 First and foremost, you don't own that beret. You rent it and that rent is due every single day. Welcome back to Airman Vision. Today we are gonna be interviewing Aaron who is a para-rescumen in the United States Air Force and he's also the co-host of the ones ready podcast. So be sure to go check that out. And also if you haven't, go on over to airmanvision.com and look at our other information to help you prepare for joining the Air Force and making the best decision for yourself. That includes a BMT prep guide, a BMT fitness prep guide and Air Force prep course and tons of other information. But with that being said, let's jump right into the interview. What is the name of your job and its AFSC? Easy question. So I'm a para-rescumen. We are called PJs colloquially. So the para-rescue career field, like that's how you refer to the entire career field, right? There's para-rescumen and combat rescue officers. Combat rescue officers are the officer contingent. We're called PJs, it's a retronome. So way back in the day, para-rescue jumpers used to work on fixed and rotary wing aircraft and on the flight forms they would write down PJ is their title, right? We've moved on from the name para-rescue jumper and we're just called para-rescumen now but they kept the nickname PJs. That's how we're known across the entire DOD. So I'm a PJ, my AFSC is 1-Z-1-9-1. I actually did not know that about para-rescue so that's actually kind of cool. Coming out hot. Yeah, that's why we're called PJs. It's called a retronome. So it doesn't mean anything anymore. Like PJ doesn't mean para-rescue jumper but that's how we got the name back in the day. It was, you wrote it on the flight forms. There'd be the flight engineer, they called them the FE and the pilot flying the PF and then PJs were in the back, para-rescue jumpers. Well, they just kept writing PJ on the form and that's how everybody knows this and it's stuck. So that's why PJs are called PJs. Why did you specifically join the Air Force, Aaron? So like all the other old guys that are getting ready to retire where I count myself happily. You know, September 11th happened in 2001 and I just didn't have a whole lot of purpose in my life. I grew up in a family. My dad was a fireman. My mom was a stay-at-home mom. I'm the oldest of six kids. September 11th happened and a lot changed and my grandfathers were both Navy vets and my grandpa Kilroy used to say that every generation owed America a debt and you don't know what it's gonna be. You know, my dad paid the debt to the nation by being a fireman and being a good upstanding citizen in his community and being a good man, raising a good family full of knucklehead boys and some really good girls. But, you know, September 11th happened and I just kind of knew. I knew that I wanted to go do something. I looked at my dad and I said, hey, I'm gonna go talk to the services and I think I want to be a Marine because I want to go get in this fight right now. And on the way to the recruiting office, my dad looked at me and goes, so I was 21, I was a little bit older, right? But he looks at me and he goes, hey, just check out the Air Force. There's this job called para rescue. I think you'd probably like it. So why don't you just talk to the Air Force first and the rest is history. I took a past test. I talked to the recruiter. I got myself an order and two or three months later I was headed down to Lackland Air Force Base in San Antonio, Texas. Shout out to your dad for steering you away from the other branches, huh? Got me. Well, I got three little brothers that are in the Army. So that makes for fun Christmases. I've got two, one fixed wing pilot, one helicopter pilot and the other one works in the cyber warfare sort of command there. And it's been fun. It's been fun the entire career to make fun of each other essentially, but I was the only one. Nobody followed in my footsteps and I've always made fun of them for it. How long have you been in or how long did you serve? So I've been in for 21 years, just a little bit over 21 years. So my Air Force birthday is in January because I got down right after the first of the year. So September 11th happened and it took me about two months to process and got down to Lackland Air Force Base in January. So it'll be 22 years here in January. What number was this job on your list or what other jobs were you interested when you were going to join the Air Force? I know you kind of already touched on this, but if there was anything else you were maybe interested in if you went and it was like, hey, PJ isn't gonna work out or just in case, here are my other things that I'm interested in doing. My calling was two special operations. My calling was to small teams working in possible problems with a lot of responsibility. So I talked to the other services and I talked to some, the Army about being a Ranger, being a Green Beret, I did talk to the Navy about being a Seal. I never did get to talk to the Marines. The Marines were out to lunch when I actually went down there. So they weren't even open. So, you know, serendipitous. I said, well, exactly, well, but we can argue that point later. Yeah, but you know, I always wanted to do special operations. I've wanted to do something physical. I wanted to do there. So I did a really bad job of coming up with a plan B. You know, I had, this was at the time they would give you a guaranteed contract for a para rescue. We do it a little bit differently now. We have what's called the SWOV program. And if you want to raise your hand and say, I want to be in the Air Force and I want to be a special operator, but I just don't know which flavor yet. You go into the same development program and you go all the way through basic training. You actually go all the way through one of your first steps in the pipeline. It's called the special warfare candidate course before you have to actually say, I want to be a PJ or I want to be a controller or I want to be a tech P or whatever. So I came in with a guaranteed contract to be a PJ. And I had my heart set on it and I didn't really even look at another job. I was just like, I'm gonna do this thing. I talked to the recruiters about some other jobs. I scored well enough on my ASVAB to have a good list of jobs to look at. But I don't really remember talking about any other job. It was, I'm gonna go do this PJ thing. And if something happens and I don't make it, I knew the attrition rate and I knew it was high. I knew it was super tough to get through. And I just, I told my recruiter, listen, I'll handle it when it presents itself. If I don't make it through this first in-doc team and I have to go do another job in the Air Force, I'll figure it out then, which he thought was hilarious. He was like, boy, that is a terrible plan. Do you want to think through this thing? And I was like, no, let's go, you know? Well, fun fact, I didn't make it my first time and I did another job in the Air Force. So I had to go back. I actually failed the first time I went to in-doc. I became an aerospace physiology technician. And then I went back to in-doc in 2005. So I was there and it did present itself. I didn't make it. I made it pretty far on both of my teams and then just had to step away and came back the next time. So those recruiters' words were ringing in my ears as I was looking through jobs down at Lackland. Like, oh man, what am I gonna do? I wish I had to talk to him about it. What is the attrition rate for PJ as of right now? So it's a little bit squishy, right? So the way that we assess and select now, there's a little bit of wiggle room in the numbers and that sounds disingenuous, but it's really just how we staff and fill positions. But it's always around about 90%. So anywhere from 89 to 91%, depending on, you know, what time of year you take the number and what the attrition rate looks like. But you're really looking at a nine to maybe 11% success rate. So when we say attrition, we mean 89 to 91% of the people do not make it and only nine to 11% of the people actually do make it through the pipeline and put a bra on. Did you sign a four or six year contract and why? Six year contract, a couple of reasons. So number one, they offered a pretty big bonus back then. So the enlistment bonus for Pear Rescue and a six year contract was pretty good. It was more money than I've ever seen in my life because I was just tooling around Northeast Ohio, no college degree, just a high school graduate, working job to job, trying to figure life out and trying to figure out if I'm gonna finish college and do all this other stuff. So number one, it was the enlistment bonus. It was pretty appetizing. But number two, again, I knew I wanted to do this thing. I knew that the pipeline was very long. At that time, the pipeline was 18 to 24 months. It's just about the same now. But I knew that I wanted to get out and do good work. And I kind of did the math and I said, hey, if it takes you, if I get set back at school, if I'm unable to, if I get injured, if something happens where I have to miss parts of this pipeline, it's very, very doable you can spend two and a half years inside of the pipeline. We've had some bad luck cases of guys that'll tear an ACL, just out on a run or something, they'll tear an ACL and they gotta take six to eight months off. You're talking about a three year pipeline, three and a half year pipeline at that point. I wanted the option to get through the pipeline, have a little bit of wiggle room and then have a good first enlistment. So six years was the first contract I signed because I wanted to make sure that I got into the job. I believe now I don't think you can even sign for and I don't think they offer that for special operations. I'm not for sure on that. But- I would have to look into it. This is why we have a wide network of recruiters because when these questions come up, we ping them. Or maybe they still allow it, but they, like you literally said, because the training pipeline is so time consuming, it doesn't even make sense for the Air Force to have people sign up for your contract because you finish your training and then you go and in process at your base and then you're like, oh, time to out process. Exactly. It's not exactly beneficial for the Air Force at that point because all they do is train you to then get out and not actually do the job. Sure. Where and how long was your tech school? So I know you said it could be 18, 24 months. I know you guys have a lot different experience than most other career fields. So if you wanna talk about in general, at least for PJs, because of all the other special operations jobs end up going down different paths or can go to different classes. So focus mostly or like just completely on PJs, what does that whole pipeline look like? Where are you going and how long are each of those phases? I know Peach has even said like, some of those depend, right? It's like, so it can fluctuate. So if you just general idea, what to expect on that journey. Sure. And I'll speak in real time because my pipeline experience was different. We actually do it differently now than we did back then. So you start off at Air Force Basic Training and you go and you have your own flight full of aspect war candidate hopefuls, right? So before it used to be some PJs and some like controllers and Seer guys and EOD and they would just get stuck in the big flights of people with like maintainers and cops and a bunch of other AFSCs. We've since changed that and it's gonna be a whole flight of aspect war candidates. You'll go through basic training and then you go over to the other side of base or actually it's the same side of base now but it's just across the street over the bridge there over to the special warfare candidate course. And that's where you're gonna start your journey actually into the pipeline. So the special warfare candidate course is an eight week program meant to get you ready to go to assessment selection. You'll get out of the aspect war SWIC. So special warfare candidate course everybody calls it SWIC as it's written out. So you get out of SWIC and you go to assessment selection. Assessment selection is four weeks. At the end of those four weeks you'll either be selected or non-selected. You'll know what job you're gonna have. So that's when they stamp you and say, okay, yep you were selected for para rescue. And the next thing you go to is pre-dive. These two courses are run back to back and there's no break. So you essentially graduate on a Friday you know that you're selected and you go directly in a pre-dive that next Monday. So after pre-dive, obviously it makes the most sense to go to combat dive school. The Air Force has our own combat dive school and that's down in Pensacola, Florida at the NDSTC. So it's a great program. You six weeks long, you learn everything open circuit, closed circuit, dive fundamentals, dive physics, dive emergencies. You learn how to navigate underwater in both open and closed circuits. You do simulated exercises or FTXs where you infiltrate a beach. Nobody sees you do that of course and then you have an objective that you have to complete. So awesome time down there in Pensacola. And now just as Peach said, it gets a little bit wonky here because now we go to a bunch of different schools but these schools may differ in order just due to class seats and we don't own all of the schools. The army owns a good portion of the schools that we go to. So for us to have class seats, it gets a little bit wonky. They start playing this checkers game of where can I put this person and do we have a seat open here? So in some order, and by the way, as a PJ candidate you'll still be a joint based San Antonio. So everything is happening now. You're just in different dorms and you're going to these pipeline schools from the same sort of compound at the aspect where training lane. So from that compound, you're living there and then going TDY to these schools. So after you get done with dive school, you'll go to airborne. So army airborne school where you'll learn how to do static line parachuting. And that's down in Fort Benning, Georgia. From there, you go to Sear school. So Air Force, Sear school. So survival, evasion, resistance and escape school. That was about three weeks. It's up in Spokane, Washington. You'll have to go to another Sear course. It's a helicopter dunker because we work in helicopters a lot. There's a certain qualification you need that if the helicopter goes in the water, you know how to get out. So they basically have a huge dunker that goes into a pool and then you learn how to swim out of the helicopter. So that's just one of the weird things that you'll need to go do. But that's also- What base was that at? Yeah, it's in Spokane. Oh, that was too? It is, yeah. You'll get done with dive school, airborne, Sear. And then you're off to Freefall. This is another one that the army owns out in Yuma, Arizona. So you'll go- It's military skydiving. It's super fun. It's usually the most fun part of the pipeline where you're just jumping out of an airplane two or three times a day, learning how to jump with equipment, learning how to jump with oxygen, learning how to jump at night, and with equipment, and with oxygen, and under NVGs. And the whole thing is pretty rad. It's typically a pretty fun time. It's very memorable the first time that you get to Freefall out of an aircraft to get paid for it, as opposed to paying for it. So that's a pretty cool one. It's usually cost people like a hundred, a few hundred dollars to go skydiving. And it's an expensive hobby, my friend. So you'll go back to San Antonio. So for this entire time, you're still at San Antonio. The last thing that you'll do, usually at San Antonio, is you go through what's called the MP3 program, the military para rescue provider program, or MP3. And essentially that's where you get your EMT certification. So they take you from no medical training and a high school degree, all the way through nationally registered paramedic in the course of about eight months. So that is super fast. That is a very fast progression. And that includes going to places like Philadelphia, St. Louis, Baltimore, to get trauma training on actual patients. So you go ride and work in hospitals. You ride the EMS truck and you work in hospitals in order to get your paramedic certification. How long is that course typically? Cause you said it was eight months for you guys. In the civilian side, how long does it take a normal person to get that same certification? Because they cram yours into a shorter amount of time. So I have a little pressure on you guys. Normal civilian courses can be more than a year. Sometimes it can be 18 months to two years, depending on how much you're going. Like a full-time student going eight hours a day, it's still more than a year for the civilian side. So, and we get it done in eight months. The instructors are amazing. The contractors that teach those courses are a lot of them are former PJs and former special operations medics. So they really know what they're talking about. And it's a lot of information. I distinctly remember I was in the pipeline and it was an E5, so I was a staff sergeant. And it actually came up time for me to test. And the question was, am I going to study for this test at all and try to make rank? Or am I going to study for this paramedic? Cause we had two tests that week. We had a test on Monday and a test on Friday. And the test on Monday was the cardiac test. So cardiac block for us, I think they've narrowed it down to like two weeks, but it takes like three months for civilians to learn the cardiac stuff. With every code and medications and stuff like that. So it was like too bad not studying for this Air Force test. You got to study for the paramedic test, but it's big. It's a test of your adult learning and it is really, really tough to do, but they've got a really high pass rate oddly enough because people really buckle down and pay attention to it. So and then that's the last thing that you do at JBSA. So that's kind of your culminating event is you get that MP3 certification and then you're ready to go on to the next step of the pipeline. You know, what is the next step of the pipeline after that? The best one, Kirtland Air Force Base. So you PCS to the land of enchantment in Albuquerque, New Mexico, and you get to go to what's called locally known as PJU, but it's the apprentice course, the Perrescu Crow apprentice course, which is about six months, but it's your finishing school. So up until now we've done all these things in little stove pipes. So we learned how to jump, we learned how to shoot, we learned how to do medicine, we learned how to dive, we learned how to move tactically as a team, but you were never asked to put it all together. And that's what the apprentice course is all about, is they're gonna ask you to put everything together and look, act, talk, behave like a PJ the entire time. And how long is that section, that last piece where they put it all together? How long is that at Kirkland? So six months from start to finish the apprentice course, there's seven separate phases, ending in the final evaluation phase. The final evaluation phase is exactly what it sounds like. It is two straight weeks of you being evaluated day in, day out, multiple missions a day, everybody on the team just getting tested over and over and over again to see if they're ready to graduate. So your final piece of training is longer than most other careers, like entire tech school experience. And that's after you guys have done like several different sections and you've been in training for over a year at that point. And then you're like, all right, on to the final piece of tech school when you're like, that piece is literally longer than other people's whole tech school experience, which is kind of crazy in perspective to think about because the people that you went to basic training with at that point, they've already been at their base for like a year, year and a half doing their job. And you guys are still in training shows how much information goes into what you guys do. It's even accelerated like you said, like you're taking, you know, almost a year and a half, two years of training, realistically, it should be like four years, maybe more to get to the expertise that you guys are getting just in that year and a half, which is pretty insane to think about. It seems like a very intense pipeline to go through. That's a good way to describe it. It is intense, but it's also some of the best memories you'll ever have, so it's awesome. Kind of just answered this like with that last sentence, but how was your tech school? Did you enjoy it? Why or why not? So since you kind of have already said that you did enjoy it, maybe talk about what was your happiest moments of the most fun things, but then also what was the hardest part about all of your pipeline and what were the moments where you're like, this was tough or I didn't really care for this. Yeah, well, the best moment easily is, you know, we get to blouse our boots. We have a distinctive Air Force uniform. So in 1966, we were authorized to wear the maroon beret on and off base for official and non-official duties. We were authorized to blouse our boots. So we're one of four career fields that can blouse your boots. So you look distinctive in your uniform and your classes. So when you get that command to blouse your boots and don your beret and you say the creed, it's a big deal. It's something that I will never forget. I know every single second of everything that happened kind of over that day and over those couple of days. And it was a culmination of a lot. And to answer your question directly about what was the worst part of the hardest part, it was literally every other day of the pipeline because it was intense. Now, you know, really it's just the grind. It's waking up every day and knowing not only that you could really hurt or kill yourself, like no kidding, the things that we do are dangerous. They're hazardous duties. So jumping out of airplanes is fun, but it's also very dangerous. And diving is fun, but it's also very dangerous. Working on a sheer 300 foot drop off on a mountain, only tied to a rope and a harness, that's pretty scary. And that doesn't even encompass the academic challenges. We talked about paramedic in the MP3 program. That's really, really hard to get through. And at any day, you could fail. So just kind of, you know, waking up, you know, the grind and oh, by the way, just in there, you could just have any number of heinous events where, you know, you're physically at your very limit. Like you cannot do one more pushup. You cannot do one more set up. You cannot run another foot and you're asked to do more pushups and more setups and run further. So it's really, really tough to get through. The grind is day in and day out. And, you know, that's on top of being evaluated every day. You know, it was heartbreaking. I ended up being an instructor during my time and I went back to the apprentice course and it was heartbreaking to watch students who couldn't make the standard at the end of that two-year pipeline and we would have to tell, you know, folks, hey, you're gonna have to go do another job and come back and try again. And unfortunately you didn't make the standard. And, you know, that was in the back of your mind every day. Every day was another opportunity to fail, was another opportunity to get set back from a school. And it was another opportunity in some cases really to put your life on the line because that's what you were doing. I can't imagine like making it that far and then having to turn around and like walk away from it. You like gave it your all and you made it to that point, you know, like you were so close. It's pretty intense just to hear like you say that where you're like, you even went through it and you made it and you're like, it's scary some days, it's tough. Like there are days where you're like, this is dangerous. And like, that's possibly like the most safe you're gonna be. It is the most safe you're gonna be. For the rest of your career. The pipeline, you have instructors that are almost all the time when we're doing that stuff, you have one-on-one instruction from somebody that is a subject matter expert in the thing that you're doing. When you're at dive school, you're under the watchful eyes of guys that have thousands of hours underneath the ocean. Tens of thousands of jumps are the instructors that are teaching you how to jump out of an airplane. Some of the people that we have teaching mountain rescue has spent more time on a mountain than I have on the earth. You know what I mean? Like they know what they're doing and that is the most safe you're gonna be and it's still dangerous. You mentioned that in training, you guys go all over the place, right? So some jobs can be stationed everywhere, some jobs can't. So with para rescue, what bases can you guys be stationed at once you've made it through the pipeline? You officially became a PJ and they ship you off to your first duty station. What are your options looking like at that point? So we're gonna do a by command. So ACC has the preponderance of PJs, like the most PJs, well, so technically the most PJs that are in the Air Force work for the guard and the reserve, okay? So we'll put that for later. So ACC active duty side, when you graduate, you can go to Davis-Monathan Air Force Base in Arizona or you can go to Moody Air Force Base in Georgia. So they just close, they announced the closure of the 58th Rescue Squadron in Las Vegas, Nevada. So that is no longer gonna be a place where para rescuement can go. On the ACC side of the house, you can also go over, it's technically over in Yukon, but when you can go over to Aviano, Italy as a rescue unit, and you can go over to Okinawa, Japan, and there's a rescue unit over there. So those on the ACC side of the house that's where you can go. In AFSOC, you can go to the four two series units. So in ST, we have what we call the two series. So the 21st STS is in Pope. So it's in North Carolina, Fort Bragg, North Carolina. So you can go to the 21st STS, the two two where I work now, which is Joint Base, Lewis McCord, and that's in Washington State. The two three, which is in Hurlebrook Field, Florida. Or you can go to the two six, which is in Cannon Air Force Base, New Mexico. That's just down the road from Kirtland. Overseas, you can go to RAF Mildenhall, which is in England. Or you can go to Ogy, there's also an STS there. So that's the ST side of the house. After that, you got the Garden of the Reserve. So you've got Alaska, J-Bear. So Joint Base, Elmendorf. You can go to just outside of San Jose and you can go to the Moffitt unit, which is in Cali, Northern California. DM is another spot that you can go for the Guard of the Reserve. Kentucky has a Guard of the Reserve. New York has their Guard up there. Cocoa Beach, Florida has their Guard. Portland has a Rescue Unit and an STS unit. So Portland, Oregon also has a Guard and Reserve base. So how many hours a week do you usually work? So there's really no answer to this. Sometimes it's 24 hours a day, seven days a week. Sometimes you get a break to take a knee and you don't have to put that much effort into it. It depends on where you are in your training cycle. How many hours, it kind of depends on how you get ready for training. There's a very set up and very deliberate training cycle, how we get ready for deployments. And this happens on a 24 month cycle, depending on which phase you're in and depending which things you need to get done. Like in the first phase, it's called our individual training phase. You might be more focused on getting your Air Force PME done. You might be more focused on getting your individual schooling. Like if you have to go to an upgrade school, like you're gonna become a jump master or a dive supervisor or a mountain leader. You may have to take time out to where you're going off ones and twos to go get that stuff done. In the individual training phase, usually you're resetting from the deployment. As you move on through these phases, there's unit and joint collective phase and then finally your committed phase, which is your deployment. There's gonna be ebbs and flows with how much you work. So oftentimes in the joint collective phase, that's the phase where we interface with sister service or other partner nations where we start doing deployment tasks. So for instance, if we're going to be doing a global access task, we're gonna work with other sister service partners and we're gonna be working those global access soft skills. Now this can mean two week exercises. It can mean very easy afternoon classes. It just kind of depends. So typically we have a much higher ops tempo than almost all the other career fields. And oh, by the way, you're always on alert. So right now, if something happens in the world, there is a para rescue team that is ready to deploy within 72 hours, get on scene and start making a difference. And we saw this happen in the fall of H-KIA. So in August of 2021, when we needed to have the joint tactical exit of H-KIA, one of the para rescue teams, one of my good friends actually was spun up to go to that event and start helping with that event. So I don't wanna be too hyperbolic, but you're on call at 24-7. If you're on status and you're on a team, if something happens, you were always, and that's stateside, humanitarian, all the way through World War III, from a hurricane to World War III, if something in that range happens, they're gonna call a para rescue team and you have to be ready to go. So it really is a 24-7 job. I think some people don't realize that you guys aren't just there for combat rescue missions. A lot of people think, oh, you're gonna go off to war. And you're like, you've maybe been deployed to locations that were combat zones, but also earthquakes, like hurricanes, typhoons, you guys are there because some of these nations that need humanitarian relief, you guys are trained in responding to catastrophic events. I mean, my very first mission, I trained all this time. I went back and I was getting ready to go on deployment and I was ready to go and go down range and do that whole thing. And I was really excited about it because I was gonna get to go, feel like a PJ for the first time. And we got a call when we were in England and it was to go rescue a sailor, a Filipino sailor that was aboard a super tanker and he had a appendicitis and they thought he was gonna die, but he was 400 miles out into the IRC and there was no way that they couldn't turn the boat around, they couldn't get him. There was no way that they could take care of him. So we actually got alerted and we had to fly out and through multiple air refuelings, I got hoisted down to the deck of the ship, buttoned him up, brought him back up into the aircraft and then treated him all the way back so we turned him over in Ireland and that was my first mission. It was for no kidding, just a person that was sick and that had a burst appendix. There's probably more things that you guys contribute to and you help people and save lives than people even realize because even here, the unit at Nellis would get sent out to go rescue people in the mountains or the Grand Canyon. You guys are trained better than some of the fire departments and police departments that would be tasked with going to rescue them. So what do you do in your job? Explain what a typical day, week, month might be like. Like you said, you guys kind of do those 24 month cycles where you're getting ready to deploy and then you come back. What is preparing for that deployment cycle? What does that look like in a typical month cycle? What do you guys do? Just think of it as building blocks, right? You have to make yourself better individually first. So you're always honing skills. You know, there's currency and there's proficiency, right? Currency is have you done this thing in the last number of days? Proficiency is how good are you at this task, right? So we chase currency first to make sure that we're current and qualified on everything that it is that we're doing because we have a ton of regulations that when you do dangerous stuff, there's a bunch of regulations that you have to follow and a bunch of currencies that you have to get. So that's always first and foremost, are we current, are we qualified and then are we proficient? So you're building off of that and the training cycle is made in such a way where you make sure your individual skills are good and you're current and then your individual skills are proficient and then you start opening it up to the team. And the easiest way to kind of explain this and you can apply it to everything is, you know, think about jumping. So you get back from a deployment. If you didn't jump a whole lot on that deployment or sometimes you don't jump at all, you have to go back and kind of like knock the rust off, right? So you're gonna jump out of the plane a couple of times, fly your parachute a couple of times, get your own space in the sky and you're gonna be nice and safe. You start feeling better. You start learning how to fly again. Well, now it's time to jump with the team. And now the team's gonna jump together. The team's gonna fly together. The team's gonna land together. And then you start adding complexity. So we're gonna jump together. We're gonna fly together. We're gonna land together. But then when we're done, we're gonna get all of our tactical gear that we jumped in. We're gonna move to an objective. We're gonna perform a mission objective. And that mission objective is gonna be what we're gonna go deploy to do. So let's say that we're there for rescue and for the rescue team, then we're gonna go pretend to rescue somebody and we're gonna do some medicine. We're gonna make sure that we're calling in the appropriate aircraft fires. We're calling in the appropriate aircraft to land and support our mission. And then we're gonna go ahead and finish the mission and we're gonna debrief. And you just do that over and over and over again for every single thing that we do. So that building block approach. So for diving, it's been a while since we dove. So we're gonna get current. Then we're gonna get proficient. Then we're gonna make it a team sport. And then we're gonna give a bigger scenario where diving is a small part of it, but you have to do all of these other things. And really that's what you're doing in a stair step, very deliberate method through this 24 months to get ready to go. And it's really through 18 months ish because that deployment is usually we earmark six months or so for the deployment. So that's usually what you're doing the entire time. So that can change what your day to day looks like. That can change what your week to week looks like. Sometimes we go through two weeks worth of time where we're only focusing on jumping. You're just jumping every single day or some days we go to shooting schools that are two weeks long. So you're doing a little bit of medicine because we always put medicine in everything that we do but maybe you're not really focusing 100% on these other skills. You're just learning how to be a better shooter or sometimes we go to a mountain course and it's the same thing, driving course. We have so many different things that we have to stay current, qualified and proficient on that it fills up the time really, really quickly. You have to spend enough time on each given task and we just have a lot of them. So it fills up your day, it fills up your week a lot. People wanna nail you down and be like, well, what does your battle rhythm look like every day? I can't really tell you what it looks like every day. I can tell you what it looks like when we're getting ready to go to a jump school. I can tell you what it's when we're learning a new piece of equipment or how to cut into an aircraft. I can tell you what it looks like when we're learning how to cut apart an ISR drone because we need to go get it and take it home because that's part of our job too. But I can't tell you where that falls and I can't tell you what an average week looks like. I can just kinda tell you the methodology that we train, right? Get current, get proficient and then put those skills together as a larger team to get after a very deliberate and very specific task. A lot of people might look at you because you're special operations and be like, you guys work out all the time. I'm sure you guys do have some sort of workout program or a regimen that you guys follow. You guys do crossfit, you just do standard weight training. Do you guys just go and run 20 miles a day? What does your guys' fitness program look like? You will take bumps and bruises in this job all day long and you need to be durable through that. So we have what's called the Human Performance Optimization Staff. They're not just attached, they're actually assigned to the unit. So inside of the unit, we have two strength and conditioning coaches, two athletic trainers, a multitude of physios and extra medical folks that can do everything from cupping, scraping, dry needling, electro therapy, heat therapy, cold therapy, taping, anything that you want. We have at our fingertips and they work there in the unit. So every gym, every unit has a gym and nobody else is allowed in there. That is your gym. You can 24 hour access, you can walk into it and train whenever you want, hot tubs, cold tubs, saunas, infrared saunas, cryo, anything that you could use to be better at your job, whether that's for rehab, mobility, durability or just reaching peak physical fitness, you're there. I walk into the gym in the morning, pretty much every single schedule is the same. Seven to nine o'clock in the morning is marked out for gym time. It's mandatory. We have a program that's written up by the strength and conditioning trainers at every single unit. You walk in, you look at the board, you get after your work for the day, you do whatever mobility, durability that you have to do afterwards. If you tweak your shoulder, you can walk right over to the treatment table and say, hey, having a problem with this shoulder or having a problem with my neck or I took a hard landing on a parachute. So can you kind of help me out? And you get individualized care. And it's not just five days a week. It's very common to walk into the gym on Saturdays and dudes are in there throwing down. Saturday bro sashes are very, very fun in our community because it's expected that you maintain a high level of physical fitness. You can't be on call 24 hours a day if you're out of shape. It just can't be a thing. You have to be able to answer that call right away because if the phone rings and they ask you to go on the hardest mission in your life, you have to be able to answer that call. And there's no hoping, there's no wishing. If you haven't done the work, when that call comes, you're gonna be found wanting and that's gonna be a bad day. It could cost your life or it could cost the life of your teammates. So we place a lot of value on physical fitness. And to the Air Force's credit, they came up, they actually, Para Rescue is actually a weapon system. So just like an F-15 is a weapon system, the reason that they did this is because F-15s have budgets for maintenance. They have maintainers that are supposed to be there to fix the plane when it breaks. They have people that refresh, give it new gear and new pieces of equipment when it needs it. And that has its whole separate budget. So when Para Rescue a couple of years ago got itself classified as a weapon system, then we got a budget for maintenance and we got a budget for maintainers and we got a budget for new equipment and stuff like that. So it was a really smart move by the career field but that's how we're looked at. You are a human weapon system and that weapon system needs maintenance and needs maintainers and needs support in order to continue and get the most out of that piece of equipment and the equipment in this case is us. That's awesome. So you guys don't actually go and do your own workout programs, like individualize. You guys will have somebody that plans one for you and then you guys will follow that because that maybe ties into all your other training. Guys always wanna do their own program. They're gonna get through the program workout and then you definitely see guys, some guys love to lift heavy, some guys love to go out and put hundreds of miles in on the bike. I do Jiu Jitsu in my off time, right? So I am at the gym five days a week doing other stuff. So guys are always gonna do that because it's the people that we select and it's the people that we want. These people that, it's not good enough to just do the program workout. These guys have other goals that some guys wanna run ultra marathon, some guys wanna be able to summit Rainier in a certain amount of time, they're gonna get after it. I think that makes you guys as a team stronger too because you have, everybody has the space line but then because that's the standard, right? You have to meet this. But then each of you guys have like, you all have your own unique talents built on top of that strong base because you guys probably are working out more than most people in your work day. And then a lot of you also do physical activity after your work day. Well, and then you spice it up every once in a while you're like, hey, we're gonna go out on a long rock today, you went to the gym that morning, cool. But if your afternoon involves doing some mountain work or going out and jumping, like that stuff's physically demanding too. So you need to be able to answer that call. It's tough. What certifications or training do you receive through your job that can be used to land a job outside of the Air Force? I'm not sure what the retirement rate in the para rescue community is compared to the Air Force as a whole is about 17-ish percent retire. So that means 83% of people get out before retirement. So right, they're gonna get out and then they're gonna go and pursue another job. I'm not sure what that looks like for you guys, but I would assume a decent amount of people don't do 20 years. It's just not statistically possible. Not everybody can stay in for 20 years. They do a ton of stuff. A lot of our guys like the medicine, like the medical aspect of being a para rescuement the most. So you see a ton of guys that'll go, the PA route that'll go be a doctor, that'll go be into anesthesia, that'll go be a CRNA, that'll go do all these other things in the medical realm. A lot of guys do that. There are some possibilities. There are some contract companies that do personal recovery and you still have the opportunity to go deploy and a lot of PJs and a lot of special operations, medics work for them. So those are their opportunities there. You're a nationally registered paramedic and you have a lot of good time, a lot of good patient contact behind you. So guys can go work as paramedics as well, but really, the type of guy that we attract, this guy is the limit. It's not just the certifications, but through that resilience course that is your two year pipeline and through some of the things that you learn, it's not just about the certifications, it's more about, you now have the life skills that really take on impossible stuff. So you see PJs that get out and are successful entrepreneurs in every different walk of life. You see guys that get out and go to law enforcement and spend another 20 years as a law enforcement officer in some form or fashion or they go to the firehouse and do all these things. So the certificates are there. There's really no job that directly correlates to para-rescue in the civilian world, right? Cause that would just be wacky. The para-rescue archetype, the dude that is getting out of para-rescue, really the sky is the limit. And we see guys do tons of stuff. Like a lot of guys like to stay close to the career field so they'll go back and they'll teach at the school house or they'll be involved in the community in some way with that, whether it's working at the school house or working at one of the test facilities or what have you, but really it's as diverse as our career field is because it takes all types of personality types and backgrounds in this career field and those guys go out and get after it when they get out. I like how you said the sky is the limit, like nothing's impossible because you literally have gone through a training program where only 10% of the people ever will make it through. It was nearly statistically impossible for me to make it. Yeah. And that's what's crazy is because even to get picked up as like when you want to join, they don't send everybody that even wants to join special operations to basic training. It's probably that same number, 90% of the people that even want to join as special operations don't even qualify to even get to go to basic training with that career field as their path. And so then the people that actually proved, no, I can do this, I want this, then they go and still 90% of those people fail. So like when you say like, these people get out and it's, whatever they set their mind to because you literally have kind of programmed yourself to believe like if I want to do that, the only thing stopping me is me, right? And it's like that, I think is a lot of, that's a lesson I think for everybody in life in general. Like most of the time, like 99% of people, if they want more in their life, they're really the only person stopping themselves. Like nothing else is actually stopping them other than themselves. Most of you guys have deprogrammed that from your mind where you're like, it's like, you know, the moment you're like, oh, I want that. Thinking, oh, I can't do that. Isn't it's not a thing anymore because you're just like, oh, I want that. Okay, let's do it, you know? And there's nothing, nothing's gonna stop you and there's no certification for that, you know? Like a legitimate certification. But like that's a life lesson that you guys have been programmed to understand is you're the only one holding yourself back. What is your deployment tempo like? You kind of already touched on this, I'll have you recap. And at what point does that deployment tempo slow down or does it? Like you said, you're an E8 now, you've been in for 22 years. So it really depends on what unit you're at, it depends on what's going on in the world. It really does depend a lot on luck. The guys want to deploy as much as they possibly can, but there's definitely guys that just, they barely miss a cycle, they get locked up into a school and they miss the next deployment and, you know, and then there's definitely guys that are, you know, just magnets for missions. And every time they turn around, they're walking out the door and they're going on a deployment, you know? I was lucky enough that even as an E8, I deployed, I'd been in for 20 years, I took a troop down range and deployed in 2021, you know? Like, so I was lucky enough to do it. The deployment ops tempo really doesn't slow down, your job's gonna change, right? Like you might go to a different area and be managing a bunch of different teams as you get up, but for our career field, really we're pretty rank and verse. There's not a whole lot of old dudes. So E7s are still taking teams down range and deploying and doing the job. It's a pretty cool aspect of our job because we're just, we're so small. So that's a really, really cool thing. The tempo is really gonna depend on your, you know, the guard and the reserve deploy on a more predictable schedule, but they can always hop in and augment other teams. Sometimes if there's nothing going on or sometimes if, you know, we've had teams getting ready to go deploy to one area and then another area pops off, so they have to go there and another team has to fill in and it makes the deployment schedules all wonky. So it really just depends. It does slow down a little bit as you get up in rank, just like anything else. If you know, if you're the chief of the unit, you can't necessarily be gone. If you're the ops soup of the unit, you can't necessarily go deploy. And you know, you work yourselves into those positions, you know, on the officer side, they work themselves into those positions or they can't go down range with the boys and go have fun. They have to stay at home and keep the lights on and pay the bills and stuff like that. So it's gonna be a while, especially on the enlisted side. You know, the tempo is gonna be high because remember, we're training, we're doing dangerous stuff all the time. So it's not just deployments, it's long TDIs and spending lots of time on the road. And then you throw a deployment in there and it can get pretty hectic. You know, there's definitely, especially in the height of GWAT, guys were getting two deployments a year and they were gone for 300 days that year. So that includes, you know, their training schedule and stuff. So it can be as much as that or you could get a deployment every 18 months because you're just like clockwork on your schedule and thankfully the world isn't falling apart and there's not a lot of people that need you. So it can really be a whole lot of stuff but it depends on a bunch of different factors. So that's actually something important not only for the person that's interested in joining but even for the family involved. Because like you said, you're like, it might not slow down through an entire career of 20 years. And so that's 20 years of, if you have a family, they got to be on board for that, right? Like you can't, it's not like, oh, we're gonna just push through this these first six years and then it'll get easier. You know, like in your career specifically, you might be looking at, it doesn't ever slow down until you decide to get out. It does produce some of the strongest families that probably the world has ever seen. Some of these kids are getting six or seven moves and deployment after deployment, like some of the most resilient families have ever seen but you're right, it is tough and it does take a toll. So yeah, you crushed it. So what advice do you have for someone who is interested in becoming a PJ? Like if you were to have, you guys kind of already do this because of one's ready but if you were to talk to somebody that's like 18, 19, 20 years old, that's like, hey, I'm thinking about becoming a PJ, how would you talk to that person or what would you kind of want them to understand about what they just said, right? You know, I would first start with, you know, kind of a sobering thing and it's never, you're always supposed to start with motivation and then temper it at the end, right? I actually do it the other way. Like this job will take literally everything from you. Like it will ask you, you know, our very career field motto is that others may live. You're expected to live up to that motto every day and what that means is even though you know it might kill you or kill your teammates, you are going to be asked to put yourself in situations to save other people and you have to internalize that and accept it every single day. And if that person that I just said that to looked at me and they have a follow on question, that's how I know I got them. Because this job is the most righteous. This job is the most awesome. This job is the most humbling thing that I've ever done in my entire life. It made me who I am. It shaped me. It taught me lessons that were uncomfortable at the time but benefited me later in my life. It is always going to take from you. You were never going to get more from this job than it is going to take from you for the entire time that you're in. But that's not a bad thing because the people that we want are people that are willing to give up huge parts of themselves to put their family in those positions, to put their lives second in order to pursue this thing that we do that others may live. So the only advice that I would ever have is, you know, number one, don't quit. Nothing's impossible. You can do it if you just don't quit. You gotta show up every single day. You're not gonna wanna show up every single day. You don't wanna work out every day. You don't wanna train every day. You don't wanna work 24 hours a day, seven days a week all the time. You don't wanna be evaluated every day. But that's not the point. The point is that this mission, that this pursuit, this profession of arms is so righteous that you are going to love the fact that you're giving up a little part of yourself every single day. And there's gonna be a time where it's time to step away and time to prioritize yourself again. And that time will come soon enough. But if you're thinking about doing the job of peri-rescue or any other Air Force special operations, sell out, sell yourself out, lean all the way into it and give it 100% and don't quit and you can do it and you can do impossible things. You're gonna make the best friends that you'll ever make. You'll learn things about yourself. You could have never, you could have never known in a million years doing anything else. You're gonna do things and you're gonna see things that are unbelievable both in good and bad ways, both in positive and negative aspects. But it is like no other and it's righteous and it's a righteous pursuit to do. So if you're thinking about doing peri-rescue, if you're thinking about trying to be a PJ, to be one of those nine to 11% that actually makes it and gets to blouse your boots and throw a beret on your head and say that others may live and make the best friends that you've ever had, don't wait, go do it now. Nothing else matters, what's going on in the world or the political environment or what's going on in the social sphere, none of that matters. You can find a way to do something righteous and it can be today and it's called being a PJ. What advice do you have for people who are just starting out in this job? How can they have a successful career? I'm talking about the guys that literally just made it through they're getting to their first duty station, right? And so like they did all that, the hard work up to that point and like they're getting there. Like what is your advice to those guys that now are gonna have to actually put all that work into practice? Yeah, first and foremost, you don't own that beret, you rent it and that rent is due every single day. That beret was worn by friends of mine that have unfortunately died by heroes, national heroes, no kidding, medal of honor winners. Pitts and Barger wore that beret. I can name off Jason Cunningham wore that beret. A million other people, not a million other people. A lot of other people that were righteous men wore that beret and now you owe it to them to live up to the motto every single day. And be a subject matter enthusiast, okay? They're subject matter experts, but you don't get to be a subject matter expert unless you're a subject matter enthusiast. Really lean into what your given profession is. Be good at your job. Understand what you're asked to do and be really good about it. Be enthusiastic, ask questions, go the extra mile. You're never done, so just keep improving and hopefully one day you'll go to that Jedi master status, but for now be a subject matter enthusiast and just care. And then this one's probably not gonna be like as normal for a guy my age to say, but man, don't listen to those old dudes. We get salty and we tell you that this young generation isn't as good and we'll tell you all these kids these days, man, don't listen to us. Back in my day. Yep, don't do it, man. I'll be the first one to tell you. The young J's out there, the MPJs out there that are getting to their first unit and that are hard chargers and they're just meat eaters and just wanna go all day. Y'all are bigger, stronger, faster, smarter, harder to kill than every single one of us that has been moaning you and be like, oh, these young PJs, you're the future. So act like it. What's your biggest advice to someone who wants to join the Air Force? Not be para rescue, but the Air Force in general, right? Because like we just, like you just explained, not everybody is going to be a PJ. Even the people that want to be a PJ aren't gonna be a PJ. So like your biggest advice to people that are just like, it doesn't, no matter what job they get, what is your advice to future Airmen in general? It's the exact same. Be a subject matter enthusiast, really care, really go there and be invested in being an Airman. My checks are not signed by the United States para rescue force. They're signed by the United States Air Force. First and foremost, I am proud to be in the United States Air Force and be an Air Force Airman. Everybody can share that pride. My uniform might look a little bit different, but it was the same uniform that you had when you were in. We could look across a bar, we could look at each other and we'd go, hey, wait a second, that guy knows a little something. I went to basic training too. We all have that in common. So for the people that are looking to get in the Air Force, no matter what it is, para rescue men, Air Force Special Warfare, special tactics, Air Force Special Operations, okay, sure, we may train differently. We have different tools. We are a special forces entity, right? We have special tools and special equipment. We do high risk mission sets on small teams. Those things, doctrinally and definitionally, okay, that's fine. But in the end, we're all Airmen. If you wanna get in the Air Force and you wanna be a personelist, get in and be the best personelist that you could possibly be. Be the best mechanic that you could possibly be. When somebody else, when a para rescue man, when I walk into a finance office and I see a true professional and I know they know what they're doing, man, I respect that. I respect the hell out of that. So it doesn't matter if you're gonna be a PJ or a controller or a personelist or an IT specialist or an Intel specialist or you're gonna be a vehicle mechanic or you're gonna be an aircraft mechanic, be the best one that you can be. You're supporting the best fighting force that history has ever seen. The United States Air Force has done more for humanity and done more against evil that stands in the world than any force in human history and you get to be a part of that. So go crush it. Go lean into that. Be proud of that. And then you owe more, you owe more to the Air Force than they owe for you. They're gonna compensate you and you're gonna get benefits and perks that you'd never believe. But you owe a lot to that uniform and you owe a lot to that US Air Force tape on your uniform. So lean into it. Be an enthusiast. Go crush it. Whatever it is that you're gonna do, go crush it. If you go to two people and you have one person that has a positive, happy mindset, but they're gonna work hard. They're gonna outwork everybody else. You have two hard workers, but you have somebody that's salty negative attitude and then somebody else that's like positive attitude. They work just as hard. Like who do you wanna follow? Who do you wanna work with? Who do you even wanna be around? Who do you wanna share a room with? So I'm like, yeah, being a subject matter enthusiast means like you're gonna be an expert at it, but you're gonna be the best expert at it, right? And so I'm like, it was just cool when you said that because I was like, dang, I never heard that before, but it's like, that's good. Aaron, where can people follow you and check out more of what you do? This is really cool because you also have information that you provide for people to help people. So people can't just go and follow you on Instagram and just like hit your DMs. You actually provide a lot of valuable information. So where can they follow you? Yeah, I suppose you could hit my personal page, but honestly, it's pretty much all animal memes and it's really useless. So go over to onesready.com and you can check out everything we do, right? So we're onesready on Instagram and Facebook, onesready.com is the homepage. And you can find us wherever you get your podcast. So we're out on all podcast platforms. We've got hundreds of hours of content. So I think we're on episode 240 at this point and we're focused directly on Air Force Special Warfare and helping people prepare to get not only into Air Force Special Operations, but all services, first responders. We do a lot on mental resilience, mental health, mental strategies for becoming the person that you want to be. So we're really a holistic look at helping people become the best versions of themselves. If you want to come in specifically for Air Force Special Warfare, we got you. We're happy to answer a DM. Like we said, we were joking before we kind of came on. I'd appreciate if you like looked for your answer in the catalog of stuff that we have, because I bet it probably exists, but we are still in the DMs. We answer every single DM between Peaches, Trent and myself. And we are there solely to help you out. If it's hooking you up with a recruiter that you need, if it's finding you the right physical preparation platform that you want to use, if it's finding you some other group of folks that you want to be involved in, we can get you to those groups of folks. So go over to OnesReady on Instagram, on Facebook. You could just Google us, O-N-E-S, ready, R-E-A-D-Y. So OnesReady.com and you can find everything that we do and we are happy to engage. It's the whole reason why we're here. When I first found you guys, I started going through and I was like, holy smokes, like the amount of information, you guys post almost every single day. And so I was like going through and I'm like, this is crazy how much information you guys have put out up to this point. And you guys are like doing 45 minute long episode, really diving into these situations and you got multiple perspectives from multiple people in special operations, not just one career field. And I was like, you guys have done an absolute brilliant job on it. I was telling Peach is the same thing, like the amount of information that you guys have already put out and you guys are like still trying to build this up, right? And so that's the cool thing is like, you guys aren't even, haven't turned it into everything that you want to yet and it's already like, just looking at it. I was like, this is kind of wild how like you guys are literally subject matter enthusiasts about special operations. And so like you have all these guys come in and you guys are so passionate about it. You guys have created hundreds of pieces of content. So definitely if you guys are looking for anything to do with special operations, not just PJ, because if you found this and you're like, oh, I'm interested in a pair of rescue, but what are the other special operations jobs like? Aaron and the rest of the team at ones ready is my far gonna be your best resource on the entire internet to find out what exactly you do want to do in special operations and how to do it. Because yeah, I was like kind of overwhelmed even me. I'm like, I'm not even interested in going special operations. I did the Air Force already. I was maintenance, I got out. I'm not looking to do that, but I started going through and I'm like, I don't even think I could come up with questions that you guys didn't answer. We appreciate that man. Yeah, no, it was, I was pretty impressed when I started going through your guys' catalog. So if you're definitely interested in special operations and especially for rescue, Aaron and the rest of the team have everything that you could think of. And you guys aren't even stopping there. You guys are continuing to make content still. So yeah, it's a lot of good things. So I appreciate having you on. Thanks for sharing some knowledge on Para Rescue. And definitely go check out Aaron and the rest of the team at OnesReady and we will see you guys in another video.