got a section in here called when to quit again no one wants to hear that no
one wants to hear that one of the mantras and the SEAL Teams has never
quit that is one of the main refrains utilized during seal basic SEAL training
and it makes a lot of sense during that training because that is how you make it
through you don't quit no matter what training evolution comes along no matter
how hard it is no matter how tired sore frustrated exhausted or otherwise broken
you are you don't quit that is how you make it through SEAL training and that
is how you eventually become a seal but when you get to the actual SEAL Teams
that extreme attitude has to be adjusted it has to be modulated because if it
isn't it can lead to disaster the classic example this is a young seal
leader who's made it through the basic SEAL training and shows up at the seal
time team he has heard the mantra mantra never quit thousands and thousands of
times he has yelled to his friends and whispered it to himself it has become
ingrained in his head and I go through a scenario which is one of many where
guess what what what you just what you need to do is actually quit you need to
stop you need to stop what you're doing you need it you're gonna get your entire
platoon killed you're gonna you're gonna destroy this situation that you're in
and you need to be able to detach look around and figure out a different way of
course no one wants to hear that but if you are patrolling towards a target and
they open up with multiple bunkered machine guns with interlocking field of
fire on your avenue of approach and you decide you're not gonna quit guess what
everyone's going to die so I go through that and I go I go through how we
measure that when is the appropriate time why it's the appropriate thing to
do so I even talk about some of the classic examples right Dunkirk
yeah Dunkirk guess what that was quitting General George Washington led
the retreat of Continental forces out of New York and escaped that was crucial
for the ability of the Revolutionary Army to continue to fight later
engagements and win by the way so what are we talking about yeah we're talking
about tactical and and I explained this in the book
strategic like we're not gonna quit on our strategic goals but a tactical
situation we might quit on yeah I mean you said it obviously they're talking
about tactics this the tactical decision is actually enforcing what matters which
is not winning that engagement it's winning the war and if I'm flying around
in my airplane and I get engaged with three aircrafts and I have 500 pounds of
usable gas and my wingman just went home with an emergency you know and I need to
run away I need a set but what we call separated I need to set up a plan R I
can separate and I leave this fight I need to run away from this fine ad to
quit this engagement and get away and nothing about that sounds sexy none of
it sounds rewarding none of it sounds good in any way and
the story they want is like oh I turn decisively and then get I will die I'll
be in a parachute I'll be dead whatever it is quitting tactics is actually just
iterative decision-making going oh you know what this isn't work this isn't
getting me towards my goal and I'm just maneuvering in another direction the
worst thing you can do is what we when we decide to fight in an aircraft you
and I've met you're a bad guy I'm a good guy we decide to get to an engagement
and we turn we call that anchoring and there's a reason it's called
anchoring because just like with a ship that has dropped anchor guess what
you're not going anywhere you are gonna anchor right there and you
can't and your decisions have now gone from an infinite number of decisions
down to one which is I'm gonna sit here and turn until one of us dies you know
what that does to every other person involved in this engagement the 50 other
airplanes or the Sam they all know I'm right there I have almost no maneuvering
room I have no options and the likelihood that I'm gonna anchor and
survive are very very small but people want that satisfying answer
ever ever ever quit we see this in the FTX all the time send me two more
they're dead to get the other two okay then under their debt and now you're
saying it so plainly but it's that mantra and that in their mind has never
quit and they don't understand that you're talking about a tactical versus a
strategic thing and that's the biggest difference yeah don't anchors similar I
guess then to don't dig in don't dig in because right you're gonna give up your
ability to maneuver it's exactly what is that because once you once you decide
you're gonna fight you just don't have the aircraft doesn't have the capability
to just get out of there it's two reasons one no different than you as a
task unit commander looking down the sights of your rifle so I'm now
decisively engaged with one of the aircraft 100% of my attention is on that
aircraft 100% I have zero bandwidth for anything else and to those fights a
hundred percent of the time go from fast speed to slow speed because you're
turning so all your energy all your manoeuvring all the G's slow that your
planes down so you go from four or five hundred knots down to usually about a
hundred and fifteen knots and you can have the most advanced airplane on the
world when you're turning around 115 knots you're a Cessna you're just
sitting there slow compared to us and so you don't see anything else is happening
and you have no literal manoeuvre maneuvering speed so you're slow and you
can't you're not paying attention anything else because if I stop looking
to you I look elsewhere you're gonna kill me it's it's you have no options so
anchoring and aviation is the exact same thing as digging in and once you do it
you have no options and this conversation based around a one-on-one
fighting and this was a revelation to me last time that the conversation around
one-on-one fighting is not very realistic because we're not I'm not
gonna be alone no now you and I might end up in a one-on-one fight but the
other 20 airplanes aren't in that one-on-one fight and they're all gonna
focus on that and when one of the two of us is gonna get picked off by our by our
allies by our friends so you and I might be fighting one against one and then
you're gonna get blasted by echo Charles even if I fight even if I beat you even
if I win that fight that that dogfight you he's already behind you he's yeah if
I get maybe a matter of time but the likelihood there is no such thing where
the enemy takes off let's want launched one aircraft and
Americans responded we'll gonna launch one aircraft it does ever happens like
that so you might be in a one-on-one fight but there's 20 other airplanes out
there are you is our strategy is the strategy of air combat hey we're gonna
send more planes than you it used to be we thought well that's been a cycle that
was the Russian strategy in the 80s just build a whole bunch of airplanes
seventies and eighties and turns out that we discovered that with technology
we could build less that were way better and I have a system that could take down
six years for you know for every every one more time I can shoot down six years
sending the strategist to technology and now we leverage that we actually don't
think mass in and of itself is what we need to do we actually need to have the
ability to guess what maneuver maneuver and no more than you have more awareness
and more information and be able to focus on much more than just one thing
and so technology isn't just about being high-tech it's about giving the pilot
more information about more different things that are going on which is the
exact same thing as a pilot I no longer need to stare down the scope of my rifle
I don't need to look at my sights I actually have a system that lets me look
at 15 different things at the same time and have high fidelity information to
decide on I can think strategically in a one-man fighter which nobody ever
thought was possible but it actually is possible if you can
detach and you use a great language and here used to talk about detach not just
physically but detaching mentally aircraft now allow pilots to detach
mentally in ways they never could before and are there aircrafts that are
detached from the situation that are monitoring so am i as the air mission
commander or whatever the name is am i some guy that's at whatever 30,000 feet
or 10 nautical miles away and I can see this entire thing on radar and I can be
like Dave D hey everyone Dave's in a fight it's you know yeah you know attack
two intact for go take go support him I would I would still compare it much
more to like a platoon commander on a platoon size operation or a task image
that you're there but you're you're physically detached but not like
literally you know back away so it's not like I'm in a platoon on the ground and
someone in a talk weh-weh that can barely doesn't really
know what's happening and they're trying to give you directions because that's
what that comparison that's right got it check