Navy

When you look at the integration-- There's two different terms, and so I had the chance-- Last time, uh, we were here at Fort Bragg not too long ago, we had an opportunity to sit down with General Anderson, your boss, General Anderson, the commander of eighteenth Airborne Corps.

And he spoke a lot about interoperability and integration of the conventional force with special operations forces and made the distinction that in interoperability, can we talk to each other? You know, if I'm an ODA commander, do I have someone on the other line if I need to call for fire? But integration, can we work together? You know, can we co-locate on the battlefield? Do we have the resources to use each other's stuff and truly operate as one element in the broader support of the joint force? And when we look at large scale combat operations and we start to define, as you said, what does a day of large scale combat operations truly look like? And we are getting a, a glimpse of that over the last couple of months when we've-- I think, you know, the Navy probably more than anybody else with their proximity and some of the defensive stuff that they've had to do to protect those carrier groups is probably seeing it, you know, front and center more than anything.

But how do you see from your perspective, what is your ability from the eighteenth Field Artillery Brigade to support special operations forces in large scale operations, combat operations?

Yeah.

She was a New York City d- detective.

She's a Navy veteran.

She was on Ground Zero, and she was for three months going back and forth to the Staten Island landfill, where they were sending the items from Ground Zero there for forensic evidence, and she was in charge of all that.

She's gonna be in our studio.

Good job, Sam.

And then after 8:00, we're gonna have Victoria D'Angelo Tompkins in here.

She is former Navy veteran who is a New York City detective, and she was in charge of Ground Zero and the landfill area where the items were going from Ground Zero to be checked as forensic evidence so that families could get a piece of their loved one back.

Now, 60% of people only were found.

So in one of the books, I, I don't remember which book referenced this because there's a seven-book series.

But one of the books talks about a, um, a gentleman being brought to a Navy black site.

Uh, what they call a black site requires Q clearance, um, and it was also known-- it was also the area or the facility that served as the Naval Space Fleet Command Center.

And they said it was located inside of the Melton J. Anderson Flight and Test Center in Nevada in a small set of hills at the south end of Groom Dry Lake.

This is, uh, this is the book explaining what happens in this facility that I just described, and it's a black site, and I'm gonna press play and let the author explain what this site is.

No one outside this base in China Lake even knew this assignment existed until they got it.

Even the Navy had little to no control over this base.

It was a black site on all their organizational charts.

It came out in 1980.

It's about a very similar thing, a Navy destroyer that is out in the ocean, and it, it accidentally travels through a portal, which they thought was a storm, and they end up going back in time prior to Pearl Harbor, and they realize that they've gone back in time, and they try to stop the attack.

But John Warner IV, who we've interviewed a number of times, he said his father took him to see that movie when it premiered, and there was a lot of Navy brass there, and they were all going to the premiere to approve the film as a recruitment film.

So there's-

Wow.

Yeah

... truth to that movie.

Uh, it, it matter of factly tells you that the-these craft were going through portals, or I'm sorry, well, m- uh, ships, Navy destroyers, uh, aircraft carriers.

Everyone here was watching the televisions to see what was happening in New York, and trying to find out as much information as they could, having no idea a plane would hit them at 9:37.

Patrick Dunn was in the Navy command center.

He was calling his wife to see if she was okay, and then a short time later, the plane plunged through the south side of the Pentagon.

Others here today I know of, Steve Workman, uh, who rescued Kevin Schaffer.

Kevin Schaffer was in the Navy command center, badly, badly injured.

I saw them at the last memorial, the 20th memorial.

Steve Workman, his hand on the shoulder of Kevin Schaffer, a, a tight bond between those men.

But the stories since then, Rebecca, are just extraordinary.

of this.

It makes me just so annoyed, to be honest with you, because it's like you bring in a Navy SEAL to train these.

It was the first practice, I'm pretty sure.

So you just had a whole summer off, first practice.

It's like they're like this kid was Canadian.

He's not used to hot weather.

You bring him in and then you have a Navy SEAL train you.

Like, why do you need Navy SEAL training? I'm sorry, but like that's so unnecessary for college kids.

Okay.

Let's see, anyone from medical here? Do we have any medical or dental updates? Anything from our Navy brethren?

Yes, sir.

This is Chief Petty Officer Nine Smith.

Appreciate that.

And I'll get off you online on some TTPs on how to make an Outlook event.

You know, just some field grade things, you know, some finer details that the Navy maybe doesn't teach to.

But so

We've got Zach Staples with us.

So you're a former Navy officer and

you spent a lot of time on the open seas.

I took two days off.

I finished my last day on active duty was December 31st, 2017.

And then I was planning to take, you know, three or four weeks off.

I've been out of the Navy like a day and a half and the phone rings.

And it is a tech accelerator in Europe doing tech scouting for Maersk, the largest shipping company in the world.

It's not just that you're comfortable communicating and have trust in the organization that you can communicate openly, but also that you're learning as you go along every day to improve your operations.

The very first podcast guest we had was Cutler Dawson, who was an admiral in the Navy, in charge of the Enterprise carrier and the fleet in the beginning of Desert Storm.

And then he went on to run Navy Federal, the world's largest credit union.

And it was fascinating to hear you because he talked, he used an example of a problem they had on deck with airplanes on the carrier.

And it was a pretty serious accident that happened.