a good worker the other important thing on that is no one that you that i've ever met that was a pj cct any of that kind of stuff is like man i really regret being a pj i really regret you know going down whatever path never it's never been a thing we've talked to people that have literally like been doctors physicians assistants officers fighter pilots entrepreneurs olympians and never once did they were like yeah i regretted that part of my life that was not that was never a thing they're like i wanted a different challenge so i moved on but never are you ever going to be like you know what i regret being a pararescueman i regret being in afghan get out of here yeah like working with the best people in the world and figuring out who you really are at your core and and taking that for the rest of your life that's a terrible situation to be in like it's sarcasm by the way i'm so mad at you where this trend this is the best podcast we've ever done i'm just gonna put it out there right now you're not supposed to say it's like saying that there's a no-hitter in the ninth i don't care trent i i'm gonna be an sr guy and i get a cross train now great hope you got room we got space so yeah yeah just go see your recruiter and be the right person it's the same thing for everybody you know okay so they see a recruiter they start talking they start training man is there anything that you would want them to know i know we've laid it out but is there anything a lot of times i'll talk like expectation management or i'll be like hey just understand that it's not going to be like it's going to be awesome all the time your best day as doing anything else is never going to be equal to your worst day of being an sr guy or a pj like those days are my days as a pj are always better than anything else my life could be because it's it's what i'm i feel like i'm designed or built to do right right is there any piece of advice that you want to give somebody to keep in mind like while they're going through this process and just be like hey just keep this in mind while you're going through the process well let's talk about one thing that they should know before they go see the recruiter is the only thing that's really different about sr is i'm going to expect you to be top secret capable earlier than some of the other career fields and um get through that first process and don't change your story all right that that's a big thing but just maybe look into what is required for top secret clearance and if you definitely don't meet that uh you know find something else that you want yeah yeah exactly the devil's lettuce lots less uh less uh approving of the devil's lettuce on the sr side of the house but let your recruiter walk you through that process don't don't make any huge decisions without talking to your recruiter absolutely um the physicality of it people ask us all the time all the time what do i need to be at man from the horse's mouth is sr any different in their physical needs than pj and combat controller no um nope we're looking for the same person you need to be tough you need to you need to be smart you need to not quit that's it um you know like my my apprentice course it's not my hour our apprentice course i take ownership of things that i work on um i will uh we're planning on making our guys the the dirty field guys especially early on in their career you're going to spend a lot of time in the field you're going to spend a lot of time moving weight across terrain but you're going to get there you know that's post selection and post your employment phase at that point we're invested in you at least as much as you're invested in us but that's what you have to look forward to and the last thing is we are a small career field so there is there is a little more onus on you to to find i don't want to say find work but like if if you're just sitting there and no one knows what to do with you you need to use this thing between your ears and think about your training and look at the big picture of what's happening in your squadron and be like this is where i fit and maybe go to your op superior supervisor and be like hey this is what i need to do that might be a difference and those are the people that we're looking for like i've done it throughout my whole career like you just have to walk up to you and be like i'm gonna go do this are you cool with that and i don't think i've ever been told no they're like you wanna you wanna go to this this training that no one else wants to go to and i'm like yes they're like go like cool again it's choose your own venture it's figure out what it is that you wanna do what do you what do you wanna make your career field look like or you know your career look like before i turn over to brian who's going to hit you with the big question of the day are there any misconceptions i know there's a usually the number one thing that like the number one question in the dms and the comments that we get is like tell us everything about sr i don't know how we can lay it out i hope this episode puts it to bed i hope this is the one that we can probably we can just point to and we can go hey everything you need to know is here right but there's still misconceptions out there what are those what are some misconceptions what are what are some no kidding from you big if true moment big facts nothing but the truth what misconceptions do you want to dispel about sr right now i just want to say when we say reconnaissance it's a very broad term all right and so when you say marine force recon range reconnaissance all these other things it's very broad and once you get to it there are levels within those communities that focus on different items and we are very much focused on the solving air force problems first and the way that we go about it the way that we're leaning forward into some of the tech is is a little bit different and and the objectives that we're getting after and then your classical reconnaissance is just the first step that is our foundation uh because when all the tech fails or when everything goes wrong uh at the end of the day i still need a person that is a hard person that can you know go into the woods hide do what they need to do and accomplish their mission no matter what so that's the foundation i'm gonna build um and then i'm gonna put all that that gucci stuff on top of that and all those uh tactics and techniques on top of that that's uh that's all i'm gonna say damn well i'm super excited about sr now yeah right yeah like holy cow i don't know you know trent's been off for probably a week you can see that he has some facial hair growing on his hen's hair he's been out in the woods just contemplating what he was going to talk about in this episode for the past at least week he said he was camping with his family but we know he's apparently been preparing for this in a locker room for weeks weeks trent i i gotta be honest with you i hate to i hate to put out a call to action like this the next person that puts anything out that says what does this or do and you don't like immediately link to this video and four speeches i am going to flip out exactly boom gonna plastered everywhere so there it is i don't know you know if there's anything that we could have possibly missed in the pipeline there this may help you or it may hurt your decision making process as you're trying to decide on which career field you're going to be going to but like we said before there is no person that is in these type of career fields that regrets their decision and you can look at our other episode last week and you can just go off of rj casey's lead and go try all of them so you know there's always the opportunities out there to continue on and do whatever it is that you want to do but the basics are what remain the same you know like trent was talking about we want tough guys that are ready to execute the mission and are good team players always looking out for the team first so that's the foundation of what we're looking for as far as those guys that are coming in and the capabilities are going to be stacked upon it if you're noticing now a trend between all the different career fields everyone gets the same basic amount of training everyone has the capabilities to insert via you know halo airborne dive all those other methods and of course be able to shoot the things that are on top of it the icing on the cake is what makes that beret color change from person to person so you know go ahead and do as much research as you can i don't know how much more research you can do besides this video on sr but you know go and watch the other videos about power rescue we're going to do another one about cct just so you guys can have all the decisions out there everything laid out in front of you and you choose your own destiny figure out what you want to do so you know super excited trent thank you for laying that out and you know using the last couple years of your life to dedicate to these guys and further your career field um you know it's not just a label change like we've been talking about before it's not just out to you guys um still doing weather and doing the same kind of thing we're not trying to sell like that we're not just trying to repackage the same thing it's an entirely new thing that's inside the package and out so i'm really excited for these capabilities to actually go and be employed i think it was necessary with the amount of technology that's employed in the battlefield at this this amount in time and who knows what our our adversaries in the future are going to actually be capable of because it's not going to be always just people in caves doing that kind of stuff it's going to be people that are actually capable of doing electronic warfare against us as well and i think it's really great that we're at the forefront of bringing the fight in that arena to our future adversaries so super excited again make sure that you guys go ahead and like subscribe on the youtube channel if you didn't watch it super awesome watch trent's little picture back there it's really cool and then also you can go on to the apple podcast and leave us a review we really appreciate it um and you know as always go out there earn each breath and we're out here for you guys so hit us up anytime light up later late train hard [Music] you

Channel: Ones Ready

Views: 145,956

Keywords: special reconnaissance, air force special operations, air force recruiter, air force special warfare, air force special forces, special operations training, Air Force Special Warfare, AFSPECWAR, special reconnaissance air force, air force special tactics, afsoc special reconnaissance, afsoc a&s, afsoc training, afsoc selection, special warfare air force, special warfare preparatory course, special warfare assessment and selection air force, special warfare prep, combat Control

Id: qkn2uxSsRF0

Length: 54min 5sec (3245 seconds)

Published: Sat Dec 05 2020