Transcript of Navy SEAL Operator: From 9/11 to Fighting ISIS | Joe Taverner

Hey everyone, this is episode 410 of The TeamHouse. My name is Jack Murphy and we are here with our guest today, Joe Taverner. He is a former Navy SEAL, joined the Navy in 1999, served in SEAL Team One with deployments to Afghanistan, Iraq, Asia Pacific theater, and all the way up to the battle against ISIS in around 2018, 2019, and now works in the private sector working on directed energy defense systems and other cool gadgets. We're going to talk all about that stuff in this interview. Joe, thank you for joining us.

Yeah, thank you. Glad to be here.

So, Joe, the first question I always ask about your origin story, if you can tell us a little bit about, you know, your upbringing and why you joined the Navy. I mean, 1999, America is supposedly at peace during this time frame.

Yeah, that's exactly what it was. And, you know, just still growing up, for whatever reason it was, you know, I didn't grow up in a military family. I had an uncle in Vietnam. My brother had done, you know, 4 years as a Seabee in the Navy and did everything he could to convince me not to join and what a horrible idea it was. But for, you know, just the growing up, I really felt the desire to do my part, put in whatever time it was going to take. And kind of, you know, I just felt it was partially kind of my responsibility to serve back to the country, you know, that has protected us and done everything for us. So at the same time, I'd grown up as an athlete, you know, ran cross-country and track all the way through high school, college, and liked kind of the small unit, the teams, the small group that that is, and work together, count on each other. So when I kind of decided, yeah, I'm gonna enlist, I'm gonna serve after college, I wanted it to be with a great group, a great team, and, you know, unit that I could count on to be there.

So I enlisted in July of '99 after I graduated in June with a contract to go to BUD/S. So I went through boot camp, A school, and then immediately checked into BUD/S January of 2000.

Where did, you know, I'm just curious, you know, growing up in the 1990s, how did you even know about the Navy SEALs? How did that come up on your radar as a young man?

Well, so I spent 3 years as an engineering major, but graduated with history. So I'd always loved history. I loved reading a lot. I read a lot of Vietnam books, World War II, and just through kind of, avid reading and just research on history. I had learned about, you know, both the Army as well, but for whatever reason, it was the SEAL teams that kind of resonated a little bit more, right? Resonated a little bit more. And so that's the direction I decided to go.

So tell us a little bit about, you know, if I'm looking at my notes here, were you at BUD/S when 9/11 happened?

No, when 9/11 happened, I was, we were doing a workup. I was actually up in San Clemente. We were doing assault training at Camp Pendleton and woke up in the morning and turned on the news and the first tower had already been struck. And I'm sitting there watching the news trying to figure out like, what's the deal? What's going on? And watched the second plane impact the second tower and knew the second that that happened that everything just changed, that the training we were doing, everything got very real very quickly.

What kind of orders or what kind of information was coming down from higher to you guys at the team level, at the platoon level?

Yeah, it was— there wasn't, I think initially at least, there wasn't really a lot going on. The initial We were up at Camp Pendleton, like I said, doing a bunch of work. But I know that, that night I got called back because, you know, you're the new guy, so you get to go do security. And we had, you know, machine gun nests up on all the roofs. And, you know, security was crazy. Trying to get back on Pendleton the next morning took a significant amount of time. But at that point, I think the focus was pretty drastically shifted, I should say. It wasn't like, hey, this is all fun now, we're just going to go and do whatever. Now it's like, okay, this is like very, very serious. Pretty quickly afterwards, I think that, you know, the realization of what had really happened and taken place, you see that you saw the Pennsylvania and the Pentagon and everything else that happened. And you started getting some of the intel back of, you know, the responsibility and what happened and the direction that we were going to go, I think, as a nation.

And then your first deployment was actually to the Philippines rather than Afghanistan or Iraq. That was coming down the line.

Yeah, it was. We had kind of already had some groups set up. They did pull from all of the platoons to kind of create some additional units going to Afghanistan as well. But my specific platoon, we had already kind of been designated So the Philippines it was. So off we— there we were in, yeah, 2002 in southern Philippines down in Zambo. And I think we'd kind of mentioned the— there had been a lot of planning done, a lot of the initial planning for, you know, with the Taliban and, well, al-Qaeda, I should say, I guess, the planning from al-Qaeda and what they had done over in the Philippines and Indonesia and that role that that had in the attack on the Twin Towers. And so even though we were over in the Philippines instead, there definitely was still a feeling that it was still an important place and a place that we needed to get control of.

Yeah. Do you want to lay out kind of like the situation in 2002 in Zambo, because, you know, at that time, especially anything, any international terrorist group that even remotely touched al-Qaeda or like money, terror money coming out of the Middle East, it was like game on at that point.

Yeah, it was. And we had a great working relationship there with a lot of the Filipinos, you know, special forces, the SEALs, the NASOF guys, and then a lot of their other intelligence groups. And so we helped do a lot of targeting. We were actively very involved in the Abu Sayyaf group Abe Sabaya, uh, that turned into the operation to eliminate him, take him off the battlefield, as he was one of the big leaders of kind of that movement in southern Philippines. So it was a great mission to be part of. Uh, when I went back to the Philippines years later, part of Abe Sabaya's boat was still up on the wall there in the Marine Corps Museum. Uh, so it was kind of an interesting thing to see, to get to go back and talk to the Commandant of the Marine Corps and explain how I had been a part of that mission that is now at you know, up on the wall along with Zubayr's sunglasses.

And Abu Zubayr, if I recall correctly, he was like their propagandist. Was that— that was his primary job?

That was a big part of what he did. He was the definitely kind of the larger-than-life figure, you know. He was kind of a key person for the Abu Sayyaf group, but it definitely was, you know, he was, he was kind of the figurehead for sure that was on the news, that larger-than-life person, always representing, I guess, the terrorist organization, even though I think at that point for him and a lot of what they did was kidnapping, kidnapping for ransom, just being involved in having that prior connection to Al-Qaeda put a huge target on their back for us.

I remember talking to some of the retired Filipino, like, colonels, Marine Corps colonels, smoking a cigarette, like Abu Sabaya was very noisy. It is that it's like, I'm out there.

Yeah, they, you know, they had kidnapped a lot of— I think one of the things that definitely did not help him any was they started kidnapping, you know, Americans, other people. It wasn't yet missionaries exactly, and it wasn't just, uh, you know, wealthy Filipinos anymore. The, uh, the Burnhams Martha and, yeah, Burnham, trying to think of what her husband's name is.

Yeah, the husband was sadly killed in the rescue attempt, if I recall correctly.

Yeah, exactly. But, but we were there, uh, for the rescue for, for her, and it was one of my medics that escorted her from that rescue back.

Oh, really?

Um, through northern, through northern, uh, the Philippines, then back to Japan.

Did you ever— did you by chance work with a CIA officer named Kent Clisby?

I don't recall the names of some of those. I, I wish I could recall all of the names of the people we worked with, but it's very possible.

Kent sent me a picture of her coming off the helicopter that he took.

Oh, didn't—

so it must have been—

yeah, we definitely would have.

Yeah, yeah. Kent, we did a previous interview with Kent many years ago now. If you guys go deep, deep into the archives of, uh, this podcast, you'll find, uh, interview with Kent Glisby, very interesting to hear his point of view. And actually another guy, Ron Mohler, who was an agency, may have been Air Branch at that time. We have a couple interviews with him where he was watching the whole operation unfold on the drone feed. But Joe, I mean, can you tell us about it from your perspective, what you experienced and what you saw?

Yeah, absolutely. But also I will say that Throughout the multiple decades of working with, uh, with the agency, very rarely did you get an actual first name.

A real name. Yeah, yeah, I'll have to show you.

Yeah, um, uh, yeah, so I guess going back to that operation itself though, uh, we had gotten information about, uh, Ceballo wanting to move. He was getting, he was getting kind of pinned down, getting cornered. He needed to, he needed to get kind of pulled out and trying to move to a different island. Through one of his contacts that ran a lot of his financing, we knew where that was, and he was going to be the one to go in the boat. So we, we kind of put some of our own— or the Filipino, I should say, Mission Force— a couple of their guys on that boat along with some, some tracking strobes, and then we followed them in. So we had you know, a couple of our RIBs, a couple of the Filipino RIBs as well. And then, like you had mentioned, we had the ISR flying overhead, kind of tracking behind. So we move up the coastline under darkness, and then right as first light was kind of getting ready to come up, called them into the shore. So they went in, picked them up, and then as soon as that boat got far enough offshore, the two NAVSOF or nav sailboats moved in at the intercept, if you want to call it intercepting, with, with a lot of guns blazing.

And it turned into a pretty interesting little firefight there that lasted not, not too long because they ran over the boat and, uh, yeah, splintered it into pieces pretty quickly.

And, uh, the fate of, uh, Sabaya himself, he went into the water, didn't he?

Yeah, so he went into the water, and, and again, every person It was on that initial boat, loves to claim credit for filing or for firing the fatal shots. They pulled out his glasses and again, pieces of the boats. But that was one of the bodies that was never pulled out. They did find a couple of other bodies, but, but not his. It was, it was never recovered.

Yeah, you're right. There are all kinds of war stories, people saying they got his 1911 and stuff. It's like Okay. Yeah.

What—

so it was NAVSOC, the Filipino SEALs, you know, that you were partnered with. And they're also— the Filipino Marine Corps was pretty involved in that operation too, I believe.

They had a lot of the support out there. We— after we pulled them off, they did the recovery of all the equipment. They also did the transfer of the people that were pulled out, all kind of went onto their boats. and then they, yeah, kind of did a lot of the recovery of whatever was left of the situation and kind of an SSE, if you will.

And what was that sort of like for you guys in Zambo? I mean, prior to 9/11, being deployed to Guam or the Philippines was kind of like not exactly a hardship tour for a SEAL platoon, I imagine. But now, now you're in combat. I mean, this is real.

Yeah. You know, I mean, I guess you're still thinking though of like all of your other buddies that are in getting, you know, Afghanistan at the time, and they're getting after a little bit, a little bit differently. Uh, it still is very real, you know, there's a lot of, a lot of gunfire going on. There's— you've obviously got the bodies all over that you're trying to help recovery or help recover. We talked about the, the, the, uh, the mission with, uh, with the Burnhams as well. So I think you do feel that you're very active. Before that, I think most of the people in the teams would have seen a deployment to like Sri Lanka where you're doing some live feed as kind of like the, the higher-end missions, you know, and you weren't really doing anything. You're just training, you're training the, the Sri Lankans and getting them to go train them, you know, to go fight the Tamil Tigers. And this was completely different, you know, all I think when you talk to some of the older guys at that point, they— we had one person that had done Desert Storm and that was about it.

There was very, very little experience, you know, and they talked about when they were new guys and they were young and they're older guys that had all been like the Vietnam guys. So you're looking at the guys from like the early '80s that are now in there, you know, been in the teams for 20+ years and how they were in the early '80s with the Vietnam vets having all that experience and they've got nothing. And so I think that that was just that transition period going from the early 2000s through mid-2008, 2010, and just that growth and wealth of experience and development in the teams and really the military in general.

Mm-hmm. Did you— you did Sri Lanka too?

I did not do Sri Lanka. The platoon that I joined, they had done Sri Lanka the previous deployment. So that was their big experience from from their previous deployment was talking about Sri Lanka.

Yeah, I was gonna ask because that, this, again, before 9/11, Sri Lanka was like a, that was like a very kind of like closely held, uh, secret that we had Special Forces and SEALs over there training those guys.

Yeah, yeah, it wasn't, it wasn't really talked about a whole lot, uh, but it was, it was, at least it was some, some pretty decent action and, and a good, a good place to hone skills.

Yeah, yeah, absolutely.

Yeah. I was just going to say my father-in-law, actually, he was a pharmacist and he spent a lot of time over in Sri Lanka for the Army as a lieutenant colonel. He ended up getting to the point that he had been over in Sri Lanka so many times that he was like the person the locals trusted. And the rest of the military wasn't even able to get in the locations unless he was there to help, like, coordinate and work with them, because that's who they trusted was—

Yeah, yeah, that's awesome. Oh, uh, so then, uh, I mean, you go— I, I assume you're going back to the United States, getting— doing— going through another workup, and this time you're getting ready for Iraq.

Yeah, so now we're looking at Baghdad, 2004. Definitely an interesting time. You know, we spent 3 months just doing assaults there, working with the Polish ROM, which is a fun time. And then we got tasked with taking over the PSD mission. So we did 3 months, basically you know, was a protection detail for the Iraqi leadership. And then right towards the end, I also got to go do the assault on An Najaf, the city of An Najaf, which was an interesting time as well.

Yeah, well, I mean, let's start off. I mean, what was it like working with the Polish GROM?

The Polish GROM were a lot of fun to work with. They are, they're a, Yeah, they're a great group. They're very well trained, very professional, can be a little on the crazy side. But, you know, I mean, that's, that's their mission. They're, they're a national asset for those guys, or for Poland. You know, they are one of those groups that can work both in the country and outside. So, you know, I mentioned that later I went back and did the assault of Anajow. I was the JTAC and communicator for the for the GROM sniper group that I was with. So I was the only American, and I was with the team of like about— I think we had about 8 GROM with us. Um, so after that, I've got my— I, I— it's in one of these boxes here, but, uh, my honorary official GROM certification and my coin and all the other stuff. So I think I'm official GROM member number 28 or 27, uh, back in 2004. So I don't know how many there are now, but at that point there'd only been you know, less than 30.

That's unreal. It's interesting to read about the Polish and how like the CIA formed a very close partnership with them after the wall came down, and then our militaries did too. I guess it's just a cultural thing that we have a lot in common with them.

Yeah, they— I think just the attitude they had, everything just really aligns well with with the soft groups. You know, I guess most soft elements that I've worked with throughout the years, be it the SAS or SVS, the CANSOF with Canada, you know, same with the GROM, it's always kind of a great working relationship. There's always a little bit of a, you know, like, who's better? We gotta, you know, battle a little bit, but it's healthy. It's in a good way. It's not there's always just a lot of support. You're always there to help cover each other, to support each other, and to figure out, you know, like, hey, what can we do to help take care of you? You're, you're there for a QRF for the other one, whatever it needs to be. You're always there to support.

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Bye.

Well, tell us about the Najaf operation then.

Oh yeah. So in An Najaf, that had been basically, it was kind of a big holdout spot, right, for a lot of terrorists. And the Marines actually led that offensive. They basically had the whole city of An Najaf surrounded. Going in and they, it was a pretty good dogfight for multiple days for actually it was a little over, I think we were there for about 2 weeks. It was a little bit longer than that total. And that was one of those spots where initially at least ROI or the rules of engagements, the ROEs were literally given to us of like, there was nobody good in the city. If you see anybody moving, you can shoot them.

Holy shit.

It was like, that was— that's what you were given. And then sometimes you would find some people that you're like, that is definitely not— that is like a kid or whatever. And you've got to— you've got to, you know, hopefully have that, that moral decision-making ability to not engage. But the ROEs were clear. Like, if there was anybody there, we have told them over and over again that this is now an open city. Like, anybody moving is free game.

And how did that kind of operation unfold?

Uh, we, we just slowly, slowly, slowly started moving, you know, into this, into the center of the city. I think, uh, you know, I'm glad that I wasn't on the other side where they had the, uh, the cemeteries because they had a lot of, a lot of movement. And as the Marines were moving through and trying to clear out the cemetery, they had just dug in a lot of tunnels and they were just moving, popping up behind, uh, popping up behind you know, anything they could find. And that was a tough movement. On our side, it was just straight urban warfare. We got stuck in a couple of big buildings. We got pinned down a few different times. Uh, there's a first time that I think, uh, at least for me, where, you know, we, we're just completely pinned down in a building. There's no way that we were going. Uh, you gotta low crawl up to the front to, you know, engage a couple of people. And then you're just, you're just doing urban movement, doing whatever you can to break contact and get out of there. Because, you know, at that point I had a small group of GROM, I had 2 Army SF guys with me doing this movement piece, and we were just stuck.

And there was, there was nowhere, nowhere else that you're going. So, uh, real quickly you, you learn that, okay, we gotta count on your ability and your training and move fast. Don't stop.

So, yeah, how'd you fight your way out?

You know, that's basically what we did. We figured out where they are. We put in a 2-person blocking, you know, some sort of a blocking team. Like, okay, I need you doing, you know, I need you to engage this building and this building. Because even at that point, at a couple hundred meters, you're like, I think they're in that window, but they could be in that window. And either way, they were moving in on our position, so we couldn't stay. You know, at that point it was like, we got to move or we're going to be done. Uh, so we put a couple blocking positions in, um, moved down, uh, about a block down is where we had to get to. So just, uh, did kind of a rolling, um, like break contact, basically, uh, rolling break contact drill, uh, just like you would in any sort of your workup cycle. And more or less just moving down an alley or a street because there's nowhere else to go. We thought we'd be able to get out the back, but it was solid. There was no exit through that direction, so we had to move down the front of the street right into an open courtyard, which was not very fun for about 50 meters to get to an alley that then we could escape back towards friendly forces.

Um, and what was kind of the result of that battle? Was it the, the Marines end up clearing the city basically?

Yeah, so they finally called a truce fire, a ceasefire, and, and they, uh, and more or less surrendered and gave up the city. Uh, so that kind of ended it at that point. But it took— yeah, they— it was, it was a big holdout spot for, for a while.

And, uh, you rotated back to Iraq in 2007.

Yes, yes, so back to Iraq in 2007 over in Haditha. Again, it was a lot, a lot quieter at that point, but it was still, it was still a good, a good tour. We had a lot of good mobility, a lot longer trips heading out towards the Syrian border and doing some clearance operations out there. So I think it really, at that point, you're starting to see a lot of the SOPs that had been built over the previous, you know, 5 or 6 years really starting to take place, really starting to take hold. So you've got at that point, you know, all of your mobility training and all of these things that had been like, we're just figuring it out in '04. By the time you get back in '07, a lot of these things are really ironed out. So that was one thing you definitely noticed. But western Iraq out there, at least for the most part, was a lot quieter than I think, than what we were expecting.

Yeah, yeah, I, I can see that. Um, it's like a lot of like tribal areas and small villages out that way. Uh, were you guys by this time, was it mostly like doing HVT strikes or was it already sort of like working with a partner force and kind of trying to get them out there?

You're pushing, you're— we are building at this point, we're building like our local SWAT force, SWAT team, kind of a local militia or military, and then we would use them to kind of try to partner and then as there would be like a larger operation that they would want to go do a clearance off, a lot of times it would be with a conventional unit that we would team up with and they would maybe have a larger movement and we would kind of have a small piece within kind of a larger operation that they had planned.

And as far as like how the SEAL platoons had evolved over time, were, I mean, as I recall, —what is a SEAL team, like something like 16 guys— that you started deploying like 2 platoons together as one kind of action element?

Yeah, so initially we had 16 guys. It was 2 squads of 8, basically a mirror image of each other. Slowly over the years, by the time we get up a few years later after this even, a lot of times you're looking at 24 people. Gotcha. 25 people. There was just too much going on for one 60-man platoon to manage. And then they made the task element, like you're saying. So the task element kind of has shifted a couple times. It was two platoons, then it was three platoons, and it's two platoons again. They still haven't— I don't think as of last year, it was supposed to go back to two platoons, I think, total. But, you know, it's really kind of like an AOB or an AOB light type of a a group led by an 04, you know, element. So when we were there in 2007, actually, basically our platoon or our troop commander at that point as an 04, I think he probably had the size of what previous to that would've been an entire SEAL team that he was in charge of. So we had 4 platoons, I think. He had 3 ODAs and he had another, not a MARSOC team, but he did have another like civil affairs or something else that he was responsible for.

So it is a pretty big size element for an O4, and yeah, out of al-Assad.

Yeah, the machine's getting rolling there. Um, and let's see, you're going back home. I mean, I guess before we jump over to Afghanistan, um, do you have anything else you want to mention about how you saw the SEAL Teams kind of evolve through the War on Terror and some of the things that changed as you got deeper into the conflict?

Well, I don't know if the timing was just— if it just aligned correctly or what, but, you know, prior to really 2002, we did what was called, uh, a big— we did a force optimization thing at that point where before that it was each team would deploy 2 SEAL teams at a time. So you had— and that was only with 6 SEAL teams, so you had 6, 6 platoons deploying at a time. From the West Coast, 6 platoons from the East Coast, and that was, that was it. And right at that time with force optimization, they wanted to have an O5 headquarters along with kind of the troop headquarters be able to deploy to represent the team. And that just happened to align, you know, well with the beginning of the war. So you saw going from 2 platoons you know, with two O-3s running the platoons. So all of a sudden you'd be deployed and you'd have an actual O-5 headquarters and O-4 headquarters. And I think that that ability to manage the teams also led to a lot more of the advanced intelligence and the intelligence package, the development of the SRTs or the Sensor Activity Teams initially.

And it really allowed, at least from the NSW side, for the, teams in the community to grow and to become kind of a much more affordable, yeah, kind of piece of the battlefield. As you've got that entire operating engine, the intelligence engine, the operators, you can fully develop a target package instead of waiting for some other sort of, sort of agency, whoever it is, whoever it was to just bring you that target package.

Yeah, yeah, the intelligence capabilities exploded. And also, I mean, the equipment and the gear and quite frankly, the amount of money I think that was coming to these units was also pretty amazing. I remember talking to a guy, he was a SEAL during the 1970s, and he's like, all we had back then was a snorkel, flippers and a Ka-Bar knife and your UDT shorts. And that was about it.

Yeah, for sure. If you look at even early, the 2004 deployment when we were there, and you're driving around Baghdad, and you had Route Michigan, Route Irish, whatever, and everything that was going on there. We were driving around in thin-skinned Humvees with no doors, and you had just machine guns everywhere. You'd have a.50 cal or something up top, and then you'd have both of the back seats had some sort of a saw, the back of the Humvee had two more. Saw, so you're just driving around, you look like a porcupine with guns just everywhere, running rails on the side so that as you're rolling up to the target, you guys are like jumping off and instantly either entering the target or getting ready to enter a target. And then you look even just to 2007, just with all of the IEDs and the development that way, now you're in armored vehicles and Humvees, and then soon after that you've got your BAPVs or your Strykers or whatever else you're driving around on. So I think as you talk about the technology, it's also the safety and security is, it changed a lot, you know, after just the 4 or 5 years of kind of continual combat.

And then you get over to Afghanistan in 2009. What was that first trip to Afghanistan like?

I mean, it's just different, right? I've been used to Iraq and you're in, especially Western Iraq, it's flat, there's nothing out there. And now I'm pretty far east, close to the, you know, Pakistan border. It's mountains everywhere. It's— you're at altitude, you know, you land initially in Bagram, whatever, but then get a ride out to our little FOB in one of the agency's helicopters because that's all that was really going out there to provide any sort of support. And you just, you instantly, you're like, okay, this is a slightly different battle. It's a different trip, you know? A lot of those roads where we were, you can't take a lot of the same vehicles. We're in armored vehicles a lot, but it was now you're in Hiluxes, you're in other vehicles that can handle those roads. You know, when I was there a couple years later, we did have some MAPVs and RGs, but also we managed to get one stuck pretty good one time, and you know, that is never a good position to be in. So I think the smaller vehicles and the ability to just kind of adapt to the area is something that you have to learn very quickly.

What area, what was the area of operations you were in and kind of what was the mission at that time?

Yeah, so we had a partner force that we were working with and training with. And again, I was out in, so I was out in Khost, so pretty, pretty far over and I was working with some other partner force groups. It was a good trip that I was kind of attached to another group, some guys that I actually knew, but it was an awesome experience and opportunity for sure.

Yeah. Any memorable experiences from that deployment?

I mean, there's a, I guess you've got a couple. I remember, you know, we went and did another like multi-day kind of an SR deal. And again, now you're starting to get really close to the border, but expecting because of the partner force that we were with and where we were expecting that to get a lot harder than it did. But then we left and almost right away they started receiving a lot of mortar fire and a lot of contact. So I don't know if they were waiting for us to depart the area or if it was just dumb luck on their part. And then we left in, I think, September or so. And then, uh, you know, that FOB got hit by an IED in December, I think it was, just a couple months after we left. And one of the partner groups that we had worked with, yeah, they had a good portion of that group was, was killed. The American, you know, the, the, a team of, uh, agency guys that we were working with.

Yeah, I mean, it's pretty tragic. Um, is there— I mean, I know you weren't— you probably had very little oversight, if any, on the kind of intel stuff they were doing, but, um, you have any thoughts about why that incident happened, um, and what went wrong that day?

I, I know you weren't there at the time, but I was not there at the time. I know quite a few people that worked on that operational, what was going on. And I think that the high-risk meat significantly changed after that in the protocol for how you vet individuals coming onto a camp. So I think that there was a lot of desire to get the intel that this person they thought had then. And because there was so much of, of that, just like, no, we need this intel, they let security down a little bit. And I think that that's the reason why you had a lot of change in protocols later. It really forced you to kind of double down on like, okay, what is the process? How are we going to make sure that this is correct or that this person is safe or that this is not going to be some sort of an ambush that we're walking ourselves into?

Yeah, just to remind our listeners out there, 2009, we had basically no intel on where bin where Osama bin Laden was. I mean, we kind of had nothing. So that leads, I think, into the— I don't know if I want to say desperation, but there's a high level of motivation to gather up any intel that we could on where his location was or to get someone inside his organization.

Yeah. And they thought, they thought this doctor had access to some of that information. And so they kind of dropped their guard a little bit.

So the next time that you went to Afghanistan, it was 2014. Now actually bin Laden has been killed. Is it a different war the second time you go over there?

It was different. The first time also while we were there was when what is his name walked off camp or walked off the FOB. And so there was a— yeah, Bergdahl. So there was a huge— that was another piece of intel that people were searching for it was anything that you could do to get a piece of information for his location was also a huge requirement that everybody was just looking for. Go fast forward, like you said, a couple of years, and it very much was like a different war, I guess. I think that at that point, I really started to notice, I mean, they are very much a tribal nation, right? That is what they care about is their people, their group. They didn't really care about anything else. They wanted the, you know, we, I think we may have discussed this before, but, you know, we're in the middle of a, it was about a 12, 14-hour firefight. And, you know, 200 meters to the, what direction would that have been? I guess to the north of where the enemy force was, is a guy out there with his donkey clearing his field, 'cause he's gotta eat.

Like the fact that we're in the middle of a firefight doesn't get his fields done. So we're calling in A-10s and you've got Apaches and F-15s and all these things. And he's just sitting out there plowing his field back and forth for 3 or 4 hours while we're just getting after it.

Yeah, I've heard stories like that before. The guy coming out and like hoeing the field, you know, some 80-year-old Afghan guy because, yeah, his life doesn't stop just because there's a war.

Yeah, he's still got to feed his family. So you started seeing the insurgency different because you would see this very much seasonal, like, okay, it's very much downtime, then it's like, oh, it's wartime, and you'd start seeing the flood of people, the flood of insurgents kind of coming through. We were right at the southern tip of the Tangi Valley. This wasn't too long after Extortion. Extortion helicopter went down just a couple of miles north of where we were. And so I think that it was just kind of a, for us, it was a very pivotal location because of that. And we did have a couple of really great joint ops that we gotta do with both our other platoon and then with an ODA that had been up a little bit north as well. They came down 'cause their previous, I think it was their previous cycle, they had lost one of their guys in a fight right in that general area. So they wanted to come down and, and work with us and kind of make sure that, you know, let's clear this area up. It was personal for them as well, so.

Yeah, well, you were right, a lot going on in that one AO at that one time. Any memorable experiences from that one you'd like to share before, it sounds like there's a few.

Yeah, those are, they're all, I mean, you have some, just some really tough, some really tough times. We had helped build up a new FOB for a new forward police station and had the police come over and had talked to them about, hey, we just put this here, make sure you have security. We need to make sure this is maintained. We can't just put this up and run. They decided they were going to have a huge party instead. They left 4 people there, it got completely overrun. All 4 of those guys were killed. And we sat there and watched it on ISR, watched the whole thing happen. And You know, that's a tough thing to do. You just put in all that time and effort, you know, in a fight on our own, but to make sure that that spot could be set up and then maintained, hopefully. And instead of leaving the force that we knew they were going to need, they just, they kind of left it and let it get overrun. Shit. It's never, you know, the stories of of sitting there watching the partner force, uh, just get annihilated. Like, those always— those are always tough, um, you know, tough events to, to think back on.

And speaking of which, so 2018, 2019, you're starting to look at, uh, Iraq again, right, as the ISIS war is picking up?

Well, so 2016, we're back in Iraq. Gotcha. Initially. So we're in Iraq, in up north, a little bit north of Mosul, and we're setting the stage for basically the, uh, the clearance operation for Mosul. Yeah, so, and that's where, that's where the Battle of Tel Aqsa happened, and that's where, uh, that's where we lost Chuck, uh, Charlie Keating.

Uh, can you tell us about that operation and how things unfolded? As it was, ISIS was overrunning a Peshmerga position, if I recall right.

Yes, exactly. So we, uh, you know, my platoon, we deployed in 2016. Uh, we've got two different sectors up there between Sector 6— I think we're 6.1— and then my other platoon had Sector 7, which is going out towards the west. Uh, it's just a huge line, you know. At that point, you've got truly a flood. It's like a berm basically that the Peshmerga are managing, and on the other side of it was all was all ISIS. So Charlie and my platoon OIC were over at Mosul Dam, and then I stayed over by the hook with my AOC. And we had been checking the border, trying to figure out what was going on since we'd gotten there. We got there like late February. By March 3rd, the other platoon, Charlie's platoon— or they're— we're all the same platoon, I guess, but his squad They were actually doing recon and there was a huge assault on the Mosul Dam then that they had repelled, and that ended up being a pretty, pretty crazy fight as well. And they had multiple VBIEDs driving almost right up on their position. If they had known that they were actually a group of Americans, they probably would have all been dead because they drove by within about 100 meters of them.

They tried LAW rockets, whatever, and they just like bounced off these armored trucks that they built, you know, the Mad Max trucks that ISIS would put together. They finally got some CAS in there, took care of the IEDs. We showed up to assist after, of course, everything's done and then it's too late as you're trying to do, you know, show up as a QRF. But anyway, that was March 3rd. So then fast forward a couple months later, we've been doing our own recon, you know, meeting with all of our partner forces and kind of figured out this weak spot that we thought was gonna be the weakest spot in the line. They just didn't have the funding, didn't have the support. Both of the other sides where their guys, where Charlie and his guys were more of General Barzani's forces. In front of us was another general who was part of the Peshmerga Parliament, another higher ranking official. He had a lot of his own funding. And then you've got Tel Aqsa and it was just kind of an open area. You had forces, but they didn't have a lot of food. They didn't have a lot of supplies.

They didn't have any tanks. They didn't have any armor. Vehicles, or not, not many at least. And so we had kind of felt that that was probably the weakest point, and if something happened, that's where it was gonna— that was where it was gonna take place. Plus you've got a direct line road coming from the border through the, through the town there, Tel Skofan, almost all the way to, uh, to the Mosul Dam. So not only was it a weak spot, but it was also a very pivotal spot that gave them direct access up to straight up to Duhok and then over to— or over to the Mosul Dam. So that morning we started getting calls at about 2 AM saying like, "Hey, we're— the FOB's getting attacked." Like, "Okay, let us know if it gets worse." So again, throughout the night we keep getting calls, and by probably 4 AM, my ground force commander now, AORC from the platoon, he wakes me up too. He's like, "Hey, this is— we got to start getting ready. We're going to figure this out." So him and I sit up for a while. We start figuring out what the plan is going to be, and finally by By 6 at least, we've got our whole group up now.

We're heading out on our vehicles and we're going to that spot because we know that's going to be the weak spot. As we're driving into the town, my communicator is on, or my translator actually is on comms with their partner, Terp, you know, from the general saying that, "Nope, Tel Staff is still secure. We still have the town." they're on the south, but they're, you know, they breached the flop, but they're still south of the town. They don't have access to anything else. So I go, okay, well, we're going to go to the general's headquarters. We'll get up on the roof, we'll get some CAS support, we'll figure out what's going on. And then as we start pulling into the village, we start taking small arms fire. So at that point, we're like, okay, what's going on? What's the deal? So stop the convoy a couple hundred meters before we enter the town. There's a there's two Pash Humvees that are kind of blocking the road a little bit that we can use as a little bit of COVID So we pull over, I've got my one armored vehicle at the front, and we're on comms trying to figure out what the heck is actually going on because obviously the intel we had was not correct with the status of the city.

And almost immediately, the Pash people in the group in the two Humvees start driving away and our armored vehicle at the front takes an RPG, uh, airbags are gone. We're not driving that vehicle anywhere. Then one of our F-150 starts taking a bunch of bullets. So now we're basically down 2 vehicles, not really going to be able to get out of there well. And the decision that I make is to— we're gonna, um, consolidate. We're gonna hardpoint in a building complex about 75 meters or so off to the side. So just like before, it's like, okay, let's set up some blocking positions, let's lay down some fire, and let's get behind cover. We can't just sit here in this bowling alley, that's definitely not going to end well for us. So that's what we do. We move over to the building, and as we are entering the building and just getting there, then Charlie and his guys show up as a QRF. We had sent them over to go check out another area. They had already done that. Barzani's guys had confirmed that that area was clear, so they came to join us. So we all link up as a platoon, actually almost a 1.5 platoons because we had another group up visiting us and they were getting ready to go on another event when this took place.

But we'd been housing them for the night, so it just lucked out for us that we had an additional about 10 guys. So we're sitting there with about, we probably had about 30. About 30 people there, and we just hardpoint this, this building. We start getting a lot of— it ends up being a school, but from the school, it's, it's, uh, north of the town, maybe 200 meters or so. Uh, we've got multiple VEBIDs coming up towards us, going off, you know, doors are flying directly over your head. Uh, we've got a small field in front of us and then a line of like 3-story buildings, so they've got altitude on us and they've ammo, they've got basically everything, tactically superior to where we are. So not really the best, again, position to be in, but I don't have anywhere else to go and it's the best cover we can get. So we hardpoint there and just set up, you know, we've got our Javelins for some of the IED or some of the bigger vehicles, whatever we can do with that one, our automatic weapons, and then our own sniper teams, and we're just in a battle for multiple hours.

We finally were getting our CAS support, so we're starting to be able to engage with some CAS. We weren't getting as many aircraft as we wanted. The flood of the vehicles and the flood of the forces of ISIS from the south was still continuing pretty heavily, and so the headquarters decided that they were going to keep part of the forces themselves, and they were engaging the vehicles as they were trying to move from further south in Iraq up, uh, up across the FLOT. Um, I don't, I don't know if that would have made a difference for, for Charlie or not, but we definitely, uh, had the building that we're pretty sure he was, he was, uh, you know, shot from on our list. We were trying to get air support in order to, uh, take that building out. Um, but before that was able to happen, I tasked him because we were getting a lot of very, very accurate you know, sniper fire from kind of that area. He was our lead sniper and spent years as a sniper. So I had Charlie, uh, try to work on figuring out where that was and, and hopefully take care of that threat.

Uh, while he was in the process of doing that up on the roof, he took, took a single round, uh, right kind of by his clavicle, upper, you know, collarbone. And, uh, and that was that. He basically rolled over and, and had, had said, you know, he was hit and And then he was, he was gone. You know, we continue to work on him for, for as long as we could. We got him off the roof, got in the medevac bird. They launched that almost immediately. Grid was— the grid was passed incorrectly, not from us, but we passed the 10-digit grid. Medevac birds take an 8-digit grid. Instead of taking off digits 5 and 10, they took off digits 9 and 10. Which completely changes the grid, and they ended up directly on top of the town that all the forces were coming from instead. They did make it up finally. After they finally got to us and we were able to get some smoke out to call them into the position, I took Charlie, loaded them up on our one other armored vehicle, and along with basically a security detail and a medic, they, they drove about 5 kilometers up the road further north to get away from the contact where we finally had the helicopter come in and land.

And then they got out of there, and at that point, they, when they got back, one of the helicopters I think never flew again. It was done. I think they had, I forget, 100-something bullets. It was pretty wrecked. Both of them had quite a few bullet holes in them. So those pilots were amazing. They did everything they possibly could. For sure to do what they could. They changed, I think, the SOPs after that too, because they were supposed to be escorted by a couple of Apaches. The Apaches were slower than they were, so they just said, "We're not waiting for you," and they took off. After losing basically the two helicopters, they said, "No, no, no, you guys go as a team. You need to keep your armored escort. You can't just take off on your own." So, but after Charlie took— or after Charlie was medevaced out, we still had another couple of hours of the fight before we finally that they could take over the fight, and we were able to, to break contact and get out of there.

I remember you telling me that, you know, after— oh, sorry— after losing Charlie, that it was kind of a leadership challenge for you as the platoon chief to kind of like hold the— you know, you're the senior guy, you're the adult in the room, and you got to hold this thing together because the deployment's not over. And obviously everyone's upset that, you know, their friend was just killed.

Yeah, I think that, uh, it really brings up that leadership issue that, you know, I'm not the only person. A lot of people have had to deal with it before, uh, but it's not something that you can ever plan for and not something that you can ever train for. It's something that, you know, you have to just take care of at the time, uh, but the guys are, you know, the guys want to get after it. The guys are Well, one, you're already all— everybody's, everybody's struggling from TBI after that with all the VBIDs and everything else. I think— I don't think there was a single person didn't have headache for at least 3 days, um, after that. So we got everybody— well, supposedly got everybody in the platoon, uh, baseline tested for TBI at a repeal. Of course, they lost all those records, so I don't know what happened to them, uh, but we tried. So some people can see that there is something that was supposed to be inputted in the record from repeal, but but you can't open it. The files were all corrupted, unfortunately. So, but after that, you added to, you know, it's like most guys want to get after it.

They want to get revenge. They want to get whatever. So it's a matter of keeping guys focused, keeping guys busy, not letting them just kind of go crazy, continuing the mission and keeping them kind of tied in. So really started making a huge point of breaking down like, okay, here's today's operation. Here's what we're doing, here's why we're doing it, so that the guys knew exactly what the job was that day. And it wasn't like— you could see sometimes that it was maybe that the guys were Taliban or whatever, and they just immediately wonder— sorry, ISIS— immediately want to get some sort of CAS in and start blowing people up. But sometimes I need this town to maintain its Cat 1 classification so that we can continue to do strikes or whatever. But if it I think it was Cat 1, Cat 2. But you've got to have a certain amount of footage of video footage and just recon on the town showing, hey, look, we were here for this long. This is all we've seen. There's only been ISIS. There's no other threat. So sometimes it's like, look, this is more important. We have to continue the mission.

We have to do the job that we're tasked to do. We can't just go do, like, follow these guys and go do something else because that's what you want to do to to, you know, get revenge. And it worked very well, making sure that guys knew, okay, this is exactly what we're doing today. And it kept them from kind of straying on whatever other little tangent they wanted to go do. But it also, by getting into a good kind of rhythm, it kept guys focused and not just getting kind of, I guess, antsy. Or it was like, okay, we took a few down days, and I feel like, okay, now it's time to get back after it again. And you go do an op, you take a down day or whatever, just go do an op, take a down day, and just stay busy. Stay busy but also focused.

Yeah, I think one of the interesting key points you make there is the issuing of precise instructions to your subordinates, that they know exactly what they're doing, why they're doing it, as you mentioned. But sometimes the worst thing that can happen in combat, it's not a bad decision, it's confusing instructions or no decision being made, which is often a lot worse.

Yeah, clear and concise decisions or clear and concise instructions are huge. It's also not the time to start questioning authority and questioning instructions. I had a boss both in Afghanistan and then a different one there, and we spent a lot of time discussing leadership and what does it take and the timing that it takes to get to know your people, truly understanding their strengths and their weaknesses and when they're having a down day or an off day and what does that look like. But that also turned into, I think, a lot of times, like, earlier in a workup cycle, earlier in a training piece, like, answering some of the questions, answering like, hey, why are we doing this? Or why do you want me to do that? Or what are we doing? So that then when we were in combat, they didn't ask questions. Then it was like, now it's just time to listen and move, right? Because you already had to build— you built that confidence earlier. Just because you've got 8 years or 10 years or you've got the rank or you've got whatever doesn't mean that you're going to always be right.

So you've got to at least teach though that they should and need to be following and it takes time to build that trust and that confidence. They're putting their trust in me as a leader that I'm going to make the right decision and I'm going to keep them safe or at least to the best of my ability. So I've got to show that that trust is worth than, you know, putting in me.

The other thing I wanted to ask you about is from, you know, 2000— or you joined the Navy in '99. Now we're getting into 2018, 2019, 2016. We just talked about, but even the subsequent years, how you're starting to see the battlefield change and how drones are starting to become a normal, regular facet of tactical-level operations.

Yeah, and that even is from our side, right? Because early, you didn't have a lot. Now we're running with like, be it a Raven or whatever, we've got our own smaller drones, not just the Preds and the Reapers and a lot of the other tactical Scan Eagles, but even the smaller ones, you know, and after the 2016 deployment, I started moving more into the intelligence side of what Naval Special Warfare offers. And worked a lot with both, you know, our SIGINT teams and our, our, uh, intelligence and teams. And you really learn to leverage on our side those ISR platforms and how important they can be. But at the same time, that's right when we started having ISIS flying over with small drones, and they learned how to just fly them over and drop grenades. You know, you look at the how that has shifted from 2016 to today, as you've got FPV drones and you've got— I mean, it's very, very impressive what they can do with a lot of these drones today, uh, taking out tanks, taking out any— almost any armored vehicle. They, they're so small and precise with these FPVs, they can fly into the smallest creases.

And back then they couldn't do anything. And if they were just going to drop a grenade on a tank with reactive armor, Bradley, anything like that, uh, it wasn't going to do anything. Now you look at all of the tanks that we've sent over to Ukraine today And they don't move any of them. They can't. They are— the Army operating concept of using, you know, mechanized infantry and these armored Abrams and Bradleys is just not functional. And so that's a huge shift, I think, that the Army is figuring out now. Like, okay, we need to figure out a bigger and better counter-UAS policy and capability to defend our armored vehicles.

What are you allowed to tell us about the tail end of your Navy career as you kind of delved into the intel side?

Yeah, we get to, I mean, a little bit, I think I did a lot more work. So from 2018, all the way till I retired in 2025, was just a lot more with the, the sensitive activities, a lot of work with the creation of like the ramp at SOCOM and a lot of work with them when I was at the Naval Special Warfare Command. And then a lot of Beltway tours. So we, you know, you work with, with all of the, the partners that you probably think of over in the Beltway, the three letters and a lot of numbers as well. But you end up with close relationships with, with a lot of these groups. And you start really understanding what does the targeting cycle look like? What is the, like, what goes into developing some of these, these target packages and everything else that as a platoon, as an operator, you don't necessarily see. You're just seeing the end. You don't see the, you know, week, week upon week of 20-hour days that these intel analysts are putting in, uh, sitting behind their computers and building out, uh, what their targeting network looks like and understanding how to task assets and what does that look like and when you're building Pattern of Life or you're building out a network, be it a physical network or a cellular network or whatever it might be, you don't see the work that goes into that.

So I really appreciated all that time and helping me develop kind of that whole cycle understanding of like, look, going from Going from just being a door kicker, which was a lot of fun, but then to really managing and running an entire intelligence platform is just, I don't know, I really enjoyed it. It was a great way to kind of finish off, I think, my career and maintain a lot of, I guess, just feel that you're very relevant. You know, like the rest of the platoons, like that's essential, like they can't do what we need them to do. Without what you're doing as well.

People get upset with me sometimes when I say this, but I do think it's true that the operators a lot of times really just don't understand everything that goes into the operations that they're sent on, you know, on the back end.

Yeah, no, I agree 100%. And it's, it's fascinating. I think the capabilities that we have as a nation and and what goes into, you know, like, quite honestly, one of the more interesting places to ever visit. You know, you can go to the FBI headquarters or CIA headquarters or whatever, but go to NSA headquarters and you're like, this is a very interesting place. It's full of some very, very bright, not always the best communicators though in that building.

Yeah, they have a hard time making eye contact and shaking hands. Yes, exactly.

They always have a great joke of, you know, the outgoing ones are the ones that look at your shoes instead of their own shoes as they're talking to you.

You know, I was gonna ask, like, was that hard for you as a frogman going from that sort of very like more kinetic environment to going to this intel, interagency, deconfliction coordination sort of role? It sounds like it was a real eye-opener for you and you really enjoyed it, but I mean, was that a tough transition for you to make initially?

I think it was tough kind of more on the deployment side when you're there and everything we were doing was essential with my task group that I was, you know, kind of running, 'cause we ran that whole intel engine. But then you see the platoons and you see what they're doing and you definitely miss that piece at that time, I think. You start seeing like, All right, you know, your days as being that operator are over. You know that it's coming, you know that you're getting older and, you know, the body is fragile. And after close to 20 years in the teams, like, you just— I don't know, another workout out at Nyland was probably just not in the cards. You just start breaking down physically. So, you know, that is where you start looking at like, okay, well, where's the best spot that I can go and still be a contributor? So as difficult as it is, it also, I think, was a way to maintain relevancy. Yeah, absolutely.

And then you did the SOCOM Fellowship program at the tail end of your career. Can you tell people what that is?

Yeah, so the SOCOM Fellowship with the Care Coalition, they basically— SOCOM will sponsor you with an outside company. They do a specific contract for every, every company they do. Go see your care coalition rep if it's something you're interested in, and that is up to 6 months that you can do. So unlike SkillBridge, where it's changed multiple times— last time I think when I was retiring it was 4, I've heard it might be down to even 3 months, and it's got to be with the SkillBridge, like, certified company— with the SOCOM Fellowship, you could go to any company at all. You write a separate contract or the care coalition will write a contract for you and it gets routed up through SOCOM signed by the, I think it's the deputy commander, one of the senior civilians at all of SOCOM signs it from their side and then the company representative signs it from their side. And then once it was signed, basically you're gone. I would check in, it wasn't a requirement, but I'd call back to WARCOM as that's where I was at the time about once a month just to check in. And then every month on the 1st, I would get a survey of like, how is this going?

What are you learning? What are you getting opportunities? And so you just fill out this survey of like about 10 questions and break out like, here's the things I've done, here's who I'm talking to or how I'm growing, I guess what you're learning. And then at the end of it, they just ask you to kind of do basically the same thing, write another survey about how great it was or what your opinions on it. And it was just, it really gave me the opportunity to network. You know, I started networking through the Honor Foundation. I did the Honor Foundation, and you start talking to people, you start kind of growing a little bit there. You start figuring out what a resume looks like, what you might be interested in doing. How do you translate your military resume into civilian speak? And In that process, I had run into an old friend of mine that we had done a couple of platoons before. He had a company that was like, hey, if you want to do this, like, I will totally like sign up for it. And he allowed me to join this company. They did some investment stuff with— it was a nonprofit VC company, basically.

But it allowed me to just start networking. That's what he wanted. He's like, come in. I need you to help me with this. And then I want you to just start talking to companies. And in the process of talking to all these other companies, I met Michael and my current CEO, and I started helping them a little bit as well with a few things. And he offered me a position in about, I think it was in November when I was retiring in the end of January. And I thought, well, this is awesome. I don't have to worry about finding a job, but I still got 3 months. So that was a huge relief actually of like not, there was just no pressure at that point. I could really focus on just transitioning out of the, out of the military.

Yeah, the SOCOM Fellowship and the Stuff the Honor Foundation sounds like it's great. As far as, you know, a lot of the problems that we've had with, you know, special ops guys retiring and having a pretty rocky transition, which I think it's a little going to be rocky no matter what. But it sounds like those programs really help guys, you know, land on their feet and have a good transition out of the service.

Yeah, I know some people that have done the SODIF and a few of the other programs, and I think they're all great programs. I don't know that one is necessarily better than the other. I very much enjoyed the, uh, the Honor Foundation, the time that, that I spent there. It was a lot of work. It's definitely time-consuming. Uh, it's not an easy thing to, to, you know, you're dedicating a lot to go through that process, but I think it's worth it.

And so you found a pretty good landing, it sounds like, at, uh, Aurelius Systems. Tell us about that company and what you guys do there.

Yeah, so we build directed energy weapons. We build basically laser guns. So laser guns, small laser guns to take out, uh, Group 1, Group 2 drones. So we use, uh, everything's built software-wise, everything's built in-house. Hardware-wise, we build all of the materials We are looking at vertically integrating our laser, but currently we are buying a laser and the cameras and like radar. We're not going to build those things ourselves, but the company is doing great. We are— we closed the seed round already. We're currently working through some Series A stuff as we are just rapidly, rapidly growing and the demand signal from the government is huge of like, we need the system now. You do have some other, some other good systems out there. You've got like the Blue Halo AeroVironment system, but it's just a lot bigger. We're looking at a significantly smaller, you know, at the biggest side would be the back of like a JLTV or a vehicle of some sort. You know, a few hundred pounds type of a deal that you could really move anywhere, runs off a battery, you're going to get you know, a pretty significant amount of shots off of a battery.

You're looking at, you know, um, the smaller size, the Group 1, Group 2s, that final line kind of a defense though. So if you, if you're looking at a big FOB and you've got the $10 or $20 million Blue Halo system, that's awesome. I think it's a, it's a, it's a great, very capable system. But when you start having some of these larger swarms, or if you're forward and you can't move a a system that big, that's where the system we're building kind of comes in.

So just to translate that for folks out there listening, when you say Group 1, Group 2 drones, you're talking about the smaller drones that are like 10 feet to 500 feet off the ground?

Yeah, so you're looking at Group 1 drones are basically like 0 pounds, like DJIs or normal ones that you're flying around town, up to Group 2s. So think of anything probably really 20 to like even up to like 40 pounds. I think 55 pounds is technically the cutoff from Group 2 to Group 3. But you're looking at the smaller drones, the FPV drones, the really the small Group 1 drones that we're talking about, just like your, your 10 pounds or less drones that people have at home. That is the number one cause of casualties in Ukraine. That is like over 80% of casualties are caused by these drones. They're the ones with FPV that, that they can take into these creases and they can, you know, like the crease in the tank and the turret and they can destroy the tanks. They are the ones that are targeting with explosives. Basically, you're putting a shaped charge on this and you're turning it into an airborne IED, you know, with a shaped charge. That's basically what it is.

And I know that counter-UAS or counter-drone stuff is, as you said, there's a huge demand right now. This is like something the entire military, I think, is thinking about and trying to find systems to protect our troop formations. Forward operating bases, forward medical facilities, all that sort of stuff needs to be protected. And how would, you know, this system that you're working on at Aurelius, how would it actually do that?

Well, so I'm trying to think of how to explain, you know, Michael's great at some of these explanation stuff. I love the operation side, but really, so everything that we built, right, you've got EOIR, but you've also got a radar that we can integrate with. You can integrate with ATAC, you can integrate with any of these things. For a tip can cueing system, locate whatever these drones are. And then with the laser, you really just— you can do a couple of different things as we train our language model on how to target. You can look at propellers, you can look at the body, you can look at the battery, you can— so you're basically training your model on like what are the weakest spots of these different types of drones. And then the system itself then is an autonomous system, ideally is going to target that that weakest point of the drone. And if that's the case, then they get— they drop pretty quickly.

So it has some sort of radar, an algorithm is processing the data that's coming into the system, and then it's going to like rapid-fire these laser beams at the drone. Yes, exactly.

If you've got a swarm coming in, you know, that's what exactly you're doing. You're looking at whatever you can to help you with your cueing, We have done a lot of integration work with Equidine specifically, but we could integrate with whatever radar to give us an additional, like, cueing from outside of what we're getting with our internal EOIR cameras. Or we can just run passive off of our, our own camera systems and stuff. You know, as a, as a soft person, the last thing you want is to be required to have some sort of a radar or something that's active, something forward. You know, that's just an electronic signature that you want to not be forced to use if you don't have to. You know, most people know at this point that if you have even like a Harris or Thales radio, if you have anything radio that is going active, if you're over in Ukraine and as soon as you turn that on, that signal, signal is getting picked up immediately and you're gonna have some incoming rounds within minutes, you know. So if you can maintain just kind of a passive attitude and you don't have to go active, Great, you know, then, then that's awesome.

And you can, you can set up out there in a forward FOB or forward position, and you can still use the system passively. But if you're on the southern border of the US, or if you're at an airport or a stadium or a large FOB, you've got active radar all over the place, like get as much information as possible, we will intake that for our cueing, set it up so that you can, you're ready if the swarm is coming in. And you can, exactly like you said, you just one after the other as you're prioritizing the incoming drones.

Is the current thinking that at least during warfare, it's going to have to be autonomous, that a human being won't be able to select and target each of those drones fast enough that a machine will have to do it?

Well, so I think that, I think that the consensus is it's a lot easier to build it autonomous and then to add a human in the loop than it is to build it as a human in the loop and then create it autonomous after the fact. But then also, to your point, a lot of these drones, the way that they are operating right now, if you look over in Ukraine, they're either— they've got a spotter drone that's flying up fairly high, you know, they might be at a couple of kilometers even away, and they're just in a hover with a really good camera and they're doing the spotting and they've got somebody sitting next to them after they identify the target. And so they're coming in very, very low Maybe behind a ridgeline, you don't even see them. And by the time they hit the ridgeline or through the trees or whatever it is, you've only got a few seconds. It's just not enough time. I think that from at least the staff, even with Department of War now that I've spoken with, there's a pretty open recognition that the long-term plan is going to have to be at least in some locations, you have to be able to run autonomous or you're not going to be able to make it.

Yeah, there's going to be more sensitive areas where that's probably not going to be the case, and you're going to want to be able to keep that human in the loop to, to make that final decision. Even if they're tracking and everything else is all done autonomous, the, the actual firing of the laser itself, that can still maintain human loop.

Um, anything else about what Aurelius is doing that you want to talk about, or anything else about this system?

We've got some great testing opportunities coming up, and then, you know, we're looking at integrating our own laser. I think that lead times on supply chain are a very difficult piece right now, and I think that's not just for us, across the board. So, to really solidify that supply chain The feeling is that we have to integrate that ourselves. We've got to vertically integrate the laser system. There's only a few companies in the US and they're just, they're maxed out. But honestly, the few that you have, you're looking at 4 to 6 months and they're just running full speed all the time. And so it's hard to grow if that lead time is what you've got to wait for all the time. So I think that as we do that, you're going to continue to see— it's going to help us grow, I think, because we'll also be able to sell potentially those to outside markets. You know, right now we try to make everything as— everything is as COTS as possible. We want it to be commercial off the shelf. That's how we keep costs down. You keep costs down by somebody mass-producing these products.

And that one is just one item that's just It's not happening right now across the board.

So the laser itself, correct? Yeah, yeah, yeah. You can't exactly buy one of those at Walmart.

No, it— but the funny thing is, they— I mean, the ones that we mostly use, right, they are— they're built for, uh, automotive industry for the most part. That's, that's kind of what they're built— they're built and, um, expected to basically be on 20 hours a day just sitting there you know, welding away, cutting sheet metal for automotive. So they're very robust. These are built to last for a long time. We know that you can use them for an extended period of time. What the team is doing is they're really— they're putting a lot more focus and effort on the software stack and on the targeting piece of it so that they can use kind of a lower-grade laser, if you will. Because as soon as you go from, like, these commercial lasers and you try to get some of these other more of a bespoke laser, it's like a 10x increase in cost and it's no longer an affordable system that you can put in a ton of different locations.

Gotcha. Well, Joe, I appreciate you sharing all this with us. Is there anything else you wanna discuss or anything you wanna plug before we get going today?

I always think it's worth mentioning to everybody, the mental health piece and staying on top of your mental health, you know, through— let's see, where do you want to go with that? I know personally, I struggled a lot. I struggled for a long time, do a lot of therapy still. And it was hugely beneficial for me. You know, I had a lot of guys that I could tell were struggling and being able to share that story of like, look, It got to the point where my wife left. She was like, "I'm done. You need to figure this out." And, it took about 8 months of really hardcore focus and therapy and meditation and a lot of work. And now, we're great. I've retired. We're together and we're doing awesome, better than we probably ever have. But, it's because I had to put in the focus and I had to put in the time and I still have to. It's not something that just ends. It's not just like, Oh, I did therapy for 2 months and now I'm better. It's, it's an ongoing thing that people need to continue to be on top of. And it's just very easily, you know, how many— not only how many funerals have we been to from people we lost, but then how many funerals also we've been to from suicide after people have gotten back as they've gotten into that mental state.

And my wife has been pretty open saying that if I hadn't shifted when I did, that she feels that I'd probably be another suicide statistic now. So I'm very grateful for all of the opportunities I've had to take care of myself in the therapy and the support, both from all the different foundations and groups that are out there. Yeah, that's great.

Are there any particular that you found helpful or that you like that you recommend to people?

There are a couple.

Shoot, now you just said that and I'm trying to think of the one that I go to in Boston that was absolutely huge. So the Boston Red Sox Foundation pays for and sponsors the whole event. They've got two different groups there. One is, I think it's called COMBAT. It's a one-week deal and it's really only for soft operators. But then they also have a two-week that is an in-depth cognitive or a therapy session. It's kind of a group of like 10 people. And you can do a soft one or you could do kind of a joint, but it's, it's still basically all military people that have suffered, you know. And I ended up doing the joint one for that. And, and I'm grateful that I did because I got to see some of the things that happened to the other, you know, just like maybe an Army or whatever it is, just other individuals that they had gone through and how similar to what we've gone through as well. It's just because you're in SOF doesn't make the PTSD any different, you know, it's, it's, it's still what it is. I want to look it up real quick and figure out who am I thinking— why can I not think of a— why can I not think of the name?

Yeah, but that, that was probably the best one for me. A lot of support. And then afterwards, they follow up every— we did a follow-up every month for a year. I think I just had my last call.

Oh, cool.

Because I did that one last April, the combat one. But I went over there and within the first day, I've got like 2 or 3 different MRIs. You've got X-rays, you've got full body scans, and you're going to speech, you're going to a therapist, you're going to just everything of like, okay, let's see what's going on with you physically and mentally and figure out and develop a plan going forward to, you know, make you whole, I guess, as best as possible.

Yeah, uh, you know, go ahead and look it up and we can, uh, shout it out here.

Homebase. Homebase. Okay, Homebase is what that one's called. Yeah, they were, they were fantastic. You could look them up on their website and, and apply. And, and if that isn't working, then reach out to, to you, and I can give you the details, and definitely people can, can get in contact with them. But they were— they're phenomenal.

We will, uh, put links down in the description for our viewers. And, uh, where can people find Aurelia Systems?

Yeah, so aureliasystems.com, uh, and we are based out of San Francisco, and we're going to be all over, uh, you know, touring at SOFWeek and at T-Rex and everything else. And if somebody wants to support, uh, also the C4 Foundation, as we talked about Charlie a little bit, uh, we are sponsoring a Memorial Day event on the USS Hornet in San Francisco. Um, I can send you that link as well. We're looking for people to show up and do a little bit of a workout and then have some drinks and some food. And, uh, Charlie's dad C3 is going to be up there with me to, uh, to speak a little bit. It's going to be a great event. All right. Yeah.

I hope to see you at a soft week then. I'll be down there for a couple of days. Okay.

No. Yeah, it sounds great. Look forward to it.

And thank you for joining us. Thanks for coming on and sharing your experiences with us. And thank you, everyone who watched the program tonight. So I guess we'll see you next time. And thank you, Joe. Thank you. Hey guys, I want to take a moment to tell you about the TeamHouse Podcast newsletter. If you go and subscribe, it's totally free. And what it will do is aggregate all of our data, all of our content that we put out, uh, the things that are on the TeamHouse, on our geopolitics podcast Eyes On, uh, things that I write journalistically with Sean Naylor on the High Side, uh, anything else that we have going on. Books we recommend, upcoming guests that we have coming on the show, and also, you know, filtering in some fun stuff in there as well. If you go and check it out, we send it out just once a week. We don't want to spam you guys. It's just a kind of roll-up of all of our content on a weekly basis. You can find our newsletter at teamhousepodcast.kit.com/join. Again, the website for that is teamhousepodcast.kit.com/join. Kit.com/join. Uh, so we hope to see you there.

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