 Motivation wanes. You will not always be motivated. But the discipline is what keeps you going after it. On the days you don't want to train, you need to do it anyway. And don't quit. Welcome back to Airman Vision. In today's video, we interview Peaches, who is a combat controller in the United States Air Force. And he's also a co-host of the podcast, One's Ready. So be sure to go over there and 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, an 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 it's AFSC. So my job is a United States Air Force combat controller. And the Air Force specialty code is a 1Z2X1. Why did you join the Air Force? Like you personally? So I do have military in my family. My grandfather was Navy, my uncle was Marines, my cousin was Marine, and then I joined. And that was never actually the intent, especially early on, because I did junior ROTC for about three days. And I said, this is not for me. I'm not having it. I don't like my peers yelling at me and treating me like dirt. So screw that. But I wanted to do something that was fun, difficult, and got my adrenaline going, because my entire life I've been an adrenaline junkie. And I went to the Army and the Navy as well. But at the time, some of their programs were different. You had to be in the Navy or the Army for a certain amount of time before you could try out for Navy SEALs or Green Berets. And you weren't guaranteed to go to dive school or freefall school or anything like that. The Air Force said, hey, we've got para rescue. And I know that's different than what I am now. So I joined for para rescue, because immediately I didn't have to join the Air Force and do a certain amount of time before I could become a PJ. It was guaranteed I got diet school, freefall, airborne, all these schools. I got the shoot, move and communicate, ride dirt bikes, so that whole deal really get the adrenaline going. So I picked that. Why I became a combat controller, though, is that while I was at selection, I was surrounded by para rescue candidates, combat control candidates, and the respective instructors as well. So we had some of the combat control instructors give us a brief on what they actually do in terms of airfields, radios, calling in airstrikes. And then they said, hey, this is your one opportunity before you continue on during selection and into the pipeline, that if you want to swap from being a PJ to a CCT or a CCT to a PJ, now's your opportunity. And there was a handful of us that said, we'll go be CCT. We weren't afforded that opportunity at the recruiting office. Information was lacking back then. When you think of the Air Force Special Operations, PJs get a lot of the spotlight there. I love it because, you know, I've got a lot of great friends that are PJs and, you know, Aaron on the One Dirty Podcast with us. Give them crap all the time, but everybody loves a hero. That's what PJs do. They go in on people's worst days and they are there to get them out. Whereas that is not us. Now maybe we facilitate some of that, but our job is really to end people's lives. How long have you been in the Air Force or how long did you serve? I decided to continue to do the job throughout the years, as long as I was having fun. Here I am starting my 25th year. So, and I'm still having fun. It's been fantastic. So when you initially joined, you didn't have the idea of I'm just doing my first contract and get it out or I'm doing 20 plus years. You were just going to take it one contract at a time. You haven't committed yet to a retirement date yet, right? No, I have not committed to a retirement date yet. I have projected just within, you know, talking to myself and talking to my family. We've kind of projected, but I have not pushed the button to retire yet. I came in and said, okay, well, if I do 10 years, that's not too much invested to where if I did get out, I'm sure it feels like out of high school. Yeah, I joined at 17 right out of high school. You know, had to get my parents permission to join and all that kind of good stuff. Yeah, 10 years. You're not even you're not even 30 yet. Exactly. So I was like, you know, if I do 10 years, great, whatever. I'm still in my 20s, you know, came in for six years. I had a signing motors for $18,000 at the time. It's much, much more now. It's a lot more now. When you went to a recruiter and were like, I'm going to join the Air Force. And you came up with the idea of what jobs you wanted to do. Were you all in on being a PJ at the time? Or were you kind of like, Hey, I'm interested in all of these jobs. PJs at the top of that list. You know, I wanted to not put all my eggs in one bag of skits. Navy was going to be a seal for Army was going to be Rangers and Green Beret. And then for Air Force is going to be para rescue because that's all I knew. Once I found out all the, all the nitnoy details of everything, as much as I could off of a trifle pamphlet, you know, asking people that happened to be in the military, para rescue became my number one, Navy Seals came my number two, and then the Army was, was number three. But again, once I got to, to Indock and selection, and I found out about comic troll and everything that they did, that then became my number one. And then PJ became number two. You weren't interested in any like normal job. Cause you said earlier, you're an adrenaline junkie. Your idea was, I want something that is as high speed as the military is going to offer me. You weren't interested in any other career paths at that point. I wasn't. And, and I didn't go in with a plan B or anything like that. Maybe that was age, right? So I mean, 17, 18 year old going through all that stuff. So that could have been age. You're young enough to be able to afford to not have a plan B. So it's, it's not even a bad thing, honestly. But I didn't have a plan B, which is fine. We kind of tell people that now. If you're planning, if you have a plan B, that means there's a slight doubt in your mind at some of those darkest points, some of those points that are extremely difficult to where you are starved of oxygen. You, your heart is pounding at 200 beats a minute kind of thing. And we're asking for more and more from you. That plan B doubt can grow rapidly. And then all of a sudden you're ringing the bell and you're being sent home or not sent home, but sent to the barracks, packed your stuff. Now you're getting retrained. It's walking a tightrope. You know, I'm not saying that people that have had plan Bs don't make it because that's not true, but you're running a risk and I believe in the back door open in case you want to run out. And so when, because Aaron, when I just did his interview for PJ, he mentioned there are days, weeks, months where you're like, I can't do another pushup. I can't run another step. And then they're like, we're going back out. And you're like, and you just said, you know, if you already have that back door open, you're like, well, I got another option. You know, I can't go, I can't do one more. Well, that's okay. Cause I got this, you know? And so that, but like you said, there are people that have that second option and they don't, they still don't give up. But that all comes down to it. Each individual person is going to be completely different on how they handle those situations. And there's another way that we do that. And we've talked about it on our podcast. So what we'll do sometimes not all, not all the time, but we will do this often is the best way to say it is, we'll just go out for what is expected to be a four mile run. You know, we, there are loops around the training facilities and routes and stuff like that, that you kind of know, okay, this is a three-miler, four-mile or six-miler and so on. But what we'll do is we'll go out. Okay. The plan is to go out for a four-mile run and then, you know, you usually start right there at the compound and then you end at the compound to kind of play with people's minds a bit or, you know, see if you're as tough as you think you are. We'll come right by the compound like we're ending and we'll either just continue running or we will say, you know, we say quick time means that you're going from running to walking. So we'll go quick time and then everybody will start walking and then about five seconds later, double time and it will start the run and do it all over again. You're getting people's hopes up and then you're like, I don't want to crush it. And then you see if they can withstand that. Yep, exactly. And you will see people, I mean they, they immediately quit because they are so mentally crushed by that because they had in their head, oh, just, just 200 more meters, just 100 more meters, almost done. Finally. And then, oh, we're going again. Get your mind right. If they ever had any doubt, boom, they're quitting. Man, it is devastating. You will lose a lot of people that way. You have to do that because some of your guys' missions you might have. Right. You know, hey, we're going home. Just kidding. We're going to be back at work. We can't go home now. We're stuck for another 12 hours and we have to perform. And there are times. I mean, think about the folks that were on H-CHIA doing that operation. And there's been many more. Like there's been operations where we think we're getting out and then all of a sudden we get re-rolled to another target or an incident happens and now we got to go on a recovery or something like that so that they can always get extended. But think about the folks operating in H-CHIA during the, the evacuation. No really in insight. And the mission never stopped. It was constant. So they got sleep where they could. All of a sudden people are, are launching babies over Constantina wire. They're, they're providing medical treatment. People that are not medics or not medically trained are providing medical treatment. People are, are handing over their kids just like take them and then they disappear. Now, all of a sudden you've got these kids. I mean, and I'm not talking about just ground operators. I'm talking about aircrew members as well that are just all of a sudden they, they now own essentially these kids and they've got to get them out. I mean, just extreme situations that we put folks in with no insight. And we don't need them to have doubts. We don't need them to go, Oh my God, I'm tired. I'd need to, you know, it's getting rough. I need to quit. And that's essentially what that, that run kind of test does is it tests their metal to see what they're actually made of when they are smoked. They are tired and they just want to stop. Can you keep going where and how long was your tech school? So your, your tech school is going to be a little bit different than most Air Force jobs because the special operations pipeline involves multiple different stops and trainings. So if you just walk us through what is that, like what to expect as a whole, what are the different parts, how long about overall, how long is it? Okay. So I'll tell you what it is now, not what I went through because my pipeline when I went through is definitely different than it is now. And this depends on a lot of different variables, but it's usually about two and a half years from, from entry to earning your berets about two and a half years. That includes, you know, your, your time at basic training. And then from basic training, you're going to go what's called special warfare candidate course. That's an eight week course of just kind of getting you ready. It's a preparatory kind of course. It's, it's not easy, but it's, you are definitely training your butt off, getting your mind right in a preparation for assessment and selection, which is about a month long. It changes. And they also try and keep some kind of cloak of mysteriousness about it. So I don't want to compromise that, but that's about a month. Then from there, you're going to go to pre dive, which is right around four or five weeks long. And I, and don't please don't quote me on these, these times because sometimes, sometimes I get them right, right. Sometimes I get them wrong just off top of head. Well, it can depend too, because of like certain holidays or things that are going on. And even each person is going to have a different experience because you guys deal with injuries or other aspects. Even some of those times you might have, like people might have like family emergencies. Oh yeah. And so you have like short breaks or yeah, you get delayed. So yeah, in general, when you're saying, you know, five weeks, I could be five weeks. Yeah, it could be five weeks. It could be a little bit longer, but you know, you always add a plus minus to that. Yeah. You do your prior pre dive, which is the dive school that's going to help you or the school that's going to help you prepare for combat dive school. So then you're going to go to combat dive school. And then after that, um, it's kind of a mix of different things on based off of school availability and dates, because we don't want students hanging around if they don't have to. So if we can get them in courses, then we will sometimes the dates just don't line up where, you know, you end on a Friday and then you travel to your next school and start on a Monday. Sometimes it does, but it, you know, not owning all of the schools because, you know, we go to airborne, which is owned by the army, we go to free fall, which is also owned by the army. We go to seer, which is owned by the air force. You know, we, we provide for the PJs, we provide in-house medical training called MP3 for CCT. We do our air travel control school at combat control school. That's kind of where we diverge and then later on we'll converge again. So we'll do all that. After we finish all that, that is when we get our beret. After that, depending on for the, for the CCT and the special reconnaissance, they will go to advanced skills training at special tactics training squadron at Herbert field for additional full mission profile and upgrade training to get them from a three level, which is your graduation level, a skill level to a five level. That is not 100% in set in stone because injuries, school dates, holidays, mainly injuries again. Like we're very physical. So, and some of the things that we do is inherently dangerous. So as safe as you try and be, and you try and mitigate all the risks you can, sometimes things just happen. Are people awarded the opportunities if they fail certain sections to redo those sections at all? Is that a thing or are they completely done with the course if they fail any section? It depends on what the course is. But say, for example, say I was at pre-dive and I failed a run, like I didn't meet the run standards or something like that or the swim standards. I would have an opportunity to retest that. Now, if I didn't pass that retest and it was just for lack of performance, then I'm probably gone or I'll probably recycle. But if it's due to an injury, then I'll get a chance to go heal. If it's an injury that you're so young in the pipeline and it's going to be six to eight months for you to heal, a lot of times it's, hey, you need to go do a different job and then come back. And that's unfortunate, but I mean, we just can't have students hang around. You're better suited, you're better suited recovering, learning another job and doing that job throughout that, you know, six, eight months or more recovery process than you are just literally sitting doing nothing because you can't continue the actual training for that job. You're providing more value for the Air Force through that than if you were to just sit in a dorm trying to recover. So it might be disheartening, but at the same time like the Air Force also needs to look out for themselves and get their money's worth. Yeah, I mean, at the end of the day, it's still needs of the Air Force and the Air Force needs you as a special operations dude or do that, but we also need other jobs too. And you're right. I mean, like some of the stress fractures that happen from, you know, the intense impact and and shin splints that have gone way too long. Those take a long time to heal and you run the risk of breaking a leg. So, you know, and sometimes legs do break. So then there's even more of a heal process. So it takes time and it's definitely a lot of variables. So you had said after that about that two and a half year mark is when you earn your beret. Is that when you go to the advanced school like training? Yep. Once you once you go once you've earned your beret, you basically have just proven, hey, I can do the bare minimum to prove that I can be in this job. Now you're actually going to do real, real training on this job. But once you've earned your beret, you're still not even like you're still not even like people that are operational would still look at you like you're still learning. Here's what's great about our community. And, you know, maybe some people find it great. Some people don't. But you have to earn it every single day, every single unit you go to, every single team you go work with, you have to earn it. It is never a you show up to a unit, you show up to a team, you've got your beret. Okay, we know that you have at least a baseline or a fundamental, you know, understanding of what you do. But you have to earn it. Even me, when I showed up to the unit I'm at now, or even the last couple of units, I still had to prove myself. And you were always proving yourself. You can never rest on your laurels. You have to continue to improve. You have to continue to keep getting after it. You have never made it. How was your tech school? Did you enjoy it? Why or why not? What aspects did you like about your tech school? What did you not care for? I think when I look back, I really enjoyed it. And there were some, there were some amazing times, even while I was in it. And I recognized that while I was going in it, it wasn't like it was just a grind, especially because the first six months is, is very, you know, kind of selection oriented. Like it is very, very difficult. So there were definitely fun parts in there, but it was a suck fest. But at that point, you're just trying to survive. You're not even, you know, you're not even focused on like, trying to be like, I'm trying to be super proficient at this. You're like, I'm literally just trying to make it till tomorrow. I'm just trying to survive. It's exactly right. I'm just treading water and I'm, and I'm barely, you know, barely there. The suck fest though, is made better by the dudes that you're surrounded by, because they are right there with you. No matter how good you actually are, everybody has their day. Like I went, there were a couple guys in my class that, you know, they were water polo players. So in the pool, they were never really challenged to the level that me and some of the other folks were. When our bad days were in the pool or something like that, they were just fine. So the instructors had to make it, it's your turn to have a day now. It's not like they're, they're purposely picking on that person, but it's like every, we're trying to test what everybody is made out of. It doesn't matter how good you are, everybody has a bad day. And, and those bad days are, you know, you think, why am I doing this? Not because I want to quit, but because maybe I'm just not good enough. Maybe I shouldn't be doing this job. Maybe I'm not made of what I need to be made out of to do this job. It makes it all better because of the folks that you're, you know, right next to on either side of you that are just getting after it. They're in the same boat you are. You're a cohesive team that are out here to make it. Like you're in goal is to finish the pipeline, get the brain, get the team and start doing work. That is the goal. So when you're surrounded by people that want that same thing as you do, it's a motivator regardless of the situation. Sounds like they're trying to exploit your weaknesses to see if that makes you give up or if it makes you become resilient to be the type of person that says I'm going to overcome this weakness. Yeah. And it's a, it's a stress inoculation is what it is. So they are all that, all that kind of noise that is that, you know, for lack of a better word, like that's what I'm referring to as, you know, the pain and the, I just need to breathe. I just need to stop this, all that noise. We're just trying to raise the noise level so that all this just doesn't bother you anymore. You're able to just kind of like, yeah, all that stuff's going on. I'm not sweating it. I can just rise above it and it's all good. And if I really need to, you know, jump up to where it's like, okay, it's game time, that's fine. I can do that. And I'm still able to have a certain level of calmness and ability to think through whatever's going on. With CCT, I'm assuming that it is very selective of what bases that they put you guys at. So what bases can a combat controller be stationed at? Your operational units are, you know, Joint Base Lewis McCord up in Washington, Cannon Air Force Base in Clovis, New Mexico, Hurlbert Field in Fort Walton Beach, Florida, Pope Army Airfield in North Carolina. Overseas is RAF or Royal Air Force Milton Hall in the United Kingdom. And then you have Kenina Air Base in Japan, your main bases that you could go to. You have other ones where you could go to Lackland, you know, to be an instructor. You could go to North Carolina as well to be an instructor. You can go to Panama City, Florida to be the dive school instructor. You could go to Yuma, Arizona as a freefall instructor. You can go to any of those places to go be instructors. And then you have, like for example, there's two CCT at Nellis Air Force Base only supporting the weapons school. And the other reason there's two is because I happen to be here. Usually I would not be here. It would be somebody else. It's just I was hired for this job. So usually there's only one, maybe two at Nellis. So it's very few. So I know this is going to be a difficult question because there's probably not, you know, one single answer for this, just like every question that you can be asked about an Air Force career, there's really no cookie cutter answer for everything. So how many hours on average would you say that you work in your career field? What does a typical day look like once you get to your first duty station? It can vary based on what training is being done that day or that week. You know, if we're doing jump training, those are usually long days, you know, and it depends on if it's day jumps or night jumps, you know, because then you're going on into the night. If it is normal just, hey, we're in the team room, we're doing local training, it's nothing crazy. It's not, it's not jumping or diving where we got to travel. You're still looking at a seven to seven to four, seven to five, two hours of that is dedicated workout time from seven to nine. You are dedicated to working out, but we travel a decent amount and we travel for training, you know, we were going to shooting schools or maybe if we're in joint base Lewis McCord where it's amazing evergreens and stuff like that everywhere, but we need desert or we need ocean water. Now granted, we've got ocean water there, but if we need desert, we're not going to find it around there. We've got to travel to it. So maybe we're on the road for a week or two weeks, or maybe we're at Canaan Air Force Base in Clovis, New Mexico that has no water around it. So we've got to go to the Gulf or we've got to go to the Pacific to go do water training, you know, because that is a currency requirement for us. So that's days on the road. Now, what we try and do, and it doesn't always work out, but what we try and do is when you are gone for, you know, two weeks, we do try and give you some of those days back that you were gone. So after we get back from the trip, we reconstitute, clean all the gear up, put everything away, make sure everybody's good to go, travel, travel vouchers filed, and then we will release people and go, okay, go spend time at home, go, go do whatever you got to do, try and recoup some of that time back and then show up whatever day and then we're getting after it. So because we're gone so much on training, because we're gone so much on deployments, we do try and go, okay, we don't have anything planned today, guys, in terms of training, just go home, spend, spend time or run whatever errands you got to do that you weren't able to do for the last month because you've been on the road, that kind of stuff. So it sounds like you guys go in bursts of training cycles of different things that you're working on. And during those, those short training cycles, you're not going to have a normal nine to five day potentially. And so you're going to be putting in a lot of hours on those. So then you're back at home station, depending on what you're also training for at the home station, but you're going to have a more stable work environment in that aspect. But because you guys are doing so many different training missions, it's kind of hard to dictate exactly what your work schedule is like because it's not like there's an actual normal schedule. Yeah, and we do try and provide some kind of predictability, but you know, we're still lining up against the Air Force Special Operations force generation cycle. So, you know, we've got to adhere to that. And so it does provide some predictability, like we know when we're going to be deployed, as long as no other contingency operations pop up because we do have an alert cycle that we have to. So earthquake, hurricane response, any kind of response, you know, overseas that we've got to go do, like we have to be prepped and ready to just blow out on a moment's notice and go do some stuff. So we kind of already hit this a little bit in that last question, but what do you do in your job specifically? What is combat control? Like what is your guys' key role that you do? You kind of mentioned it before, like PJ, save people, your job is to take people out. What all does that entail? And then when you are in your training cycles kind of you had mentioned doing water or desert, but what like specifically are you guys training on in those environments? Combat controllers focus on airfield stuff. Now that could be doing any kind of landing zone on a dry lake bed to a highway in Europe or in the States. It could be taking over an airfield like we did, you know, during Baghdad. We took over Baghdad airport. So anything involving an airfield we can do remotely. We are not at the level of, you know, an air traffic controller where they can control just hundreds of aircraft in the air. We are, you know, very few. I mean, maybe double digit aircraft, but even then that's getting a little bit heavy. We will do drop zones. We will do forward air refueling and rearming points. We will call in close air support because we have the joint terminal attack controller qualification. Special tactics which falls under Air Force Special Operations Command focuses on three different areas. Personnel recovery, global access and persistent strike. So combat control has a play in every single one of those. Whether it is personnel recovery, we're not just going to send a para-escue team out there on their own to go recover somebody. It will be heavy with para-escue, but we are going to have a CCT with them to help with that communications. What if we need an HLZ, a Hilo landing zone? What if we need an airfield and we got to get people out? What if we need to call in airstrikes? There are CCTs with personnel recovery teams. Global access, that's where the airfields come in. I already brought up the hurricane disaster relief and that kind of stuff, but it could be that in a contingency operation downrange, the distance that helicopters have to travel could just be too far to reach the target area or the intended objective and they need some kind of middle stopping point to rearm, refuel. Maybe we drop off a special operations surgical team there as well. The assault force goes and does the hit, but then they still have to recover at the airfield, so we do a lot of stuff there and then go home. Precision strike, that's where the joint terminal attack controller qualification comes in, which is where us and the tactical air control party are call in airstrikes. We don't usually operate unilateral in a JTAC capacity. It is with Army Green Beret or ODA teams, Navy SEAL teams, or even some of our coalition partners that are overseas will attach to them as their JTAC and provide that close air support. So when you guys are preparing for those missions, when you're at home station, you said you go to the desert, you go to the ocean, you go into the woods or the mountains. What are you doing in the ocean? What are you doing in the desert? What are you doing in the mountains? Are you just going on campaign trips and boating trips? Oh man, I'd love if we were just going to go out fishing or camp and stuff like that, but unfortunately it's not quite like that, but we still don't know how to have fun out there. So there are a bunch of CFETP and I think it stands for Career Field Education Training Plan items. Every career field within the Air Force has certain training items that they have to accomplish so that they can become a three level, a five level, a seven level, and so on, which those different levels enable you to do your job to a certain level unsupervised. Within those we also have currency requirements. So I have to have a fast rope done, you know, every 120 days, for example. I don't know if that's the exact amount, but just using that example, if I don't accomplish a fast rope in 120 days and it's 130 days, then I have to have somebody who is current over the shoulder me and watch what I'm doing just to make sure. So that's just one qualification. We have a whole bunch of them that are involved with jumping, diving, fast roping, riding dirt bikes, riding, driving some of the other off-road tactical vehicles, doing the JTAC stuff. So there's a lot of different things that we are trying to not only upgrade, but also remain current in so that if we do get that call on an alert, we can blow out and go do whatever we've got to do. One of the things that we've got to do is called a RAM-B, which is a rigged alternate method boat. And it's essentially a zodiac, you know, the inflatable black inflatable boats will deflate it, roll it up with an engine in a scuba tank inside with a fuel bladder, we'll roll it up, tie it up, and it will put a big parachute on it. And so that if we are out in the Gulf or the Pacific and there are, you know, a capsized vessel or somebody needs to be rescued or somebody ejected from plane, that we are flying over in that C-130 or C-17, we can open the ramp, throw that boat out, and it'll float to the ground, then we will jump out after it, float with it under parachute, get in the water, then derig it and inflate it in the water, mount the engine, and get going. So when you guys are going out to the water, that's what you're practicing that whole maneuver, that whole situation where you're like, you don't want to have to try to figure it out while you're in a situation uprange, you're thinking, no, we're going to run through this whole scenario right now. So that's what you guys are going and doing, it's like a real life scenario, but you're just trying to put yourself through that test. That's right. And it's also, you know, when you think you're doing this, we'll just say with five guys, right, maybe one person is in charge, like everybody's getting a chance to go through it, you know, and be part of the team, but only one person gets a chance to run the event and be the team leader for the event. So guess how many more times you got to do it? You got to do it four more times. Now, maybe you're not doing it four more times that day, but you're going to do it four more times that trip so that everybody gets a go at it and each scenario or each event is likely going to have a different variable to it, you know, a different situation that they're going after, or it could even be a different location. Like maybe one day you're doing it on the lake, like the first go is on a lake where it's a little calm, you know, you're not dealing with courage, you're not dealing with waves or swells or anything like that. But then the second day, you're going to go out and do it in the Pacific where it's choppy and saltwater and, you know, like so different conditions create different problems. That's pretty awesome, actually. Yeah, I love it. It's amazing. The reason why it sounds like it's up your alley for adrenaline junkie, right? The reason why I brought up that is because I love doing those and it's primarily a PJ kind of upgrade item. Like we have it too as a CCT to have that signed off, but man, it is fun jumping out into the North Sea off of the United Kingdom or jumping out into the Gulf of Mexico with nice warm water. And like I said, you're surrounded by, you know, four of the dudes that are just out there having fun with you and wanting to train their asses off and get after it. It's just, it's infectious. So this kind of ties into everything you just talked about with all of your training and everything. So what certifications or trainings do you guys receive through this job that can be used to land a job on the outside? Because there's not many civilian jobs that require what you just said, right? Like there's, how does that translate to the civilian side? Like what do combat controllers do once they get out of the Air Force and how did their training help them land those jobs? If at all. The training as a whole that we get from Special Operations Command and our sister services, that foundational kind of special operations training is what sets us up better for the outside. Whether it's being an entrepreneur, a contractor, where you're still kind of running sensors from a plane or doing, you know, on the ground contracting where you're still carrying a rifle and working with partner forces. It could be law enforcement. It could be, you know, kind of, this is rare, but it could be going and actually working in kind of a cubicle land on programs and stuff. If you're somebody who's really smart in programatics and you're good at that kind of stuff, there's a lot of folks that get out once they retire or they separate and they start their own business. You know, just like you did. So, yeah, it those kind of soft peculiar or Special Operations Force peculiar skills kind of set us up well. I think more than a PJ getting paramedic training or a CCT getting getting JTAC training or getting air traffic control training. I mean that stuff helps for sure. Like I could go work for a tower with the FAA. That's actually something when I talked to Aaron, when I did the para rescue job interview and Aaron does the podcast with you guys with ones ready. But that was something he also said is it was like our training sets us up for life and not just like a specific skill, but life in general because you guys are trained to not give up. You guys are trained to tell yourself if I want to do something it's going to happen. Nothing is stopping me. The only person stopping me is me at that point. And so he said a lot of people get out and you said it too, entrepreneurs like they get out and they're like I want to go and start a real estate company or I want to get out and I want to go start this business or I want to go out and I want to work in this company. It doesn't matter what they choose. They could get out and for all they care say I want to be a cashier but they're going to show up and they're going to be the best cashier that company's ever seen because they're literally like once they decide that's what I want to do. I'm going to be number one. I'm going to be the best. Nobody's going to outperform me at that and that kind of mindset just sets you up for success. It doesn't matter. It doesn't even matter what career path you choose. If you if you are mentally telling yourself I don't care if every day it's hard. I don't care if there's weeks or months where things are going wrong. It doesn't matter. I'm not quitting. I'm not giving up. I'm going to succeed and it's like that's not even a certification. It's not like you can't get a degree in that but that's a life skill that you guys are it's ingrained in your blood at that point by the time you guys get out and that's what he was saying too where it's like it doesn't it doesn't matter like what we do. We're going to be successful. Yeah and and that is it's so true and it may sound arrogant egotistical and stuff like that but like I am so confident in my abilities that I know that I'm not going to be the best at everything and I know I would never pretend that I would be the best at everything. In fact I could I could rattle off all of my weaknesses. I am confident enough in my ability to negotiate, read people, read situations that I I know that I'm going to be successful and you know what if I'm I'm not getting shot at I can breathe. I have shelter. I have food and I have water. I'm a little bit alright. You're like what's the problem? Yeah it really does it gives you perspective. You're like I'm not fighting for my life right now. I can breathe. All right I'll get through this whatever it is and then you just just drive on. There's not many people in general like jobs alone but just people in general that have been through the trials that you guys have been through that made it to those to earn your beret and then go on and serve several years after that. There's not a lot of people that have had to go through the trials that you had for years on end. It's not even it's not a hard skill it's more of a soft skill but it's just it's something that is not like you can't purchase it like you couldn't like you have to earn that. Yeah. What is your deployment tempo like in your job? You kind of mentioned this a little bit that you guys have cycles that you go on so what does that look like to somebody that was going to come in? What can they expect their their deployment tempo to be like say if they had a family and they were trying to get their family on board how is their family going to be prepared for that or other people that are joining? How are they mentally going to be prepared for what that cycle is? Oh boy so that that has changed throughout the years for folks and it'll probably continue to change too. Yeah it'll it'll absolutely continue to change so one cycle is your kind of individual training where you just I am focused on my upgrades I'm focused on any additional training that I need to accomplish any kind of joint professional military education air force professional military education which are you know we are still air force airmen so we still have to meet those same requirements that every other airman have to meet it's just we have additional ones that we also have to go to you know that's that's what we're taking care of all the upgrades all the professional military education that kind of stuff in our kind of individual training phase and then we have a team kind of training phase where okay as a team we are we are doing training events to make sure we can operate as a cohesive team and then even in that sometimes there are upgrades that happen because sometimes you do need to be the team leader or on an event so it's like okay well we couldn't knock that out during your individual training phase so now you've got a team here now you can run it you know so that that's part of it another another kind of cycle is an alert cycle where you're typically not traveling that much unless something happens and if something happens then you're going you might be gone a couple days you might be gone a couple weeks you know you don't know what you don't necessarily know where you're going like I said you could end up going to you know Mississippi on a on a hurricane really for Florida on a hurricane or Puerto Rico you know which seems to happen like every year kind of thing so if you're in that kind of alert phase then you're going for that then you have your deployment you know and you're going to go this is separate from the alert you're going to have your deployment which you know is forecasted out you'll know what months you're going to be gone two years in advance so you can kind of plan your life out that way as difficult as it would be to for this job to be family friendly that seems like it they're trying to you know make it as easy as possible in that situation where you know like you just said two years in advance like you're going to be aware of this and so it kind of lets you get that planned out with your family or your own your own personal dealings whatever you have going on yeah we we try to now and we have done a much better job about it now at the the beginning when I when I came in and early on in the operations there was not a cycle established because it was all hands on deck so everybody's going a couple people will stay back to train the new new folks that are coming out of the pipeline and then those trainers and those brand new dudes would then deploy replace the folks that were downrange and and they would rest recoup train train the folks that were just getting you know graduate the pipeline and then they'd come over we just swap and that it went like that for a couple years until we was that during the global war on terrorism when that first kicked off yeah it was it was super early on um you know so it only lasted a couple years before we got into a nice cycle so what advice do you have for someone who is interested in combat control well assuming that they've already found your channel you know since they're watching this I would also ask that you check out ones ready dot com um on at the website or at ones ready on instagram or youtube check out because they have a lot of videos that are specific to cct pair rescue any of the air force special warfare pipeline just to get information what I would say in terms of advice though is man there's so there's so much advice you can try to sum it up like if I had to like give somebody you know like just a few minutes like an elevator pitch stop thinking about it start you just got to start once you start you don't quit you even when you don't feel like getting up and working out and training you don't feel like going to that development session to train you do it anyway it's about discipline not motivation motivation wanes you will not always be motivated but the discipline is what keeps you going after it on the days you don't want to train you need to do it anyway and don't quit what is the advice that you tell these guys that are brand new combat controllers that just got to be operational what's your advice to those people for every single service member that comes in stay away from the car dealerships getting a v6 camaro or Mustang for a with a 34 34 interest rate so that's I feel like you guys might have a bigger problem with that because your guys get enlistment bonuses and so then you're like no save it save it don't spend it on something stupid yeah exactly but now but really it's focus on training focus on your upgrade keep your nose clean don't don't get in trouble although it's not a one strike air force it can definitely set you back and oftentimes the way that we kind of handle that is we take people off deployment the whole reason we join and the whole reason that we want to do this job is to deploy and then you're telling me I don't get the train I don't get to deploy like that's going to crush me so and sometimes that's not us taking you off of deployment sometimes that's because you just happen to get in trouble and legally we can't deploy you so keep your nose clean focus on your upgrade training focus on your physical training don't you have again you haven't made it right you graduated you got your break great but you haven't made it started you just getting started you have to continue to stay hungry stay motivated and keep getting better to those people that are just like hey I just want to serve serve in the Air Force what's your biggest advice to just somebody that wants to be an airman in general for the folks that are already there and you know I would say be present enjoy the company that you're around and enjoy the time in because whether you end up doing four years six years or you know 25 like I'm at you're going to look back on it finally now I'm sure that's not 100% of people I'm sure that there are folks that you know have separated that have had poor experiences but I would be willing to bet that that person's poor experience is probably only a fraction of the time and if they look back they're going to make they made lifelong friends and so for the folks that are looking to join is I would expect that expect that you are going to have people into your life that you're going to remain friends with for the rest of your life no matter how far apart you are and how long it's been since you talked you happen to run into that person again or you having to pick up the phone and you're gonna pick up right where you left off enjoy the time travel if that's your thing if your thing's not traveling that's fine too but take advantage of all the skills that the the Air Force has afforded you all the opportunities that the Air Force has afforded you and just look fondly on it because not everybody gets these experiences that you're going to get a chance to you know involve yourself in where can people find you and check out more of your work especially because you and two of your close friends run a podcast that help a lot of people so how can they follow you or ask you questions get more information from you if they wanted to follow up sure so they can check us out at ones ready dot com or they can find us on youtube at ones ready or Spotify pot apple podcast any of the the kind of podcast platforms if you search for ones ready o n e s ready you can find us there on instagram we're at ones ready i'm at at cct peaches uh we're not actually on tiktok but um we're kind of we're just the gram youtube and and all the other podcast platforms like what is ones ready so why why should people go over there dude you tell them hey you ask me i have no idea i don't know why anybody would listen to us uh but but apparently they do the three people that listen to us you know our families but that's about it all of your moms yeah exactly so they love what we're doing but uh you know if you're interested in special warfare whether it's air force or or any of the other ones like we're we're kind of giving you an idea yeah we tailor more towards air force special warfare but you know we have navy seals on we have green berets on um and we can kind of the mentality is actually the exact same across the board on any of the special operations teams regardless of the service um it's just that we kind of tailor ours towards air force special warfare because that's what we know it's a lot of information about the career field about each job about the pipeline and and some of the mentality and and jobs that you can do and and have in there because even i just pulled it up right now and you guys have your most recent video is with uh dr britney lonie and she's like a mental preparation for selection so it says uh like an elite uh cognition guru yeah so like that could possibly it's probably more catered towards like you said special operations but that also is something where that can benefit anybody is understanding you know mental preparation just for any challenges that you're yeah and we don't we don't just talk to you know special operations operators or anything like that like we have everybody and we had a i don't even know what his job title would be he would he works for nasa and he is in charge of everything personnel recovery in space so recovering injured people from the space station from the moon and they're planning mars like i mean that's crazy we have senior leaders on like we've had chief master on the air force on twice i'm already talking with her right now to get her on for the third time we've had general minahan on who's the air mobility command commander we've had the air education air education and training command team on so like we try and hit a mix of of everything whether it's big air force special operations mental cognition um space i mean so we try and we try and cover it why it's we haven't launched it yet but we had one of the players from nickel back on the basis from nickel back on like you know i'm saying like yeah why would we have him on but guess what i mean they've spent the better part of 20 years in a in a small team essentially a small team with an extreme amount of pressure to not only perform but you want to talk about the hate that somebody like nickel back has yeah even though people really actually kind of like their music yeah i like nickel back and i'm not i'm not ashamed to say it but there are a lot of people they say they hate it just because it's popular to do right and they're like deep down you love it you know so you know i mean we had we had him on you know i hadn't launched it hadn't released yet but i mean we we just had a a c-17 and again this one hadn't launched it either a c-17 pilot who was one of the primary people doing the recovery out of h kaya in afghanistan she had to sign for 24 orphans like so on paper she adopted these these orphans like that and had had them on her plane that she was flying it's not just special operations however it is primarily focused on that but everybody can get something out of it we get firefighters law enforcement and even parents that watch just to get an idea of the mentality that we have as so maybe special operations then you still go over subscribe to ones ready and then just click on the videos that interest you and they when they pop up so you don't have to watch every video yeah you don't have to watch it because you guys do kind of you focus on special operations but everyone's while you'll ping some random some random other people that you're going to incorporate the special operations side of it but it also is appealing to everybody for the most part yeah exactly that's awesome i appreciate you jumping on and taking the time to do this job interview uh peaches and talk about combat control i'm sure this video is going to help a lot of future combat controllers and hopefully a lot of future airmen in general no matter what job that they have but yeah definitely go follow peaches and the rest of team at ones ready and we will see you guys in our next videos thank you