Kind: captions
Language: en
how are these interacting with our
fighters if they are how are they
interacting with the weather and their
environment how are they interacting
with each other so can we look at these
and how they're acting perhaps as a
swarm
especially off the east coast where this
is happening all the time with multiple
objects
the following is a conversation with
lieutenant ryan graves former navy
fighter pilot including roles as a
combat lead landing signals officer and
rescue mission commander
he and people in this squadron detected
ufos on multiple occasions and he has
been one of the few people willing to
speak publicly about these experiences
and about the importance of
investigating these sightings especially
for national security reasons
ryan has a degree in mechanical and
aerospace engineering from wpi
and an interesting career roles in
advanced technology development
including multi-aging collaborative
autonomy machine learning assisted
air-to-air combat
manned and unmanned teaming technologies
and most recently development of
materials through quantum simulation
this is a lex friedman podcast to
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in the description and now dear friends
here's ryan
graves
what did you think of the new top gun
movie how accurate was it let's start
there i thought the flying was really
accurate i thought the the type of
flying they did and how they approached
the actual mission
um of course had a lot of liberties
but one thing that seems to be hard to
capture on these types of things are the
the chess game that's going on while
that type of flying is happening the
chess game between
like in a dogfight between the the the
pilots and the enemy or between the
different pilots i'll even speak to just
that particular mission they flew there
and
for that particular mission it's kind of
a chess game with yourself to to get
everything in place so
what kind of flight they flew is called
a high threat scenario which means they
uh have to ingress low due to uh the
surface-to-air threats that integrate
air defense systems that are nearby and
they have to ingress low and pop up like
we see in the movie
and in that particular movie that was a
pre-planned strike they knew exactly
where they're going but there's a
scenario where we have to operate in
that type of environment and we don't
know exactly where we're going to strike
or we're going to be adapting to
real-time targets and so in that
scenario you would have one of those
fighters down low like that operating as
a mission commander as a forward air
controller and he's out there calling
shots joining on those other players in
order to ensure they're pointed at the
right target so so that's a bit of the
chess game that he'll be playing
can you actually describe for people who
haven't seen the movie uh what the
mission actually is yeah what's involved
in the mission so
in this particular mission it's kind of
what we would call a pre-planned strike
so there's a known location that's in a
heavily defended area
and the air crew in this case i believe
it was four f-18s on the initial package
their job was to ingress very low down a
canyon to stay out of the radar window
of the surfs to air threats what does
ingress mean ingress means that they're
going to be pushing from a start
location towards the target or the
objective so there's an ingress portion
of the mission and an egress portion of
the mission oh
okay uh like the entrance and the exit
correct type of thing got it but it
changes our mindset tactically quite a
bit right because when we're entering
some place we have the option to enter
but when we go drop a bomb on location
we're exiting
we don't have that luxury we don't have
that option so it actually changes our
tactics and our aggression level
got it and so they were flying low to
the ground and then there's a
surface-to-air missiles
that
forced them to have to fly low is that a
realistic thing it is realistic so
driving those aircraft in the clutter uh
you know
all radar systems or most i should say
are essentially line of sight and so
they can be limited by the horizon or
any clutter out there and even a number
of radars if they are located up high
and looking down towards that aircraft
the clutter all the uh the objects such
as trees and canyons
can have effect on radar systems and so
it can be a type of camouflage
so that's the camouflage for the radar
but what about
the surface air missile
is that is that a legitimate way to
avoid missiles flies so low like fly i
guess below their uh
their level
as far as i know you know you can fly
under any radar right now
we don't have necessarily radars that
can look through anything so there is
always going to be the ability to mask
yourself
but with a larger number of assets and
distributed communication networks where
those radars are looking makes all the
difference and i said they are
ingressing pass in is and that's an
integrated air defense system and that
linking of
air defense systems is what makes it um
so hard so complicated is that the
sensors and the weapons are
disassociated from each other so that if
you took out the target that was
shooting at you it still has the ability
to um to intercept you from another
radar location
so it's distributed and it's stronger
that way
you mean the the surface-to-air missiles
if you like it's a
it's a distributed system and that if
you take out one
they're still able to
sort of integrate information about your
location and strike at you correct and
there's a lot of complication that can
go you know once we start thinking about
distributed systems like that and the
ability to self-heal and repair and
adapt to
losses
it's an interesting area are you
responsible for thinking about that when
you're flying an airplane to some degree
when we ingress to an area like that
we're presented with
information about targets air to air or
air to surface or surface to air i
should say
and we can essentially see where
essentially the danger zone if you will
is located
and so essentially we would stay out of
that and so having a full picture of
the environment is extremely important
because you know at the end of the day
if we go in that circle we can die
pretty quickly so
it's absolutely crucial so there's
regions that have higher and lower
danger
based on your understanding of the
actual whatever the the the the
surface-to-air missile systems are so
you can kind of know
that's interesting i wonder how
automated that could be too especially
when you don't know
it seems like in the movie they knew the
location of everything
um i imagine that's less known in most
cases
and also
a lot of those systems might be a little
bit more
ghetto if i can use that technical term
like um i've gotten uh ad hoc maybe is
the uh
i don't know but you know having uh just
recently visited ukraine and seeing a
lot of aspects of the way that war is
fought there's a lot of improvised type
of systems so you take height
uh high-tech like advanced technology
but the way you deploy it and the way
you organize it is very
improvised and ad hoc and is responding
to the uncertainty in the dynamic
environment and so
from an enemy perspective or whoever is
trying to deal with that kind of system
it's hard to figure it out because uh
it's like me
i played tennis for a long time
and it's always easier to play this is
true for all sports uh play tennis
against a good tennis player versus a
crappy tennis
because the crappy tennis player is full
of uncertainty
uh and that's really difficult to deal
with it seemed like in the movie the
systems were really well organized
uh and so you could plan and there's a
very nice ravine that went right down
the middle of them that's how movies
work isn't it yeah but no i i absolutely
agree so you know um what you say is is
a very good point and as you know if we
were to take a a
a chunk of airspace and break it up into
little bits you know there'd be places
that are better to fly or less less good
to fly
um and
you know we are seeing that now with
what they call manned unmanned teaming
uh we see tactical aircraft or you know
some type of aircraft or platform that's
being uh automated and it's not being on
made in traditional sense uh where
people think air crew are flying around
to conduct missions but it's very high
level uh objective orientated uh mission
planning that allows the air crew to act
more as a mission planner
mission commander versus having to just
pick the right assets or fly them around
and or manipulate them
um
somewhat physically
so actually going back to the chest
thing can you elaborate on what you mean
playing a game of chess with yourself
what's when you're flying that mission
what exactly do you mean by that well
there's a few people you're usually
fighting against in the air you know
there's the bad guys and then there's uh
physics and and mother nature right so
um
when we're down at about 100 feet um
it's a chess game to stay alive for the
pilot and it's a chess game for the
wizzo to
process the information he needs and
then communicate it to all those other
aircraft that were flying around to
ensure that they're putting their
weapons on the right target what's the
wizzo
wizzo is a weapons systems officer he's
a backseater who is not a pilot but
they're responsible for radar
manipulation and communications and uh
weapons appointments of certain natures
so the the chess game is against physics
against the enemy
uh
time
time what about your own
psychology fear
uncertainty no
no there's no time for that type of
self-reflection while we're flying
i want to get i want to get to that but
i i don't want to forget the point that
you made about increased randomness
being a tactical advantage you know as
we
as you mentioned you know you can
introduce autonomy in there and when you
when you bring autonomy in there and my
expectation would be as we bring
different uh abilities and machine
learning as we gather more data um we're
going to be able to bring the the
tactical environment around that jet the
war space that it goes into will almost
be at a stochastic level from the
enemy's perspective where it'll almost
seem like
every tactical environment they go in
will be random and yet very deadly
because
the system is providing a new tactical
solution essentially for that particular
scenario instead of just training to
particular tactics that have to be
repeatable and trainable and lethal
right but not necessarily the most
lethal because they have to be trainable
uh but if we can introduce ai into that
into and to have a level of randomness
or at least the appearance of randomness
due to the complexity
you know i would say like a stochastic
uh tactical advantage because even our
own blue fighters won't be able to
engage in that fight because it would it
would be unsafe essentially for anything
else uh and i think that's where we have
to drive to because otherwise it's
always this chicken and mouse cat game
about whose tactics and who knows what
but if knowledge is no longer a factor
um it's gonna make things a lot
different that's really interesting so
out of the many things
uh that are part of your expertise your
your journey you're also working on
autonomous and semi-autonomous systems
the use of ai and machine learning and
uh man-to-man teaming all that kind of
stuff we'll talk about it
but you're saying
sort of when people think about the use
of ai in war
in military systems they think about
like
computer vision for perception or
processing of sensor information in
order to extract from it actionable
knowledge kind of thing but you're
saying you could also use it to generate
randomness that's difficult
to work with in a like a game theoretic
way like it's difficult to respo for
human operators to respond to exactly
that's really interesting okay so
back back to tom cruise and top gun
what about the dog fighting uh what
aspects of that were accurate so dog
fighting is kind of uh an interesting
conversation because it's not the most
tactically relevant skill set nowadays
uh by traditional standards because the
the ranges with which we engage and
employ weapons are very
uh significant uh and so if we're in a
scenario we're in a dog fight like that
um
a lot of things have probably gone wrong
right and that's kind of how this
mission was set up right it was a you
know a no-win type scenario most likely
um and so for a dog fight the aircraft
size and the ranges and the turn
radiuses make it so it's not very
theatrical right the aircraft looks
small and while it's intense with the
systems i have and the sensors and what
i'm feeling and all that
if i you know we've done it and we've
done it right we take video of that and
it's just like a blue sky and you see a
little dot out there so not very
interesting and so
anytime it really looks interesting in
dogfight arena um that's most likely uh
fiction because we really only get close
for you know a millisecond as we're
zipping past each other at the merge
you're breaking my heart right i know
breaking my heart
no i understand you can go and have fun
but you know in a dog fight specifically
maybe that was more common in the
earlier wars of world war two and before
that where the is it due to the
sort of the range and the effectiveness
of the weapon systems involved exactly
and the accuracy of the targeting
systems at range but there's also a
train of thought um
that hasn't actually been tested out yet
which is with the advent of
advanced electronic warfare ew
and or
unmanned assets the battle space may get
so complex and missiles
may essentially just get
dropped out of the sky or wasted such
that you're going to be in close with
either ir missiles or guns uh if it's a
no kidding
um
you know must defend type scenario first
of all what's electronic warfare you
know it's basically trying to get
control of electromagnetic spectrum
for the interest of um whatever
operation is going on so in the tactical
environment a lot of that is trying to
deceive the radar or can we deceive the
missile or just you know stop their
guide and things of that nature
man it's a battle in the space of
information of digital information
yeah that well f-22 and f-35 right f-22
is a big expensive aircraft and it was
made to be a great fighter
but the f-35 is not as great of a
fighter but it's it's an electronic
warfare and mission commander platform
of the future
where information is what's going to win
the war instead of the best dog fighter
and so it's interesting dichotomy there
what's the best airplane ever made
fighter jet ever made i know the
aviators in the in the audience are
gonna hate my answer because they're
gonna want that sexy you know muscly
f-14 tomcat type fighter or or maybe
p-51 type aircraft but
the
f-35 is maybe not the best dog fighter
but it doesn't have to get in a dog
fight right it's like how you'd be the
best knife fighters not getting a knife
fight sometimes lockheed martin f-35
lightning ii
it looks pretty sexy there's two real
strengths you can have as a fighter you
can you can have the ability to kind of
out muscle your fighter uh your your
opponent and beat them on g's and power
and rate around on them and then there's
the other side of that which is uh you
can be overly maneuverable
uh you can bleed energy quickly and
that's what the f 3 f 18 was good at
because it had to be heavier to land on
the aircraft carrier we had to give it
extra bulk
but it also needed special mechanisms to
slow down enough to land on aircraft
carrier so it made it very maneuverable
and what that leads to a lot of times
the ability to get maybe the first shot
in a fight
which is very good but if you do make
that sharp turn you're going to bleed a
lot of energy away and be more
susceptible for follow-on shots if that
one's less susceptible and so there's
this kind of aggression non-aggression
game you can play depending on the type
of aircraft you're fighting where does
the f-35 land on that spectrum the f-35
lands somewhere behind the f-22s so
there'll probably be a row of f-22s or
f-18s and f-35 will be out back but
it'll be enabling a lot of the warfare
that's happening in front is it one of
the more expensive planes
because of all the stuff on it it
certainly is yeah
in the movie they have tom cruise flied
over mach 10. so maybe
can you say
what are the different speeds
accelerations feel like mach 1 2 3
or hypersonic have you ever flown
hypersonic no
um does it get how tough does it get
i'm just going to call out the the bs of
ejecting at mach 10 just for the record
because in the movie uh there's been i
think at least one ejection that was
super sonic uh and i'll just say you
know it was not pretty but he survived
um so there have to be some interesting
mechanisms to eject successfully at mach
10 but i'll digress
yeah
uh but anyway so what
um
what's interesting to say about the
experience of ma of the as you go up
does it get more and more difficult
in the end of the day crossing the sound
bear is much like crossing the speed
limit on the highway you don't really
notice anything
um
to cross that at least an f-18 because
we have a lot more weight than most
fighters is typically we'll do that in a
descent
and we'll do that a full afterburner
just dumping gas into the engine
and so that'll get us over the fastest i
think i've got about 1.28
but what's interesting people realize is
that if i take that throttle and i'm an
afterburner and i just bring it back and
just bring it back to mill which is full
power just not afterburner the
deacceleration is so strong due to the
air friction that it throw you forward
in your straps almost you know i would
say you know maybe like 70 of strong
almost as has trapping on the boat it's
pretty strong
so it's almost like a reverse car crash
just for the acceleration so the
acceleration you know is usually kind of
slow and you don't feel anything of
course when you're crossing through it
but the acceleration is pretty violent
the deceleration is violent huh okay
uh but is there
is there a fundamental difference
between like mach 1 and hypersonic mach
5 and so on does it require like super
special training
and is that something that's
used often in warfare is that not really
that no so hypersonic human flight in if
it exists it's not something that's
employed tactically
in um in any sense right now that i'm
aware of so
um you know i think of hypersonic um
technology i think of uh missiles and
weapon systems and delivery platform i
don't think of fighter aircraft
necessarily i can think of bomber or
reconnaissance aircraft perhaps
but those would be more efficient very
long long range i imagine acceleration
would be kind of gentle honestly
the thing you experience is the
acceleration not the actual speed
um there's been just a small tangent a
lot of discussion about hypersonic
nuclear weapons like missiles from you
know russia
uh bragging about that is this something
that's a significant concern or is it
just a way to flex about different kinds
of weapon systems
hypersonics i do think pose uh a
challenge for our detection systems
because there are
um
you know there are design considerations
in these sensor systems as always right
and when you build them and the
technology progresses to a point where
maybe it's not feasible to use that
technology you know there's a problem
but with the
you know the all domain and kind of
cross domain data linking capabilities
we have um
it's less of you know
it's a more of an integrated picture
i'll say um and so the hypersonics
are really
what it is is uh how fast can we detect
and destroy problem you're just
shortening the time available to do that
we call something like that the kill
chain right it's it's from
um locating a target and identifying it
and
you know essentially authorizing its
destruction by whatever means uh
employing and then actually following up
to ensure that you did what you said you
were going to do in some sense right
does it need another re-attack something
of that nature and so
there's an old dog fighting framework
you could call it it's called the ooda
loop that kind of made its way in the
engineering business now but the old
observe orientated side act was
initially a a fighter mechanism in order
to get inside that kill chain of your
opponent and break it up so that he
can't
uh process his kill chain on you and so
hypersonic's a way of shortening those
those windows of opportunity to to
react to that
i wonder what do like how much do you
have to shorten it in order for
the defense systems not to work anymore
it seems like uh
it's very you know i
i'm both often horrified by the thought
of nuclear war
but at the same time
wonder
what that looks like
when i i dream of extreme competence in
defense systems i imagine that not a
single nuclear weapon can reach the
united states by missile
with the defense system
defense systems but then again i also
understand that these are extremely
complicated systems the amount of
integration required and because you're
not using them
i mean this is exactly
there could be you know there's like an
intern somewhere
that like forgot to update the code the
fortran code that like is going to be
make the difference because you don't
have the opportunity to really
thoroughly test
um which is really scary of course the
systems are probably incredible if they
could be tested but because they can't
be really thoroughly tested in actual
um
in an actual attack i wonder
i mean i guess one assumption there
would be that these hypersonic missiles
would only be launched and the case
would attack
um it'd be interesting if there were
other hypersonic objects that we could
use to flex those systems
another thing that actually happened i
just have a million questions i want to
ask you it's fascinating to me uh is
there's a bird strike on the plane does
that happen often yeah it's a series
they damaged the the engine and they
made it seem like it's a serious exactly
a serious issue i've hit birds um i've i
know someone that took a turkey vulture
to the face
through the cockpit right shattered the
cockpit knocked him out
um i think the
it actually i don't know personally
about the story i know from uh the
command i was at and uh i believe the
backseater had to punch out
uh and punch them both out because he
was unconscious you know in the front
seat from the bird
um it can kill you from hitting you it's
you know it's like a bowling ball going
250 miles an hour
it can take out an engine uh
very easily uh
every airport i've flown at in the navy
i've had to check the the bird condition
if you will to see how many birds i've
we've had to cancel flights because of
because there's too many of them around
the airport some airports even have bird
radars with no tear ports there are
systems that monitor the bird condition
there is yeah there's actual radar
systems and you can go in the
certain bases you have to call up and
they'll tell you what it is for the day
or for that hour and other ones having
like their their weather report that
goes out with the radio
what are some technological solutions to
this or is this just
uh
because it's a low probability event
there's no real solution for it i would
say it's not a little probably develop
event i mean this is happening a lot i
mean although the hits themselves aren't
necessarily that common or i'll say a
catastrophic hit either a near miss or a
hit or the pilot having to actively
maneuver to avoid it is pretty common
and in fact it seems stressful it is
it's so common in fact that we know that
you never want to try to go over or you
never want to go under a bird if you see
it in front of you you always want to
try to go over it because what they'll
do immediately if they see you is and
you startle vegetables they'll bring
their wings in and just drop straight
down to try to get out of the path it's
interesting i didn't know they did that
but so if you immediately if you try to
go under them they're going to be
dropping into you so you typically want
to try to go above them is this
something you can train for or no um
is this one of those things you have to
really experience it's a skill set that
um
you somewhat trained for
in the duties of being a fighter pilot
in a sense right being able to react to
your environment very quickly and make
make decisions quickly so is that one of
the more absurd things challenges you
have to deal with in flying is there
other things sort of maybe weather
conditions
like harsh weather conditions is there
something that we maybe don't often
think about in terms of
the challenges of flying birds in a way
aren't a ridiculous threat for us it's
it's
a safety threat that
you know anything physical in the air is
something that we really have to be
careful about whether we're flying
formation off of the aircraft right next
to us or whether
it's a turkey vulture at two thousand
feet or a flock of five thousand birds
like at the runway we have to wave off
you know and
although they're low probability a lot
of bases will have like actual
environmental protection agency
employees that are responsible for
safely removing migratory birds or
different animals
um that may be in the runways or flying
about
wow i didn't know what a turkey vulture
is and it really does look like a mix
between a vulture and a turkey
and look kind of dumb no offense to
turkey vultures um
in that movie who was the enemy nation
was it uh i mean i think i guess they
were implying it's iran
or or is it russia i didn't think they
were implying any particular nation
state frankly i think they did a
somewhat decent job of having some
ambiguous fifth generation fighters
um
the location and and the stockpile like
i i get like how the story kind of
insinuates certain things but they seem
to a good job of not having anything
directly pointing to another nation
which i thought was you know the good
move i i enjoy these type of movies as
an aviator and
you know as an american right because
it's a feel-good movie but um you know
we we shouldn't be celebrating going to
war with any particular country you know
china russia whoever may have these
weapons it's it's fun to watch but it
would be an incredibly serious event to
be employing these weapons
yeah we'll talk about
war in general because yeah it's the the
movie is kind of celebrating
the the the human side of things and
also the incredible technology involved
but there's also the cost of
of war and the seriousness of war and
the suffering involved with war
not just in the fighting but in the
death of civilians and all those kinds
of things
um
well you were a navy pilot let's let's
talk a little bit more uh seriously
about this and you were twice deployed
in the middle east flying the fa-18f
super hornet
can you briefly tell the story of your
career as a navy pilot sure
so i joined the navy in 2009 right after
college i went to officer
essentially officer boot camp officer
kinder school
i applied as a pilot and i got into the
pilot that was the advantage of going
that way is that i essentially choose
what i wanted and if i got in great if
not i didn't get stuck doing something
else
so you knew you wanted to be a pilot i
did
i joined i went through my initial
training i went through primary flight
training that all aviators go through
and i did well enough that
you know one of the first lessons they
teach in the navy is that um you know
you can have a great career in the navy
and you can you know see the world and
do what you want but at the end of the
day it's all about the needs of the navy
and what they need so you know they may
not have the platform you like or you
know you may not necessarily get to
choose your own own adventure here but
uh i was lucky enough that there was one
jet slot in my class and i was uh lucky
enough fortunate enough to get it so it
was a jet slot so well yeah what that
means is that i was assigned actually a
tail hook at that point which meant i
would go train to fly aircraft and land
on aircraft carriers
um and there's essentially three
aircraft that do that at the time is f18
and the um
e2
and the c2
c2 is kind of like the male truck for
the boat e2 is the one with the big
radar dish on top
and then there's all the f-18s so e2 is
calms
c2 male 2
yeah what's that c2
they're the ones that bring supplies to
the ship via air and people sorry if i
missed it is it a plane is it a
helicopter it's a plane okay
all right and the f-18 is a fighter jet
correct okay so i selected tail hook
which meant i could get one of those
other ones but eighty percent of them
were so are jets so i was in a good spot
at that point and that's when i went to
murder mississippi to fly my first jet
which was the t-45 gauze hawk cool so
what kind of plane is that is that is
that that's what you were doing your
training on
that's the jet aircraft you get in
before you actually go to the f-18
it is a carrier capable so go to the
boat for the first time in it during the
day
drop uh fake bombs do dog fighting
um
low levels formation flying day and
night
well that's a pretty plain
yeah yeah and it looks like a cone so
that no one hits it
okay so it's usually not used for
fighting it's just for training it's
used for training how to fight got it so
what was that like was that the first
time you were sort of really getting
into it yeah that was really interesting
because before that it was a 600
horsepower prop plane and going from
that to the t45 is one of like the
biggest jumps in power and like
navy you know machine operation how much
horsepower does the 245 have
approximately
like 15 000 or so so it's a huge jump
from 600 you said horsepower about yeah
so it's a big big leap
but it's a jet you know so it performs
differently it's faster and right and
what that means not just because it's
faster your whole mind needs to be
faster everything happens faster in the
air now right those calms happen faster
um your landing gear has to come up
faster everything just happens faster in
a jet and so it's a big jump uh and i
never forget going on my first flight
in that aircraft
it was a formation flight for someone
else and i was just in the back watching
and there was an instructor in the
flight and so what that means is
instructors in a single aircraft and
then there's three or four other
aircraft and they're learning how to do
joins and they're learning how to fly in
formation and as a new student in the
back it's amazing right because you know
photo op time and all this like i'm
seeing aircraft up close for the first
time it's awesome
um
and on the way back um
we couldn't get our landing gear down uh
ironically
so
it you know to make a long story short
because it's overall not that exciting
uh we couldn't get the gear down we
actually went to go do a controlled
ejection uh to the target area that
where that is about 15 20 miles to the
north of the base did you wait did you
just say that's not that exciting
well
because that to me is pretty exciting so
that i mean how first of all
i mean uh i mean that must be terrifying
like uh early on in your careers i
haven't haven't seen those things
um
that yeah like how often does that kind
of thing happen
decent more than you would think more
than you would think there was no
significant panic this is like
misunderstood this is what has to be
done in this case i think i was probably
just too dumb to realize the
significance of it because as a new
student you know not really appreciating
you know just what is ahead of me if we
are rejecting um
but at the time it was more it was just
like wrote right because i was back
there and then i went from a observer
mode to a
i'm going to provide you the help that i
can provide you as a member of this crew
you know mode and so it was less about
i'm you know on this 20-mile trip and
thinking about my um how vulnerable i am
you know we're going through checklists
we're talking to people we're getting
ready so
no it wasn't it wasn't fearful and the
whole time we were doing one of these to
try to get the uh the gear down so we're
unloading the jet and then loading it
back to try to get the gear out
with the stick and um
and it came down it came down halfway um
there just on its own so we came back
around and we did like a safety trap in
case there was a problem with the gear
and that was my first flight you know uh
a little bit of serendipity but i'm
gonna fast forward a bit and i went back
to the squadron's instructor about five
or six years later and i was an aviation
safety officer at this point which meant
i was responsible for investigating
mishaps
and
a a student went in and he he went in
the back seat of a form flight
just like the one i went on
and he went out and he ended up
projecting on that flight exact same
type of flight they went out and they
had a runaway trim scenario and it
caused the aircraft essentially just
inverted itself almost 180 degrees
uh at about 600 feet over the ground and
they punched out just slightly outside
the ejection window at about 300 400
feet or so but they were completely fine
um
so you know and then about
two months later we had another ejection
about three months after that we had
another rejection so
um unfortunately you know it can it can
be more common that people think what
does it feel like to get ejected
thankfully i don't know i could describe
it to you i can tell you what it's like
from what i've heard but i truly think
it's one of those things that you just
don't understand until it happens
uh it's like instantaneous about 250 g's
which is only possible because of
inertia in our blood
right so you can actually get like 250
300 g's for like a few milliseconds and
then it backs off to like 40 or 50 g's
to get you away from the vehicle itself
and so
um you know you may lose consciousness
um if you
do you know who knows where you wake up
um you know you could be in a tree you
could still be falling uh you could be
in the water so the physics of that is
fascinating how do you eject safely
do you know the story about how that was
tested at all i don't know the full
story but uh there was i'm guessing
nobody knows the full story there's
probably a lot of shady stuff going on
but anyway uh you mean like in the early
early days or they suck a flight dock up
to a rocket sled and just see how much
their body could take it
and he turned a lot of his body into in
the mush in the in the process of
getting that science done but he saved a
lot of life
people use it used to be tougher back in
the day
that's how science used to be done
um so how did your training continue so
how did take me and take me farther
through your career
uh as you work towards graduating
towards the f-18s so in vt9 where i was
a student
there's two phases there's an
intermediate and advanced
intermediate is getting very comfortable
with the aircraft and at that point you
truly hear all right you're going jets
now or you're gonna go one of the other
aircraft that land on the aircraft
carrier
i was told i was going to you know jets
at that point and then we go into
same squadron same aircraft same
instructors but it's called advanced now
and now we're
learning how to dog fight for the first
time we're
doing what we call tactical formation
which is uh just like aggressive
position keeping
um we are doing um
dog fighting and low levels and all
sorts of great stuff so it's really that
first introduction to that tactical
environment and putting really putting
g's on the jet on your body and
maneuvering is there like tactical
formation is collaborating with other
fighter jets a part of that it is so
flying in a that's what you mean by
formation so literally having an
awareness all right is this done for you
or are you as a human supposed to
understand
like where you are in the formation how
to maintain formation all that kind of
stuff yeah is it done autonomously or
manually there's a great autonomy point
on the end of this i've thought about so
but what we do it's all manual so i'm
looking at his wing
and i'm looking at um different visual
checkpoints that form like a triangle
right like an equal out triangle
essentially and then as that triangle
you know is no longer equal i can tell
my relative position against that
aircraft right that's really cool uh and
so that's what i'm staring at first
sometimes hours on end you know several
feet away doing with these if i'm in the
weather that's all it is
so you get it's almost like is it
peripheral vision or is it no we're
staring directly at it the peripheral is
coming on my on my um that's interesting
stuff right my sensors and my
instruments and so here's my gyroscope
at that point right while you're flying
not looking straight correct i'm fly
like this for hours it can hurt your
neck we don't like doing this as much
and i don't think it's just me right
it's a weird thing where when you're
like this it's actually harder to fly
formation slightly than here because
being in line of your hand movements and
of the aircraft
somehow has an effect on our ability to
be more precise and comfortable it's
strange
uh yeah so but so the there's a symmetry
to the formation usually so one of the
people on the other side really don't
like being on that side
is it is it does it who gets like the
short straw how do you decide which side
of the formation you are it's a good
question too because there's there's
kind of rank in some sense so if it's a
four-person formation right you have the
division lead who's qualified to lead a
whole division but maybe the other ones
aren't and he has a dash too
and that's his wingman essentially and
then in a division there's two other
aircraft and then you have another
senior flight leader that's the dash
three position
and then you have dash four the last one
and if you are all lined up on one side
like fingertip one two three four that
dash four guy is going to be at the end
of that whip so if you're flying
formation each one's making you know
movements relative to the lead dash four
is kind of you know at the end of that
error you know and so his movements are
kind of like a whip it's very difficult
to fly in that position and close can
you elaborate is it because of the air
the aerodynamics what's the whip if this
is the flight lead and this is dash two
you know flightly is rock steady and
just doing his thing yeah flight two is
going to be working that triangle moving
a little bit right and he has this small
air bubble that he's doing his best to
stay and then but dash three is flying
off dash too and so his air bubble is
dash two's plus his own
and that's
more and more stressful as you get
further yeah
okay um what's the experience of that
staring for long periods of time
and trying to maintain formation
how stressful is that because like
you know we're doing that when we drive
staying in lane
and that becomes
after you get pretty good at it it
becomes somewhat it's still stressful
um
which actually surprisingly stressful
when you look at like lane keeping
systems they actually relieve that
stress somehow and it actually creates a
much more
pleasant experience while you're still
able to maintain situational awareness
and like
stay awake which is really interesting
like i don't think people realize how
stressful it is to lane keep
when they drive so this is even more
stressful so are you
do you do you think about that or is
this um yeah i guess how stressful is it
from a psychology perspective it's very
stressful uh when
so i taught students how to do this as
well and so at our feet we have two
writers and if i'm flying off a flight
lead over here what you'll find a lot of
times is you'll be flying or you like if
i'm the structure and the students
flying i'll start to notice that he's
having a harder and harder time keeping
position yeah and what i'll notice
typically is he's locked out his leg
they'll lock out the leg that's closest
to the aircraft they're flying against
and push on the rudder subconsciously
because their whole body's trying to get
away from the aircraft because they're
so uncomfortable getting close to it
and so i'll tell them i can i can fix
their form with just a couple words
they'll say wiggle your toes
and they'll wiggle their toes and
they'll reel out and they'll loosen all
the muscles in their legs
they've been locked up and their
formation flying will get a lot better
uh and so you know there's a lot of
stress associated with that there's some
interesting
psychological or
visual
issues such as um
vertigo as you're flying so if you're
flying with him and then you fly right
into a cloud right that's when it's very
stressful because you have to be very
close in order to maintain visual you
might be on thunderstorm right
and so you have to be very tight you
might start raining
and then he's turning but you might not
even know that
you might not even be able to see that
turn and so all of a sudden you might
look while you're in a turn thinking you
were straight level and you look
just maybe back at your instruments very
quick and you realize you're like in a
30 degree turn
and your whole concept of where you are
in the world
starts getting very confused and you
immediately get this this sense of
it it's weird like i look at the hud and
it it feels all my sensor telling me
it's spinning but it's not you know and
so i have to trust my instruments even
though it feels like it's spinning and
the same thing can happen
when you're flying formation off of
someone and it it can be very um
very dangerous and um disorientating but
the point is to
try to regain
awareness by trusting the instruments
like
like distrust all your human senses and
just use the instruments to rebuild
situational awareness not in this
particular case because our situational
awareness is based it's predicated off
of our flight lead so in a sense i'm
just trusting his movements and so he's
my gyroscope but you're absolutely right
if i was by myself i would trust my
instruments but i can't just stop flying
form and trust my instruments because
now i'm going to hit him oh yeah you
have to pay attention so he's my
reference so the instruments are not
helping you significantly with his
positioning not it's all completely
manual
so i is there a future where some of
that is autonomous yeah and i've thought
about automating that flight um regime
but when i started thinking about it
i you know realized that all the
formation keeping that we do
uh is designed to enhance the
aviator's
ability to maintain sight right so we
fly very tight formation so that we can
go in weather and to reduce
groups of traffic coming into the boat
we fly
in one particular position so that all
of all of the flight crew can look down
the line and see the flight lead so
everything is based
everything has to do with
the two air crew visually maintaining
sight of each other and defending each
other right
in a combat spread i might be looking i
may be three miles away from him flying
formation directly beam and looking
around to make sure nothing's there so
as i'm looking into automating this
process i thought
well you know
sure it's easy to get a bunch of
aircraft to fly in formation off each
other right it's it's trivial but why
you know what is the best formation why
are they doing that and that opened up a
much more interesting regime of
operations and flight mechanics and
that's when we get back to that kind of
stochastic mindset where we can bring in
aircraft close to do some type of normal
flying or reduce congestion around
airports but when we consider flying in
a formation and tactical environment we
can be much more effective with
non-traditional formation keeping or
perhaps no formation keeping perhaps so
autonomy used for formation keeping not
for convenience but for the introduction
of randomness that's hard too real-time
mission planner yeah
and then that's where you also have some
human
modifications so it's like
man unmanned teaming enters that picture
so you use some of the
human intuition and adjustment
of this formation the formation itself
has some uncertainty it's such an
interesting dance i think that is
the most
fascinating
application of artificial intelligence
is when it's human ai collaboration that
that semi-autonomous dance that you see
in these semi-autonomous vehicle systems
in terms of cars being driving but also
in the
safety critical situation of a airplane
of a fighter jet especially when you're
flying fast it's
i mean
in a split second you have to make all
these kinds of decisions and
it feels like an ai system can do
as much harm as it can help and so to
get that right
is a really fascinating challenge one of
the challenges too isn't just the the
algorithms of the autonomy itself but
how it senses the environment
that of course is going to what be what
all these decisions are based off of and
that's a challenge in this type of
environment well i gotta ask so uh f18
what's it like to fly a fighter jet as
best i mean what to you is
beautiful powerful
what do you love about the experience of
flying
for me you know and i think i'm an
outlier a bit it wasn't necessarily the
flying itself right it wasn't
necessarily the the soaring over the
clouds
and you know looking down at the earth
from upside down you know i i came to
love that and but it wasn't necessarily
the passion that drove me there i just
had no exposure to that the only exp the
exposure i had was
was reading and going in the woods and
and science fiction and and all that and
so you know what seemed to kind of drive
me towards that was just
a desire to really be operating as close
to what i thought was the edge of
technology or science and that's the
path that i chose to try to get close to
that i thought that being in a in a
fighter jet
uh and you know all the tools and the
technology and the
knowledge and the challenges and the you
know failures and victories that would
come with that just seemed like
something that
i wanted to be a part of uh and it
wasn't necessarily about the flying but
it was about the challenge and
like i said as a person from a small
town you know small high school
being able to get my hands you know or
even just near something of such
technological significance was kind of
empowering for me and that's kind of
what bore the love of flight from there
you know becoming you know having some
level of mastery in that aircraft it
really feels like an extension of your
body and once i got there then then the
kind of the level flying kind of
followed
so you sort of one is the man mastery
over the machine and second is the
machine is like the greatest thing that
humans have ever created arguably the
the like things that lockheed martin and
others have built
i mean the engineering in that yeah it's
um
however you feel about war
which is one of the sad things about
human civilization is
um
war inspires the engineering of tools
that are
incredible
and it's like
maybe without war if we look at human
history we would not build some of the
incredible things we built so in order
to
win wars to stop wars we build these
incredible systems
that perhaps propagate war
and that's a that's another discussion
i'll ask you about but this
do you this is like um
this is a chance to experience the
greatest engineering humans have ever
been able to do
like similar i suppose that astronauts
feel like when they're flying i wanted
to be an astronaut i wanted to take that
route
uh i was gonna apply to test pilot
school
um
it just didn't work out for me uh i
ended up having a broken foot during my
window but long story short i ended up
after uh my time in my fleet squadron
and we can get back to the rest of the
timeline if you want but
i went to be an instructor
pilot
um instead right and then you know i i
was talking about this with a squadron
mate earlier today about how you know i
certainly wouldn't be talking with lex
today if i ended up going to test pilot
school you know
i never would have i never would have
had the
i wouldn't
maybe recklessness i don't know but the
the willingness to have a conversation
about uap
while i was you know i that led me to
the decision to get out once i went
there and
it it kind of enabled me to talk about
uap more publicly
and if i stayed in the navy then i don't
think that would have happened i
wouldn't have been able to
if i went that route
well as a small tangent
do you hope to travel to mars one day do
you think you'll step foot on mars one
day
if you ask me that five years ago i
would have said
yes i want to in fact i would like to
die on myers
um
now today now i have some hesitations
and i have some hesitations because
i'm hopeful and optimistic and i think
that you know i think that we are truly
like on the brink of a very wide
technological revolution that's going to
kind of move us how we used to move
information and data
in in this last century we're going to
be manipulating and managing matter in
that next century and so i think that i
think our reach as human as humans are
going to get a lot wider a lot faster
than people may realize or at least
wait are you getting like super
ambitious beyond mars is that what
you're saying well i mean
like mars seems kind of boring i want to
go beyond that is that we
do do you mean the reach of humanity
across all kinds of technologies or do
you mean literally across space across
space you know so you know we're going
to be i think that as artificial
intelligence and machine learning starts
broaching further into the topic of
science or the area of science and we
start working through new physics we
start working through or i should say
pass the einsteinian frameworks
as we kind of get a better idea of what
space time is or isn't
we may have we may find you know answers
that we didn't know that we were looking
for and we may have more opportunity and
i'm not saying this is something i'm you
know betting the farm on of course but
um maybe maybe that's a road i want to
explore on earth instead of uh on mars
ma