So it was really a huge, massive effort being brought forth by many, many different nations when you reach its peak there between 2010 and 2012.

I was part of that peak.

From the fall of 2011 to the spring of 2012, I deployed to Bagram Air Base in central Afghanistan as part of a special operations task force, which, it sounds sexy, I bet, but I was mainly a PowerPoint ranger preparing briefs and reports.

Even so, I had a front row seat to the enormous enterprise the coalition had built over the previous decade and was still building.

Bagram wasn't simply an air base.

It had become a city complete with a makeshift Taco Bell and a Domino's Pizza restaurant, among other stateside amenities.

The base was abuzz with activity.

And at approximately 5:48 PM local time, an ISIS-K suicide bomber detonated inside the crowd at the Abbey Gate.

The Berlin Airlift had just finished right before the 1950s, but he approved missions anyway because to him, the risk of not knowing what was going on was way greater than the risk of getting caught.

What the U.S. needed was something radical, a way to see inside denied territory.

That need gave birth to one of the most extraordinary aircraft ever flown, an airplane my guest, Lips, explained in great and amusing detail on episode 93 back in October 2020, the Lockheed U-2.

Kelly Johnson and the legendary Lockheed Skunk Works division optimized the single-engine U-2 for altitude and endurance.

Long, sailplane-like wings, lightweight construction, minimal systems apart from outrageously capable cameras and sensors, and room for just one pilot wearing a pressure suit, cruising along above 70,000 feet, where the difference between stall speed and structural limits could be as little as 10 knots.

The theory was simple: If you fly high enough, no one can reach you.

And at first, it worked.Beginning in the mid-1950s, U-2s overflew the Soviet Union with relative impunity.

But the U-2, man, with its fragile airframe and bicycle landing gear, that thing had no business being anywhere near a carrier flight deck.

It's going to work out the way that it's supposed to.

Well, and again, the book covers so many different aspects of your life because we talked about grit there and you talk about relatives and family and all that.

But just this being the fighter pilot podcast, right? On page 135, you have a section that if you don't mind, I'd like to kind of paraphrase here.

You say, I looked up and noticed an unfamiliar glare in my mirrors.

The F-15C has three rear view mirrors.

The glare was orange, and as I noticed, each mirror reflected the all-consuming fire eating away at my aircraft.

I thought, well, there's nothing you can do now.

Do you mind sharing with the listeners what you're going to cover on those episodes?