Ep. 217 | John Dailey | MARSOC Det 1 Chief Sniper

All right man, John Daily back on the podcast. Thanks again for coming on. It's your book, Tough, Rugged Bastards. Everybody could check that out. You were Oh I remember now I said that I got a copy of it before you did. Right, did you get a copy of it?

I do. I've got in fact, the Simon and Schuster at a box of like forty copies they showed up yesterday. Oh no, I got obviously some people to send them out to and people that have helped me out and things. So it was good. But yeah, you were the as far as I know, the first person to have an official copy.

That's awesome. That's so crazy. It's I really like it. I think it's a good cover and everything. I like how they did it. Was it easy working with Simon and Schuster.

It was so Simon and Schuster distributes it. I have. The publisher is actually Knox Press, so relatively small press. They kind of fall up under Simon and Schuster for a distribution. So it was uh yeah. The cover, Like I I'm not a big fan of covers that like have your picture on the front. Plus I really I really didn't have any any really cool pictures, so uh I uh, you told them that.

You know, how do you not have any cool photos? What are you talking about? I?

Well, I also I was in you know, well by the time I retired, you know, cell phones were really just kind of becoming ubiquitous. So you know, like I I don't think, uh. I think I went to to Iraq with a digital camera, like an early you know, relatively early digital camera, but it was very poor quality to sayd destroyed it quickly. Afghanistan. I had the film camera that uh, and I was just never the guy.

There was always the guy who was taking photos of everybody or asking people to take pictures of him, and that was this never me, which I totally regret. I mean, I've got, you know, pictures that other people took and gave me, but I just I don't have a lot of a lot of great pictures. And that's something that I, like I said, I wish, I wish I would have thought a little bit more about.

I think that's a universal thing amongst veterans as they look back and go, damn, I wish I would have taken more photos. And then they tell like guys that are coming up, like make sure you're taking photos with you and your buddies, you know.

Yeah, And it's become a lot easier. You know, it's become so much easier to do now when everybody's walking around with you know, with the phone in your pocket.

Yeah. Yeah, in these phones nowadays, I mean, the camera quality on it is out of control, you know. I mean some of them are really you can just take professional level photos. The only different between this and like a digital camera is like the photo I take on my on my phone, I might not necessarily be able to blow up to like a billboard size photo, all right, but I can make one that I put on my wall really easily. You know. That's the difference the resolution there.

But yeah, man, But anyways, I really appreciate you coming on. Like we talked about a second ago, we stopped around. We talked about you and your team going to Afghanistan, your reconnaissance element in Afghanistan. You guys were like one of the first elements into Afghanistan after nine to eleven, and then we jumped ahead because we're running out of time to talk about Debt one a little bit. But I want to talk more about that time at recon because I think that's really important and I know you guys did a lot of work, not just in Afghanistan, but like in Iraq and everything. Can you start with what was it like to be, you know, one of the first guys on the ground in Afghanistan, like you had to did it dawn on you that this was

like how important this was?

Absolutely? I told the story last time that I was already on deployment when sitting in a pub in Darwin, Australia when the attacks happened. So we saw it on television, you know, with the time difference it is like nine, So we're sitting around trinking beer and we see that and kind of knew, you know instantly that you know this the our deployment wasn't going to be a normal deployment, right, and that we were going to find ourselves, uh somewhere, you know, somewhere we didn't quite know where at the time, and that you know, information it was pretty quick in coming, you know, and we are ships that we were on steamed over that way and I think as early as uh, I forget when the Army Special Forces landed, but are

the ships that were within our amphibious ready group were you know, launching rockets and things into into Afghanistan, and uh, you know, we weren't weren't far behind, you know, launching aircraft and and things like that.

I think the army guys got there. I think the I want to say they were there by December and maybe even earlier.

I think, yeah, they were. They were already on the ground when we got there in November. Okay, so they were, they were there. We we landed somewhere around Thanksgiving. You know, we got our first kind of first boots on the ground, and uh, you know, not a not a lot of idea of what to expect, you know, you because it was obviously just a completely different kind of war than we'd been accustomed to, you know. But we landed and set up our camp for the Marine Expedition or unit out in a absolutely desolate section of UH Desert. It's called the Registrarian Desert, I think, and it had it had been a location that at one point was you wasn't as arid, and UH had had a lot more activity, a lot more people that lived in it, but they

had had a really big drought several years ten years prior to that. So what we came into was this old camp that had been like a hangout for wealthy Afghany families, you know falcons. They would bring their falcons out and fly around. And so it had an airstrip that had you know, a compound with with guard towers and things on it. So we land at this you know, remote desert air strip and as soon as we did, sent two of my teams out to to kind of secure the perimeter and and implant seismic intrusion sensors, so little sensors that they would ping us, you know, at people if people tripped them, you know, in vehicles or on foot. So we established security and then the the you know, the an entire marine expedition and you know

you're talking, you know, a thousand marines start you know landing, and the infantry battalion starts digging, you know, digging fighting positions and security perimeter. We were fortunate, I guess enough to get one of the one of the few structures harder structures to to sleep in. But it was, uh, it was spartan living conditions, you know. So I had thirty guys sleeping in the space of you know, probably this room that I'm in, but it was we weren't living out in foxholes who we you know, fighting holes with the with the Marines from the b l T, the Battalion Landing Team. So we had that going for us.

But December, November December, it was really really cold, and we were not well prepared. We hadn't uh we brought with us. You know. Normally when we would go on to deployment like that, we would spend a lot of time in the Pacific and then we would maybe go to some of the warmer parts of the of the the Gulf, you know, we'd go to Kuwaid or uh and do some training Jordan perhaps, but uh so, we hadn't really prepared for that level of cold. So that was kind of the first hurdle that we had to get over. Yeah, you know, and you got you know, I had told my guys and we had packed probably more cold weather gear than anyone else had, so we were more you know, far better prepared. But but still it was you know, we weren't quite ready for that,

you know, for what we ran into you know, zero almost zero subzeruero temperatures.

Yeah. I remember being in Marsia in twenty eleven and in December it snowed, you know, and I just remember being like, fuck, it's so cold here, Like this is crazy, especially after you go through the summertime, because when we got there in the summer, it was really hot. So it does have those extremes. That's a it's a tough environment.

I mean, you talk about living spartan living, that's really the way to go though, you know, because I remember again on my twenty eleven deployment flying into like leather Nag and it's built up and they have like the green bean coffee and like the fast food stuff and everything, and that was never appealing for me. I was like, what the hell is this? You know what I'm saying, Like moving forward to fob Marja and then on my other deployment into Singing, which was probably my worst living conditions I had, but best deployment. You know, that's just such a much better lifestyle, I think because there's less distractions and it seems like you're it seems like it means something. I don't know. It feels weird when you're

like surrounded by comfort creature comforts all day, you know what I'm saying, Like like we're at war. I was in Iraq and nine as a mechanic before I lap moved and I was at tq Altacatum and we had like a couple of chow hauls and like a shitty p X and stuff like that, and I still felt that way. I was like, this is like, this is cool in all, but this isn't what I envisioned, you know. Yeah, so I think you're what you're talking about so much better thing.

Yeah, Afghanistan was was that way. I mean, it obviously grew up, but it was in those early days. It was fascinating to watch The Marine Corps has these guys called Magtat planners, and then Avy has like loaded planners. So they would they would sit there with computers and figure out like, hey, we need whatever two crates of toilet paper or two pallets of toilet paper to go on on this next sea one thirty flight, or we need you know this many batteries we need to get you know, four people out there. And it was I mean, it all comes down to space and wait, you know.

So they would pull things off, put things on, and really they were kind of the in the early days that those guys were the heroes and heroines of the making sure that the right stuff got there. But what that meant was that h and you're right, that's that's what you expect, and that's what everybody expected until you know, things started, you know, kind of going crazy. But time that we were we were there, we ate nothing but mrs you know, Christmas came and there was somebody had told us that they were going to send out stakes or they were going to send out something for Christmas and uh something you know, a priority came up and it wound up being like batteries or something else. It was necessary. But uh, Christmas morning, we're waiting on this

plane to come in, you know, thinking that it's going to have uh, you know, steaks or have some sort of break. Yeah, and that that wasn't the case. But what happened now, what what we found out later that happened was one of the the refueling locations. You know, all of these aircraft were flying in with steaks, and uh, at this refueling location, they would you know, a priority would come up and they'd have to you know, maneuver their load. And so this small detachment of guys in the Pakistani desert, it just had eaten nothing but steaks for like, you know, months yeah. Yeah. When we finally flew through there, they're like, oh, man, do you want some steak? You know, we were really sick of it.

We'll trade you an MRI because that was all they were getting.

That's funny. That's for the games though, you know, out there eating protein. That's uh, that's good times. Yeah. Again, it's just I remember being like in Iraq and I remember guys bitching about like, oh, the Wi Thought doesn't work or whatever, and I'm like, dude, we're we're in a war zone. Shut the fuck up. Like there's dudes out there sleeping in shitty like fighting positions and stuff like that, and you're complaining that the Wi fi and your can doesn't work, you know, like you're what do they call those containerized housing units? Yeah, the chew. And until I got to go to like Afghanistan and do that, that was my MLG life, and I was just miserable because that's not what I wanted to do. So it

was very it was a hard pill to swallow to listen to guys complain about their living conditions when I knew that there were dudes out there fighting and doing stuff and you know, living in shitty conditions. And I really like appreciated it, even though like we were starving and saying it and we had like really I mean it sucked, the like living conditions kind of sucked. I remember having a mouse run over my face while I was sleeping and stuff because creatures, you know, But that was the best because all the other bullshit, there was no there was no like distractions. It was like do your job, you know, go on missions, find the bad dudes, train the Afghans. You know. It was very basic. Yeah, I would much rather do that again than go to

some base that has all the creature comforts.

Yeah, definitely a lot to be said for that. We uh, when we went into Iraq, we were kind of on the outskirts of it, so we you know, had the opportunity to drive in to Toner Chows or to go to the PX, but it was it was rare. You know, we just we're pretty well self contained at that point, and it was you know, you're right, distractions distract you from from your mission.

So that's making ps runs and whatnot. When you guys were on your way to Afghanistan, what was the intelligence like what was like the rumor mill? Like on ship it had to have been out of control.

There was, and it was just it ran the gamut. So we would get as the force recompleton. At one point we were oh, I can't even remember now, we were needed to rescue some American citizens. We were preparing and that was a lot of the transit over there. There was this the State Department and Americans, you know, n GAS or n g O s. We're trying to figure out where all the Americans were in the country and figure a way to get them out. And so we spent a lot of our time kind of preparing for UH missions to go in and extract Americans from.

There's like a small consulate I think in La Whore. There's just just different locations that there was concern about their their safety and their welfare and and it's because we were the first ones that UH they were going to be arriving in country. You know, they wanted us to do that. And then I don't know what what became of that, but you know, as we started approaching Afghanistan, that UH requirement went away. So I don't know if someone else took care of it, or if you know, they were able to get themselves out, or if you know what what what happened. But then our our focus shifted to to you know, as a force reconnaissance unit, to reconnaissance finding the bad guys, pinpointing them so that uh,

you know, we could bring in air strikes or bringing the infantry to hit them. And that's uh what we were most prepared for, you know, doing a long range desert patrolling in vehicles, you know, and identifying enemy positions that and we did some of that, but not as as much as uh as we had thought.

I guess do you think you were Do you think you were utilized properly there? Do you think you could have better? Been better employed? I mean, obviously the for those that haven't like there's if you haven't read about the early days in Afghanistan, there's a really good book called Jawbreaker, which is about the CIA going in and then they I think they touch a little bit on the Green Beret teams that go in as well. But they were very busy. They were very much like in the fight and working with the locals and stuff like that.

You guys weren't really doing that so much right now.

We were we were down further south, yeah, so and we were limited of course, at least initially by the need to get kind of a major military foothold and the country. So the Green Breeze and everyone else that was in were kind of coming in from other other routes. We were all, you know, on boats, so we had to come in from from where we could. So we were coming into Pakistan and then flying into this this camp, and the initial mission really was to kind of build up forces, to get enough people there to start operating.

And that's what what we did. And I felt like we had we were used as as well as we could be at the time. I mean, we we got to do I said, some reconnaissance missions, a lot of those, and that's our bread and butter. And then once the and like I said, in planning seismic contrusion devices and centers and things of that nature. And then when we realized, uh or I guess the focus shifted a little bit.

So we arrived and then a second marine expedition expeditionary unit arrived and we'd really kind of built up enough combat power to you know, make can impact in Kanadadhar. So that's uh, you know, that's that's what we did.

In being the first being the first like recon team there, you know, and this is like the real first engagement for American forces since the Goal War. I imagine you guys were testing a lot of new TTPs or testing theory. There's a lot of stuff you probably had in theory, this is what we should do, and then you actually went out and did it. Did it change your TTPs at all? Did you pass on a lot of info to the team that was following you to you know, like, hey, we tried this, don't do it, you know, do this instead?

How much did it rewrite the recon like you know TTPs?

I guess and not not a lot. I mean we had always done some uh and probably the biggest area was in desert vehicle mounted patrolling. You know, we would normally during our our training prior to deployment, we do a patrol old or two, but it was usually a couple of days up in Falla, Nevada or Yuma, Arizona.

We hadn't done consistent operations, so there were a lot of lessons that were learned just from vehicle and how do you keep vehicles going over over that duration? In Afghanistan, we ran into like bad fuel, you know, a lot of either I don't know if it's older or whatever, but uh, you know, fuel was burning at a much more rapid rate than than we anticipated. It's just some of the we we did have new, relatively new vehicles that were called the fast Attack vehicles. The Marine Corps had had purchased their really Mercedes G Wagon there's is the military variant of that small enough that they could fit into a uh, you know, our helicopters and uh, you know, we could get too into a helicopter and

that helpful, but it's also I mean tiny, it's a tiny vehicle, so trying to get a team and their equipment loaded. So so we did learn a lot of lessons about how to pack, you know, how to how to operate in small to two vehicle teams. There was some my platoon had we had recently switched from, uh the M four. We had got the M four maybe a year or so before. So in the past we would always deploy with both and M sixteen for reconnaissance work and h K M P five was our kind of weapon of choice for hostage rescue and things of that nature. So going to the M four was you know, we learned a lot about that, you know, kind of putting it through its paces as really the before the Marine Corps adopted it as a whole, and then my

platoon was the first to adopt and we were working with the US Armies Native laboratories. The Mitch helmet and the Mitch Communications system, the mobile or modular inner integrated communication helmet, I think is what Mitch says for.

I never even knew what I said for.

Yeah, modular integrated communications helmet makes it. Uh, And that was you know, phenomenal, phenomenal ability to for me. I was able to talk on to you know, to radios at a time, talk to my teams, or talk to the air and relatively seamlessly. So yeah, there was some new gear, we were using, new things. We were learning.

That absolutely one of the and I've always been really really big on making sure that we captured lessons learned. And when I got back or when when we got back to the States, we spent a lot of the transit back, you know, just sitting down putting our heads together. What are the things that we learned. I mean, we were really the first force recon platoon to have have been in any kind of real I mean there was some people doing some shooting in Somalia. Right, there was some absolutely some guys doing some stuff and uh, the first golf war, but uh, you know, the first real kind of you know, significant engagements since Vietnam, you know, nearly so there was a lot. So we spent a lot of our time on the way back in the

months you know, sailing back, just sitting down kind of documenting everything and then presenting it kind of over and over to each platoon, to kind of anybody who would listen. You know, hey, here's here's the things that we learned. Here's uh, you know, it was really cool. We got to uh we had plenty of Sea four and the thing I had always thought was super cool and the Vietnam books was you know, using Sea four to cook your chow or heat up your uh, heat up your coffee.

So you know, that was that was something that uh, you know came in Andy.

You're like, oh, I want to try this. I read it in a book.

One yeah, yeah, and I did and it worked worked like a charm.

Yeah. They what do they do? They pull off a little pinch and then just catch it on fire and it burns or something like that. I'm reading that too.

Yeah, as long as uh, you know, you know, if you stamp stomp it out while it's on fire, there's the potential, probably a pretty low potential. It's a relatively safe explosive. But yeah, it worked much better than anything else. Or you know, we like said, we weren't planning to go into that sort of weather, so like we didn't have stoves or anything that you would you would take if you were going there intentionally.

That's crazy too. And and for those that are listening that were in the military also, remember this is the earliest days with the oldest gear. You know, this is like old school you got seventy eight two doucee gear or whatever, you know, like all the old school stuff that we would look at now and be like, holy crap, that's what you carried, you know, like I was, you know, technology and gear shifted so much over that twenty years.

It's pretty wild.

Yeah, yeah, absolutely was. That was kind of the start of it, just before we left, because we had in nineteen in ninety eight at First Force Recon Company, we had a helicopter crash with a bunch of our guys. On seven of our guys and some pilots and or not the pilots, but the cruisies of the aircraft. They were doing a shipboarding and the aircraft came into low the skid caught the safety netting that ran around the aircraft and it rolled over and a couple of the guys got out. A lot of them didn't, and the reason or reason that they didn't was because the equipment that we were wearing at that time was just insanely heavy.

We had. It was a lot of the kind of what we called our close quarter battle gear pull a bound. Certain things were were equipment that was built around what police officers were, you know. So at that point, following that, the Marine Corps and we need to do something different. So I was I was fortunate to be sent one of the the guys UH to be the representative first forced reet Con to go to Quantico and UH developed what came to be known as the full spectrum battle equipment.

And that was like where the Mali Malli webbing, UH you know, came from. And we didn't invent that, but it was, you know, we kind of picked and shoes throughout, you know, everybody in the d O D what they had. The mitchelmet That's where where that came from. So we went in with definitely a higher level of UH of gear that we would have had, you know, several years before.

But but yeah, the amount of of UH innovations and changes that happened, you know, just it was curve that went that really hadn't moved in a long time, and it's you know, between ninety eight and you know twenty twenty. I mean it was just on a on a huge straight up line path on new things being built, new lessons being learned.

Were now were you guys when what you guys established was that that was Camp I think it was called Camp Rhino. Is that what they calling it? Was madis in charge while you were there of.

That he was he was. So we landed and it was it was shortly after we landed. In fact, like I said, right when we landed, I sent out the first recon patrol. I wasn't on it, but I sent out two of my teams and they came in, you know, while they were still out, Maddis landed and he I don't know where he came from, but uh, he landed and was obviously in charge of kind of all ground forces and uh, when my guys came back in from that patrol, there were two of them that needed I think one was getting promoted and one had to re enlist.

And that's you know, doing that the combat zone is a cool thing. Yeah, and they were adam it. They're like, hey, we just came off this patrol. We've got you know, beards, we haven't shaved in like a week or whatever. Uh, this is the way that we want to we want to do this. And I'm like, man, your call. I mean, you're you're the one reenlisted. You could do it. Do it how you went. And the sergeant major of the Marine expedition or unit was He's like, hey, well, you know, why don't we get Madie to come and and do it?

And he he came. You know, we got pictures with him. Then. Of course he wasn't I didn't even know that he was called mad Dog at the time. It wasn't.

His leg had n't been established yet.

Yeah, it hadn't. But uh, you know, there were people running around pitching the moon and that. You know, my guy's hadn't shaved or whatever. But he was at least the least of his worries, you know, he was, uh, you know, pulled us around and asked us and asked us what we need and the you know, the big thing that that they had learned already was that, hey, the tires that we have on these uh these Mercedes vehicles are insufficient for the terrain. Right, there's a lot of really really soft sands, and you needed bigger tires that you could deflate and you know, uh, and he was he was like, hey, that's that's why I got And he only had one star on his collar, that's time, but he's like, that's why I've got this. And there

was he made some calls, some tires were shipping from Italy or someplace, and you know, we got the equipment that we needed pretty quickly. So that was first and only real interaction with him. But uh, yeah, nothing bad to say about the General Madus.

I was gonna ask because there's a there's a thing I always heard, because everyone sees his praises General Madice and stuff, but I always heard through like I don't know, just chatter out there that some of the Special Operations units didn't care for Mattis because when he was at Rhino, there was like there was a unit that got compromised or something happened, and there was a QRF at Rhino, but he refused to send it out to help him.

I don't know if you know anything about that or if you've ever heard that before, But I don't know if I was just wondering if you've even heard of that.

We were we were standing by to go into Tora Bora and we were we were actually supposed to parachute in.

That was wild.

Yeah, yeah, it would have been, but a couple of weeks just things had happened. So right right before our deployment, we were doing uh some parachute training and we were doing a military free fall jump and I was actually on the drop zone as the drop zone safety officer for it, and the plane flies by, the jump master, you know, calls down, hey, we've like seven parachutes out, and you know, my job is to sit there and count and see we've got pair of seven parachutes open, but we did, we had six, and you know, thirty seconds later, you can see, you know, a body without a parachute falling really fast and he hits the ground kind of beyond a little hill. And it was one of one of the Marines in our platoon, Jonathan Bates

was relatively new out of military freefall school, but had kind of had all of the training and everything that he needed. We're not sure what happened with his main parachute. His reserve parachute as an it's called automatic opening device that should have opened it, and it fired, but there was It's essentially there's a cable that pulls, you know, out of grommet a series of groments that hold the parachute closed, and this was a mechanical device that was supposed to pull that pin out, which would have allowed the parachute to open. It did that, but the cable for some reason was like two microns too long, and so it didn't clear the loop necessary to allow the parachute to open. So the impact, of course caused the parachute.

So when we get out there, there's his parachutes laying over top of him. I mean, obviously he was deceased, and because of that, all of our free fall parachutes were deadlined, right, they had to do an investigation get to the bottom of what had caused this. So so by the time we deployed, we didn't have our parachutes, so it was maybe like a month after we left on deploy that they cleared the equipment to be used.

And so when we recognized that there was the potential of us jumping in the tour bor we said, hey, we need our our free fall parachutes and marine from and the States volunteered to you know, take thirty parachutes, get on a plane with them and fly him, you know, fly him out and cart him around until he finally linked up with this in Afghanistan. And he was a great friend of mine who was good, you know, good to see him. So he showed up with our parachutes.

We you know, he operated with us for a little while and then and then went home. But that was it was at least considered, you know, that we jump into tour Bora to relieve the uh you know, provide some QRF and some relief during that that battle. But part of it was aircraft availability and the elevation, the ability of marine aviation to get up that high. I don't I've I've heard rumblings of it, but I'm not one hundred percent sure. You know, when the I certainly wasn't pretty to Matis's decision to to not send us I know we were. It was it discussion was was Christmas Day. I mean we were kind of planning for, Hey, you know, we'll do this on Christmas Day, and that's uh, didn't come to didn't come to pass.

Like I said, that's crazy about the parachute man. I mean, that sucks anytime, and that it seems like that happens every couple of years, right, like a recon guy or somebody going through military freefall or somebody doing military freefall training. Like some kind of accident occurs, and that's one of those It seems like one of those things that anything could happen, right, like one little error. I mean, even regular skydivers that jump hundreds or thousands of times, sometimes they get killed because something happens that was outside of their control. It's just one of those freak. There was a girl actually the other day who was a skydive instructor up in Paris here in California, who passed away

because she was tandem jumping with someone and on her way in I think like fifty feet off the ground or something like that, hit a dust devil and it collapsed her shoot and kill killed her. But the dude she was jumping with survived, you know, and it's like that kind of thing you can't I mean, how do you plan for that? Right?

Like, yeah, yeah, there's I mean it's you know, dangerous activities come come with risks.

That's why you get the extra one hundred and fifty bucks a month or dollars the most whatever.

It is, which is worth it to tell it isn't? You know? That's you know, I was in when I was going through free fall school. You know, we had got a couple jumps and we were out in Yuma, Arizona, and uh, there's instructors came kind of rushing back with the students and we were all told to gather in the packing room where we're pack in our parachutes. And I was the class leader. So each each service had its class its leader. So the Seals had their senior guy, the you know, the Air Force Army obviously, but for some you know, I had been picked as the overall class leader. So I'm like, they're all kind of giving me the thumbs up that we've they've got everybody, and I'm sitting there kind of all the Marines and we're

all there, so I'm like, you know, We're supposed to have whatever, fifty four students. We have fifty four students. Like, so, what's going on? And so I'm standing in the back of the group and one of the instructors walks up to the front and says, hey, you know, you're all setting in here because we had a fatality. Staff Sergeant Daily died and it was an instructor named Staff Sergent Daily, Air Force instructor. Of course I was I was also Staff Sergeant Daily at the time, So I was like, man, you know it, uh, you know, and this is a guy who was absolute professional with you thousands of jumps and had you know, hadn't done anything wrong, just something happened that So there's there's always I mean, there's always

that risk, you know.

Yeah, yeah, that's uh inherent dangers of the job, right, you know. I try to tell people that all the time, especially when we talk about fire support and stuff. I'm like, you're you know, you're lobb one hundred pound rounds down range that are going to explode somewhere. You know, things could happen that make that, you know, not work the way it's supposed to. Just just another aspect of the job that's just inherently dangerous. And yeah, that's that's crazy.

I mean, how has it so? I know, you guys pack your own shoots at at military free fall school when you're back in the fleet, do you guys have the what do they call them the parallof guys? Yeah, the riggers that they normally do it or do you guys share responsibility on that?

We kind of share it, so we will expect if we're doing a series of jumps, we'll pack our own. So you're allowed to jump a shoot that you packed, or you're allowed to jump one the rigger packed, like I am not supposed to. I don't know if it shouldn't happen where you know, I pack one that you jump. That's uh, that's not the way it works. So it's it's normally, you know, the first the first time you go out to jump, it'll be one that a rigger has packed. And then uh, and they are the pros.

I would much rather let them do it because they, you know, they absolutely know what they're doing. I mean it's not, you know, it incredibly complicated, but they're really good at it. You know, they could do it rapidly. I'm always having to call them over to you know, double check and make sure I'm not screwing.

Something up, I mean rightfully, so right, I mean.

Yeah, you got. That's one of the things they say, and you know in free fall school is if you have, you know, whatever problem you have, you got the rest of your life to figure it out.

Yeah. That's yeah, that's one way to put it. I suppose has has like parachute technology changed much since the war, you know, the Global War on Terra started. I know, the static line shoot in the Marine Corps changed to a new variant. But besides that is there has there been much difference in like parachute technology.

There's there's been changes, you know, there's not a ton of difference in technology. The big changes are whether you're pulling a ripcord or whether you're throwing out drogue shoote. And there's different variants of of where the drug shoot is and and the Marine Corps is in a there have been issues with the current parachute and it's been deadline for you know, safety concerns for for a little while.

But currently currently it is no, I don't think it is. It's not currently, but it was for a while and we're Mars socks in a unique environment because we have ah there are various soil com parachutes that that are used, and then there's the Marine Corps parachutes. So we're currently using what the Marine Corps provides, but there have been absolutely advances in technology with remotely piloted parachutes for you know, bringing in resupplies and things of that nature. There's just a couple of weeks or months ago now, I guess, down at Soft Week in Tampa, there was a big demonstration of marine raiders flying in on powered parachutes with kind of the big fan you could take off like an aircraft. Oh yeah, and that's that's the kind of

the latest and greatest. I mean, it's really really cool, uh technology.

I think my buddy helped with that. I don't and he was on He may or may not have. I could be wrong, but if you want to hear more about that kind of thing. John Eisley, who was one of my friends, he was on my advisor team. He was a logistic marine officer and now he teaches paramotor flying. He lives up in Wisconsin, and he was telling me about that, and I remember I remember watching his videos and other videos and thinking like, wow, that's a really interesting way to do an insertion, you know. And and before that was even you know, an idea that was out there. And yeah, and they.

Played around with them in the nineties, so I mean we were we were experimenting with them in the nineties. But the lot of issues yeah.

Yeah, the tech Yeah, and then I think we saw it in real life when they October seventh, right when the Hamas went into Israel. That's one of the methods that they came in on. They came in on those, and they came in on the little what do you call them ultra lights or whatever that looked like hang gliders with motors on the two m Yeah, that's so that's so crazy. I mean, that's a that's an interesting way to do it. Look, they're gonna have to work on making the motors quiet on them though, like a little bit quieter because they are pretty loud. That's what's the whole point of parachuting in, right, is that you're pretty quiet, you know, coming in yeah, silently, especially if you jump in at night and stuff. Yeah, I mean

how often is I mean, you you're you're in that world? Are there a lot of examples of doing freefall into combat zones like actual like combat jumps with military freefall.

There are examples, there are not a ton of them. The Marine Corps i think has done did one in Iraq and to my knowledge that was the only combat jump that have been done since Vietnam for the Marine Corps. The uh, you know, there are certainly people that are that are using it as a way to get into places, but it's it's not it's one of those skills that you you can't build when you need it. Yeah, you know, like diving and jumping are hugely time money, you know, requirement, resource intensive skills that they're they're the like the only way to get in when they're the only way to get in, and you know you you have to have them.

You know. One of the challenges and force recon and recon Marine recon the mottos that were jacks of all trades and masters of none, and that's you know, there's so many things that you have to know. You can't stay on top of everything all the time. So that's that's why you know, premission or pre deployment, you training is really important because then you have time to anticipate where you think you're going you know what you think you're going to need and refine those skills. I said, we weren't anticipating jumping in Afghanistan, so he we didn't have the equipment and it had to be brought in, you know, because it was had been deadlined. But but we had not done a lot of obviously because we

didn't have the parachutes, we hadn't done any recent training. So that was one of the demands that I had, is if we were going to jump into uh, you know, the mountains, then we then we at least needed to do a rehearsal or two kind of before we took off, because it's a very especially free fall, you know, it's a very I've seen it happen too many times. You know, something happens to somebody's parachute, they can find themselves, you know, very far away from the main body, especially when you're doing it at night into an unmarked drop zone.

Yeah, yeah, yeah, that's uh yeah, I think you said it right. You know, you can't. You have to constantly practice and just be ready to go and rather than try to build someone up, you know, out of scratch when it when the time comes yeah, it's I don't know, it's just such a that's like I never went to I never didn't jump while I was in some of my Anglico guys we sent to h jump school, but it was all static line and I really had no want to even do statics line. It was like, that doesn't even look I mean you, I don't know what the big deal is like, that doesn't look fun at all.

Like that looks like every time I'm jumping, I'm possibly breaking my leg or my back. I mean, now, military free fall seems like it would have been cool, because that seems like a more fun way to jump out of an airplane rather than just jump out. I hope for the best, you know.

Yeah, it's unfortunately you've got to get through the static line gate before you can get and jumped free fall. But I was, honestly, I was never in love with it, you know the way that that some people are. You know, I've I've never done you know, sing and sky hiving. Yes, I really, you know, every time I I if I'm doing something like that, I want to be you know, a little bit scared. You know. I don't want to get to the point where it's just a commonplace. You know, I want to have a little bit of fear in me so that i'm you know, making sure that I'm thinking through everything that needs to be done because uh and for me, the inside the plane, I would be you know, I would do everything that I needed to do,

but I was scared. You know, I was scared inside the plane. You know, once you jump out, then that kind of you know, it's all in your hands and that's really doing it at that point. Yeah, so you've got, like I said, you get the rest of your life to figure out any any issues.

Now you made you made a comment about recon being you know, jack of all trades kind of deal, and that is true. You guys have a million roles that are required. You got guys that you know everything from obviously shooting, communicating, breaching, jay tax, jumping, diving that you know, on and on and on. Now, isn't it though? Like you want to kind of train your guys all like Wavetop at least on all those subjects, and then you designate certain guys like this is the jump team, this is the dive team, and those guys specifically work on that.

So if the call comes, we have a group of dudes that are truly professionals at that one thing, while the rest of the guys are getting spun up, you know, breaking the rust and getting a little bit more training. Is that kind of the deal?

Yeah, yeah, normally that would be the way that a force fery completoon would be broken down. A jump team, dive team, and a vehicle team maybe, and sometimes that would you change a little bit. But yeah, the guys in the jump team were always jumping and be very proficient at that skill set. I did not love diving either, but somehow I always found myself on the dive team.

And diving it's a lot less scary, I think to me and jumping, but there's a lot I mean, it's actually a lot more dangerous in my opinion, really a lot more. There's a lot more things that can go wrong, you know. It's i'd say the less probably a less likelihood of of kind of instant death than than parachuting has.

But there's just so many more things that you have to consider and think about, you know, while you're you're diving, depending on whether it's on scuba or on a rebreather breathe the no too. But yeah, for the most of my platoons I did. I was on or I was in charge of the dive team. And then, like I said, normally a vehicle team who kind of specialized in the desert uh long range desert movements.

Now the guys that rock that rock like the not anymore, but back in the day they rocked the silver dive bubbles. Those were scuba, right, that was just scuba.

So it initially so that's when that bubble and when I got my we used to send Marines to Navy dive school and they would go to usually to Pearl Harbor and just go to the standard Navy scuba diver school, and that was the kind of the first step for the Navy. The Navy obviously goes up in the hard had diving and various levels skill levels. So that was the standard until the rebreather came about, and that was probably in nineteen ninety thereabouts, and even after that, we still wore the silver bubble for quite a while until the Marine Corps decided to create what's now the Gold bubble.

That's so you only get the gold bubble if you were a combatant diver, and that means that you're trained in the rebreather. So in the early days, the Marines who were only trained in scuba were able to go through. They didn't have to go back to scuba school right or to dive school. They were able to just get trained on that and once they were certified, they were eligible to wear the gold bubble.

Nice. That's I've heard. I've heard some horror stories about guys, especially pre dive. I've heard pre dive. A lot of guys have told me that pre dive is worse than dive school because they want to make it.

Yeah. Absolutely, it's uh, it's like with a lot of things, like when I went to before I went to sniper school. You know, the pre sniper school was to make to weed out anybody that wasn't going to make it. I didn't. Dive school is the same because they're very There's limited quotas to have the opportunity to go to dive school, so you want to make sure that you pick people that are definitely going to pass. So I had the misfortune of going through twice past both times, but there was the first one I went through was was really bad.

I mean it was it was really physically oriented. And then after I we finished. For some reason, we didn't have as many slots as we thought, so I did not get to go because I was a newer guy. And then they were like, hey, well there's another dive class that starts in January, so we're going to put you through Prescuba again. Yeah. The second one that I went through was was much more academically oriented, and that really for me was the you know, I didn't understand it at the time, but you know, you're learning physics, right, you kind of have to know quite a bit of diephysics.

There's a lot of gas laws and how a gas operates it you know, depending on the temperature, pressure, and volume that is at and you know the pressure being you know whether you're under the surface and how far you are under the surface. So there was a whole lot of of academic rigor and math. And that's kind of why I joined the Marine Corps because I didn't didn't want to do math. So that's that one last way. Yeah, luckily I was able to. Yeah, between and I talk about this all the time, between being a sniper, there's a there's a whole lot of math involved there, you know, being a breacher, you know, trying to calculate the net weight of explosives is pretty mathematically stringent, and you know,

being a jump master, you know making sure that when you throw a guy out of an airplane he lands in the right spot. So yeah, I wound up doing a lot more math than if I would have just gone to college.

Yeah, I was. I was actually on someone else's podcast the other day and I was talking about it. How like as a forward observer. You know, people think, oh, I could do call for fire, like that's uh, yeah, I can do that, And it's like, Okay, well that doesn't make you a forward observer though, because we're doing a lot more than that. We're doing stuff, like I was telling I was telling him, like a specific thing that we learn is like trying to engage a moving target with artillery. You know, we're gonna look at a convoy going down the road. We're gonna measure the convoy with the mills on our Bino's and then we're gonna translate those mills into the actual length of the convoy.

We're gonna translate, We're gonna send that to the FDC. We're also gonna give them the direction of travel, what angle that they're traveling at and then we're gonna do between us and then the math to figure out what the trigger point is. So we know this convoy that is this length is traveling this fast because we we measured it going from one point to another. Now we know its speed, and then we're gonna calculate that it's gonna be at this point at this time. So we need to shoot an artillery a linear artillery mission, you know, at this certain trigger point.

And it's like because time of flight's gonna be this yeah.

Yeah, So it's it doesn't matter the job you do. If it starts getting technical like that, you're gonna have to do some math, you know.

Yeah, and it's none of it's you know, it's crazy, man, But there's just layer upon layer upon layer. You know. With shooting, it's it's absolutely that way. You know, when you start affect you know, fag factoring, how temperature, humidity, angle, you know, all of these things impact bullet strike. You know.

It's the same with with artillery, you know, air, you know, explosives. I mean, there's a lot that has has to be thought about. And that's why, uh, if you've got to have at least one or two guys in each platoon that are really kind of laser focused on sniping, they can get everybody else spun back up. But you know a couple of guys that are laser focused on preaching and exactly, and they're the ones at least come through and like check your work, like, hey man, you totally forgot about this step. Oh yeah, that would have that would have been bad.

Yeah. Yeah. I remember being on ship and and I was doing a JFO course. I was teaching a JFO class on ship. Could had nothing going on, and the recon guys shared the same kind of office space that we did, so they would basically listen in on the classes. And I was teaching worm formula, you know, the with equals range. Yeah yeah, and they the captain was like, worm formula. I haven't heard that in forever. And I'm like, yeah, we use it. You know. It's like one of those things you gotta you gotta understand it to do it.

And I really appreciated that a lot of the Recon dudes, especially the guys that were Jay Tax Jtack qualified, they were like, man, we suck at this. Like listen, I went to school like two years ago and I've gotten like two controls since then, like please spin me up. You know, they were at least humble enough to be like, I'm not very good at this. The Anglico guys are the experts at this. Teach us to make us better, you know, because we may actually use this kind of deal.

And I think that's where a lot of the guys kind of saw, you know, my guys that worked with the recon guys kind of saw that like, oh, like we were talking about before, like these guys all have wavetop knowledge of a lot of these skills and they can do them if they get put in a position where they have to do them. But like you said, there's a few guys that are the experts at it, that are pros at each different thing, you know, and they kind of share that knowledge and everything. Yeah, it's a good We had a good working relationship with our guys because with the recond detachment on our ship. Because of that right there, you know, we would teach classes on fire support and fire support planning, close air support,

stuff like that, and then they would give classes on you know, vehicle vehicle movements, were clearing buildings and things like that. It was it was a really good time. Now let's move back into your actual deployments and stuff. You guys get back from Afghanistan, how long is it before you hear the rumblings for Iraq? And then you know, at what point did you get tagged to go over?

So we got back in early two thousand and two from our deployment to Afghanistan, and it was even on the way back there was some rumblings that the Marine Corps was going to start Special Operations Command Unit. You know, it was nobody quite believed it. But I got back, going to spend a little more time in First Force, and then relatively quickly, I think by mid two thousand and two, went to be an instructor. I had spent gone so much time nearly ten years at First Force RECN and they're like, hey, you've got to do something.

So the only thing that really appealed to me, and it's something that would keep me close, was to go to the Special Operations Training Group, and I took over the two courses we ran, the Urban Reconnaissance and Surveillance course and the Urban Sniper course. So it was really an opportunity for me to take all the stuff that i'd learned on that deployment, you know, and you know, look at the curriculum of that course go through a different lens. You know, we had. One of the things that happens over time is and like people might call them like training isms or things like that. You know, when you're when you're away from combat for a long time, you start doing things because they're a little bit easier.

You know, they're easier to uh, they're more like logistically sustainable or maybe it makes it easier for you to evaluate how a students doing something. And these things kind of compile Europe on Europe on year and then you when you look at it, you know, kind of with fresh eyes, you realize that, hey, we're doing a lot of you know, not dumb shit necessarily, but we're doing a lot of things that aren't the way combat works, you know, things that aren't going to work in combat, or things that aren't really setting these guys up for success. So, you know, my first and when I came, I brought over with me about half of my platoon, not quite but you know, three or four of the Marines that deployed with me brought them overs instructors and we said, hey,

we're just going to dismantle this course and kind of rebuild them from the ground up. So a lot more, uh, focus on physical fitness, a lot of you know, focus on combatives that that hadn't been there before. When you're sending a very small team into a you know, built up area, you know, somewhat you know undercover you know, or under you know, working in a maybe not a hostile area, but a non necessarily friendly area, you know, you've you've really got to be able to take care of yourself, you know. So you know, we implemented some you know, hand to hand combat things that that it kind of slipped away over the years because people got hurt or whatever. You know, we kind of just went back to the basics and said, what are all the

things that that we need guys to be really really good at. You know, trying to get communication from a hotel room, you know, is challenging. You know, to set up a radio and and and get a radio signal you know with satcom or with high frequency communications is tough. You know, in a city where there's a whole lot going on, you know, how do you how do you get photos and managed to gather information and send that information out. So it was I was only there for actually I think it was less than a year, but it was it was a lot of fun. You know.

It's a great opportunity to to kind of revamp some training and uh, you know, teach things that were going to help help guys when they did deploy. And we weren't at that point really certain you know, obviously a wreck hadn't hadn't even kicked off yet. So the when we kind of thought the war was nearly over, you know, in two thousand and two, kind of the Bush should already you know, kind of said, you know, declared victory on the on the ship we thought it was. It was, uh, he was done, and I was. I was super thrilled to have been able to play a part in it.

And then you know, obviously the that hey, we're going to invade Iraq comes up, and that's uh, that change, you know, changed a lot of things obviously, and that really about that same time, the you know started hearing the little louder rumblings that there was going to be a Marine Corps unit assigned to us so COM and uh, on one of the training events that I was out observing, the man, Colonel Coates, who would ultimately lead lead the unit, came up to me and was said, hey, do you don't you know this? I'm going to be in charge of this thing. You don't want to be a part of it? And that was a very quick yes.

Yeah. When you got to s O TG, were they open to changing the curriculum or did you get some resistance from the people that have been there and instructing and stuff like that.

Not really, because I was in charge, so it.

Was uh oh, you took over as like, okay, I.

Was the chief instructor, so at this point I was a gunny. So there was there was also you know, we were further away from the flag pole than the close quarter battle section of s O t G was, so you would certainly have had a little more difficulty coming in and just saying, hey, I'm going to change things there because there was a whole lot more at stake safety wise. But from the reconnaissance side of the house, it was really going back to the basics, you know, of setting down with and I've got it somewhere as a copy of an amazing document that recon Marines and Vietnam typed up and it was just best practices, and it was you know, some of it are things that that we kind of take for granted today, but you know,

like taping a punch rode to the to the handguards of your you know, you're sixteen, so that if you know around you know, you have have an issue or you can't get a casing out, you're able to quickly get it out and get back in the fight. You know. There was just a lot of these little tips and lessons learned, you know, talk about camouflage in yourself, how to mix your camouflage paint with bug juice so that it would go on and stay on better. So you know, there was a lot of things. You know, yeah, there's there was so much stuff that they learned then and this if I find it all, I'll send it to you.

It's just a great little booklet of lessons learned. The uh I was you know, like they you know, we just said, hey, let's go back to the basics of reconnaissance. You know, most regardless of whether you're in the you know, on a reconnaiss suspision in the jungle, or you're in a city, there are a whole lot of similarities. You know, let's think through why we're doing everything and see if it makes sense, and if it doesn't, then let's get rid of it. Let's not do things just because a that's the way we've always done it, which is my all time most hated phrase, uh in the world. Or do it because it's it makes training easier. You know, if it's you, training is supposed to be fucking hard, right so and it shouldn't be. We shouldn't be doing

things because we want to make life easier on the instructors to evaluate. You know, Let's let's make it hard on the instructors to evaluate because you know, every time you do that, you're getting better yourself. So it was really just I mean, we wrote, we wrote every every class you know that we that we gave. We added a lot of things to it. Lengthden the course, which is where I thought I would get some resistance, but it never came, and we really were able to I think, you know, make some great improvements on the course on the urban Reconnaissance course. The Urban Sniper course was had been one of the favorite Yeah, the training events that I had gone through, right I you know, really, you know,

we'd look for ways to make that more realistic and relevant, and I think we think we did a pretty good job.

Kind of a sidebar, But the Army hosts like an international sniping competition basically every year, and the Marine Corps sometimes does well, but sometimes doesn't, you know, And what do you what makes you think makes people do better? And something like that, I mean, is it excuse me? Is it is that even like competition realistic at all?

Or I don't know, you know what I'm saying, because it's it seems like every year when someone comes out, I think Coast Guard won one year and everyone's like, oh, well, I thought the Marines were the best shooters, and everyone likes to talk shit to the Marines because they didn't win it or whatever. You know, what do you think keeps us from taking more wins?

And some stuff like that, I think, and not to knock you know, anybody that wins, but one of the things the Army particularly has the capability to do is, you know, identify who they're going to send to this competition and just let.

Them prepare for it for for a long time, you know, for six eight months. You know, that's they do that with the Best Ranger competition, you know, units will devote a lot of time and training and resources to two guys that they're going to send because they want to win. And I think, you know, units that are local to the area, you know, that have the opportunity to train, you know, kind of in the same you know, on the same ranges obviously have a leg up on the competition.

You know, there's there's a number of big sniper competitions throughout the US each year. The Army run your Hosts, Nash Reguard has a really really big one, and the Marine Corps we usually do pretty well, but not you know, it's it's rare that we we went it. We've lately Marsk's been sending teams that have have done done you know, top three uh in a lot of them. Uh. But I think it comes down to the amount of time that people have to the boat to training and and and how close the training replicates what's actually done in the competition.

Yeah. Have you Have you taken part in any of those competitions?

Not?

I think that only once I got to know. I was just talking to somebody about H and K put on a counter sniper competition that I took part in. Some I mean, it's back in the nineties up in near d C. And it was it was really a great opportunity because there were a lot of special operations units from the Canadians were there the bridge, but there was Capitol Police snipers, Secret Service snipers, and it was we didn't when we went up the Marine Corps. It was myself and another Marine named Dave Lynd, who's actually the guy who brought our parachutes over into Afghanistan for us later lost both of his legs in Commbat and does a great job still like working to support veterans, particularly disabled veterans. But him and I went up, and

the Marine Corps decided that if we were going to go up, they wanted us to shoot a new weapon that they were getting ready to field called the Designated Marksman Rifle, which was just really an En fourteen. So we went up, you know, got into a competition with weapons we never shot before, so we didn't do as well as as we might have. But overall, what I the thing I absolutely learned from it, and the reason that I'm always a huge advocate of that is any time you can be around you know, other people from different services, different countries, with different training methods, different you know, equipment, You're going to learn so much, you know, and that's that's what those things are really all about. You just

see different ways. You know, every time we send a team to a competition, they come back and they're like, you know, hey, you know these the Brits were doing this thing, or the Brits had this piece of gear, the Canadians were doing this. So it's it's a great, great opportunity to i mean with any craft, right, any anything that you're you're trying to become a master level at, you know, having a guild or whatever, having a guild meeting or a place where you can you know, kind of bump heads and and uh, learn new things is hugely valuable.

Yeah, especially because these are all i mean you're competing against you know, sister services and like international partners. So these are the people like you will probably work with in combat. So there's no reason not to like go and take the best ideas and bring them back home and promote them yourself. You know. I think one competition that's really cool is the Recon Challenge that they do every year. That looks like such a ballbuster. I mean, that's a pretty intense It doesn't get the notoriety that like a Best Ranger competition does. Do they do? Do they allow other services to send people to do the Recon challenge or No?

I don't think they do. I've never I'd hoped to make it out there this past year.

This year, it's only a couple of months ago, I think, right.

Yeah, yeah, to watch, and I'm really hoping to get out next year. It's relatively new. I think it's it's been going for less than ten years. Maybe I could be wrong on that, but it's it doesn't have the lineage that the Best Ranger competition has thirty years or more. But yeah, it's when I first retired, they were allowing retired recon marines to participate in it. I'd heard that they've stopped that, and I don't know that, you know, I want to embarrass myself anymore, but uh, I mean it's it's the beauty of that one is it is?

I mean it tests all of those skills that that we're supposed to be the you know, jacks of all trades at and if you're going to win, you've really got to be kind of up, you know, on your game. Across the board, and it's it's interesting because almost every time it's it's relatively older guys that win. I mean, guys who are well into their thirties. That I mean.

It's a whole lot of a lot of movement, a lot of endurance, and this the requirement to operate, you know, while you're tired, wet and cold and hungry, and you know when you get to the performance on demand, which is one of the you know, the requirements of being a reconnaissance brain.

I'm sure that maturity helps, you know, being a little older, have been around the game a little bit, you know how to you know how to when to turn it on and when to turn it off. You know, you can't sprint the entire competition, right, you know, so you got to know when to do those things. I've been lucky enough to know multiple people that have won it that I served with on two different eleventh MEW deployments.

Two of the two different recont attachments both have had guys that have gone and won the competition, which was really cool to kind of like see them in the paper and be like, oh shit, you know, I used to know that guy, like kind of deal with stuff now that's a big deal. I think it's cool. I really hope it gets bigger and I think it's cool.

The thing about like the Best Ranger competition is they allow all these other people to do it, but it's also it's like big enough where they have like corporate sponsors and stuff, and the winners get like, yeah, all kinds of stuff, like I think to give them a handgun they get, like optics they get, you know, just like knives, like all this stuff. There's like you know, which that's not why you're doing the competition to win the prizes, but that is kind of cool to know that, like, no, you won, you get this custom pistol, you know with the and all that.

But it used to be and what used to be televised on like ESPN two or what Okay I thought it was. And that was the requirement for that is that you just have to have gone through ranger school. So that was that was another one that I was trying to, you know, to find another because I had the chance to go to Ranger school many years ago, but uh, you know, to find another marine who was ranger qualified to do it with me, and you know, that opportunity never presented itself. But the Rangers absolutely, you know, they'll pick each battalion, will pick their guys very early and they get you know, they do nothing else but prepare, you know, and train and prep for that competition because to win it, you know, is you know, hey, second

battalion or whatever your battalion is is is a huge uh you know, huge bragging rights for the year.

Yeah, for sure, it's.

And the best The Ricon Challenge has has started to grow to that point. They the Marines that you know, do get some some pretty good prizes, but I do I feel like over you know, in the coming years, that's only going to get bigger and bigger. And it raises money for the Recon Foundation, which is obviously an awesome, an awesome thing.

Yeah.

I've been trying to push MARSOK to do something similar, but this hasn't happened yet.

Yeah. I really like that the Recon Challenge. They make a focus of it on you know, their following teammates, like everyone is racing in the name of someone else kind of deal.

Yeah, Yeah, I think that's that's very cool.

Yeah, the Ricon and Sniper communities are the best about maintaining their legacies and kind of like reinforcing that brotherhood, right like you said with the Recon Foundation. I mean I see them on social media all the time. They're always doing stuff for Gold Star families. They're always doing stuff for that community, and they really, like, I don't know, they keep that spirit alive. I think even for guys that aren't in the commu unity anymore, you know what I'm saying. And yeah, there's not many job fields or mos is in the military that kind of hold their brothers up like the Ricon and sniper communities do in the Marine Corps.

Yeah, absolutely. I have the the great honor to be on the Scout Sniper Heritage Foundation board. And you know, our latest, our kind of main focus is building at the Marine Corps Museum in Quantico a monument to the fallen Snipers. And it's that that the website Scout Snaper Heritage Foundation dot org. You can go on and buy a brick, you know, and dedicate it to somebody and that you know, funds for that will help you know, build this, uh, this memorial. But I think we've units the units that are hard to get into. You know, you just by virtue of the training, you develop a brotherhood they you know, extends long after after guys leave.

So there's there's just uh, you know, you know what every other guy's been through and to a you know, a more macro I guess, look at it. I mean, it's like being a marine. You know, you run into another marine, You've got a bond all right with with that that marine, regardless of when they served or how long they've heard there's ah, there's somewhat of a bond there, you know, but it's it's kind of diluted because we've spent a lot of marines over a lot of years.

You know, when you ramp that up a little bit to a very very tight knit small community that had to go through a lot to get where they were, then that you know, that bond is a lot tighter. You know, even if that marine was in Second Force Recon and you were in First Force Ricon, or they were in the third Battalian seventh Marines niper platoon when you were in uh, you know, fifth Marines. That's uh, I was shared MISERI I guess, yeah.

And I always thought it was interesting too, Like when I was in especially when I was on the mute and I worked with them more. The recon guys show a lot of respect to the battalion snipers even though they're not recon guys, because they know they're school trained snipers and they're like, these dudes are legit. You know a lot of them have been to the same course, and it's like we I don't know, it just kind of seems like they're they're kind of brought into the fold a lot easier than you see, like some of the other jobs and stuff that they work with. I will add, you know what I'm gonna I'll throw in the links for that for your website into the show description, so if people want to buy a brick and help

support that organization, they can do so. I think it's great stuff. I think again, I think the recon and sniper communities do such a good job. I remember when I was at campbella June, there was a there was a gun shop right there on not Western that highway was it seventeen or whatever that goes by the main gate.

There was like a gun shop and it was owned by a Marine sniper and they had like Marine sniper hats and stuff like that, but you couldn't buy anything unless you brought in your school shirt saying that you had been to sniper school. They were very much like, you can't wear any of this gear, you can't buy this hat. I thought that was really interesting. I was like, man, it's got to be tough for business sometimes. But I get while you're doing it, because I'm sure you guys run into a lot of people that were like, yeah as a marine sniper and you know, definitely not the case.

Yeah, absolutely, I mean there's a lot of that going around. I don't. I mean there are people that kind of make their their live uh you know, uh, spend their free time trying to discredit people, you know, for wearing a hat that they don't. I've got better ship to do with my time. I mean, if that's what's gonna you know, float your boat, you know, to to wear something that you don't deserve, then okay, you know I'm not gonna lose sleep over that. But yeah, it's it's it's curious, you know, I definitely, uh, you know, wonder you know what kind of what's going through your head, you know, what makes you feel that you know, wearing something is going to somehow or other, Yeah, kind of engender you to you know or I don't know. I

don't understand it.

Yeah, I mean have you do you know who Don Shipley is? You've heard of?

Yes? I think he's He's the stolen valor guy.

He's the Navy seal that does stolen valor checks. Like people will hit him up if they think this dude's lying about being a Navy seal, and he'll straight up call him up, be like, so, Bob, you said that you were a seal and you wanted to And I think that's pretty funny. And I think guys, there should be people like that calling people out. I don't get it, especially when it's it's like service members that served, but they did some other job, but they lie and say they did this other thing. They say they were a sniper, they say they're whatever, and it's like, bro, you were in the military, man, be happy with that. Like, yeah, the real world, most people have no idea what the difference is anyway, So why are you lying?

Yeah, it doesn't. I mean, it's just it doesn't make sense to me, you know, and there should be, you know, people doing that. I get, you know, I've had the good fortune to have worked at the Marslock schoolhouse since its inception. So I have a list of everybody who's ever graduated to become a Marine Raid. So I get I get hit up from time to time, Hey this, this guy's resume says he's he's this or that, and I'll absolutely, you know, replied, you know, hey, he's legit or he's not. You know, I'm not gonna uh or I don't have the time, I guess to go around hunting people down and belittling them in public.

You could be the don simple of the Marine Corps.

I could, you know. I just I said I don't, and I'm not discounting what he does, you know.

I think it's he made a job of it. He gets paid, Like people pay him on Patreon to do that. I don't think he does it. He used to do it for free when you yeah, but it became so so many requests that it was taking up a lot of his time and he's like, you know what, I'll do it, but you got to pay like fifty bucks or whatever it is on Patreon and then I'll look into it kind of deal, which I get, you know, but yeah, it's sad that that industry has to even exist.

Right, Yeah, I mean for us, we've only been in existence for sixteen years, so we've you know, we don't have that many people that have gone through, so it's relatively easy. You know, it seals I can imagine that there's you know, it's a little more than just you know, looking at a list, right, There's there's got to be some some detective work going into it. But yeah, I don't.

I think one of the the negative things it's become more common lately is is, you know, veterans looking for ways to to beat down other veterans for not being veteran enough, you know, or and I'm not talking about guys who are lying about things. I'm talking about guys who were you know, that's that Hey, you were you weren't this, so you're not as much of a veteran as I am. Or you weren't combat so you're not. Like, Man, we're pretty small, we're a pretty small, tight knit community.

Or we should be. You know. I think we could do a lot better, you know, lifting each other up than trying to kick each other in the balls every chance we get.

Yeah, but that's the veteran community though, right, That's just like that's like asking vets to watch a war movie and not point out things that are wrong. You know, it's just not gonna happen, like you know, like that's just the veteran community. They're gonna call people out. Unfortunately, they're gonna you know, denigrate people's service if they didn't do as much cool stuff. The thing I've always said on the podcast is there's always someone cooler than you are.

Doesn't matter what you ever did in the military. There's God, there's gonna be another person that did more cool stuff, did crazier stuff, did more dangerous stuff, you know. And if not, if you're the guy that did the most dangerous, most cool, most whatever, you're probably paying the price a little bit on the mental health side because of all the cool shit you saw, the dangerous things that you did, you know, that starts to eat away at you over time.

Yeah, there's there's there's no free lunch, you know, and there's that's another you know, especially in the special operations community, sniper community, the recon community. You know, I've I've had i think in the last two months for guys that I know that have have killed themselves. You know. That's uh, I mean, it's it's like hitting kind of epic proportions, you know, and it's you know, those are guys that I know personally, you know, that's not guys that I didn't know that well. So it's you know, there's definitely a price to be paid for people that that uh you know, kind of work at that at that level for extended periods of time.

Yeah, I don't get it. I don't get the suicide thing. I knew a guy, uh Major z Uppinger right recently committed suicide. And he was a he was our APSO on the MEW, or assistant opso on the MEW. Super good dude, one of the hardest workers on the MEW, beat up a lot by the more senior officers and shit, but that dude, you know, and before that he was at Lar and before that he was like an enlisted guy, you know. And you hear about someone like that killing themselves and you're just like, damn man, Like, I don't know.

I mean, I get if I'm like eighty and I have a terminal illness and it's like, well, the next six months of my life is gonna be laying in a bed suffering. That's one thing. But when you hear about guys that are like in their early thirties and they have a family and stuff. It's like, obviously everyone's situation is different and everything, but it's it just seems so permanent and like, I you know, I just don't get it. It's hard for me to wrap my head around.

You know. Yeah, I mean I'm in the same boat, but it's you know, it's something like last night, I had a marine that was out now that I spend time with as a Sabian just calling me up and like, hey, you know, what the hell can we do? You know, we've got to And that's that's been like these calls are coming increasingly, you know, there's I think people are at least starting to recognize that, I don't know, we got to figure something out, you know, because it's kind of hitting epidemic proportions. You know.

The problem is there's not really much you can do because once somebody makes that decision, like it's it's easy for them to do it. You know, it's much harder for you to identify it and stop it than it is for them to be sitting in their living room one day and go, you know what, fuck this, it's over, I'm done with this and pop, you know, or whatever however they decide to do it. It's like the best that we can do is just to remind people to reach out, you know, to other people, and not necessarily like if you're hurting, reach out to other people, but I want to. I always tell people like, you should be reaching out to guys you haven't talked to in a long time, just to say what's up, you know, shoot them at tax be like, hey man, been a while,

I was thinking about you today. Hope you're doing well, you know, and that that that text message may never get a response. They maybe don't want to be associated with the military or military people anymore. That's fine, but at least they know someone's thinking about them, or in a lot of cases, it may turn into a phone call that ends up being like a two hour phone call where you're reminiscing and catching up and thinking about stuff you haven't thought about in forever, and you know, really brightening somebody's day, you know, And it's not hard to do something like that.

Go ahead, Yeah, no, I definitely think that that's something we should do more of. And I was talking with another another former marine who was you know, frustrated with this and you know, one of the things that he brought up and I hadn't thought of it to this lens before. But you know, I call you and I think that maybe a year, Hey, I'm good. You know, I'm going to call you up and see how you're doing.

You know, I'm telling you how awesome my life is. Right, Oh no, I'm really good, man. I'm worried about you. You know, what are your problems? That's that's not the way that we do things in the military. You know, we bitch, we're especial marines. Right, You're not happy unless you're a vision. So one of the you know, the thing that he was talking about it that kind of hit me was like, you know, when I call you up, you know, I need to be willing, you know, to to kind of air someon of my dirty laundry too.

You know, Hey, my wife's my wife's on my last fucking nerve, my kids are assholes, my boss is a dick, whatever, Because you know that's that. You know, if I'm being vulnerable enough to you know, to say, hey, my life's not perfect, then that might entice you to, you know, say the same. But if I call you up and I'm like, hey, man, I'm great, but how are you.

Then you're gonna be like, oh man, yeah, I'm great too.

Yeah. So I think that's another way. I think that's another way where the Marine Recon Foundation and stuff, these organizations like that do a really good job because they're so well organized and they do enough people are sending them money and helping fund it that they can plan like reunions, and they can plan these things that bring people together, you know what I'm saying. Rather than hoping someone will reach out on their own and guys will, I think reunions and stuff should be a bigger focus of what guys do when they get out, you know what I'm saying, Like, Yeah, every once in a while, get together with the homies and see how everybody's doing and help each other out. You identify, Bob got out

and you know he's having a tough time. He got divorced and now he lost his job. Like that's a lot of red flags. Maybe we should bring Bob back into the fold and you know, help him along to get him back up on his feet so he doesn't feel all this external pressure of life. You know.

Yeah, and some units do that really well, you know, it's some of them, you know, a couple of two years ago, I think I flew out to Vegas for a First Force recon reunion and it's kind of wide open from you know, Vietnam guys to modern guys. And I mean I knew a handful of the guys, but there are a lot of people I didn't know. But it really doesn't matter, you know, once you sat down a drink of beer and start talking to you know, he it's cool to talk to a Vietnam era guy, but even guys that you don't know, you know, somebody that that that you know, it's probably a little more challenging.

And uh, you know thurb Attalian seven Breens, you know, because you've got a massive lineage, you know, many years, you know, tons of people. But I still think there's value in it and and use as you know, we're not joiners as much as we used to be, so like the b f w's or you know, full of full of old guys you know actually recently joined because I'm like, it's I feel like it's something that I should do. I still haven't actually been to one, but one of these days I'll get around to it. But you know, I mean there's one for the from the you know, from veteran perspective, you know, you know, throwing a little bit of money every year at an organization that does a lot to lobby for your you know,

your paying benefits and rights is a good thing. But it the you know, just getting to sit down with you know, it's it's kind of cool, you know, get to set down with with people from different errors or different moss and you know, the more you talk to them, the more you realize that you know, you should be you know, people should be proud of the service, regardless of what they did, you know, if you were an admin, chief, a recruiter, whatever, you know, I mean, they you're absolutely your service should be something that you're you're proud of and and but it doesn't have to define you for the rest of your life. You know. I think that's where people people run into mental issues is when they they're like, hey, the best of life has already passed

me by. You know, I'm thirty years old or you know, twenty five or forty, and you know, it's all downhill from here, all right. It's doesn't have to be you know, there's a lot of cool shit start podcasts right book, you know.

It's starting organization. Yeah, I mean, you're right. That's I think is a big issue that guys are like, yeah, I've peaked. You know, I'll never be this cool again. I'll never do those cool things that I did. It's unfortunate. I mean I've had the same kind of thoughts before where you're like where it's like, you know, even trying to if you're looking for a job in the real world, you kind of look at some of these jobs and it's like, why would I want to do that? You know this it feels below you almost because you've done all these other things. You're like this, I don't know.

I get I get I get people's frustrations and stuff. I just think the big thing that people need to be doing is just reaching out. You know, if you haven't talked to somebody in a long time, shoot him a text message, shoot him a call, shoot him an email, and just be like, hey, man, been a minute, I was thinking about you today. Hope you're doing well. You know, reach out if you ever need anything, and you don't know how that's gonna that could change somebody's life. You know, that could be the that could be the saving grace for someone. So let's move on to so we we didn't get too much. We talked about you getting into Depth one on the last episode at the end and working with Colonel Coats and you got to pull in

your own team and like build up a team and stuff. What what was different about screening guys to come into debt one compared to like screening guys to join a force recon platoon.

Ah, So you know, in a forced frecon platoon, I never had the opportunity to to pick you know, you were you kind of either joined the platoon as a young guy and stayed in that same platoon and kind of worked your way up the up the ranks, which is what I did. I joined the platoon, has started out as a point man, became a you know, an element leader, a team leader, and then you know, on the next next appointment, deployed as a team leader. And and you you know, probably fifty percent of the team of the platoon would still be there for the next deployment.

You know, you get some new guys, and new guys you would just get divviied up. You really wasn't a whole lot of thought put into who's going to what team, you know, unless they had a particular skill, right, so like this guy's jump aster, you don't have one, you know, you're gonna get him here. We were starting from scratch, so it was it was but we were picking from largely known quantities. So we were picking from the kind of the cream of the crop within within Force Recon and primarily from within First Force Recon because that's that's where all of us mostly came from. So that's kind of who we knew. So it was, uh, you know, we could have anybody that we picked, but they had to be you know, we could pick a guy who

was in the work up for a deployment and it was already already kind of locked in, So there was there was some restrictions, like I said, but we also looked at guys who had recently gotten out. And I wound up with with two guys on my team that were out of the Marine Corps. So he called them up and say, hey, hell's life treating you? You want to come back in? And both of them had gotten out before nine to eleven, you know, and now they were you know, one of them was working at Low's. I think one of them was.

Uh, that's what I'm talking about, the Heart store, and they were like, yeah, absolutely, yeah, working at Lows. You know, you look at that and you're like, oh, like working at Low's. You know, but that's that's a real world job outside of the military, you know, like, yeah, that's they probably loved that phone call.

Yeah. Yeah. There was I think a total of four that we contacted, and three of them you know, kind of dropped everything came back in. The fourth guy wanted two, and I think it became an ultimatum with the wife. Hey, you know, it's it's either me of the Marine Corps and Shoe won out, and that probably for the best.

Yeah, because she's there forever supposedly right, and the Marine Corps only temporary. Everybody gets out at some point.

Yeah.

Yeah. Now when you guys now the team's formed up, you guys are kind of I mean, were you building TTPs, were you building out, did you have a were you building towards a specific mission, or were you guys just kind of getting a general, like, I don't know, kind of structure to yourselves while the mission itself was still being developed.

Yeah, the latter so we had no idea where we were deploying, you know, how we'd be employed, you know, what missions we're going to be given. I think looking at kind of reading the tea leaves, we decided that we thought we would go to Afghanistan and we thought that we'd be doing primarily reconnaissance missions. So we spent a lot of time training in place like Bridgeport in the mountains, doing kind of austere environments, doing long range for reconnaissance missions, focusing on that. And while we were I think it was one of the trips, we were in Bridgeport and we received word our colonel coach maybe got pulled back and they decided that we were going to go to Iraq and uh we would be operating

as a task unit underneath a Navy Seal Task Group. So that kind of changed, you know, once we got back to Camp Pendleton from that that training mission, we just relooked at everything and realized that going there we were going to be primarily tasked with direct action raids. So we went hot heavy into preparing for that.

How much shooting were you doing to prepare for that? Like were you shooting weekly, you know, a couple times a month, like how what did it look like? How many? How many rounds you think guys are putting putting into targets?

Wow, So we we ran was pretty close to a standard kind of forcere con training work up. I think we shot more. I think we over span of about eight weeks, I think we probably you shot about ten thousand rounds per man of five five six, probably half that of forty five just I mean day, every the first couple of weeks, just every day, all day on the range, you know, getting really really good and busting off all the rust at fifty meter and in one hundred meter, in with the rifle, shooting you know, shooting with gas mask on, shooting with night. And then once we kind of reached the point where we're happy there, then we started going into the shootouse. And those days you'll shoot a lot less obviously, because you you know,

there may be a target in the room, there may be multiple targets in the room, but not everybody that enters the room will you know, we'll be able to engage on a target. So we tried to set up you know, it's just through weeks of scenarios, you know, so some of us would go in and set up the house and we would bring in some outside instructors as well, you know, other teams would go through clearic.

Then we set it all up, you know, mix it up, do it again, and just you know, cycle after cycle after cycle until you get to the point where it's it's uh, I mean, it doesn't matter what's going on, you know in the building, in the room, you know, how you have to get through a whether you're going in a door or window, through a wall, through the roof, if there are hostages not hostages and non sheet targets IEDs inside the building. You know, you just have seen everything so many times that it kind of becomes a battle drill.

Yeah. Now for something like that, that's obviously extremely dangerous training, you know, and you have to like ease your way into it. But I think if you're getting to the point where you're shooting twelve twelve hundred rounds a week of out a different platform, you're probably getting pretty good at working with your gun and stuff like that. Did anyone did you guys lose anyone, Like, did anyone to get dropped from the team because of like safety issues inside the house or was that or did you guys do a pretty good enough job screening on the front end where none of the guys weren't ever kind of considered dangerous or you know what I'm saying, Like, did anybody get dropped for that? Or was everybody already pretty

good coming in?

Yeah, everybody had been through probably at least two or three of the Special Operation Training Group shooting packages previous to this, so we knew that everybody was had done it before and had the capability to do it. We, like I said, we were bringing in, you know, just we had the money right to bring in kind of big names in the shooting world to help us improve our skills. We brought Larry Vickers out, who was you know, helped us change the way that we kind of looked the things. So there wasn't there were a few occasions, I think. So we we have a policy at forcet Riecan and the platoons that I went through that if you miss, uh, you shoot a target outside of the kill zone when you're going through a house, or if

you shoot a somebody that's not supposed to be shot. Right, there's a there's a hill behind the house, steep, really really steep hill that has a big cross at the top of it. It's called hostage hill. And if you you shoot one, you know, you get one, right you And at the end of the day and all your kit, you've got to run up that hill and write your name on the cross. You know. I had done it, you know, during my first shooting package, going into a room.

And so the targets that we would shoot at that point were mostly just paper paper targets, cartoon type targets. But they would have their hand would be empty, which you could put a sticker on there that was a noosy, right, or you could put a sticker that's a bottle of coke or a movie camera. And then so they had a lot of a lot of these stickers that looked a whole lot like guns. Like it might be a hair dryer, but it's black. Right. There's a lot of so you really had to pay attention. And and the reason for that is because you know, you're train or your the way your mind works, you come into a room expecting there to be a bad guy. And I think that's a lot that's you know, it goes to a lot of the reason why there's a lot of

like law enforcement involved, you know, shootings of people that have a wallet in their hand, right, They're just they're not you know, they don't have the time or the money or the ammunition to train them to a level that they probably you know, would be nice to train them to. So, yeah, one of the first rooms I went into, I looked and I saw a gun, and I shot the guy, and uh, you know, then after we finished and come back and realized that it was a monkey rancher, it was something else entirely, so, so I had paid my price of going up the hill.

I think we had, you know, one or two guys who had had to make the track, but uh, you know, for the most part, everybody were no problem qualifying to the standard that we that we held them to, which was pretty uh you know extensive. Yeah, I mean really like a three by five, you know in the head and in the chest that where all your rounds had to be, you know, with rightful pistol from like I said, shooting on the move, shooting multiple targets. It's just it was some of the best we were. We were at the most highly trained I had certainly ever been, and I think, you know, I would have I would have put us up against anybody at that point in time.

Yeah, Robert Keller and Tom Satterley are both Delta guys, and they've come on this and they talked about, you know how everyone thinks that you're gonna go to Delta and you're gonna get the peek behind the curtain and it's gonna be all this crazy like training and da da da da da, And they're like, the reality is, it's all brilliant in the basics. You know, They're like, we spend five hours at the range doing nothing but unholstering a pistol and doing dry fire, you know, just to get used to unholstering the pistol and pulling the trigger, side alignment, site picture, and the whole point of it is you get to the point where you can shoot at anything in a room and hit it while also scanning ahead and seeing what you have to do next,

looking at hands, looking at like, you know, identifying those things in the hands so you're not accidentally shooting someone holding a you know, a black blow dryer or something like that. Is that kind of the same with you guys? Do you think where it's like you just consistently it just has to be consistently good at the basics to get to this level of what the Marine Corps advertises as surgical shooters. You know what I'm saying.

Yeah, absolutely, I think the and I've seen this, the the higher level or you know tier that you go up, the people are just you know, absolutely fanatical about the basics, right, you know, commission planning, you know, pre combat inspections and checks, rehearsals, you know, just you're doing it not until you get it right, but doing it until you can't get it wrong.

You know. It's really the thing that we would hear, the kind of mantra we would hear over and over again. You know, there's you know, most special operations are you know, are really that way because they you know, you can't afford to screw them up. All Right, There's political sensitivity, there's there's obviously physical risk, there's deniability, there's all these other things. But the skills that it takes to execute it are the basic skills of the infantryment, right for the most part. Right, there's obviously some some things layered on top of those, but that's the thing that you don't start layering other things on top of it until you've got a solid foundation and being able to shoot, move, communicate, medicate.

Yeah, no, yeah, I agree with you there. So let's talk about the actual deployment itself then. So you guys get the team ready, you get trained up, ready to go. What did they end up saying, like, here's our mission and here's where we're going, and I guess kind of going to.

It from there, right, So we'll we were, like I said, we were going to Iraq and we were going to work underneath maybe Seal Task Group. So it's uh T G one, the Task Group one, and underneath them we were Sealed Task in it raider. So we're drawing our lineage, you know, back to the World War II raiders. We were assigned our area was going to be in Bagdad, kind of co located with the Task Group. One of the things that really had set us apart when we built Attachment one was that we had in addition to the roughly thirty of us that made the kind of the shooter platoon, we had about another thirty intel marines and these you know, from geospatial intelligence, human intelligence, signals intelligence,

and got all source fusion. We had an amazing intelligence apparatus, uh and then apart from that, we had some communications guys, some administrative guys, some mechanics logistics guys, but we were really heavy on intel. So when we got into Iraq, the Seals who were the commander of the task groups and you know, I'm gonna take some of your intel and spread and spread the wealth basically, because that wasn't the way the Seals operated. So the Seal teams were kind of flung across Iraq without that capability of intelligence that we had, and we had it in a kind of in spade, all right. So for my team, I had my own human intelligence guy, my own scand guy and uh GEO and guy. So the commander was like, hey,

we're going to spread the wealth a little bit. So we lost a lot of our capability. So we weren't able to start fighting the way that we trained because these assets were taken away from us. But and of course we were pissed at that. But one of the things that had quickly come to realize was that we now had our intel guys like embedded, you know, all across Iraq. So and these guys were all talking and I think, you know, very quickly we had the best intelligence picture you know, in the country, right, So we had guys working with you know, O g as uh In in the green zone in Bagdad. We had guys attached you know, all over the place, so the you know, they were just chatting back and forth about you know,

things they were seeing, and it really allowed us to develop a really really good intel picture that that led to our ability to start targeting high value targets pretty quickly.

Now were you guys Now, Well, one, that's kind of wild that the Seals, you know, you would come in with a lack of intelligence assets into a combat zone like that, because that's you know, intelligence drives operations, right, So that's kind of funny.

But when yeah, I went, well, I wouldn't say that they came in. They came in the way that they always came in, you know. But when we showed up and we had this, you know, we had been deployed with a like an unheard of yeah capability, and I think they just recognized that, Hey, let's you know, and I don't you know, I said, and then I did.

Now I don't fault them for it. The commander, uh, you know, made his decision to employ his forces as as he saw a fit. So so no no heartburn about it. And like I said, ultimately it wound up certainly planning into our favor.

Yeah. Now, when you talk about going forward and doing these missions take out you know, different high value targets or whatever, it was the majority of that in uh DA raids, direct action raids, or were you guys on any kind of like sniper missions, like, well what did that look like?

Yeah, the preponderance was direct action raids, So using uh you know, sources that or human intelligence guys developed or signals intelligence captures to identify when in where people were going to be, you know, hitting them in the middle of the night, grabbing them and then we're obviously grabbing all of this stuff around them, so computers and cell phones and information papers and you know, handing all that over the intel guys who would pour through it all and figure things out and come up with more targets.

And that's really the way that you know, you know, ops and intel or drive each other all right. So you know, we'd hit a target, find some stuff, they'd figure some things out, give us another target, and we just kind of star stuff like that. And that was the bulk of what we did. We did have a couple of opportunities to do some kind of longer duration sniper coalition support operations. I led one in the Joff in two thousand and four, which just the other this past week was the twentieth anniversary of the battle in the Joff, which seems seems wild wild to me. But yeah, and that was a you know, opportunity to reflect back on all of the skills that I was teaching guys in the urban sniper course and put them all to use.

You know. It wasn't uh uh and and validate in some cases, you know, unvalidate things that I thought we were right. But it was a really unique opportunity. And you know, I was we were thinking back to you know, big urban sniper battles had really not occurred since like Leningrad, you know, Stalingrad. So it was thinking back to things that we'd read snipers that we'd read about back then and saying, hey, let's try this out. Let's try these things out. And so it was a that was a really cool uh time.

Yeah, It's Najaff is interesting because people don't really talk about that place very much. It's not like one of the big names like Ramadi Fallujah, you know, bagged out.

Yeah, it happened. It happened right before Fallujah, So I think that's that's probably why the Fellujah was kicking off, you know, as that was ending, and it wound up not not being as big of a fight as it could have been because largely due to the Special Operations sniper teams, you know, of which we were apart, but the Seals had sniper teams there. The Army SF their coalition partners, the Polish were really big and we were able to move in and kind of ring the the big mosque in the Jaff while the Battalion Landing Team one four, I believe, was off in the cemetery, the biggest cemetery in the world, this massive, insanely man almost like a little city with tunnels and tombs and you know, narrow passageways and things like that, and there was some

intense fighting in that, but the bulk of the at least the brains of the of the outfit, the Mahdi Army, were located inside the mosque. And because the mosque was the the third holiest site for Shia's, it's like absolutely could not be damaged. So the because of that there was only precision fires allowed kind of been a like a ten block radius of that, and so we were, like I said, sniper's primarily were allowed, and uh, we were able to over the course of a couple of weeks trip a large percentage of the UH at least the leadership of the force. And and that ultimately left led to them kind of turning their weapons in and and quit quit in the fight.

That's a very clean way of saying that he went out and sniped a bunch of dudes trip their leadership. Yeah, I got to that point in the book, and you know they you said, or they said in the book that what you you know, explain like conventional forces are only allowed within a certain range of it because of the sensitivity of the actual mosque. You don't want to you know, it's obviously I'd be an international incident if you drop like a j dam or something on that there. Yeah, because I think you said it was like the third holiest site within with the within the religion. Yeah, I mean, but in the book he said when they brought you guys in, they they allowed obviously more flexibility, but they

also warned you, like, hey, if you go beyond this point, you're kind of on your own. You know, you have to be extremely careful. Can you kind of explain that? And I mean, how do you how do you set yourself up in an urban area like that without one getting identified? You know what I'm saying, It's very easy.

Like people in their mind they see like sniper movies or whatever, and it's like a guy got into the house and he set up the little cloth and he you know, set up in the window and he's ready to go. The reality is you got to take over someone's compound and then do all this set up without anyone around knowing. And that's not an easy task. So how do you How did you make that happen?

So in this case, the city was largely empty, right, all of the non combatants had fled, which which helped out immenseally. So we were able to jump in the back of a bradley and have the army, you know, the one seven I think cavalry drive us up as far as they were permitted to go, and you know, they dropped us off, and that's that's kind of what they told us. They're like, hey man, we can't go any further than this. So if you guys get hit, you know, make your way back here. So we did this, of course at night, middle of the night, and you know, let them move off and then just kind of made our way on foot to h you know, you would you satellite imagure to pick out a big building, and there weren't a ton of really tall buildings. You know,

it's always it's a mistake to get into the highest point of the highest building because that's the obviously the most likely place for a sniper to be. But you want you to obviously need to be somewhere high enough that gives you good advantage points. So we picked a building that looked like it had been a hotel or an apartment building. It was largely empty, but we we moved into that and the thing that you you don't really think about is you've got to clear you know, every single floor of this building as you go up, which is uh, you know, time consuming and tiring, a right, So we spent half the night, you know, just clear in this building, making sure that it was it was secure up to the top, and then you know, figuring

out ways to put like earning early warning devices down below, and then from the roof myself and another marine moved up onto the roof again at night, just to get the opportunity to uh be there when the sun came up to see the see what was going on. And you know, roofs are tricky to shoot from, you know, you you you know, if you're not in the tallest building, then obviously there's room for somebody to look down on you, and you're you're relatively exposed. So in this case, the roof had a like a lip, you know, a pretty pretty tall lip on it with with uh little drainage holes knocked out. They were were pretty well suited for us to be able to see what we needed to see and remain pretty well concealed. And you know, when

the while we were doing that, our marines were the rest of the team were down in the rooms below doing doing that setting up urban hides, all right, so you know, find them a way to get far enough back in the room where your your muscles not sticking out, somebody can't see you back in the shadows these rooms.

You know, in a perfect world, we would have had curtains to observe through or shoot through, but there were no curtains in any of the structures, so you really couldn't add your own right, So it really just came down to setting up the best position that we could and then you know, being you know, picking from there, picking the next position. So we would move every night, you know, to another another building. Uh. Ultimately we got to about a block and a half from the mosque and we're able to Yeah, like I said, take care of a lot of targets in and around it that you know, led to a pretty successful operation.

How did that work? Though? I mean, so what are the roe's in that kind of situation? Or do you have like do you have like a list of individuals that you're looking for with like imagery so you know who they are? Or are you looking just for you know, so called nefarious activities? Like how does and before you shoot, are you, as a guy on the roof and you see something, can you just shoot? Or are you requesting permission every time? You know? Like how does that work?

Yeah, in this situation, like I said, the bulk of what we consider non combatants were expected to be gone. So there's a a term that's like a legal term. I guess when an area or a target site or whatever it is declared hostile. That there's you can shoot anybody without provocation, and this anybody in and around the mosque was declared hostile. I nearly nearly everybody was, you know, walking around there was carrying a weapon. You know, not all of them, but you know, for the most part they were, and anybody who was, you know, walking around wash it was pretty easy to identify that they were up to no good. I guess, so there wasn't there wasn't a requirement to notify anybody or ask for permission.

We just had the opportunity to engage as targets presented themselves.

As that as you know, has that happened? How did their pattern of life change? Because now they know after a couple of guys started getting smoked, they're like, oh shit, you know, we're being watched by snipers. You know, I imagine the way they moved around and exposed themselves became a little bit trickier for you guys.

Yeah, absolutely they were. The first morning was was kind of open season because they were they knew were smart enough to know that that we were limited on how close we could get. Uh. They What they didn't know is that, you know a bunch of snipers had just rolled into town. So the first morning when sun came up, they were just kind of walking down streets, you know, unaware and relatively uh, you know, very little security, very little tactical countermeasures or anything of that nature. That changed, you know, as soon as we started dropping bodies and they became more wary, they started, you know, moving back to They quickly and you know, they're not dumb people at all. They you know, quickly moved back and realized that, hey,

you know, they can't see us back here. You know, we're safe. You know, we're safe here. And then of course of that night we would move forward, you know, and then the sun would come up again. And that took a couple of days for that to sink in. You know, that we weren't stationary, and they really did not like to move at night at which was you know, obviously we were prepared, you know, the work either way, but we very little, very little movement at night, at least initially. A little bit later on, I think they thought that that was a better way to get around, and we were able to, uh, we had a couple of j tax with us that you know, and so there were sometimes when we were able to bring in sif uh Siff cast on on targets, especially at night,

as long as it was deconflicted and far enough away from the mosque.

Yeah. Now, this was if I remember the timelines correctly, this is before that marine sniper team got ambushed and killed. Correct or the dudes came into their hide at night and took out you know what I'm talking about. Yes, that may have happened in five or six, I could be.

I'm pretty sure it was. That was after that.

Now, my question is, was that ever a concern that, you know, someone could come in, like you guys are focused on sniping guys and you're moving and all this stuff. Was there ever a concern like of being like ambushed, overrun, someone sneaking in on your positions because you know, you're talking about being on top of a hotel or something like that. There's a lot of space in that hotel for dudes to maneuver through with that you've ever known about it?

Yeah? Yeah? We For one, we had a relatively large team. I think I had eight or nine guys, so we were, you know, rotating through providing security for a while. We were able to borrow some soldiers from the one seven Cave that helped us out provide in security. But you know, one of the things that early on we started putting our heads together and came back to, was, you know, put putting broken glass, you know, taking big floress and light bulbs and breaking them, you know, on the stairs so that somebody coming up has got to make some noise, you know, a trip you know, you trip wires and things like that, coke cans on a you know, a string with a trip wire. So we used a lot of really old school techniques. I mean, nowadays there's there's

a lot of you know, very small sensors and uh cameras and things like that that that people can use. But it was very very low tech. But fortunately it was never nobody ever tried to come up.

No one ever tried to push your position or anything. That's good now now coming from this, I mean that's obviously it sounds like you guys did a lot of actual sniper work there. Did you Were there any lessons learned from that, from that kind of deployment, from that kind of engagement that you brought back and and and spread, you know, the word to other sniper teams within the Marine Corps. Or military in general.

Yeah, absolutely, we uh we came back and I had been before we left, as I had spent time, Like I mentioned, there's a sniper instructor. I had spent probably more time than their average force Riekon guy had in a sniper platoon before I got to Force Recan. So I was kind of tagged as the lead sniper for the unit. So when we got back, we had just did the same thing, you know, started just capturing all of the information. Particularly you know, use of periscopes was something that that had fallen out of favor. You know, that was big, you know in World War Two among snipers.

You know, it's it's almost you know, you don't see a sniper running around without a periscope anymore, right, Your ability to to see without being seen is crucial. We had gone into Iraq with among the first optics, with a Horus vision Radical, and it's just a completely uh you know, the Marine Corps snipers had always been very, very big on the Inutal scope and the Radical and the Inerdal scope. That's like sacrilege to say that there's anything else. But before our deployment, we had run into some some uh at a trade show a guy named Todd Hoten who's since then has really become like the go to guy in the world a long range shooting.

But he was working with this company called Horrors Vision, and they had the guy that ran the company had developed a new way of putting a radical pattern and a scope you know, much more busy, but you know, a whole lot going on, but it provided the ability to to rapidly re engage targets, to you know, do a better job of range determination, to uh, you know, more quickly bring follow up shots or shoot on moving targets.

And with that he had built at the time it was a little palm pilot with a ballistic programming and so you could kind of go through and let it do the math for you. Uh So we came back with that it's really the only snipers in the Marine Corps who would use this technology, and that has become absolutely ubiquitous across the Marine Corps now. So now the scopes that are the are issued come with that that radical pattern and the software is kind of in use everywhere.

So that was one of the and that's one of the you know, a great demonstration of how a special operations unit can you know, test things out on a proof of the concept on a small scale and then you know, hand it over to conventional forces for use. So we have on that deployment, Uh, I mean everything from you know, we actually rebuilt the Fizzbee kit that I was talking about, the full spectrum metal equipment kit, you know, with lighter plates, you know, better plates whould stop more hits of of a p I AMMO, new optics suppressors on our you know, the MPO. So just so many things that we were able to take from other soft units or things that we had access to because we were under Special Operations Command and you know,

transfer those when we got back to the to the Marine Corps and a lot of those things were in use.

Now were you guys using the at the time.

We had man, I should know this. We I don't know if we had to be money had a three. We didn't do a lot of shooting. So we with the forties because we took SR twenty five's or the Mark eleven five five or seven six to two gas gun. But I mean it looks like an M four just bigger, so suppressed night armament rifle. And we were the first guys to deploy with those as well within the Marine Corps.

So that's that's where we put those, the horse vision radicals on and we carry those almost exclusively. The Sasser. We used a little bit the fifty cow sniper rifle and we took although it didn't get a whole lot of use. A four to eight shy Tech Intervention sniper rifle was just a massive four eight round that was absolutely accurate to a mile at least, but it was it's just too big and cumbersome for most of the We weren't shooting that far, you know. Most of our shots were within a couple hundred meters.

It's crazy the when you think like rifle tech, you're like, oh, these can't get any better, like we're at the peak, and then it's just this new it's just constant got the constant like improvement of optics of like you said, the ballistic computers of like just the different things that you can do to make the rifle more accurate. To the point now where they have what do they have?

What are they trying to say? Like, you know, you have scopes that will adjust the radical as you're looking at a target, and so you always put the radical on the target, you know, where normally you would offset for range, for win and all that, and it does the math for you and puts the radical so you just put it center every time, like I don't know, it's just crazy.

And that's what combat does, you know, especially twenty years. I mean there's just you innovation after innovation after innovation. So I mean the absolutely a lot of downsides to twenty years of war, but there's there's there's also massive you know, leap leap aheads in in in what we're capable of.

Do you think do you think now you know, we look at the war in like Ukraine and you know and Azerbaijan and stuff like that, where these drones are becoming or are like huge parts of it. Is it slowly like negating the need for like a sniper because it's doing a similar job where it's finding targets and taking them out with pin point precision, or I mean it's got to be kind of a weird world right now for recon and snipers, you know, to kind of find their way in this world that drones and stuff are kind of taken.

Over, right Yeah, absolutely, I mean that's the Marine Corps thinks. So because they've done away with the sniper platoons. But yeah, it absolutely forces us to rethink, you know, everything. But I think, you know, people said the same, you know, when night vision came around, they said the same. There's always been a requirement for you know, guys with boots on the ground to get eyes on a target and identify it. I don't know that that'll change. Absolutely the way that we do it will change. You know, there's obviously a lot more use of a manned aerial you know vehicles by reconnaissance teams to better scout, getting better clarity and precision and you know things like that, and the ability to target particular individuals. But yeah, I don't

I don't know that that requirement will ever go away. You know good you know, hard men that are well trained and ready to get close to the bad guys.

Yeah, yeah, I remember. I mean we kind of opened Pandora's box right when we started using like switchblade, you know, that was I remember when that was a thing in Afghanistan. For those that don't know what that is, It's like a little handheld pop out drum. It pops out, shoots out and a guy controls it and it basically has like a grenade on the end of it that they just fly. It's a Kamakazi drone And that was kind of the first I'd ever heard of that, And now it's just so commonplace with all variants of drones everything from I remember Isis was using DJI drones that they had crafted like a device on the bottom to drop mortar rounds or drop grenades into into positions and stuff.

To you know, now we're using this first person viewing drones that were like what you would see is like racing drones a couple of years ago, are now being attached with weapons system I saw a video I posted a video on my Instagram page the other day where they they dropped two anti tank mines from a drone and I'm like, man, you gotta think the lift of that drone to even be able to carry something like that.

And I don't know. I mean, I think it's good because it keeps guys from you're taking You're pulling people away from the danger. You know, you're allowing the drone to go forward and do something rather than sending a person that could get killed. But at the same time, I also don't like watching videos where they're smoking dudes, or they're they're like almost teasing them with the drones and stuff before they kill them. Or you got guys that are just like these drone operators that are like really lax a day's goal about it. You know, they're almost like they're playing a video game and it's it's a game to them. It takes away the humanity of it, which is kind of weird. I don't know, it's a it's a very weird situation we're finding ourselves in right now,

you know, Yeah.

It is, and I think you know, one of the interesting things used to be that when it came to you know, guys or gals with with PTSD, you know, obviously the closer you were to the target, the more likely you were to have that right. You know, pilots rarely did because they were at a large offset, you know, and they didn't really see the kind of the carnage, I guess. But you know, since you know, drone pilots now are become very susceptible to it. So, I mean, you're setting in a in a room. There's a movie, it's not a very good movie, but it's on Netflix right now called The Land of bad and it's like two of the non thor Hemsworth brothers are in it, and it's uh a drone, you know, drones are flying

around for the special operations scene that's on a mission, and uh, you know they've come to realize they drone pilots back in the States are getting PTSD from from you know. Uh, there are operations you know, in a much different way than than fighter pilots ever were. So it's it's really, you know, an unusual dynamic that we're seeing and you know, having you know, I think that the military as a whole has looked at, you know, how do we recruit people specifically to do this thing?

You know, recruiting video gamers that have killed zillions of people in a video game. You know, does that translate to, uh, you know, are we fucking up a new generation of of people?

I don't know, maybe maybe. I mean I think we used to kind of like tease, like, uh, if someone was a drone operator and said they had PTSD, you'd be like, okay, bro, must have been rough walking out of your trailer in Vegas and going to the casino. But then when you kind of think about it, you're like man, if this dude's involved in actually like striking and killing people, it's got to be weird to get off work. I just smoked a couple of terrorists. Now I'm gonna get off work and go home and have dinner with my kids. You know, like you're you're living in two worlds at one time.

Yeah. One of the things with and that's like a proven tactic, right when to bring a unit home from combat to have a what they were calling third location decompression, you know, bring them this to someplace as a stopover. You know, in Vietnam, they'd like take you to Thailand or whatever and tell you to just run wild for you know, in Bangkok for a week, but someplace. So there was a step between being in combat and being at your house. The for the drone guys, they obviously don't have that, but they also and I kind of like made fun of it as well. But then when you start realizing that some of these people are you know, a drone that's loitering watching an objective for weeks, you know, looking for a guy. So you're seeing the kids coming

and going to school, You're seeing the all of the activity that goes on and and when you're looking at somebody that doesn't know you're looking at him, you know, you kind of you're you're not seeing the bad guy necessarily, and it doesn't mean that they're not a bad guy and don't deserve to die, but you know, you're you're seeing them taking a shit, You're seeing them, you know, make breakfast for his kids, whatever he's doing. So it definitely puts a whole new spin on it. Then I don't think we're Yeah.

We did a strike one time when I was with three six and we followed this guy for like you're talking about. We followed him for a long time and we were waiting for him to stop. He was on a motorbike and we're like, all right, when he stops the vehicle, we're going to do the strike. And he drove it back to his house and like parked out front and was doing something. And while he was like parking it and getting off, you know, the jay attack and everything's working it and give them clearance and they shoot the hellfire missile and as the missiles on the way, you see this kid's dad or this dad his kid come out of the house kind of like, oh, dad's home, you know, come out of the front door and da da da, and then boom, he gets smoked right in

front of him. And initially we thought we hit the kid. Also, we're like, oh, my opso, I remember my opso going fuck, did we just kill a kid? And you know, we're all sitting here like oh fuck, and we're watching for a second. We didn't. We didn't hit the kid. But it was just like none of us felt good about that, you know what I'm saying. Like the dude deserved to get struck. His kid did not deserve to see his dad get fucking blown up right in front of him, you know what I'm saying.

Yeah. Plus, we were gonna be killing that kid in ten or fifteen years, you know.

Because of that. Yeah, he's now radicalised for sure.

Yeah if he wasn't already, and he probably was, but but yeah, that's that's that's the nature of the Beast, I guess.

Yeah, man, John, it's been a great episode. I really appreciate having you on. Everybody needs to go check out your book, Tough Rugged Bastards. We're gonna have to do another episode because I know we've just scratched this. I have a million other questions I want to ask you, but we're over two hours already. Where can people find the book?

The book is by this time you see this, The book is out and it's available wherever you buy books, absolutely on Amazon or Barnes and Noble or Books and Allion. Bookstores may or may not have it, but they can order it if you order it for you. So yeah, I appreciate you. Pick up copy if you like it, leave a good review or leave a bad review, whatever you want to do.

Do you do? You sell them? You have your own website, right, you sew them on your own site too, or.

No, I don't. You can link to it. So I have the website jadaily dot com. There there's there's links that'll take you to to all of those places.

Okay, nice, all right, Well people do that. I think they had to check it out. It's a really interesting book. And I'm glad I've seen you go out on a couple other podcasts. Now I see you're kind of making the rounds, and I'm glad people are picking up your story and and I'm hoping you're getting some traction there and getting the support from the community that you deserve.

And then everyone can check out my website jacramographics dot com. My instagram is Former Action Guys and Former Action News and that's it. Man I really appreciate the combo.

Absolutely thanks for having me

Ep. 217 | John Dailey | MARSOC Det 1 Chief Sniper

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