No Way Out
Welcome to the No Way Out podcast where we examine the variety of domains and disciplines behind John R. Boyd’s OODA sketch and why, today, more than ever, it is an imperative to understand Boyd’s axiomatic sketch of how organisms, individuals, teams, corporations, and governments comprehend, shape, and adapt in our VUCA world.
No Way Out
TOPGUN vs. Major Boyd: Humans Over Algorithms with CAPT Dan Pederson
In this episode of No Way Out , Captain Dan "Yank" Pederson, the "Godfather" of TOPGUN, shares the origin story of the Navy Fighter Weapons School, established in 1969 during the Vietnam War to address a 2:1 kill ratio that exposed deficiencies in aerial combat.
Pederson recounts how he selected eight experienced pilots and RIOs who, with limited resources, created a PhD-level curriculum in just 60 days by emphasizing the human element over technology. This focus challenged John Boyd’s Energy-Maneuverability (E-M) theory, prioritizing pilot skill, heart, and adaptability, leading to a remarkable 24:1 kill ratio by the war’s end.
Key innovations included vertical fighting tactics and a culture of psychological safety in debriefs, fostering a brotherhood that drove excellence. Pederson’s insights extend beyond aviation, offering lessons for organizations on building high-performing teams through mentorship, experiential learning, and human-centric leadership. As AI and automation reshape industries, he warns against over-relying on technology, advocating for human capability as the decisive factor. The episode connects TOPGUN’s principles to modern challenges, including AI’s role in human-agent teaming and the OODA loop’s relevance in cognitive warfare, urging organizations to prioritize people over systems.
Dan Pederson Wiki
TOPGUN: An American Story
NWO Intro with Boyd
March 25, 2025
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Recent podcasts where you’ll also find Mark and Ponch:
I am sitting outside of Captain Dan Yank Petterson's house. We're about to go in there. I'm sitting next to Bart Bartolone, who was an instructor of mine back in the day. He happens to have a book in his hand called Top Gun An American Story. We're going to go and have a conversation with Captain Yank Petterson. One of the reasons why we're here.
Brian "Ponch" Rivera:Our view is that our weapons school, top Gun, influenced John Boyd's view of how living systems actually operate, and we'll get in there. We'll have that discussion. It's going to go something like this It'll include the aerial attack study where John Boyd was able to break down spatial relationships in three dimensions using geometry to break it down. So knuckleheads like us can learn how to fight in a dogfight. Then he goes on to create the EM theory energy maneuverability theory and pushed that so hard during Vietnam that he forgot about something. Actually, two things emerged from that One, fast transients and two, something that I believe our Navy fighter weapons school let John Boyd know that there's something missing in his EM theory and that is the human in the cockpit. We'll let Dan take the conversation from there and we'll see where it goes. So, bart, what do you think, man?
"Bart":Barton Pichette Ponch. I'm really stoked to be here, so thanks again. You know our flying career, I think had a lot to do with our formative years as businessmen, when we got out, and Top Gun and what you learned there and how it taught us is really a shining light of entrepreneurialism and just really making you know what's the saying Making lemonade out of lemons, right. They had to make something happen, right, we were getting our asses kicked.
Brian "Ponch" Rivera:I think there's an interesting view here. I want to share One. You went through Top Gun, you're a bro. I didn't go through Top Gun, so you send people to this weapons school who end up coming back to train the rest of the squadron.
"Bart":Train the trainers.
Brian "Ponch" Rivera:Yeah, you train the trainers, you create these coaches, you create these capabilities within a squadron and you federate the information that way and it always gets updated. Information gets updated. So the weapons school is really about accelerating human performance, given the current technology, and sometimes I think we'll hear this from Dan Patterson and that is when you take away capability, when you start taking away human capability, for example, when you take away a gun from a fighter aircraft, you start removing capability away from the pilot, and I think we're seeing that in AI right now. So, artificial intelligence, everybody's running towards the technology. We're saying, yeah, that's great, it's an enabler, but what's more important is the human in the cockpit. Right, got to have the human.
Brian "Ponch" Rivera:And that's the story of the fighter weapons school that I think people get wrong. It's not about the aircraft. We'll see what Dan has in store for us. Again, it's Captain Dan Patterson. His book is Top Gun, an American Story. It came out about the same time that Maverick came out. We may talk about the movie, may not, but let's get in there here in a minute and we're going to stay hot-miked as we go in there and we'll have this carry on. So let's go do this, all right, you?
"Bart":got it. Thanks, ponch, this is really cool. How do you describe it?
Brian "Ponch" Rivera:An oasis in the desert. All right, here he comes.
Dan "Yank" Pederson:The dogs are going to bark. All right Speaking of dogs.
Brian "Ponch" Rivera:Nice to meet you, sir. How are you doing?
"Bart":Nice to meet you. Sir, I'm Bart, nice to meet you.
Brian "Ponch" Rivera:Hello.
Dan "Yank" Pederson:Say hello to Mary Beth, all right.
Brian "Ponch" Rivera:Want some wine. Is that what we said?
"Bart":We're going to be there together.
Brian "Ponch" Rivera:I don't know about wine.
"Bart":It might be a little too. His work with John Boyd is just, it's a little mind-blowing.
Brian "Ponch" Rivera:John Boyd huh, yeah, so the podcast is named after John Boyd's conceptual spiral brief. The idea is we have to continually update our model of the world or act to change the world, right, um, so our weapon school. What you guys did? You changed the trajectory of how, uh, john boyd looked at the world. And why does this matter? Because he went from a closed system approach, the, the.
"Bart":EM theory right.
Brian "Ponch" Rivera:Which you guys pointed out. We'll talk about that. I hope you shifted that view in him and said look, you can't force these assumptions onto everybody. This framework, you have to allow the person in the cockpit fire. Right. So you focused on the human in the cockpit. You focused on that and you created exceptional leaders and coaches. Right, that's what needs to happen today. If technology, if we continue to follow the technology, we're going to lose our human capability, right, and we don't want that. We don't want that at all, right. So that's part of the story of the weapon school that I want to bring up here and set up do you want coffee or anything?
"Bart":we're coffeed up pretty good. We're coffeed up pretty good yeah, or a cold beer.
Dan "Yank" Pederson:I got cold beers outside, so well, maybe later, but okay yeah, we'll keep on our best. I'm okay normally, but I still love my coffee at 5 o'clock in the morning.
"Bart":That's awesome.
Dan "Yank" Pederson:You know, Punch, I'm going to be 90 years old 90. Awesome. In three months and Mary B, we won't tell you. You she's going to be 27 in October, 4th awesome thanks for having us at your home.
Brian "Ponch" Rivera:I really appreciate that. I've got two books in my hand ready. One is yours. I would love to have it signed. We don't have to do that now.
Brian "Ponch" Rivera:Bart has one as well and this is the flow system book. Let me just give you some background on it. We took a lot of lessons from fighter aviation, crew resource management, the OODA, loop, observer, orientated Side Act, complexity theory, and we combined it with the Toyota production system. So mission command, distributed leadership, all the lessons we learned in the cockpit, from situational awareness to how to build high-performing teams with the planned brief, execute debrief approach, and then we really dove into. Where does that not work? And there are contexts where that doesn't work all the time. But we know that because of you standing up the weapons school, you changed the trajectory of how people perform, including, I believe, navy SEALs, and I want to ask you about that as well.
Brian "Ponch" Rivera:So, before we get into the podcast and all that, I want to give you this. This is a shirt that says what part of? Don't you understand? That is actually John Boyd's observable anticide Aclute. You've been flying that your whole life On the back. It says no way out, so I want to give that to you. Okay, and this will be your copy. It is very academic, yeah, but what we did is we merged a lot of the things that we learned from the webinar.
Dan "Yank" Pederson:Do you want to put? It up here.
Brian "Ponch" Rivera:Oh yeah.
Brian "Ponch" Rivera:Oh yeah, it's fine. We can leave it right here. It's fine right now, Whatever. But let me kick us off with a pathway and I want you to pick it up. So let's go back to the 1960s and we get into the aerial attack study. We learn about the AIM-9B, we learn about lead and lag. We learn about all these things. John Boyd takes the spatial relationships between aircraft in a three-dimension fight and four-dim fight and breaks it down for us in the aerial attack study, and then he goes on to create this energy maneuverability theory based off the second law of thermodynamics.
"Bart":All right.
Brian "Ponch" Rivera:So now the Air Force has this big push to use this algorithm on how to drive technical performance in their F-4s, right? So we're in Vietnam, the alt report comes out, and then you pick up up and you're at VF-121. Yeah, and you're asked to stand up. This thing called a fighter weapons school, which you end up calling Top Gun. So you're the godfather of Top Gun, yeah, right. And then your team. They then you select four pilots, four Rios, is that correct? Mm-hmm, they go on to figure out how to do this in 90 days, is that right?
"Bart":60 days 60 days.
Brian "Ponch" Rivera:So you steal a trailer, you take all the concepts from a lean startup, which is you're given a goal or direction of travel. They don't tell you how to do it. You hire the right people, you bring them in, you give them a mission and they go out and execute on it. And it's phenomenal. And in fact you end up meeting um john boyd and you challenge him on his em theory. Your guys do at least, and they say you forgot about the most important thing the heart, skill and drive of the person in the cockpit. So can you pick up the story from there and kind of share some ideas on the origins of Top Gun?
Dan "Yank" Pederson:Well, march 1st 1969 is the birthday, the official day we started Top Gun Nice. Remember that the war in Vietnam had been going on for five years. You always end up fighting a war with the tools you have or the airplanes that you have. So we had F-4s and A-4s and good old industry has always been in the lead because they've moved through the political arena. In the lead because they've moved through the political arena and you don't get a vote as to what the airplane really is and what goes in it. I'd like to mention right now in Vietnam, we just never had a gun in the Phantom.
Brian "Ponch" Rivera:As great as it was we never had a gun. So why did they take the gun out? Why did they take the gun out? Wait, Wait right.
Dan "Yank" Pederson:And industry was selling the idea of radar weapons that you could reach out 10, 12 miles and shoot them and never see them minimizing the risk. And it's see them minimizing the risk, and it's the marketing guys in the industry.
Brian "Ponch" Rivera:So they got fixated on the technology Always we always do that and you know why.
Dan "Yank" Pederson:It's profit motive and you and I, the Top Gun guys believe and I've been an advocate all my life is still the individual Condor believes that all of us the original eight guys that I selected were eight out of 15 that worked for me and I was teaching basic tactics and I was teaching basic tactics and so you know 60-day mandate, you got to have it up and flying and this is a graduate school.
Dan "Yank" Pederson:Yeah, that's a John Boyd level school, that's not a. You know, five years into the war and we're still not. You know what the kill ratio was? Latus right, two to one. In other words, we were shooting down two of them for every one of us and that gets old doing that a couple times a day out there for real, for real. So, and to go back to your comment, it wasn't a light turned on as much as it was. Of the eight guys, they were the best I had out of 15 working for me. Because if I'd have gone through Washington, the Bureau of Personnel, because if I'd have gone through Washington, the Bureau of Personnel, I'd have never, you know.
Brian "Ponch" Rivera:I'd have been an old man again.
"Bart":And I should. I don't need this yeah.
Dan "Yank" Pederson:Anyhow. And then, if I'd have gone via Washington, some politician would have stepped in on behalf of the marketeers, yeah, and they would have said get him out of here. They're young. All of us have always believed, and still do, that youth knows as much as the elders do. When you're fighting a war, in your combat missions, you are usually the first to go the young ones and we proved in Vietnam that that was the answer. Let's see. I want to answer everything. Yeah, five years. I picked the eight guys. All of them had two combat tours, okay, and all of them could fly the pants off the Phantom, yeah, and initially 60 days made us blink. You know, god almighty, that's impossible, but with bright guys I selected those guys because, if you look at what we accomplished in 60 days, it was elements, elements, elements, and they were kind of different and each of the guys had some real talent. Mel Holmes, an example probably the brightest guy in aerodynamics, jet aerodynamics. He's the guy that took on John.
Brian "Ponch" Rivera:Boyd. Yeah, he took on Boyd, right, right.
Dan "Yank" Pederson:And he and Jerry Sawatsky, and each guy had his own ability. They all had combat experience. They'd all survived at least two. Jimmy Lang, the backseater, the youngest one. He had been on the ground in North Vietnam twice, He'd been shot down, got two migs, but he had been. We rescued him twice.
Dan "Yank" Pederson:So these guys had a real purpose in making it work and the answers were there. The answers were there and they didn't take a lot of study. Yeah, yeah, it's right in front of you, I told the guys here's your area, here's your area, your area, your area. We got 60 days. In about 45 days, I want you to submit a thesis on your area, or whatever you call it, and we're going to review them. We're going to do the murder board, the famous murder board. Yeah, yeah, we're going to murder board every subject and then, if we like them and we agree, we're all going to sign the final documents at the end of 60 days and say we're ready for a graduate school. Bring on the students and a lot of words. But that's how it got started.
Brian "Ponch" Rivera:So you pulled together these eight folks. They probably had a diverse background in education, they saw the world differently, but they had a similar experience in Vietnam. They had a mission in mind and they were starved of resources. You had to steal a trailer on the flatline, you had to borrow aircraft, you had to do everything you could. But that is actually how novelty emerges is from constraints that are in the system. So there's nothing unique about the weapons school story, the Top Gun story, that companies can't learn from. So the whole lean startup idea has connections to this story as well.
Brian "Ponch" Rivera:So the engagement with John Boyd is of interest to our listeners, because our view is that John Boyd was fixated on technology, that algorithm, that approach known as EM theory, the fluid four, which was how the Air Force fought in World War II, I believe, and in Korea. And then you saw the loose deuce capability, which is probably the birth of what I consider defensive combat spread and offensive combat spread. And for our listeners out there, what happens when you're in offensive combat spread? You make it a challenge for the enemy to spot two aircraft because we're not flying tight Right, we're flying in a height difference and an azimuth difference. Yeah, and it creates a problem right and a height difference and an azimuth difference.
Dan "Yank" Pederson:Yeah, and it creates a problem, right, if you look at it, with a triangle behind the tailpipes of the airplanes they cross at a point. You can see the enemy behind the other guy usually. And it optimized the use of two airplanes and then we started. I started. We first of all go back to what I opening comment. We had to use the F-4. No time to get new airplanes. There wasn't anything on the drawing board. I wish I'd have worked with John Boyd a little closer on the F-16, which today, incidentally, I think it's probably the best fighter airplane in the world. It's better than the Eurofighter. Now you give me a 9G airplane and I'll take anybody on.
Brian "Ponch" Rivera:So the EM Theory built or gave us the F-18 and YF-17 at the time. So you were seeing that and the YF-16. And it was actually EM theory that said on paper, the YF-17, now the F-18 should outperform, yeah, but this is where that fast transience comes into play and that's that ability to pivot rapidly and I think that's what you're talking about with the F-16 is it's called roll rate? Yeah, roll rate. Or redefining the fight, an engineer? Yeah, redefining the fight. Right, he's an engineer. So the idea is to redefine the fight to get inside of somebody's mind right, if you can redefine it. And that's, I think, what you did with the F-4 is in the vertical. Can you share some insights about how you use the vertical?
Dan "Yank" Pederson:First of all, in the first fighter squadron I was in when I was really young, I was assigned to VFAW3 at North Island, which you can see every day on the podcast on here on YouTube, san Diego Harbor, and it shows North Island Runway 18, well, I've got 700 takeoffs from Runway 18 in a Skyray and as an instant.
Dan "Yank" Pederson:What I started to tell you was you know, I believe God gave me some talent and made me really want to fly and kept me alive for many years doing it, but he had his hands on us. 60 days we did the impossible, mainly our own talent, but God was and I don't know whether you want to put that in but I believe that I believe that and the individual talent of each guy.
Dan "Yank" Pederson:That was God-given. How in the hell they ended up in a fighter squad and working for me at the time, who knows. But I want to go back to the first fighter squadron I was ever in. I checked in and here is a third living ace in World War II, Gino Valencia, who's my XO. Wow, and I met him that morning. I checked in at Squadron and the Squadron CO was Howard P-80, who discovered the Japanese fleet at the Battle of Midway. No way, oh yeah, no, it gets better because there were three more. Alex Verashu, probably the Navy's finest gunner in an airplane. Tex O'Neill a famous Tex O'Neill. There were five aces in that fighter squadron and they all come back from the war and they were tired. They had done all the flying they probably ever wanted to do, but for some reason they stayed in the Navy and so they all mentored us. Valencia I learned more from Gene Valencia than anybody. And one other guy, Claude Levin. Claude Levin today is living on the East Coast and he's 103 years old, so there's hope for me, you know so.
Dan "Yank" Pederson:Anyhow, there isn't a lot new. It's a matter of the young guys having the openness or the being allowed to use their own talent. And then you've got to be so good. And we ended up you know in what 73, at the end of the war, from March of 69, to the end of the Vietnam conflict, in 73. Go ahead, you want to take a break? Oh?
Brian "Ponch" Rivera:no, no, continue. I'm sorry, I'll just make sure we're recording here Anyhow the kill ratio ended up 24 to 1.
Dan "Yank" Pederson:Ah and we, just all we did was optimize the number of phantoms we had flying, yeah, and we used a vertical. And you know, one potato two, potato three, potato four, and the Phantom had so much piece of math.
Brian "Ponch" Rivera:Yeah, yeah, yeah.
Dan "Yank" Pederson:So very much power and you get when you fly it in the vertical. I made every one of the guys and every one of our students in the first three or four classes we taught I made them go out 500, 550 knots.
Dan "Yank" Pederson:And pull it straight up than 50 knots and pull it straight up, leave it in afterburner and go to zero airspeed and leave it in burner and come back down, tail slide, and that old airplane didn't like it. Oh, it would chug, yeah, but every time it'll always come out the same way and there's no MIG driver in the world ever going to follow you.
Brian "Ponch" Rivera:Yeah, so that's interesting. Fighting in two dimensions is that what we saw in Vietnam, for the most part from the Vietnamese? Or were they fighting two-dimensionally, or were they using a vertical at that time?
Dan "Yank" Pederson:You know it depends the MIG-17, it was a horizontal fighter because of the wing design and that goes back to the elements that John defined in his original equation was true Even today, over the years. I can look at an airplane and I can tell you tactically how to employ it. Yeah, based on the wing design, wing piece of it. Yeah, based on the wing design, wing piece of mess. Yeah, drag, yeah, canopy visibility. I can look at the airplanes and I can tell you the good ones and G-limiting is always, but the 17 was a vertical fighter. You get your butt handed to you.
Brian "Ponch" Rivera:In a vertical or the horizontal.
Dan "Yank" Pederson:Yeah, horizontal, horizontal, okay, and MiG-21 would go in the vertical. And you better be careful, you better own the vertical when you start up. In other words, don't go up unless you got the knots when you match them, or you go up To put him on top. You may end up laying on your back on top, which is good, because you're sitting up there watching a fight we defined it as an egg.
Dan "Yank" Pederson:Yeah, and that was JC Smith nicknamed that. And yeah, it worked. And if we'd have had a gun we'd have gotten 10 more kills than we ever did.
Brian "Ponch" Rivera:So using the vertical came out of your work after 121, while you were in 121 or right when you started school.
"Bart":Oh yeah.
Brian "Ponch" Rivera:Okay, Okay. And then just getting other pilots to be comfortable with that tail slide. Was it? Were they J-59s? I can't remember the engines. Oh, I hate them.
Dan "Yank" Pederson:You know there's no, no flight controls in the back of the Phantom Right. So I put a brand new Nugget pilot in the back and I'd go up and demonstrate this, what I just told you, and then come back to the octagon refueler, come back and hot refuel and I'd shut the left engine down and tell the youngster, okay, get up here, and I'd climb in the back with no flight control. I'd say now I want you to go out and do exactly the same thing that we did on the first half of this mission. And oh, some of them were scared, but as long as you didn't touch the ailerons, it wouldn't spin.
Brian "Ponch" Rivera:So this is important because you get a demo, do teach model, which is you're going to go demo it, you're going to do it, you're going to go out and experience and train the other people how to do that right. So that's the idea of what we learn from any time in fighter aviation is you demo it, you do it and then you can teach it to somebody else. I, anytime in fighter aviation is you demo it, you do it and then you can teach it to somebody else. I got a question when you were working with the, the aces, uh, the from World War II and I'm sorry I forgot all their names Um, the, the transfer of knowledge from their experience in World War II, even in Korea, to what we saw going into Vietnam. Can you tell us how the debrief changed from the when you, when you were a nugget, to what it looked like in the mid-70s and even today?
Dan "Yank" Pederson:You know it's teacher talking to student. It's old man. I've been there and done it talking to the young ensign who's in awe of you anyhow, and you pay attention and most of it came through war story and a hell of a lot of it was not formal Navy briefings. It was sitting at the bar being invited over. At North Island there's a famous bar called the I-Bar and the I-Bar was controlled by only the aces. In other words, if you weren't, no Ansem would ever go in there without being invited. Okay, and I'd go in there.
Dan "Yank" Pederson:And in Valencia once in a while we had a lot of airplanes, different kinds, and we had two Cedars side by side and he could take off and land, but his eyesight was terrible. But we'd go up, We'd go up in an F3D skyline and he'd be taking off and doing this and that and he's talking the whole time telling me you know, you got to watch this. And he's telling me sea stories of his engagement. That guy shot down six guys in one day. And he's telling me C stories of his engagement. Yeah, that guy shot down six guys in one day.
Brian "Ponch" Rivera:Yeah, but it's the informal social.
Dan "Yank" Pederson:Yes, it is yes.
Brian "Ponch" Rivera:Yeah, in simple words, that's right. Yeah, it's the stories we tell after we have a debrief or we go to a water cooler, we go to dinner, we go socialize. I think this is what most organizations don't understand, is they don't create that environment, they don't create the social network where people can have those conversations. So those impromptu conversations by the water cooler is where we get the culture, where we get the transfer of knowledge. The debrief is powerful, right, I mean it really is, but yet that leads to this.
Dan "Yank" Pederson:The brief is equally as important as the debrief policy, but the the manner. You know. Top Gun ended up a small group. Right now there are 650 members of our association, about 46 or 47 former COs or ONCs. It grew. You know what it is, it's a brotherhood. It's probably the best fraternity and Mary B has been to the 50th reunion. That's why we wrote the book. Top 10 American Story is to try and take Condor and I. To try and take Condor and I and Jim Lang and Darryl Gary, of course, and Steve Smith. He was phenomenal. He got a building in about two hours for us. He stole the building. You know, you've seen pictures of it, I think, and hey, necessity is the mother of invention man.
Dan "Yank" Pederson:That's right, yeah.
Brian "Ponch" Rivera:So once you find that novelty and I think you guys did that and you continue to do that. The weapons school does I want to ask you did a lot of work after leaving the military and leaving the Navy. You've talked to a lot of folks about the lessons from the weapon school, and we'll just call it the. It's a place where you create better coaches, better trainers, better leaders, better air crew right, and it's the human factor that matters with technology. That is being lost in organizations today. They don't know that the human is still the most important thing. So what advice would you give to them if they wanted to create their own quote-unquote weapon school for their Toyotas, their GEs of the world? What would you recommend for?
Dan "Yank" Pederson:them. Well, I think, don't you believe, pontius, that every company that's successful has a pretty good, people-oriented CEO and his team? You know, without getting into politics, you look at Trump and his board and his secretariat hey, it works. He's got a damn fraternity started. Those people are going to be allies and you'll grow another president out of that group. And that's the difference Most companies CEOs, you know. You got a treasurer who's always hounding them, and they have to. You got to look at the profit motive. And then, I think, we're still enamored, enamored, enamored, enamored with new things. You know Chinese and the Russians. They managed to get hold of the drawings and they replicated our new airplanes and the weapons system, gentlemen, but they're missing the one thing.
"Bart":And.
Dan "Yank" Pederson:I almost. You know I'm old, but I don't worry about those two anymore Because you know what maintains our airplanes, even the new ones, is the career enlisted guys. When I skippered the aircraft carrier Ranger later in my career, I had 5,400 guys, no women. Sorry about that.
Dan "Yank" Pederson:And so you got to involve them. You got to take care of your cabinet, if you will, or whatever you want to call them. On the carrier, my chiefs, I had a great master chief. People sometimes are intimidated by a carrier skipper, you know, with that many walking around the ship I had a Master Chief, dave Hobbs, david M Hobbs. He's in a book and he's in my new book. I got a new book getting ready to go out. It's called USS Ranger, an American Story, and I'm trying to get it published.
Brian "Ponch" Rivera:Anyhow.
Dan "Yank" Pederson:Dave Hobbs was a senior enlisted man in the Navy chief boatsman.
Dan "Yank" Pederson:And I told him and this is something to take this away with when I got him to come and be the master chief of my boat, the carrier, I said I will back you 100%, whatever you do, but I want you to organize the chief pediatrics and I want them to lead and I want them to teach, I want them to mentor the best five or six each of them that work for them. And they did. We had phenomenal success on the carrier. Same thing in Top Gun John Nash, the famous John Nash God, every one of those guys that worked for me at Top Gun. Same principle transfer your aircraft carrier. Find the junior leadership or the middle grade leadership that's been there, that's got the knowledge, got the courage to teach it and mentor the people who work for them.
Dan "Yank" Pederson:And by God it worked. And I know where you're going in your company. What I've read about is I too have been asked to lecture to CEOs and boards of directors about the leadership concept and why Top Gun worked and why it's 61. What are we now? We're 50, 58 years, 58, 57. I think it's 58, 55.
Brian "Ponch" Rivera:Math in public. Don't ask me to do that.
Dan "Yank" Pederson:But, the same things I said if you bring in quality people. And in the foreword to my book, top Gun American Story, there are about eight standards that are used when you hire new instructors, when you bring new people aboard. I use them on the aircraft carrier. I look at a guy and take the time to get to know him and I measure him against those eight things. And you know those eight things that are in the foreword to that book are still the selection criteria. That's used up at Fallon for Top Gun today and it's used in civilian life by corporations.
Brian "Ponch" Rivera:I want to unpack this some more Going through the program so I want to make sure everybody understands there's different levels of completeness. Or you know, when you go through a syllabus there's level one, two, three, four, five. So there is a mission commander syllabus that's out there that we put into fleet. But I want to unpack that a little bit more.
Brian "Ponch" Rivera:Um, mission commander the idea of that has propagated itself inside of industry as product owner, somebody who owns a strategy, things like that. Um, that is something that is an apprenticeship model inside of the way we do business in the Navy. It's not something that you just have somebody do a book and do that. They actually have to go through a process of learning how to do the planning, do the briefing lead the debriefing, lead sections, lead a fight, debrief, you know everything. It's a demo do teach model. And I think that's where organizations get wrong is they think it's just a classroom you go sit in and do you actually have to do this and demonstrate a competency in not just the technical side but also the human side? Like, how do I coach somebody, how do I demonstrate that I understand how to do an effective planning process and briefing and an effective debrief. Can you talk a little bit more about how that emerged out of the weapons school, that concept?
Dan "Yank" Pederson:Tom Gunn the purpose in putting it together was the urgency of the war obviously had to change the kill ratio rapidly and the war obviously had to change the kill ratio rapidly. And what you're doing in what you just described is you have got to be able to lecture or teach or lead from a position of excellence and you want to maintain that excellence. In other words, you're not teaching guys, unfortunately it happens, but you don't want to teach them to go work for the airlines. I mean, it happens, but you don't want to teach them to go work for the airlines. You want to teach them to stay in and become so proficient themselves and they're so smart and you know something as simple and subtle as this.
Dan "Yank" Pederson:You know the goddamn Top Gun guys. They're wives, they treasure these guys now, most of them. They're pretty proud of the guys who have been there. I know she most of the time. You know Bio just sent Beth six books I don't know where they are today but he, you know, at 14. He had the new books but he, you know, at 14, and he signed his books to the lady, the first lady at Top Gun, and that was really nice of him and we're proud of that and she's proud of me. She always has been. I've known her since her 13th, 14th birthday. She was a little bit younger but still a good-looking woman.
Brian "Ponch" Rivera:Your book is a love story, by the way, right.
"Bart":Yeah, yeah, it's clear to me.
Brian "Ponch" Rivera:Mary Beth is throughout the book. It's a common thread, right?
"Bart":Yeah.
Dan "Yank" Pederson:No, that's fun, it's a common thread, right? Yeah, no, that's fun, it's people. And the biggest thing is what you got to watch out for what you're saying I'm trying to translate to your language industry and what the Navy's doing, but the reason they've gone to such detail in briefing and debriefings. The time is precious but when a guy either makes it or doesn't make it through the scores, you want to know that he's had every chance and the best one is. You know, heater, what a phenomenal ability to teach Condor is. The same way Condor can lecture, condor can lecture to the President of the United States and he'd listen to him. He's that good. He's that good and not just teach it. But you got to have the admiration and respect even in industry.
Dan "Yank" Pederson:Bill Behan, huh, beth, bill Behan owned Airshore Limited, second biggest aviation insurance company, and I spent a couple, three days talking to his people and, god man, he just brought in some talent and they continued to grow and grow. And the Navy, it's a selection process, it's a forward to that book. I don't care what you're doing, if you follow their human, their abilities of a human being that you're considering to use in your organization, and if you use those and the person stays motivated. Because you're motivating them, it just keeps building and building and building and building. And then the Navy's got to reward them. Navy's got to reward them and promote them.
Brian "Ponch" Rivera:That's good.
Dan "Yank" Pederson:You're on the right track. Are you working government contracts?
Brian "Ponch" Rivera:No, no, I try to stay away from the government just because it's too problematic. The industry needs it. So where we are with artificial intelligence now is we're starting to see the same type of thought process with what you saw in the 60s let's use new techniques. Let's use new technology, let's kind of move the human out of the system. We're going to shoot long range, you know that's kind of what's going on.
Dan "Yank" Pederson:Oh yeah, but man that's.
Brian "Ponch" Rivera:So we're losing human capability and you know, in complexity theory it's path dependent. Your past matters. When you were talking about your connection to the aces of World War II, they were giving you a background of what happened. You know from their best ability to recall the past and help you understand how to max perform any aircraft. The past and help you understand how to max perform any aircraft so that, what performance? That what performance? Looking backwards, to understand what happened, so you can understand what's happening now, so you can project out what's happening in the future.
Brian "Ponch" Rivera:Bart and I have had this conversation several times. When you do a basic 1v1, you go out to Whiskey 291 or wherever it may be around here, you set up your perch sets or whatever set you're setting up. You got a new person in the cockpit or you're training somebody new. The purpose of the debrief and this is my view and I want to check in with you on it is to come back, have an accounting of what happened from multiple perspectives. Right Chances are the instructor is going to have a higher level of situational awareness of what happened and they're going to bring that back into a debrief and reconstruct that so that the new pilot or the student can learn what to pay attention to outside the next time they do, and that's how you accelerate performance. Any thoughts on that? Does that sit well with you?
Dan "Yank" Pederson:A CMR, that's John Nash, and Condor was involved in Cubic Corporation developing it, and that's a not real-time but delayed-until until debrief type of tool. You know, when I grew up, it was who shot John man, the biggest guy who loved his mouth.
"Bart":Yeah, yeah.
Dan "Yank" Pederson:And so we made him. We learned to write on an e-board card and graphically reconstruct a fight so you could go in and argue with them. And the biggest thing Top Gun does well still is you never embarrass the guy who's your student. Okay, never. You know, we're a brotherhood, we're a fraternity.
Brian "Ponch" Rivera:So I want to pause there real fast. I've had another Yank on the podcast, yank Cummings. You might know him, who, yank Cummings? He was an advisor for the last movie, maverick Skipper of the Ford Bald-headed really loud. Um, you can't miss them. I'm sure he's going to listen to this anyway.
Brian "Ponch" Rivera:So what you're describing is is, uh, creating, I'm going to say, removing that fear in the debrief, removing that, uh, uh. That's why you don't want to embarrass anybody. Right, they may see the world different than the way you see it. It doesn't mean they're right or wrong. It's just how the process works. It's known as psychological safety. Now, it's, it's. It's how do you create an environment so they could bring their full self? You guys intuitively knew this in the art and science debriefing back in the 60s, 70s and we, we know this. This is the key to building leaders and that's what you're describing right now. I just want to make sure we pause on that so I can share that with you and our audience. That that's what Yank is talking about is creating the conditions to ensure that those that are in a debrief, that are doing the work, are there to provide you the truth. What do they actually know? Right?
Dan "Yank" Pederson:You're as a leader of a flight with a student, 1v1 or 2V2, you're responsible for the debrief and the accuracy you gotta. You're training the brothers who you hope will be invited back to teach at Top Gun as an example. You know I've never heard the word fitness report ever used talking about Top Gun. I'm sure they miss or make out fitness reports that's green sheets, honey, but I'm sure they do it, but I've never heard that. It just popped in my head. Some of the greatest pilots have come out of pretty cold starts and of course, the instructors are usually good enough. They could win back in the beginning. My guys could always win, but there were no points in embarrassing. What you want to do is challenge a guy and then debrief him on opportunities that he had that he didn't use, and maybe you go out again the next flight with him and and you say, there, you did it again or good move, yeah. And what you're doing is you're building the man's confidence and that's how they keep him in the Navy.
"Bart":Yeah.
Dan "Yank" Pederson:You know you get so good. When the hell would I give up flying like this? And what you got? I started to tell you one more thing. Why my mind's clicking a little bit is you got to be careful. We went through VA. You know, attack world versus fighter world and due to some great leadership by some of the CEOs in about the middle of our chain of leadership, we survived that. But even today, the very senior people in Washington and certainly the politicians can veto the type of airplanes that you buy.
Dan "Yank" Pederson:And I'm going to tell you something, I don't care whether it's in there or not, the guys have got. If you want to win a war any war Russian, chinese you better have pilots that and control VF-35, you know, oh, what a great command and control. Yeah, I asked the Israelis. They love it. They're not fighting. You know, it's not being used. What makes great pilots in my book me personally is flight time, yeah, experience. And instead of paying $35,000 an hour for some of the new airplanes that cost per hour, I want to go back to the days of I had more flying than my body could handle.
"Bart":Yeah.
Dan "Yank" Pederson:But I also. In my travels back and forth to Fallon and for various things, I found out I had a CO up there was getting nine hours a month. Oh wow, that's enough to be dangerous.
Brian "Ponch" Rivera:It's a safety problem.
Dan "Yank" Pederson:And if he's getting nine, that means he's probably giving a little bit to his boys, the rest of the brotherhood, to keep them happy. And the next thing you'll get is a buper's note about re-enlistment rates or staying in, and it it's all flight time In the book. I think I advocate in that book. I like the F-5, the simple old T-38 F-5. You give me 150 of those and let me pick the squadrons and I'll build you a squadron that would be unbeatable anywhere in the world. Simple air framing yeah well, you can't see it either.
Dan "Yank" Pederson:I've got time in the AT-38 with the Air Force, so I've got a lot of time there yeah, a lot of good things. Ai with the Air Force. So I got a lot of time there yeah, a lot of good things. Ai industry. I'm just now trying to get up to speed. My son, chris, is helping me.
Brian "Ponch" Rivera:I'm looking at.
Dan "Yank" Pederson:Google's and Microsoft's and anything you, any ideas you have there? I'd like to yeah, yeah. I want to be able to get on your podcast.
Brian "Ponch" Rivera:Yes, how do?
Dan "Yank" Pederson:I get on your podcast. How do I who? Anyone Huh, anyone?
Brian "Ponch" Rivera:Or.
Dan "Yank" Pederson:Are they controlled? The podcast?
Brian "Ponch" Rivera:No, I mean we can do whatever we want. We can put it on here.
"Bart":Yeah.
Brian "Ponch" Rivera:Yeah. So let's talk about AI real fast. To me, ai is the current large language model. So that's what you hear with ChatGPT, that's what you hear on Grok they are a closed element yeah, so they're basically closed OODA loops. They're basic, non-thinking things, right? So think about EM theory as a large language model. It doesn't change, right, it's built on the data, that's put into it and that's it.
Brian "Ponch" Rivera:So that's a large language model in our language and in our history, a new type of AI would be something that looks and acts like us. It engages with the world, it probes, it learns from failure, it learns from things and it has a model that it builds up over time. So think about the discussion about experience. You got to go get that experience to build that model up, to see what that fight looks like, and so you can anticipate a fight and kick somebody's ass in a short amount of time. Anticipate a fight, anticipate what the fight would look like.
Dan "Yank" Pederson:So the large? How do you do that when it's individually driven by two different individuals?
Brian "Ponch" Rivera:Well, you know the type of platform they're in, and if you know your enemy, you know how they're trained. Right, that's what you want. That's the best you can do. Right, that's what you want.
"Bart":That's the best you can do. Right, that's the key. Right, that's the best you can do.
Brian "Ponch" Rivera:Yeah, but we can't do that we can't do that with a large language. You know you can't really do that at the moment. So that human. If you think about how we win wars, you know machines don't fight wars. Humans do and they use their mind and that's what you demonstrated with the weapons school. A lot of it's up here.
Brian "Ponch" Rivera:It's the war up here, that's going to win. I think that's where industry, the military-industrial complex and the DOD goes wrong sometimes is they think it's a machine, and I think that's what organizations look at Like we need this machine, we need this software, we need this. They need to reprioritize that and focus on the people, right, that's what matters and I think that's the most important lesson, if there's one lesson to take away from.
Dan "Yank" Pederson:Yeah, because there's no recourse when it doesn't work. You know the guy that marketed and sold the idea and the politicians got reelected based upon the whiz-bang capability they advocated that it was going to do, and he takes it to war and it doesn't work for a number of reasons.
Dan "Yank" Pederson:But you know really small things can screw up very sophisticated things in combat, and there's only one thing really drives in real combat after the merge, and that is the human's reaction and the fear factor. You know, one of the things that I laughed at for years was simulator time. You know, many companies say well, we don't need the flight time, don't worry about it.
Dan "Yank" Pederson:You know the airplane will do it for you and we don't need the flight time because we've got realistic simulators. What's the one element missing in every simulator? There's air under the butt. Yeah, your butt thing. Yeah, you, betcha. And you and I know that there's nothing like seeing those black puffs or those white puffs, or seeing the 17s Bullets going by, some of them big enough you could see. You can't simulate that. And the other thing we do well now is like Area 51, you know, I got to fly the makes and boy, there's nothing like that.
Dan "Yank" Pederson:You get to fly the MiGs, and boy, there's nothing like that. You get to fly the opposition.
Brian "Ponch" Rivera:So you write about that in the book your experience at Area 51, where the MiG-17, MiG-21, I think we had them captured and then you got to go. You put ours into the MiG-17, is that right? You got some MiG-17? Yeah, yeah, yeah. And just going back to the AIM-9B, if I understand it correctly, an AIM-9 went into a MiG-17 somewhere that didn't go high order and then that's how they built the AA-2. Is that correct? Oh, I don't, yeah. Anyway, so these aircraft at Area 51, you got to see that we had something there.
Dan "Yank" Pederson:No, and the Air Force guys at Area 51 were as good as my guys. They really were good, and I personally and I'm keeping track the picture up there me flying with Blue Angel 1 in the Super Hornet- I was 87 years old, nice, and we went out.
Dan "Yank" Pederson:We took off at Los Alamitos he was doing the air show at. I love to tell this story. He called me in September and he said I'm going to be doing the air show around Seal Beach and I'm going to be bringing the team into Los Alamitos. And he said so, you've got some friends of yours who want you to fly with me. And he said so you got some friends of yours who want you to fly with me. And he said I'd be honored. I said are you kidding me? And I said do you know how old I am? And he said that don't matter.
Dan "Yank" Pederson:So, anyhow, I go down. And the only one that almost had apoplexy was my cardiologist. Yeah, yeah, oh shit. I told him I had to get him to sign off the government paperwork. Yeah, he wouldn't do it.
Dan "Yank" Pederson:Her son, the doctor, signed off my ability to fly with Blue Angel One. All right, he's a doctor. So, dr Bob, and so, anyhow, I go down there and she's with me. Condor is my backup in case something happens to me and I can't do it. Okay, or I chicken out. I ain't going to chicken out. Just a minute. I can think of the last few. So anyhow, brian Kesselring, okay, and I go down and sit through a great briefing by Blue Angel One and I go out to the airplane and get me a flight suit. And here's an airplane that got me in the back seat with my name, top Gun. Going on it Nice, and the current CO, top Gun from Fallon, had come down and then somebody hired a photo bird. All right, so Top Gun one, old and new were in the area and we took off on a westbound runway in Super Hornet and he goes up 500 feet, 500 knots, and we're still over land and I said where are you going?
Dan "Yank" Pederson:He said we've got to go downtown Long Beach. And I said 500 knots and it was a flighty afternoon and they had the Grand Prix races downtown. So shock and awe wasn't going to bother anybody. We went across Long Beach Metropolitan at 500 knots at 500 feet and we hit the coastline and he goes and he checks in with Los Angeles Center and he checks in with Los Angeles Center, blue Angel 1, over Station calling. Say again, this is Blue Angel 1.
Dan "Yank" Pederson:And the guy says really, and so we go out and we overfly Avalon the island at 1,000 feet, damn near supersonic. And I said what do you want to do? He asked me what do you want to do? And I said I don't care, I'm just loving this and I was oh man, that was an E-ticket ride. So he said let's go down to Fight Club, it's Friday afternoon, Whiskey 291,.
Brian "Ponch" Rivera:is that where you went? Yeah, all right. Did you go? Get anybody in the bird?
Dan "Yank" Pederson:We went down looking and I thought, boy, this ought to be who's out here, blue Angel 1 in a Blue Angel airplane, looking for a hassle? Yeah.
"Bart":Any other players.
Dan "Yank" Pederson:No, but he said no, there's nobody down here, yeah, but he said no, there's nobody down here. And I don't think the radar worked. But he demoed all the aspects of the airplane that I knew and he is good man, brian Kessler. You know who his grandfather was? I do not know. His grandfather was Herman Goring's chief of staff, second World War. Oh wow, and he comes from good stock. Good stock, yeah, a pretty fair fighter pilot, and he is really good. Now he's a CAG on. He's a wing commander on George Washington right now Out in South China Sea.
Brian "Ponch" Rivera:Did you do roles? Both roles Were you a CAG and a skip? Oh yeah, you did both right. Oh yeah, we don't do that anymore. We have two tracks now, right.
"Bart":I know, so you got to do both.
Dan "Yank" Pederson:I don't know why you know.
Brian "Ponch" Rivera:Or the nuke power. I don't know. I don't know why we're doing it.
Dan "Yank" Pederson:If a guy works that hard and even some of the guys don't make it in top gun but have worked their way up through to be a CAG. I think they split the job so that they can give it out to more people. But flight time is the key In the future any war.
Dan "Yank" Pederson:The guys have got to fly, the guys have got to fly and if you or anybody in leadership doesn't allow them to build flight time, hell if I was CNO right now, I would buy 3,000 F-5s with a new engine in them and a gun, maybe some winders, something that you can and I would actually go over here in California and take the reserve fuel and there is a lot of the ground that's here and I would give my key tactical people access to that fuel, not the airliners. I wouldn't trade it to foreign countries like Biden did, but I'd make sure my boys are prepared if they're going to go to combat.
Brian "Ponch" Rivera:Yeah, so you're talking about maintaining human capability with the acceleration of technology?
Dan "Yank" Pederson:That's the key to John Boyd. Yeah, that's it. John Boyd hit them all except for one and I'm advocating the one thing. Yeah, and I'll join in with boy. You put John Boyd's idea with mine. Yeah, but win or lose, it's still a human. Yeah, but win or lose, it's still a human. Yeah, not a human. In an airplane Oversophisticated. You put too much pilot loading, tend to do that. And then there's night carrier landings.
"Bart":Oh yeah.
Dan "Yank" Pederson:That's why I was talking to.
"Bart":Potch last week and then something came up and I don't know what it was. I think it's the first time since I left the Yankees I've why?
Brian "Ponch" Rivera:Why did we do that?
Dan "Yank" Pederson:Every once in a while, I have a dream about them.
Brian "Ponch" Rivera:You have the story behind the boat where you had below the flight deck to come up right. Yeah, that's crazy.
Dan "Yank" Pederson:Point that out hey man, you had no choice yeah, you had no choice. I know even the LSO didn't chew my ass. I can't believe that you lost all instruments. Is that?
Brian "Ponch" Rivera:what it was. I can't remember that. He thought it was pretty good you lost all instruments. Is that what it was? I can't remember.
Dan "Yank" Pederson:No snow.
"Bart":Oh snow.
Brian "Ponch" Rivera:I was in Korea. Of course, you sound good.
Dan "Yank" Pederson:You know who taught me that? Zeke Cormier, ceo of the Blue Angels Years and years ago. In fact, zeke Cormier was probably the reason I joined the Navy. When I was enlisted he was at the base on a Sunday with the team and I watched him fly and I said I want to do that? What else you got?
Brian "Ponch" Rivera:I got all kinds of stuff. I want to talk about your new book. You said it's about your time on Skipper of the Ranger. Anything else you want to impart with our listeners about the weapons school or your new book?
Dan "Yank" Pederson:We could take a break.
Brian "Ponch" Rivera:Sure, we could take a break. Huh when we are in time.
"Bart":Hour 15.
Brian "Ponch" Rivera:Yeah, you got time left. Yeah, we have some time, a little bit of time left. Yeah, we're up for anything else. That's just a great conversation. So many things to unpack and you've mentioned so many people that I've come across over the years. When I came into the Navy, pepe being one, my first time at the weapons school was here in Miramar, where Pepe gave me a tour and I'm like, oh my gosh, this is a legend. And then, of course, the book Cutting Edge by Heater. You know there's stories that I was told by folks who have passed. One of them is Rhino Wilkie, about 2018, he sat down with me at a pool and explained to me all the lessons that the weapons school, our top gun, passed on to our Navy SEALs. So everything that you started has federated out to other places, except for our SWO community.
Dan "Yank" Pederson:They can't get this through their head, it's leadership dominance by non-naviator, and they just can't relinquish People that have responsibility like a ship captain of a ship they can't relinquish the responsibility drags on into their interaction with their people. They just won't let go of it. And that was a—actually I didn't mind seeing him not do it because it was a distraction. More workload for our guys and God knows they work hard right now.
Dan "Yank" Pederson:I mean, hey, yeah, when you talked about briefing, debriefing, and murder, bordering, briefing, debriefing and murder bordering, and you have to be able to do the things that are asked of you and if you don't, they get rid of them once in a while.
Brian "Ponch" Rivera:You know, bart asked me last night or the other night about having presence on a stage. And how do you, how do you build that up? And my view is, um, coming into the Navy, going through the programs and learning how to do this is all a result of what you created at the weapon school. Right, you, you started this and you said we need to build this, you, you talked about earlier but you build that confidence up, you build that ability to get up in front of people, your peers that are rock stars, right, uh, and, and deliver something to them, where they beat that shit for getting something wrong, and not necessarily embarrassing you, but you build that fraternity, uh, uh, or that order there where people can come up and go hey, that's, that's not quite right.
Brian "Ponch" Rivera:Um, it is an environment that cannot be experienced unless you go through what we all live through in fighter aviation tailhookers, and that is what is it that we really bring to the fight when we leave the cockpit, and that is our coaching ability, our situational awareness, which is painful because we see things that others don't see, because we're learning an environment where we're closing in on something at 1300 miles per hour or faster. We make a decision. It's under pressure, not just time pressure, but physical pressure on our brains, our spines. We're losing oxygen to our brain. All this is happening to our bodies and then we have to come back and recall what happened and do it over and over and over again.
Brian "Ponch" Rivera:Yet when you coach an organization. They will not bother to do any of that. They think it's so simple that we already know how to work together as a team. We're so good at this. And then I'm like why are you failing? Why do you suck if you're so good at this? So the lessons from our weapons school, and the Air Force as well. Don't get me wrong. The Air Force has a good weapons school. They're not about fighting the aircraft, they're about the human right.
Brian "Ponch" Rivera:That's kind of how I feel about what we brought to the world.
Dan "Yank" Pederson:Yeah, well, well, first of all, top Gun was in the beginning, a goal to be a graduate-level academic organization dealing with flying and winning with airplanes. That's never changed. Winning with airplane that's never changed and it's like getting a PhD. The guys that have gotten in and gotten that education and excelled and stayed in have done well. Many of them have gotten out for family reasons and God bless them, man. That's all that's okay.
Dan "Yank" Pederson:But the whole process from the first time you set foot in Top Gun's environment. In Top Gun's environment, you're growing, You're going to become you're a doctor in aviation tactics.
Dan "Yank" Pederson:And the other thing is really important is you end up and you may not do this and most of the guys don't realize it until this happened to them. They build a service reputation. You know the guys up at Fallon right now. It's not uncommon to have a phone call. Who is it? It's Admiral so-and-so, or it's the Airbots himself? It's Admiral so-and-so or it's the Airbots himself and he's got somebody. Probably industry has made a call on the senior officer somewhere in the approval or selection process and made some statements civilian and they'll call Top Gun now and you remember what SME means.
Dan "Yank" Pederson:Yeah, okay, we know how up there, they know how to pass them. What's the subject? What can we do for you? Okay, what's the subject? What can we do for you? Okay, and a lot of times the guys lieutenant will talk to a four star and give him because he's the SME, and that was part of our original. One of the things that I found in the initial effort was there was so much information, not just from the individuals that flew in Korea and Vietnam. You know, korea was the beginning of jets for the Navy, jets for the Navy but there was so much, so much tactical information, so much good maintenance information on the airplane, and so one of the things I immediately said is we owe that's why I got an intel guy. I want a central repository for technical information and things to do with fighter aviation, and right now it's the best in the world. Then anybody got that's work, but by God, they've got it.
Brian "Ponch" Rivera:That's all Sun Tzu, that's. Know your enemy, know exactly what their capabilities are, so we can build our own capabilities and tactics around.
Dan "Yank" Pederson:Yeah, well, you got to be careful because they're pretty good at espionage yeah. And that kind of reputation that, yes, I can get an answer for you. Let me talk to Smee and he'll go and validate something in the library and then he'll call you back. Yes, ma'am.
"Bart":All right.
Dan "Yank" Pederson:We're going to wrap it up here in a minute.
"Bart":It is a conscious podcast, but 30 seconds a minute. I was a boat schooler, a Naval Academy graduate and my roommate. He ended up being on the party, so he was a Samaritan.
Brian "Ponch" Rivera:And his son just selected.
"Bart":Naval Aviation and had a picture driving into the gates at Consola, so I texted them.
Dan "Yank" Pederson:Oh God.
"Bart":The greatest ride you'll ever have, all true.
Brian "Ponch" Rivera:Brand new aviator just starting.
"Bart":What words of wisdom might you have for them? I'll make them go to the lens, just fly.
Dan "Yank" Pederson:You know careers I hate that word, it's careers. I never thought ahead. All you do is you get very good at what you do and you move on to the next thing and your reputation will carry you saying and your reputation will carry you and your reputation until you run into, until you run into politics. And that's what killed me. Goddamn guy up for reelection. That's lucky. At least it wasn't a bullet and I ended up home with her, which was better.
Brian "Ponch" Rivera:I think it is the axiom or the idea to be or to do, to be part of the system is to be that careerist, to do all those things that you need to do to get ahead, or to do something which is change the course of naval aviation.
"Bart":You did something.
Brian "Ponch" Rivera:You changed the course of naval aviation. You did something. You changed the course of naval aviation.
Dan "Yank" Pederson:Right, that's the difference and that's that wasn't my intention in the beginning. That was the aggregate. That was the aggregate of eight, nine guys and maybe the first 30 years, and of course it didn't hurt us the way we came out of Vietnam. We're the only people that won anything in Vietnam 24 to 1. That's the ratio after.
Brian "Ponch" Rivera:Yeah.
"Bart":Went from 2 to 1. So the Air.
Brian "Ponch" Rivera:Force stayed still right around 2 to 1?
Dan "Yank" Pederson:Yeah because they had Moomar running it. Three-star Moomar.
Brian "Ponch" Rivera:There you go and you got Lieutenant Commander Patterson leading the world. Right there, right, Naval aviation getting everybody to.
Dan "Yank" Pederson:Not me.
Brian "Ponch" Rivera:Well, your team.
"Bart":Hey guys, yeah your team.
Dan "Yank" Pederson:If you read my book carefully, you'll find out that I never have, never, have I ended up writing the book, which kind of put me in a prominent role. What? But it was a team. Every one of the guys were so good at what their, their given areas were Phenomenal.
Brian "Ponch" Rivera:So I appreciate your time today that was.
Dan "Yank" Pederson:We can do this and you can call me anytime. Oh yeah, I'm interested in what you're doing. We can talk about that. Can we make?
Brian "Ponch" Rivera:any money. Yeah, you can make money doing this, yeah let's talk about that. So in industry, let's build on that. So in industry, over the last 15, 20 years, there's this thing called Agile.
"Bart":There, was Agile software development.
Brian "Ponch" Rivera:A big portion of that was inspired by a former fighter pilot named Jeff Sutherland. He was an RF-4C pilot in Vietnam. What he did is he took a framework that looks like Plan Brief X to Debris the same framework, to be honest with you, and added a mission commander in there. So they called that a product owner and they sold this framework to everybody, as this is what you need to do. Well, we know that that's just a framework. What you put in that map, how you plan, how you brief, how you actually execute, how you create situational awareness, how you actually execute, how you create situational awareness, how you shed those tasks, how you create distributed leadership and more importantly, how?
Brian "Ponch" Rivera:you come back and debrief, that's all that matters. But for the last 20 plus years, industry got fixated on the framework, not the actual interactions. By the way, ai is heading in this direction now. It's the interaction, it's the interoperability, it's those protocols that we put in place, those habits of mind that we create. That's how AI is going to work, more than likely going to work in the future. It's going to follow the same model that you built.
"Bart":So yes, money can be made by those that are interested in dominating.
Brian "Ponch" Rivera:But not everybody's interested in dominating, they just want to get by Right Everybody's interested in dominating, they just want to get by yeah.
Dan "Yank" Pederson:Pretty much the guys that do podcasts about Top Gun have been pretty good. We did one with the famous Seal, didn't we?
Brian "Ponch" Rivera:Marcus, marcus Luttrell.
Dan "Yank" Pederson:No.
Brian "Ponch" Rivera:Oh Jocko.
Dan "Yank" Pederson:Jocko, jocko, yeah, yeah, four hours. So she and I were with Jocko. Did you get after it at four? Am man, is he smart? God damn he is smart and we got a couple guys that I turned down one who will go unnamed today because he got through Top Gun and bailed and all he's done is, you know, his underwear stapled Top Gun, you know.
Brian "Ponch" Rivera:I think I know who that is. I'll leave it at that you don't give him the time of day.
Dan "Yank" Pederson:I appreciate that. I'll leave it at that. You don't give him the time of day.
Brian "Ponch" Rivera:I appreciate that this means a lot to us. It really does. The story is so important your life story, you and Mary Beth. Everything that you guys have done needs to be shared with folks.
Dan "Yank" Pederson:Our time is about over, isn't it, babe? We've done it. I'll be honest with folks. Our time is about over, isn't it, babe? We've done it. You know, I'll be honest with you. I, I just got other things to do every day. This thing new surgery here. I got wires going up into my thalamus.
"Bart":Try a night carrier landing with that.
Dan "Yank" Pederson:I can reset the amplitude of what's going in, but the old bodies serve. But the thing is, I will always be available to help the Brotherhood. You know the association and you need to join. If you aren't Bulldog, you know who Bulldog is. Bulldog is a woman that we hired that runs the association Neat little lady boy. And you know we raised a lot of money. A lot of the money is going to support the guys that we've lost and their families. The fatigue I worry more about our guys because of the workload and the better they've gotten over the years, the more has been asked of them. And once you get on that bandwagon or treadmill you can easily step off because the brothers are all around you doing the best they can.
Dan "Yank" Pederson:The brotherhood doesn't say no to each other very often.
Dan "Yank" Pederson:The Air Force is bigger, well-funded, they don't have to deploy and they don't make care landings at night and they don't make Carolinians at night. Night Carolinians are a real reason. A lot of guys get up. It's high stress and they can't. You know, I saw a couple guys turn their wings in in Vietnam and they just didn't have the guts to do it. Day after day after day after day, you know, we were going twice a day or every other day. We're going daytime, nighttime, daytime, nighttime Shit, you know. And then you run into the politicians. I wish I had another 10 years. I'd write a book about the problems with the politicians and what they do to the military. Yeah God, some of the, some of the poor poor, what's the word we use? Poor flesh? No, that's not right. You know the poor intellect of some of our politicians that are in office. And worse yet is the people, the electorate, that elected those people. God, oh my, it's just a problem?
Dan "Yank" Pederson:yes, I thoroughly enjoy sitting and talking with you guys. Thank you. Anytime I can spend with the Brotherhood. We only went an hour and a half. You guys are easy yeah that's great.
Brian "Ponch" Rivera:So we have Top Gun American Story, a new book waiting on a publisher.
"Bart":So this is a the book that came out five years ago.
Brian "Ponch" Rivera:I can't remember 19. Right, yeah.
"Bart":Right.
Brian "Ponch" Rivera:Right when the original Maverick was going to come out. I think it was the 50th anniversary. Go get it. There's a lot of great information in there about the origins of the weapons.
Dan "Yank" Pederson:We got a pin there.
Brian "Ponch" Rivera:Yeah, yeah, we'll get these signed for you and we can do that, but we'll.
"Bart":We'll end the podcast there just, and I'll turn off the recording right now and I'll get these squared off.
Brian "Ponch" Rivera:Thanks a lot, big guy. Thank you so much for your time.
"Bart":I'm just going to take some of the mics down and we.
