Alignment, Harmony, and the Fuzz: Blue Angels Leadership, Debriefing, and the OODA Loop

You've seen the posters in conference rooms. A picture of the Blue Angels on the wall. Teamwork. Trust. Leadership. What almost no one knows is what actually produces those images — the processes, the culture, the discipline, and the occasional near-catastrophe that tests whether any of it holds. 

Ryan “Guido” Bernacchi knows. He is a former TOPGUN instructor, a two-decade naval aviator, and the former Commanding Officer and Flight Leader of the United States Navy Flight Demonstration Squadron — the Blue Angels. In this conversation with Brian "Ponch" Rivera and Mark McGrath, Guido breaks down the mechanics behind an organization that runs half-new every year, rebuilds its culture from the ground up each November, and performs at the edge of the physically possible in front of audiences of hundreds of thousands.

What the Blue Angels model — and what Guido makes explicit — maps directly onto Boyd’s framework of implicit guidance and control. Alignment before synchronization. Synchronization before harmony. And harmony, when it comes, arrives as something the team has its own name for: the fuzz. Not speed. Not process. What researchers call flow — and then something beyond it. The zone where six pilots have oriented so deeply together that the team stops performing and starts simply being. Orientation so sound that correct action becomes reflexive, and the pilots feel it before they can describe it.

Guido and the hosts cover the full architecture: the annual destruction-and-creation cycle that keeps the team from stagnating, the plan-brief-execute-debrief loop that No Way Out has long argued is the most transferable leadership tool in existence, the chair-flying visualization practice that primes cognition before every flight, and the specific conditions under which psychological safety is built — not declared. The CO goes first. The CO accounts for sixty debrief points per show. The CO asks: what did I miss?

 That posture is not unique to the Blues. It is what high performance looks like in any domain where the cost of misorientation is fatal. Sports teams, trading desks, surgical teams, and mission-planning cells all face the same underlying problem. This conversation names the solution with the specificity that only comes from someone who has lived it at altitude.

 The fuzz is real. It is flow. This episode explains how you build toward it.

John R. Boyd's Conceptual Spiral was originally titled No Way Out. In his own words: 

“There is no way out unless we can eliminate the features just cited. Since we don’t know how to do this, we must continue the whirl of reorientation…”

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Transcript

Call Signs And Stakes

Brian "Ponch" Rivera 0:20

All right, we all have call signs. I understand your original was Little Little Guido? Is that correct?

Overview of the Blue Angels and Leadership

Ryan "Guido" Bernacchi 0:29

Yeah, well, originally it was Guido. And then when I went to Top Gun, there was already Guido Guiman there, who was I was a lieutenant, he was a commander. I'm not that tall. He's a bit taller. And so we we began to differentiate as Big Guido and Little Guido. And then when, as you recall, the pre-board and murder board process, one of the one of the things that you do is any anything that's new, anything that's a changed recommendation or proposed change, highlighted in that process. And so my call sign slide that said little guido on it, and somebody pointed out that that would be a stand change. And so eventually you get to the murder board and they vote on all the proposed changes, including that. And so Top Gun changed my call sign officially from Guido to Little Guido and put it in the stand record, uh, you know, which goes back to 1969. You know, there's no arguing with Top Gun stand. And and um, and then the derivations after that started again, you know, little G or Guido with parentheses, you know, an LSO speak or um LG or you know, just a lowercase G. All derivations of Guido, but I mostly just go by Guido.

Brian "Ponch" Rivera 1:41

Okay, so Trey Warren actually gave me a heads up on that the other day. I was talking to him, and how nice. Yeah, so small world. Anyway, we have Ryan Bernacke here in the here with us today. He is uh going to share some insights about not only top gun, but being the boss of the United States Flight Demonstration Squadron, also known as the Blue Angels. Did I get that right? It's Squadron, correct?

Ryan "Guido" Bernacchi 2:03

Yeah, United States Navy Flight Demonstration Squadron, though we we just call it the Blue Angels or the Blues. Kind of like, you know, the United States Navy Fighter Weapon School is just top gun.

Brian "Ponch" Rivera 2:13

Yeah.

Ryan "Guido" Bernacchi 2:14

Yeah.

How Blue Angels Leaders Get Picked

Brian "Ponch" Rivera 2:14

Well, we're fired up to have you here. Uh we've got a lot of things on the agenda that we could talk about. I'm just gonna throw some things out there. But I think what we ought to do is just kind of have a conversation first on just how challenging it is or how rare it is to not only become a top gun instructor, but also go on to command the uh flight demonstration squadron, the blue angels. And we'll get to that here in a second. But uh a couple things I want to cover most. Uh we definitely want to look at destruction and creation. Uh, I want to look at flow triggers, uh, we want to look at alignment, uh, synchronization, and harmony, see if we can break that down with Guido. We'll look at mental simulation, of course, the debrief and brief and a lot more aspects of being a leader of one of the most, I guess, uh, dynamic organizations, well-known organizations in the in the world. And uh, to do that, I want to share a little screen with you if I can. I don't know if it's gonna work out the best. Is uh usually when we go into organizations, we see these pictures of eagles flying over valleys and water droplets falling into ponds and you know, excellence, leaders, teamwork. And then you get onto seeing these things out there where there's always a picture of the Wangles and a diamond and it says teamwork or trust or leadership or something. It's just funny when you go into an organization, you see these pictures on the wall, you're like, only if you knew what is behind this. And that's what we want to get to today is kind of break down what's behind these metaphor or um artifacts you find in organizations that are trying to be the best in the world. So welcome to the show. Yeah, those are great, great polls. Yeah. Um, I wish it was that easy. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Put just putting your mission statements on the wall.

Mark McGrath 3:53

Yeah, it looks so easy when you watch it on TV. Yeah. I'm I'm glad we did have put a face to the name because I was in attendance of my mentees' graduation from Annapolis in 2016, and I think you had the blues then, right? Oh yeah, yeah. So I saw I saw you. You look great. I saw I saw you fly right over.

Ryan "Guido" Bernacchi 4:12

The the uh goal is to make sure the smoke settles into the stadium on that flyover. So as long as the smoke was settling in, we were pretty good.

Brian "Ponch" Rivera 4:22

So let's let's unpack this a little bit. Uh let's go back to you know, basic fighter aviation. I always tell folks I'm a I'm a knucklehead, I'm a lucky guy. You know, I joined the Navy because I watched some videos and and movies in the in 1986. I think uh my favorite was this band called Van Halen. I think it was from 1986-ish. Do you guys remember what I'm talking about?

Mark McGrath 4:41

Dreams, yeah, with the A-Force with the The Dreams video, yeah.

Brian "Ponch" Rivera 4:44

Yeah, yeah. So, you know, we're growing up, we're products of the 70s and 80s, and on we go to college. I went to Officer Candid School. I'm not sure. Is that the same approach you went, or you went through Razi? I did um I did NROTC out in California at UCL. Okay. And then we joined the Navy. I was uh 96 just ish in API and and all that, so about the same time frame as you, right?

Ryan "Guido" Bernacchi 5:08

Yeah, I was 96 um grad, and then yeah. I think I did in gosh November of 96, something like that.

Brian "Ponch" Rivera 5:18

Okay, so just so everybody knows, we're old. We're not young anymore. I'm Naval Oro T C.

Mark McGrath 5:23

Oh, very nice. Where was we're all officially old now, even though I'm the youngest, but we're still all old.

Brian "Ponch" Rivera 5:29

Yeah, yeah. Uh so I don't know if you know this, but I I spent time in the F-14 demonstration team. I was the last uh F-14 instructor uh for coaching the uh the demo team. So uh I got to fly with uh John Sacamondo and I got to fly with OP Wally, who both went on to be blue angel number two. Yeah. They both were.

Ryan "Guido" Bernacchi 5:47

Yeah, they were both deuces.

Brian "Ponch" Rivera 5:48

Yep. Yeah, so I ended up uh rushing the blue angels uh in 2003 and 2004. I was out of phase in 2003, 2004. Uh I got to go down for the bikini show. Uh I think that's what it was called back then. I don't know if they call it that now, but it's just you're under the microscope. And it's it's a different process. I want to make sure this is very clear to our listeners that the process of being selected for two through eight is different than being selected as number one. So that experience is it's a it's a rush process. You're young, you're a lieutenant, uh, maybe a senior lieutenant going on to put on 04. Uh, you go through a process of uh being evaluated by peers, a 16-member process. You get a 30-minute interview, and I don't know if I can go too deep into this, but it's it's pretty intense week. It's it's you know, they want to see what you look like when you drink alcohol. Are you an asshole? Are you more of an asshole when you drink alcohol, that type of thing? Yeah. So it is it is an amazing process. And if you just think about the numbers in the military, and I I don't know if I have these right in front of me, but we've got about 2.1 million uniformed personnel. Of that thousand fly. So that's roughly less than 2% of those that join the military are actually flyers. In the Navy, that's around 2.5%, maybe a closer to 1 in 0.2% of the Navy actually flies off aircraft carriers. It might be smaller than that. And then you go on to the demo teams. If you can fly in an air show, it's very, very rare. I understand there's about maybe 10 to 12 guys that do it a year, guys and gals that do it a year. We're getting down into you know one in a thousand, one in 40,000. Um, and and what's important to me is uh uh my view of uh flying in air shows and being around the blue angels is these are just dudes. These are just people we fly with. I mean, they're to me, it's they're not special to me, right? They're they are the guys I expect to fly with and do great things with. Uh, but that selection process for uh two through eight is a little bit different than being number one. Can you maybe start with that process for being number one and then take us back on how you got there?

Training, Standardization, and Building Cohesion

Ryan "Guido" Bernacchi 7:48

Sure. Gosh, I was led to believe there'd be no math. So that was impressive deductions there. You know, I think um happy to answer your question, but just as you were walking through all that and uh and I was thinking about it in the same way as well, certainly if you knew the numbers, you would never apply. But it's just a it's a bunch of men and women that that are out doing their jobs, and and maybe you see the timing line up, maybe you've got somebody that that's gone ahead of you that that's encouraged you. For me, it was kind of something like that. And and you throw your name in the hat, and and then really what the team is looking for are people that are just really humble, coachable, hardworking, good to be around, but really it's it's that humility, it's that ability to the potential to to learn the thing, not your ability to do it now, but to grow into something, which I think really gets into coachability and attitude and work ethic. But if if I had to pick one thing, it's it's you're looking for humility. You're looking for people that want to do the job, not for the selfie mode on their camera or to be the you know, 0.1% or wherever that math was leading, some some um, you know, smaller number than that. It's not about that at all. It really is it's your passion for what you're doing and your desire to share it with others, I think that will come out and and people that are are right for those environments, the demo team and but by the way, I um well, this actually will answer your question. So, growing up, um, I loved going to air shows. I grew up in the San Francisco Bay Area. Um blues came to Moffat just about every year when I could ride my bike there. So, like on the practice days, as soon as spool was out, I'm pedaling my little BMX bike over the over Highway 101 to get out as close as I could to the field and jets zipping around. We'd also go watch them in San Francisco and go see the Thunderbirds and Reno and that kind of thing. And the F-14 demo was a big part of me growing up as well. You know, my absolute favorite demo. That and I loved the V-22 when I was a kid. It was still just like an X-V that flew out of Moffat. It was based there. So I absolutely love that. But the A4s, when the team had those and then into the F-18s, that was me growing up. Um I am jealous I never got to fly the Tomcat. I certainly ever get to fly it in an air show, but I don't know how you guys made it to it. But the way it would the way when you'd pitch up, it looked like the tail would slide and then it would climb instead of just like an arc, it would just do this slide and climb with uh remember it so vividly. Anyways, yeah, I I grew up doing those things and um did a little bit of flying. My dad's a private pilot still, still flying um at almost 82 years old. Um and so I had an early, you know, gift and that passion for me and the desire to go fly. And then uh yeah, I think it was about 1986 a movie came out. So at the time I was really looking at um Air Force and Navy, and you know, I have posters on my walls of F-15s and F-16s and F-14s and all this stuff. And then this movie came out, and I was like, oh yeah, Navy, I'm gonna do that. And then the Air Force turned me down and the Navy didn't, so it was like perfect, you know. I didn't really want to go to the Air Force anyways. So I would have been happy to do so. So uh that's just kind of the way the path unfolded, and then certainly wasn't thinking about being a blue angel, just wanted to get to flight school and you know, was really motivated to fly something with two tails, um, you know, and a pointy nose. Um lucky to get to do that. And and I think it really, if I were to just pull a thread all the way through, it was that that strong passion drives you to to want to fly jets, drives you to want to be a landing signals officer, it it uh motivates you to want to go do tactics and go go through the Top Gun pro, you know, apply, see if you can get in, get through the course, all those things. And uh and and when you start ending up in those environments, places like Top Gun or you know, your classmates going through, you find this very common piece of just a very strong passion, guys that really want to put their heads down and do the work and work together. And um, so those environments are contagious and they just build and build. And and so the last thing I was thinking about as a lieutenant trying to be as good as I could be tactically was flying air shows later in my life. But I had my my skipper when I was exo of uh the dragons, the super shit high, world famous golden dragons, to be more correct. Bobby Baker, Beatle, great guy. He he just he sent me the note where they were calling for applicants and just said you should apply. And had not really crossed my mind until that point. But this naval message had gone out saying, you know, those interested in applying to be the commanding officer and flight leader apply here. Both both saw the same same message. Beatles sent it to me and said it just with those three words, you should apply. And that got me to thinking about it. And so um I threw my name in and um thinking no chance paddles on this at all, but it doesn't hurt to ask. And um, and then you know, we got to go down and go through the process together. And um, I certainly didn't think they were gonna pick the the short kid with the underbite to go do this thing. And uh I still don't know why they did. I still think the Navy's got some buyer's remorse on that, but I certainly wasn't the best candidate. I just somehow was the one they they you know that said something that was right for a question or something, you know. Just I think it was that that tight, that close, or something that and I don't know what it is, but that just you know, they they gave the nod to me and and you know, welcome to Thunderdome. And and there it went to the case.

Mark McGrath 13:25

So you don't you don't you don't have to have been a blue as a younger officer to be the commander later on?

Passion First Not Prestige

Ryan "Guido" Bernacchi 13:34

Almost never has that worked out, in fact. Um there have been a couple of guys, so people have come back to fill in when somebody has gotten sick or left the team for maybe uh you know, conduct issue or um a medical issue, or uh sadly if somebody's perished, they'll bring an older team member back, usually someone that flew that same position. For the flight leader, I think they've done it a few times where they've brought back somebody that flew on the team as a junior officer and then came back as the commanding officer and flight leader, and it it hasn't really worked out that well. I think there's there's too much that's different in the positions. I think you could be a superb leader, but be thinking about how the how the everything worked from your prior perspective, maybe in the slot or a solo position. And it it just doesn't quite translate, plus that's continuous evolution in the organizational culture. And so when people come back, they tend to sort of be locked into when they were there before and think that's how everything works. And so I think it's I wouldn't want to do that. It'd be very challenging to come back and go, okay, everything's the same, everything's different. And I and my perspective on this entire process is now completely different, also. And I think that's just a challenge. But other teams do it, uh snowbirds do it.

Brian "Ponch" Rivera 14:50

Yeah, so yeah, I I got to fly with the snowbirds, but I think to Moose's point, this is fantastic on orientation, and it connects back to Gary Klein talking about A6 pilots transitioning to um an F-14. The sight picture behind the boat's different, you know. So they have a pattern recognition, a mental model that they already have ingrained in their implicit guides of control that uh it's hard to break. And I think that's uh what you're kind of getting at. Moose, is that what you're hearing?

Mark McGrath 15:15

Yeah, right on. I mean, I guess you you think of someone, again, this is a former Marine artillery officer's view. I lost my flight contract in Naval ROTC. You can see the glasses. Um, I I had them on a little younger than maybe you did. At that point, I guess I was so hell-bent on being a Marine. But as a Marine, looking at that, I would think that you would bring somebody back, but it makes a lot of sense to not have somebody come back because, you know, I mean, in a sense, you're kind of bringing an outsider in. Like you're you're bringing someone from outside the outside the organization, outside the culture, which I think is kind of cool. And I guess you don't have your way they're just like a slot pilot or whatever it was when you were like two or three or seven or whatever, you don't have those biases.

The concept of 'fuzz' and team harmony

Ryan "Guido" Bernacchi 15:55

Yeah, and you know, half the team is new, half the pilots are new each year, including, you know, every other year, it's typically number one is new. And so talk about a stressor for the organization is you know, is this guy, is he or she gonna cut it? How fast can they learn this? Because we've got a long way to go in a short time to get there. And I think having kind of a blank slate or blank canvas to work with that individual on, in in spite of the challenge and the stress, you're not overcoming um prior biases or well, this is how we used to do it. You you're just a spudge. And your job as you know, you show up with maybe 3,000 hours instead of 12 or 1,400 hours uh of fighter time. You've had command of a squadron, so you kind of know how to run a squadron, though this one runs differently. Um, but you do have a really nice foundation on on the leadership side. Everything you're doing flying wise is so different it you almost can't equate to it. And it's one of the real challenges is um I'll give an example of um, you know, we would do these low altitude training rules. You know, so you you pop off uh, you know, you're down at 100, 200 feet off the ground, you climb up real steep to roll in on a target, drop a bomb, and you do something like uh, you know, 30 degree pitch up to a 25 or 20 degree dive, and then you'd have these little sort of shallow routes, you know, you go three at 30 degrees at 2,000 feet, you would pull up to 10 degrees and and ride that down to 500 feet, and then that would level, kind of gradually level you off. Like the the introductory uh dive recovery rule on the loop break cross where all six jets are pointed at the ground opposite each other and then meet in the middle at you know 800 knots closure is 70 degrees nose low for 2200 feet. So more than twice as steep, and you're screaming down, and then instead of pulling like three or four G's to level off, you just have to stick all the way in the lap at seven and a half G's. You know, it's just and so you so you see the ground coming, but you just like you're gonna like I'm gonna die. And but it works. And so everything is sort of like that. You're miscalibrated to everything at first, and and it is really uncomfortable as the leader because your ability to assess risk is sort of thrown out the window because everything just looks stupid to you, which is normally like you know, the hair on the back of your neck, like this doesn't seem right, and everyone's going, Hey, I know this isn't gonna look right, but don't eject, hang in there, it's gonna work, it's gonna work out. You gotta trust us. And and it's so it really does, but it works. But that's happening with three of the pilots while the other three are training them, and then the next year, those three are training the next three. And so the system works, but it's it's really kind of important that you start on opposite ends and end up coming together to this point at which where you're all operating in a high degree of alignment, synchronicity, even harmony. Those things happen, but you get there from opposite ends. And I would almost say half of them are all the way at one extreme. They can operate together at a really elite level. Uh, and the other half are at the at zero. And so you don't really need in the middle. The new the new pilots just eventually get up to the level of of the returning veterans, and then everybody comes together and as a new entity at that level, if that makes sense.

Brian "Ponch" Rivera 19:14

I think the important lesson here is uh, you know, we see it in elite sports teams, going back to the New England Patriots years ago, uh, when they have a dynasty, and even the Kansas City Chiefs, they're actually going through the same cycle of destruction and creation. It's not the same team they had over and over. It's it's actually a new team, and this is what allows uh the organization to grow, right? And and I asked you the other day when we were just kind of shooting the shit about things, I said, Hey man, what would it look like if you kept the team together for four or five years? You know, and I think your response was it wouldn't be good.

High-Risk Environments and Safety Lessons

Ryan "Guido" Bernacchi 19:41

Yeah, I I hadn't no one ever asked that, but my immediate reaction was like, well, that'd be really bad. Yeah, yeah. You wouldn't want to do that. I mean, it'd be really exhausting physically, mentally. You know, you'd be gone 300 days a year for four or five years in a row, your family would be in, you know, a shattered mess. But the the reality from a teen dynamic standpoint is you would become really complacent, really stagnant. You just wouldn't be able to maintain the level of focus and intensity that is required, and you would fall into the you would start finding yourself devolving culturally. And I think that's where the the biggest issue would happen.

Applying aviation principles to other organizations

Brian "Ponch" Rivera 20:17

We'll we'll we'll talk about flow a little bit later on, I think. But you can't stand a state of flow, and that's high performance. You need to come out of it at some points, go to that recovery. And I think that's that's how great teams succeed is they have that recovery built into the system. You triggered something for me, and I wanted to go back to flying earth shows and how uncomfortable, uh how uncomfortable it is to be 60 degrees nose low inverted, pointed at the ground, uh in a uh with because that's a demo, right? That's the first time you get to do that. You're like, why would you do this? So I know exactly what it's like to be looking up and seeing nothing but ground, knowing that the sky's below you uh and the and the ground's getting bigger at 60 degrees nose low inverted. So thanks for triggering that, man. That's terrifying.

Ryan "Guido" Bernacchi 20:58

Yeah, it makes you sweat a little bit.

Brian "Ponch" Rivera 21:00

Yeah. Um let me just point out something. This is from my my perspective, the world of air shows is unforgiving. I can't remember the number of people that not, you know, my community, the F-14 demonstration community lost before. Uh I I made the team. In fact, they they sit you down and they show you these things and go, you sure you want to do this because there's the margin for error is is then it's not high risk. Not it is high risk, it's it's unforgiving, right? It's unforgiving. A bad night's sleep, you know, just human factors, things like that come into play. Uh, this is a difference, is a this is a different level of eliteness, if I can say that. This is not your life is on the line. Yeah, when you're playing football on Sunday, or you could die, you could get a concussion or something like that. Yeah, we get that. This is different. High, high risk, high novelty, changing environment. Uh, but again, going back to my experience in the Navy and flying air shows, I've lost more friends in air shows than I have in combat, right? And that's that's terrifying. We still do it. Um, and I'm I'm not saying we shouldn't be flying air shows. It's just when you think about what we did, it's crazy. So, on better human processes, I'm going to be honest and share this with Moose and you, Guido. And that is the reason I have this company, the reason we have the podcast from my perspective is those lessons that we experienced, those those events that we experienced in the military, it's pretty unique, but it drove me to want to help organizations avoid the things that happened to. Around us. And again, we're talking about a level of performance that is beyond what most organizations can do. And I think that's why you do what you do and what you did at the Naval Academy and what you're doing today. So thank you for that. I do want to switch gears a little bit and talk about aircraft because I'm going to give you a quick story. This connects back to the transition of the F-18C to the ENF in the Blue Angels. So flying the Fort Lauderdale Air Show. I'm down there with both crews. This is I'm flying with Sean that weekend. We're doing the Friday and air, Friday night air show. We fly the Saturday air show. We get a phone call from the EXO, and it's like, hey guys, we need a jet out in San Diego. Ponch, you're going to go fly on a on this dentist with a cone, a new student, cat one, that you haven't flown with before. Get out there Sunday, be prepared to go out there Monday to this dentist. And I'm like, but I have an air show on Friday in Kansas City where my parents are going to be at, right? I've like, I got to get this guy qualified. So we, you know, here we are with our air show weekend gear. You know, I've got the different helmet, everything. Go out to the uh uh San Diego, uh, you know, get the aircraft at North Island, fly out with the cone. I think he's now a CAG, actually, or or post CAG. Um, I think it's Puck, actually, I was flying with. And uh, we get him called up Thursday evening. And I know that the OIC, and I'm like, hey man, I need to give a shot to the beach tonight with that jet because we've got an air show to do tomorrow. Uh and he goes, but I want to fly it off tomorrow. I'm like, no, I think we have, I think we're number one on this uh in this pack here. So so fly off that night, do my laundry in the hotel. Uh Puck wants to go celebrate in San Diego, and maybe um he can pay me some money for not telling the full story about this uh some other time. Uh, but you know, we have to call the skipper, get a waiver for me to fly the next day because of crew rest. Uh plus we have to do a practice demo, and I'm going somewhere with this. So we land uh in Kansas City, Sean and I are out there. We get out of the cockpit, you know, presses there. Uh, there's a beautiful F-16 that the uh, you know, F-16 demo flies, a brand new F-16, and we got this dirty F-14 D that just spent three days on the on the uh Stennis. I think it was Stennis. Beautiful and um grease over the nose, and grease everywhere, man, right? And I'm wearing the same flight suit I was wearing at Fort Lauderdale, you know, and maybe my hair's a little bit longer. Uh and I it we just look out of place, right? What are you guys doing here? So the media comes up, and we have a quick media day with them uh before we uh turn the jet for uh a demo practice. And um the question comes up, why is your jet jet dirty? And I said, Well, you know what I was doing last night? I was on a carrier in the Pacific with a cone, with a cat one, right? That's what I was doing last night. Go ask that F-16 driver what he was doing last night and what he does for a living. There's a difference, right? We are we're instructors first, we're doing debts, and we fly the demo on the side, right? But we but it's it's a little bit different. Plus, we're flying the jet that is probably the least capable at the moment, right? Hey, which jet can we take on this debt, right? So I know that the jets you flew had like 7,000 hours on them or more, right?

Ryan "Guido" Bernacchi 25:17

Yeah, we're flying well into the like 11,000, 12,000 hour range. With the blue angels? Yeah. Oh my gosh. It was amazing. Yeah, we had 10,000 plus hour jets with you know that we'd have all these extra inspections on, but so help the artillery officer out.

Mark McGrath 25:35

What's the lifespan of a jet? What's a healthy lifespan of a jet like that?

Ryan "Guido" Bernacchi 25:39

Well, they were built for so the the contract when Boeing is really McDonnell Douglas started building them later, Boeing was for 6,000 hours. That's what they were, they were supposed to fly for 6,000 hours and then you go park them. And we were doubling that in some cases and in a really high demand environment. So, but we were also by by that point, and the you know, that was 30 years into the blues having the FA, the A through D model, and the the um, you know, fleet had had it a little bit longer. That's just all that was really left. That was the status of the fleet, especially after, you know, 15 years beyond 9-11 and the rate we were flying these airplanes. You know, we were flying the oldest airplanes the Navy had, so there were newer hornets than that, but not much newer. And now they're doing the same thing with uh the super hornets, they're flying the original kind of OG super hornets that didn't have all the later combat capabilities. That was the primary way we were able to kind of redirect those airplanes to the blues. But those a lot of those airplanes um are showing up with a lot higher um hours uh available. So they're showing up a lot younger in flight hours to the teams. They're getting a lot more use out of them.

Brian "Ponch" Rivera 26:51

So if I if I remember correctly, the the Air Force would fly the new jets in their demo team and and even with the Thunderbirds, they would have brand new jets off the line. Is that is that right? Yeah.

Ryan "Guido" Bernacchi 26:59

Yeah, I've had to fly with the Thunderbirds. We did an exchange, and it was great. You know, what an awesome experience. And now, yeah, they were like block 50 Vipers with Link 16 cooking. And then when the jets came on and the data link fired up, and I you could see all the other airplanes. I'm like, you guys use data link, you know. Like we just look out the window, and um I said which is you know, so someone's there's somebody on the Thunderbirds that carries their crypto around with them wherever they go because it's all it's all encrypted for the data link. Yes, I was impressed. It had every bell and whistle. Uh they were, you know, big motors. It was they were awesome airplanes. But but they also just like our jets, you know, they look beautiful from you know any distance a person's gonna see them. But if you're crawling around underneath them, you you know, there's chip pain and wear and tear. Our guys did such a I mean, our jets looked there the blue jets were the opposite of that Fleet John Cat you were flying in in Kansas City. They were spectacularly beautiful, old, you know, just as old, just as you know, rode hard, but our maintainers just made them shine. I mean, they f I flew the same jet almost every single day uh for two years straight. That in and of itself to me is a miracle. The pride they took in maintaining the airplanes, the the way they, you know, just the attention to detail, every little, every little thing was spectacular. But if you got, you know, up under a real well or you know, looked at looked at the paint on the on the hinge under the wing, they were constantly maintaining those. But they're also, you know, we're flying the flying the piss out of them. So we're knocking paint off them all the time. And so but you know, to your point, if you went to, and this is you know, I love the Thunderbirds, and we're we're brothers and sisters and in this mission. If you have you been to their hangar in Mellis, I mean it it it's like a museum. I mean, they ru they truly built it as a museum, you know, so visitors that come through have this experience. If you go to the Blue Angel hangar in Pensacola, although that they are going to build a new one, it looks like every other, if not worse, than any other fleet hangar anywhere. It looks like that Tomcat. It's very utilitarian, it's dirty, you know, it's this old like World War II era or Korean War era hangar that's that shows. And I kind of love that. You know, I had people go, gosh, I thought you guys would have this big fancy hanger and be like, no, we're just a we're a navy. Check this out. Yeah. This is how we get the job done.

Mark McGrath 29:18

I was just trying to share my pictures of being in the hangar with my boys in uh September of 2018. And we got we got a we got to go in there when we were down at Pensacola um when the same kid I was there that graduated from Annapolis when she was getting her wings um for for finishing uh um WISO school or whatever, F NFO school.

Speaker 3 29:38

Yeah.

Mark McGrath 29:38

And they have their picture. I I again I'm on Chrome, it won't let me do it the way it would on whatever, but it's uh it's them, the two boys, they're in their twenties now, but when they were litt or in front of uh Major Jeff Mullen's plane. I don't know if he was under your turn, but they're just waxed, they're beautiful.

Ryan "Guido" Bernacchi 29:56

Yeah, we picked Jeff, but I I didn't get to fly with him. He was coming in as I was leaving.

Mark McGrath 30:01

But but to your but to your point about those aircraft, then the passenger on military aircraft a ton, they are divine. They're absolutely you can see your face in them. I mean, they look like they look like better polished than boots.

Brian "Ponch" Rivera 30:17

Well, let's unpack how you guys build a uh let's let's unpack how you build the high-performing team. You go on L to El Centro, you do a little bit of work. So can you walk us through the process? And I think there is a process, um, the the way you fly as number one versus uh two, three, and four. Yeah, I'll give you some more background. So when when I was doing the uh a lot of rushing with the Blue Angels back in the day, I was hanging around with Intake and uh Dino and uh learning a lot from the soloists about how they're used standing on the rudders in the F-18. I'm like, what do you mean? Why are you guys doing that? And then I learned a lot about what it looks like when you don't do it. Uh so we used a lot of those concepts in the F-14 demo to use the rudder. Most guys want to touch the rudders in the F-14. Can you walk us through the process and what's going on in your cockpit, the process of El Centro, what how you're bringing everybody on board to fly in these tight formations?

Decentralized command and empowerment

Risk Feels Wrong Until It Works

Ryan "Guido" Bernacchi 31:05

Yeah. Great question. So I'll I'll start um kind of macro and then we'll get into down to some of the you know the nuances all the way into you know my my personal learning. But for the team at the macro level, writ large, half of the officers and about um a little over a third of the enlisted um membership of the team, call it about 150 people, are new every year. So there's there's parallel orientation indoctrination kind of processes happening at in the different roles. But generally what you'll find is that everybody is working up a pay grade or two at least. So, you know, your your petty officer, AT2, an avionics technician, or an airframer, or uh Marine Sergeant that might be doing doing that with a marine MOS in the same field is probably operating at the first class or chief level. Your chiefs are doing officer jobs, and the officers, very junior officers, are doing much more senior officer jobs to include, in many cases, even the CO's job. So from a mission command kind of perspective, highly, highly decentralized and delegated with on two or three sites usually going on at a time. So teams out on the road, you've got a maintenance debt back at home, and you may have something else going on in a tertiary location. So you can't try to control all this, which worked well for my style, anyways. And every once in a while, come, you know, something comes up where you're like, gosh, I really wish you guys had checked with me before you did that. But that's okay. We, you know, I'm glad you made a decision. Um, I might have done it differently next time. Here's why. You know, if this comes up again, some other things to think about. But hey, I'm glad you you got it done. And it's either good to go or, you know, it's a very easy tweak to get it where it needs to go from here. So that was kind of the, you know, it was a very hands-off approach early on because everybody's focused on learning this unique role that's built on everything you did in the fleet, but it's different. And so that's happening starting in mid-November. You change of command happens every other year, um, the middle weekend in November, and usually take one or two days off. And then the very first thing you do, and I think this is important um to note, is you don't go jump in the airplanes. So, really, my first day after, you know, we we do the the change of command in the museum. Well, I went right to work the next day, which was a day off, thinking about what I was gonna say the following day. But really, you know, you kind of have a you bring the whole team together, I say a few words. Uh I thought those words needed to be succinct, but they mattered, kind of a commander's intent, and let's go get after it. And then we sat down, and before we approached the airplanes, we went through our entire standardization down to how you wear your sunglasses, how you uh, which which I think is a great little window into this, is so everybody matches. If I was wearing as number one, if I was wearing my sunglasses, then everyone's gonna wear their sunglasses. And if I take them off, everybody takes them off. And if I'm doing this, everybody's looking at out of the corner of their eye trying to match because we thought it was important that we show this kind of unity. And so, you know, initially I was bad at it in the kind of in a clumsy way, and then I got good at it and could be bad at it on purpose, just to, you know, just because it was fun. Down to the sunglasses, but why does that matter? What matters is if you're talking to somebody, a pub, you're talking to a child, a veteran, uh to somebody you meet, whether it's at a show in the you know, parking lot of a hotel, wherever it is, and you're outside and you're wearing sunglasses, and you get your cool Ray-Ban Maverick sunglasses on, you don't want to talk to that person. You're who wants to talk to someone that's that's got their glasses on? And you know you take your glasses off and you look them in the eye. And it doesn't matter if you know your eyeballs are melting with the sun, you're gonna always take your glasses off. And I still do it to this day. I can't like it got so hardwired. But we talk about things down to that level of detail from a standardization point so that everybody can align to that. It's an open discussion so that you can say, hey, maybe this didn't work so well last year, whatever, whatever it is. Sunglasses, pick anything. And and this, you know, this goes from the the detail to how we wear our shades to how how we're flying the demo and everything in between. So there's big, big safety things and really small sort of public um interaction pieces, but it all matters. And we put it essentially all on the table for review. We get every single team member, including the brand new, you know, our most junior enlisted, which might be uh an E4, you know, petty officer third class um level. We maybe had one or two of those, and the rest was sort of E5 and up. Everybody gets a chance to raise their hand, ask a question, have input. The newer people aren't saying a lot, but they know they have a voice. And then in subsequent years, they're gonna take much more of a prominent role in these discussions. And we don't stop doing that until we are 100% aligned, which doesn't mean there's 100% agreement, but everybody's had a chance to talk about it and eventually nod their heads and go, yeah, I'm good with that. We can do I can align to that. And once that process is done, I sign it out. You know, we codify it in in our standardization, it gets signed um with a kind of a commander's intent letter uh that that g goes out, and then then we begin the work, learning how to fly the demo. And so I think that's a really important part of the reset and renewal that the team goes through every year, but it's also applicable. Because how often do we do this in our lives or in our workplaces, right? To just take take the day, take half a day and go, hey, what's working and what's not working? And let's make sure we're hearing from our, you know, that that quiet, thoughtful young person in the back, right? Create the psychological safety so that everyone can speak up. And then once that process is complete, even if you weren't 100% in agreement with all the decisions made, you can be 100% aligned and you're now enrolled in the process. You had a piece of this action. You've got skin in this game. And now we all start moving forward with the same set of marching orders, the same set of standards. And some of them, it's gonna take us all year to achieve, especially performance standards. You know, you're talking about eight or ten inch wingtip separation in the diamond 360 the last week the season. That's nowhere near where we are now. In fact, the the first flight we do is just one and two go out and three and four go out separately. And then that afternoon we put all four airplanes together and a diamond for the first time. Day one of flying was actually about day four or five of the team. It's probably day four. And the diamond doesn't, I mean, it's diamond shaped, but it doesn't look like the picture you showed, you know, of the poster in the office of teamwork or whatever at all. Yeah. It's wider than a fleet diamond would be if you just wanted to fly one with your, you know, BFA, whatever. And so we start there, but we've set these standards that are really high that we're striving to achieve in increments over time. And it includes our conduct, it's not just performance, right? It's cultural standards. It's it's what we believe, how we behave, and then also how we're going to perform. And so I kind of threw a big anchor out on this on purpose because I think it's an opportunity everywhere that we mostly forego. Um, and I can't imagine starting a an organization with half the pilots and uh, you know, half of whatever you want to, whatever the analogy is, you know, your executive leadership team or something, and half of your or a third of the rest of your entire workforce being new every year. That's a, you know, and doing that on purpose. And so what an opportunity that gave. I learned so much from that. And then we just we just get to work and we work really hard, six days a week for the next few months, and in El Centro we're flying. So we go to we do that sort of 10-ish flight schedule a week in Pensacola up to Christmas, take a you know, Thanksgiving break, take four days off, maybe for Christmas, New Year's off, and then on the second or third of January, we we take the whole squadron to El Centro, California, out in the desert, where the weather's beautiful and there's not many distractions. And then we fly 15 flights a week there. So Monday, Wednesday, Friday, three flights a day, Tuesday, Thursday, Saturday, two flights a day. Sunday, do some laundry, maybe get some groceries. Mostly you're just studying throughout that. So it's kind of a it's a gym tan laundry sort of thing, but it's really just it's fly, eat, study, workout. And you do that for three months straight. And by the end, you have a you have a team that's that's not wobbly on its legs. It's certainly not to the standard you'll get to later, but it's pretty solid and and you go forward from there. And so for me personally and all that, um I didn't, I can tell you I I did leave the base usually on Sundays to get a haircut, and I would grab maybe some some food and bring it back or something. Uh I didn't but it occurred to me the night before our first air show that I hadn't been out to to eat out one time in three months because I was just always studying.

Brian "Ponch" Rivera 40:10

There's great Mexican food in El Centro, by the way.

Rebuilding The Team Every Year

Ryan "Guido" Bernacchi 40:13

Yeah, it was a great, yeah, it turns out, yeah. No, I had had it before and I've had it since, but not during those three months. Um, and so uh that's how immersive it was. And and there was, and I think that level of of uh intensity it wasn't unique to me. I think that's just what it takes, and that's what the team, you know, and each of their roles is putting that level of intensity into the job. I might have been the only one that never went out to eat until that it was over, but uh that was just what worked for me. And so, so every day you're going out and flying, you're you're getting absolutely just wire brushed in the debrief, and not in a personal attack way, but you're just doing everything wrong. And they're gonna tell you all the things you're doing wrong. And so the goal really is to identify your own mistakes and then have people fill in the things you missed. And that's so that ratio of like what I knew I did wrong versus what everyone else saw me do wrong was you know, it was a little bit of me and a lot of them for a long time. And I'll never forget the day. Um, we were about three months into the seasons, like seven months into the experience of flying the number one jet. And we were a debrief at a show, and I I went through the list and I I got all the way through it. And number two reached over and just patted me on the on the sleeve as uh uh as only he could, just gave me like almost like a little oh, like a pat on the head. But he said, Good job, you got them all. That's the first time that I recognized and debriefed every single error that I and it took months, hundreds and hundreds of sorties. Let's get to that here in a minute. And I feel like at King on that moment, right? I was like, Yes, I got them all. Um, smaller and smaller.

Brian "Ponch" Rivera 41:58

Yeah, I want I definitely want to get to debriefing here in a minute. I do want to go back to some parallels between when you're flying two and one, two's instructing you down in Pensacola, if that if I remember correctly, the probably uh uh senior lieutenant or lieutenant commander at the time is now flying with you, and you're doing stuff, you know, flying at different altitudes and doing things. So you're going through the same process. Um, there's an intent for each flight. Uh, you're you're going through a brief with them. And I don't know if two is leading the brief at this point or you are, uh, but when you come back, you still do the debrief. And you're going to repeat that process and change the constraints as you go. And I'm I'm making using that language uh specifically for the folks in in sport. As you go, you change the constraints. You still go over the same process, the intent, and you still have the review, the learning, uh the debrief. Uh is that sound right? Did I get anything wrong in there?

Ryan "Guido" Bernacchi 42:46

It's pretty close. I know Moose wanted to jump in too, but I'll answer your question real quick. So, so one one, two is always considered the coach for a first-year boss. And the reason for that is two flies on the right wing, and and most of the maneuvers are set up in this kind of left-hand turn. I'm flying with my hands. So two is is in a very natural flying position on the right wing, the throttles on the the left, and you're so you're looking kind of over your left shoulder where your throttle is instead of over your right shoulder, kind of looking through your shoulder like three is because of the stick. And so it's a very natural position. It's on and then you can see the ground track because it's almost always a left-hand setup. So they they know where you are over the ground as it should be, what it's supposed to look like, as opposed to three who's just been looking up at the sun for the whole first year before they they slide into the slop for their second year. So two is is the natural coaching position. I had an incredible coach in in Matt Siderhound, and often one and twos don't get along very well. There were certainly times where you know there was friction, but we always really clicked and had a, I think, a really beautiful kind of coaching-coachy relationship all the way through. But the one part that I would I would correct maybe a little bit is that one leads every brief and debrief from the very first one. And it's all memorized. So, like showing up for that very first section flight, just me and two, and then a diamond flight that afternoon, from the moment everyone sits down, you know, good morning, everybody, admin. And you okay, we're gonna we're parked in reverse order for a normal walk down. The whole thing is entirely memorized on the very first. Flight, which was a big hurdle to clear, also with the change of command and everything else going on. But I knew it all had to be memorized on day one and and worked really hard to be able to flow through the entire brief and debrief process without anyone telling me what can came next. I didn't a lot of it was at that point just pure memorization. But you lead it all the way through. And I think that carries forward to leading, you know, if you're running a a weekly meeting or uh an after-action type debrief in a company, you can absolutely lead the framework of the discussion. You can orchestrate the discussion, but not drive and overly control it. And in other words, you know, I would open up on once we got into the meat of a debrief, for example, I would open up on, hey, on the takeoff maneuver, here's what I here are the mistakes that I made, you know, very succinct, kind of like LSO shorthand. And then there's there's a chance for everyone else to chime in. So I'm gonna lead with my accountability, this is what I'm aware of, and then welcome other people to say, this is these are some other things that also didn't go quite go right. But in starting at the at the top on that, with the leadership, a lot of the error, you know, if it was a diamond maneuver, probably two, three, and four's errors were all based off of my errors. If I didn't fly the maneuver right, they were having to account for that. And so if I've covered why my maneuver didn't go right, there's not a whole lot more that they can say. They might add in a little thing, but you're you're essentially covering most of it right away. Or if not, if people want to add to it, there's now context to why their mistakes occurred as well. And so that that's the way we would do that. But from a brief standpoint or a preparation standpoint, I would show up with everything 100% memorized to include whatever new um maneuver we were going to learn uh so that we could chair fly it and visualize it together. And that's how they could really assess if I was ready to fly it, if I had the procedures correct, if the cadence was right. Then we go try it in the airplane. If it was off, we'd come back and talk about it. We could usually fix it by chair flying some more. And we could get into this if you want, the visualization and really kind of the mental flow state that we would dive into. Uh it's really, really powerful. And that and that's how we did it. We didn't have simulators. We did it all with visualization on the ground, and then that would connect to the exact ways we would fly. And then if it wasn't being flown right, we could adjust again on the in our chairs sitting at one G. And that would then translate to corrections in the air. So that was kind of the process that we would do to put it together. And and so every day we're chairflying, every day I'm we're introducing maneuvers via chair flying uh until you have all the pieces there and they're refined enough that it it starts to become, you know.

Brian "Ponch" Rivera 48:06

Well, let's do this. Let's uh dive deeper into briefing and debriefing, but let's get back to moose first moose.

Mark McGrath 48:10

Yeah, I've got yeah, I want to do just like a couple of power round questions. Um, you know, on one hand, I want to go into apocryphal sea stories that I've heard we'll we'll do offline. But uh so just some observations again from a from a non-aviator standpoint, things that jumped off to me with a couple of refining questions, so we don't have to go into too much because we're gonna go out with a debrief. But one technical question is is the blues, you know, if I'm I guess I'm not talking from the commander per se because it's assuming implied, but if I'm a a younger pilot or you know, I'm a I'm a two through a seven or I'm flying fat Albert or whatever, is it expected like top gun? It might it might take what I learned at the blues and take it back to my my squadron, my my wing, my group. Same same, is it the same kind of expectation?

Ryan "Guido" Bernacchi 48:56

So you are absolutely supposed to bring the blues experience back to the fleet, but not the flying. Okay. So it's the cultural. That makes sense.

unknown 49:08

Yeah.

Mark McGrath 49:09

Yeah.

Ryan "Guido" Bernacchi 49:09

It's the process that you mark.

Mark McGrath 49:11

You guys have PGMs on your wings and sidewinders, you don't want to be, you know, eight inches apart. Yeah, I get that.

unknown 49:17

Yeah.

Standards Down To Sunglasses

Ryan "Guido" Bernacchi 49:17

There have there are some fairly notorious um, or maybe not maybe they're just a little bit infamous stories of guys coming back to the fleet, former slot pilots that are doing, you know, a double far roll with you know, which is where you've got like, you know, you've got airplanes that are right side up and airplanes that are upside down in formation. And those things tend to be frowned upon by the the higher level leaders. But you do have this unique ability to fly an airplane that you've learned differently that's just not a good fit for fleet flying. What really does impact though is the all of these other, I would just say, soft skills that you learn, both in briefing and debriefing, but also in in the ambassadorship role, the the public uh representation of the blues, thinking about that as a full-time job, talking about it all the time, having the opportunity to meet tens of thousands of people and interact with them does bring back a different perspective. And so it's really valuable to bring that back, to bring the high performance teamwork aspects back, to bring the very high standards back, though not the same standards, the but the process that I was just describing of instilling standards. I had a chance to, I was um a training officer in Wolfie Silkie's squadron when he was skipper of 87. He had been a slot pilot of 3-4. There were so many things he did in leading that squatter and exceptionally well, superb skipper and leader. That when I then later went to the blues, I exactly recognized how he had brought those things back. And I, you were aware of them at the time, but not so much the you know behind the scenes of where some of his thought processes and had come from. And where we really see this magnifying effect is with the enlisted crew of the squatter. They come back to their to their you know, their follow-on assignments, and I think really are P sub K enhancers or force multipliers because they they're bringing together bringing that this very high standards, this very high energy, this kind of, I mean, that's a thing that probably I don't know, you experienced this punch when you were working with the blues as a as a topcat demo pilot, and maybe a little bit in our time, you know, applying, and there's just really high energy. There's just this the there's it's such an invigorating environment. People are all in. And I think um, I think one of the services the blues do for the Navy beyond representing the Navy and Marine Corps in the mission, is they send a hundred, you know, or it's probably about fifty or sixty people a year back to the fleet that are bringing that impact. Yeah. And I think that's priceless. I think it's really awesome. And there's also a really high number of our enlisted go on to become, I mean, they're on really steep trajectories leaving there. So that they're all gonna be in khakis where they're you know, senior chiefs, master chiefs, officers, you know, going back to flight schools, pilots. It's a it's just a really great environment. It's kind of um an incubator for leadership and high standards of passion and high performance and all that. So short story long, I don't know if that is your intention, but okay, a couple other speed round questions.

Mark McGrath 52:21

So you mentioned, you know, wherever Marines go, there's sailors. Uh you know, I I had sailors under my command as corpsmen. Wherever you go, there weren't always Marines. Sometimes you had a boat squadron, maybe, or something like that. So speak to that. Yeah. What about the, you know, those are two clashing cultures, even though there's so many similarities. We can attest to that daily. It's two clashing cultures.

Ryan "Guido" Bernacchi 52:45

Yeah. It really uh, you know, some funny nuances in there. And I I did pick up on you said speed rounds, so I'll keep trying to keep this short. The uh I think by and large it was just one one team. There was some funny terminology difference with would be, you know, one of the Marine officers would say, Well, my Marines, da da da, right. And that's I understand that that's how Marines talk about their Marines, right? If you're a company officer, if you're a squad leader, these are my Marines. And I was really, really big on the concept of we. So I really felt like, but are they, I didn't know they were your Marines. I thought they were our Marines. Or if if they were going to be anybody, if anyone would use the word my, it would be me, but I didn't really do that. Uh, so that was, you know, sometimes it was mostly just I would poke at them and be like, wait, whose Marines are they again? You know, and just try to make it make it light. But you know, to your point, I had a a Marine C-130 that I, you know, assigned in receipt for, and I don't know a thing about the C-130. And we had some awesome Marines that would go maintain that thing all over the country, and they'd fly all night to get us an engine. And um, by and large, it was pretty seamless. Um, you know, it also helped that we all wore the same uniform, maybe a different hat um and a different name tag, but we all wore the same blue angle uniform.

Mark McGrath 53:58

We won't we don't have to go into it here, but I think that is one thing about the naval forces that people do not truly appreciate the fact how well the Navy and the Marines, as the naval force, work together, even if they're flying demonstration planes. It's yeah, it kind of goes with the grunt. Okay. The other thing that blew up jumped off the page was, you know, you know, we had talked about uh a tough part of what can happen, but we also you mentioned you kind of hit on it, you transitioned from one frame to the other. That seems like a very big, that is a massive reorientation for a culture to go through, not just because of the physical differences, but the fact that you guys are the the innovators, the first ones to test it, the first ones to try it. I'm sure that that compounded it, that others that maybe just kept the same frame through a couple of different command tours, but now you've got this new one. I don't I don't think that that can be undersold. That seems like a big deal.

Ryan "Guido" Bernacchi 54:52

That was a it was a very big deal. We didn't do it in real time during my time because it it would be too much to undertake. I did, though, as both a a maintenance officer, a department head in the fleet, and then as a skipper, transition a squadron from hornets to super hornets, and I knew it was a very demanding, you know, time-consuming, rigorous process. It takes months, it's uh just a ton of work, and it's very disruptive. Um, and so when we were looking at the end of the kind of viable use of the uh legacy F-18, um, one of the big things I advocated for, and a lot of this it was really I I would say the the primary drive driver in this were the lessons learned in losing Jeff, was that we we there there's so many things that can go wrong that we will miss if we don't really get a running start at this. And so what I what I proposed to the to the chief of naval air training and the chief of naval air forces, the air boss, so a a one and a three-star that was my chain of command and great leaders, took some time, but we we started a dialogue about what would it take to do this transition, when would be the right time to do it, and we kind of worked back from that of you know, if we could determine when the Navy could have airplanes ready, what would be the right timing for the team? And really the answer is um it has to be a second-year boss or a third year, you know, or you're gonna have to freeze the team and keep everybody in in their current position so that the only variable you're changing is the airplane. And ultimately that's what they did. Uh, and I think that was correct. And then um uh we said, hey, that there is no bandwidth for the squadron itself to stand up another squadron of airplanes while we're traveling 300 days a year on the road and supporting these air shows, let alone doing so with really um aging aircraft. That's a we can't ask them to then also start the process of learning and maintaining new airplanes. So let's we set it up in parallel. And so I stood up the first super horrendous transition team. It started with just um a few people. And we built out kind of a coalition of the willing up at the naval nave air at the um where where all the all the work was really being done to design the transition, the engineering work, the simulator evaluations. So as soon as I I turned over the squadron to Popeye Doyle, I went to work with my prior number five, Frank Weiser, and one of our maintenance guys. Um, and we built this coalition of people and we laid out the whole plan. We ended up going to the Senate to get like $79 million at the like absolute bottom out of sequestration where there was no money. That we could do a whole podcast on that. Um the country was committed to having a future for the blues, and they found a way to do it in a way that wouldn't hurt the overall readiness of strike fighters and the Navy and Marine Corps. In fact, it helped what we ended up, the plan we put together. And then we laid it all out in parallel so that at the end of what would be two seasons later, um uh Brian Kesselring, who was the that was basically the team that was featured in the Amazon Prime movie, the Super Hornets, was ready to accept them. Everything was to include a manual about this thick was written, everything had been evaluated, risk mitigated um in the simulators and with all kinds of engineering work, you know, hundreds, thousands of hours of engineering assessments. It was all done and the jets were ready to go. So they could just focus on the differences. Um, and that's how it worked very smoothly, which also in that whole process, Maverick was being filmed, and so they figured out how to put these IMAX cameras on Super Hornets. And that's how that then allowed them to put those same cameras in the blue jets to make the Amazon movie with um G Kessel Ring and the team.

Mark McGrath 58:47

All right, last thing to segue into what Ponch wants to talk about, because this is this is critical to what about the debrief. As an outsider looking in as a non-aviator, you know, Marines are naval officers too. We're just a different type of naval officer. But looking in the things that have always impressed me about the blues is number one, how they can visualize things and how they visualize things as a team and how they talk through things too.

Brian "Ponch" Rivera 59:09

Let's unpack that here a second. Uh, and and I want to set this up.

Mark McGrath 59:11

Uh so can I just can I say the second thing, Ponch? Hold on, can I say the second thing? The other, the other thing, and I think that this it's talked about, you've brought it up, and I think you can never oversell it. The level of trust that you have to have, and you were talking about how you take off your glasses, others take off your glasses. If you made a move wrong, you know, it's going to trickle down and others are going to make errors. The amount of trust that people have in each other, in theory, you could fly them all into the deck and they they would follow you because they because they trusted you. You know, I mean, that level of trust is it's many places in the naval forces, it's really on display when you're putting planes within, you know, a hand, uh, you know, an arm's length of each other. Um, the the trust factor I don't think could ever be undersold. Yeah, sorry, oversold.

Ryan "Guido" Bernacchi 1:00:01

Um I'll start there and then and then I know Ponch, you want to set things up, but I'll just kind of answer the last thing first, which is um the trust is certainly exceptional in it, but I think the key is what you said, Moose, which is it's on display. I think that level of trust is absolutely the same level. It's alive and well, and it's at scale when you go out on an aircraft carrier and you look at these young men and women that are working to flight deck, that are maintaining the airplanes, that are operating the catapults and the arresting gear, that are down in the reactor that we're all sleeping over. You know, there's actually two of them down there, these nuclear reactors that are that are keeping everything going. That level of trust is just as high throughout, but you really see it kind of personified in the in the the crazy environment of the flight deck. Also, for those of us that have had this, you know, I mean, you did the math on it, Ponch, this incredibly rare opportunity to fly off of these ships and do so together, the trust is just as high. And, you know, I I think probably if I were to, you know, if we were gonna talk do some war stories or whatever, the the the things that were most impactful to me in my career were the things that other people did, the cur courage other people showed when we were out flying together to do something to make sure that I got out of a jam, that I could get my airplane back to the ship, the extremists they put themselves in to make that happen. And so nobody ever sees that stuff. I mean, we could tell a story and it wouldn't do justice, you know. I I can try to tell a story, but you'd have to, you know, Ponch, I know you've experienced this. Moose, I would guarantee you experience this with your Marines uh out in the field. It's just on display with the blues. When you put four airplanes, you know, 12 inches apart or 18 inches apart, that it's so obvious that there's a crazy degree of trust going, but I don't think we did anything different than than what you see everywhere else. We're just putting it on display. It's just public. Exactly the way to put it. But but was I wrong? There's a whole lot of preparation. Yeah.

Mark McGrath 1:01:58

If I am I wrong if, you know, if again, you as the leader, if you're having a bad day and you say, uh hell with the world, if you flew them all into the deck, they're gonna follow you because they they they trust you, you know. That that that's uh, you know, that's awesome.

Ryan "Guido" Bernacchi 1:02:11

Uh we I definitely dragged the delta down way too low, not on purpose once, and uh they they managed to to hang in there. We had you know, you're gonna have close calls and you work through those together. But I'll tell you, the when you do, when something goes wrong in in training or it could be in a show, um, you know, you get you get too low, you you something dangerous happens. There's only one way forward. And I think this will get to the debrief of where you're going punch, I think, anyways. But when something goes really wrong, the trust is not broken in that moment. We've survived it, but the future is is certainly undetermined whether that trust will be sustained, if it will go up, it'll go down, or it'll be destroyed. And it and all of that hinges entirely on the debrief. And there's only, in my experience, one way forward, and that is just complete and utter no excuses ownership. You say, hey, that I did this, that was on me. I just about flew this all into the water. I'm really sorry. Not why, not well, it's the sun was in my eye, I couldn't see in the thing, and so and so this call came late, and what I was I was distracted, I didn't sleep like whatever. You could have a million year reasons why that happens, and none of them matter for trust. The only thing that matters is pure 100% vulnerable ownership. That was me, I messed up, I'm sorry, I will fix it. That's it, that's all you can say. And that then creates the possibility that everyone will say, Okay, I'm good with that. Let's go do it again. But that's the only way forward. If you don't do that, there is no way forward. So that that's been that was my experience. And that that's not blue angels. That you learn that in flight school. We take it to a a very high degree because they're because the trust is so high, because we could, you know, I can fly them into the the ground or the water in in a diamond or delta formation and we'd all hit together. Um, but also I'm expecting them not to hit me. You know, when they're when they're rendezvousing with 150 knots of closure and they do these hockey stop rendezvous, I'm not watching any of that. I just assume they're not gonna obliterate me when they come in and mutual trust. When we are flying 12 inches apart, the last thing I'm doing is is thinking about if one of them's gonna come up and take my wingtip off, they're expecting me not to move my wing one degree. I'm expecting that, you know, or or change the G on the pole or anything else because they're so close now that we have to be locked in in those moments. Everybody's just trusting each other in those in the in that extreme display environment. And so the only way you get there is by just utter ownership, accountability, and getting after that as if as the most important thing we did was debrief. Yeah. So I'll maybe that sets it up for you, Ponch.

Brian "Ponch" Rivera 1:05:04

Yeah, we got a limited amount of time. Uh there's a lot of things I want to cover. I don't know if we'll get to them, uh, but I do want to go back to the plan, execute, assess, teamwork uh framework, which we call P-Bed, Plan Brief, Execute Debrief, and how all organizations can do that. Now, when you ever jump into a Blue Angel brief for the first time, and I remember this, I start smiling, almost laughing, because the boss started doing something. Um, and I want you to walk us through that uh here in a moment. But that that planning process, that briefing process is kind of sacred. It's it's uh it's you know, you you change your intent, identity, and intelligence as you walk into the brief, you have your uniform on. It's it's a structured approach. And uh just to give you more context here, you talked about alignment of the organization. That's what you did when you came in. Now you're gonna go ahead and brief the brief. And you started off earlier where you talk about which runway you're gonna take off and the reverse walk down or all that. But can you take us through the what, how, and why of the brief and make some connections to that simulation, that that cognitive thing you go through to get prepped up to go execute?

The Brief That Creates Total Focus

Ryan "Guido" Bernacchi 1:06:07

Yeah. So I'll try to try to hit the wave tops just for for time. But I think the way to think about really what we're creating on a on a daily basis or a per event basis, because you might have, you know, three flights in a day or something, but in each cycle of it, you're what you're really doing is is creating a focus that we're all in together. And that starts that really backs up in in the morning to how do you all arrive? So, you know, it's you might have a police escort, you might just be at your home base, whatever. But part of our standardization was that we would be in the spaces, in whatever building we were in, whatever state, city, wherever we were in the country, as a team, 45 minutes prior to the brief or whatever meeting, whatever we're doing. 45 minutes prior, you will be there. Ten minutes prior, we're all gonna be in the room. And so imagine this in a corporate setting, right? Everybody's gonna be in the conference room 10 minutes prior. And we're milling about, having some coffee, whatever, cowboy time. But five minutes prior, well, that and no one's saying, hey, five minutes, five minutes prior, everybody's in their kind of magically. Everybody's seated. And the cell phones go away, they're silenced, they're they're if somebody still needs to be on their phone, the opsos working something, hey. Hey, boss, can I get away? I need to just make a I'm finishing this message here. Yeah, okay, that's fine. But otherwise, we're going to start respecting everybody else's focus by putting our crap away. You know, there's nothing, no greater threat to safety and focus or performance, you know, for your sales team or whatever, whatever the team is that you're that you're trying to honor in this, and we're all spending this time together. Let's make it worth something than those devices, right? So those go away. One minute prior, without anybody saying a word, it goes completely silent. Just falls silent. And then exactly on time, I'll say, Good afternoon, everybody, admin. And number five will say, Yes, we're a boss, we'll brief our demo over Virginia Beach or whatever it is, right? And then I'll start into the, you know, okay, I've got the weather, I start reading the weather, and there's this whole thing that flows out of that. And then we, you know, he hit that basically lay out the plan, and then we've got our maps, our aerial maps are laid out in front of us, and it's got the all our you know, little markings and whatever. And you take your pen and you you draw the sequence. Hey, we're gonna, you know, the the um the diamonds gonna be in the left for the diamond 360, the souls will be in for the opposing knife edge. And you just go through this whole process that calibrates everybody. And good God, we all know the sequence by then. And yet it's very important to take this time and align ourselves into where we are, into the moment, the focus that we created starting as we walked in the building. Because what we're doing doesn't have room for distractions, but it's also it's also unlocking the performance we're trying to achieve, the high, very high level performance we're trying to achieve. So taking the time to talk through it, even though we know it, and having us all be 100% dedicated to that focus, then leads us into chairfly. So there's always it's you know, if it's a high show, you're gonna chairfly the liner breast loop and the loop break cross. If it's a low show, you're gonna do the delta rolling. Well, everybody knows what you're gonna chairfly, and it's gonna be the one that that is typically the most challenging. And we're gonna do that in sequence in the chronological order. When we get to that point of the of I'm drawing now, okay, well, and then the um the fire ship will mean for the right for the line of breath loop. And then we're all just gonna put our pen, everyone's gonna step back from there from where they were, and we're all gonna go as if we're flying the airplane, and we're gonna now go through the line of breath loop. And I'm gonna call it all out. And if you look at, you know, you can see this in the prime movie, everybody's hands are moving in unison, everybody's eyes are closed, everybody's in this very deep, concentrated state. Uh, we'll do that a couple of times, and then after the the brief is over, number four will usually pick another maneuver or two that maybe we've got a hitch in or we're trying to refine or whatever, and we'll it'll just sort of audible, you know, it's a pop quiz. Hey Moss, let's uh chair fly the uh I don't know, uh low break cross. And and it's not that hard because I've got it all memorized. We just okay, uh, we're Muhammad Groud set up the low break cross. And I just go into the whole thing and we we all get to fly a rep right there in the briefing room, and and that rep will translate to the to the jets.

Brian "Ponch" Rivera 1:10:28

And so the tempo that the tempo that you use when you're doing that, I know when you're briefing, it's it's a quick brief, but when it's chair flying, you're using the tempo that you're going that you expect to use in the in the demo.

Ryan "Guido" Bernacchi 1:10:39

Yeah, so chair flying happens in real time. There are some parts you can kind of fast forward through where nothing's happening, you know, if it's a lengthy period of time. But in general, if it's a two-minute maneuver, the chair flying is going to take about two minutes. And so it it's a it's unbelievably powerful. I mean, you start learning it in flight school. I don't know, I had 607 character landings. I think I I chair flew before every single flight on the boat, you know, in the middle of the cruise, I'd go find two minutes and just think about my landing and visualize it. What if I'm high and right? What if I'm low and left? All that stuff. So that when I found myself that night, you know, two in the morning at three quarters of a mile behind the ship and was a little high and right on my lineup, I'd already been there. And it's the same, you know, and so then what you're doing to to correct that is is already you've already flown it once in the day. It's gonna be a lot easier the second time instead of being surprised by it. Um, and and so we would do the same thing uh in chair flying, and uh what it was was it was pretty laborious, and I got really good at it, and you you sort of just stopped being embarrassed by, you know, you're doing this sort of cadence voice, you know, up we go, and you're doing all this kind of stuff, which synchronizes everybody. It's the it's you know, it's it's giving you um, you know, amplitude of movement, it's rate of movement, it's doing all here's how fast boss is moving the stick or the throttles or extending the, you know, here come the speed brakes or whatever it is. Um, we're all going to go get the smoke on at the exact same time based on the cadence of smoke on pull. But I don't say pull on the radio because my thumb is moving from the mic smoke on to the flare switch, which is the smoke switch. And so I can't say pull, but when we chair fly it, I always say it so everyone knows how fast my thumb is moving on, pull. And so they can hear my voice saying that when I just, but all they hear on the radio is smoke on, and then the smoke comes on, right? So we get down to that level of detail, but it's really about you know how fast are we gonna roll, how much stick am I moving? And what's very interesting is um, like you said, it happens in real time. So, especially my first year, but I did this all the way through both years, I would chair fly the whole show at the show site we were in on Friday mornings in my hotel room when most of the team was off doing school visits and stuff. That was kind of my like quiet time, my white space on the on the calendar. And I would chair, you know, by then I had flown the circles and found all my checkpoints. I knew what the show site looked like from the Thursday flights. Now, Friday morning I could visualize everything, so I would sit and fly the show. Well, it's easy to do on an easy show s you know, relatively flat show site in, I don't know, Iowa or something, with a beautiful weather forecast, not a chance of rain. I just had to do one show over a pretty simple place. But if there was like the weather was going to be anybody's bet, we had five different shows that year. We had a flat show, a flat roll tub show, or a flat tub, flat roll, a low show, and a high show. So I would often fly all five shows because they were they were different and they had different ground tracks that year. We simplified that later, but that was part of all of the things we we try to do in the post mishap aftermath was really simplify things. That would take me like three hours to fly five shows in my hotel room. And whoever was, you know, sharing a wall with me is listening to this thing go on, you know, for hours of we go, a little more pull, ready back, you know, like he's doing that again. Like, I mean, they must have thought it was crazy, right? And so uh so I think it's just, but but why did I do that? Because the power of it is so impactful. It is it to my mind, I would then be completely at ease going into whatever we were gonna face because I'd already done it. I was I was relaxed, I was confident, I knew that I had done all the prep. I my mind knew that it was ready. And then when I went out and did it, I'd already done it before earlier in the day. And so it was fresh. And now you start getting into that higher level of performance. And that the team could feel it too, right? They like boss is on. Because if I'm not, to your point, Moose, if I'm off, everybody's off. And and so I found that that time was just utterly invaluable. And I I never stopped doing it a little less on the my second year on places I'd already been, you know, for coming back to the same city, and that it was a nice day, and I was pretty comfortable. I'm I might do an abbreviated version of that. But otherwise, that's what I was doing the whole way through.

unknown 1:15:07

All right.

Brian "Ponch" Rivera 1:15:07

So now we get to you get airborne, you got the team airborne with you, and you we've already covered alignment. We got uh the synchronous synchronicity checked out, you got smoke coming on, a pool coming on. Now they're flying independently. This is that harmony piece that I think um, I don't know if we can make that connection. I don't know if we should, but they are doing things slightly different each time to fly off of you. Is that correct? I mean you're trying to keep a stable platform for them, right?

Ryan "Guido" Bernacchi 1:15:32

Yeah, the way I so I think you can build, you can kind of stack alignment to synchronicity to harmony. And the, but I almost like the alignment and the synchronicity in the in the context of flying formation get kind of intermeshed. Because we're using the voice calls for synchronicity, we're either literally cueing off my voice so that we all move exactly together, as opposed to watching me do something and then chasing it reactively. Um, so those those things I think you can pull them apart, but they also tend to kind of mesh together. I think let me give you uh let me give you uh another analogy that I think shows how these two fit together and then opens up in the harmony. So start with alignment and synchronicity. One of the really fascinating things going back to our earlier discussion about it's just different. That one of the things that utterly blew my mind was that the first thing you do when you take off with the diamond is take your feet off the rudder pedals. You were talking about Tomcat pilots and rudder pedals and how the wingmen use their rudders like crazy. You have these huge, really powerful rudders on the back of the jet, and they are they are using those almost as their primary rolling control surface, which is counterintuitive to most flying. But what's really surprising and count was what kind of blew my mind was that the boss is flying without the rudder pedals for the whole show. So as you take off, you've got this um, I don't know if if your camera will see that. Maybe if I roll back enough here. As you take off, you've got a 32-pound spring that you're pulling. Let me see how I can do this a little better.

Brian "Ponch" Rivera 1:17:07

You're good. We'll get it all if uh yeah.

Self Limiting Leadership In Formation

Ryan "Guido" Bernacchi 1:17:10

So so you've got this 32-pound spring. So your arm is dug into your knee and you're pulling against the spring. And as you go down the runway for the takeoff, you got the diamond rolling with you. And as soon as you come off the ground, number four, four's wheels come off the ground, and he says gear. And we all reach up and raise the gear together. And as soon as that happens, my hand comes off the gear handle and and holds the stick. I raise my right elbow and I take my foot that's on the rudder pedal for takeoff, both my feet, right? You're steering down the runway, and I take my right foot and I tuck my boot, like wedge it in under the ejection seat, and then I re-anchor my elbow. And then my left foot comes and wedges under the ejection seat, and now I'm in a position that I'm gonna be in for probably the next 42 minutes or so. And I then put my hands back on the throttle in time to say, up we go for the whatever overhead maneuver we're doing, the burner loop or ascrawl cage. Um, and now we're we're flying. The wingmen, on the other hand, have their elbow anchored in here, and so they're flying like a normal airplane with their elbow tucked in and their feet on the rudders, and they're actually really using the rudders. And so when you this I wasn't thinking about in real time, but from a leadership and alignment perspective, what's happening here is that the leader is self-limiting. I'm taking one of my four axes of controls completely out of the equation for the wingman so they don't have to think about it. So instead of you know, pitch, roll, yaw, and you know, thrust, drag, all I'm doing is pitch and roll, and I'm adding or taking off my nerve. And that's it. And then on top of that, from an alignment perspective, I'm talking about it before I do it, and then I'm updating the changes. So every maneuver starts with two preparatory calls. And like we said, everybody knows what's coming, right? We've done this thing together hundreds of times. Now it's different everywhere you go. It's not the same thing over and over because the air is different, the show side's different, everything's always different, but yet we know what's coming next, right? We're gonna do the diamond 360, then we're gonna do the diamond roll, then we're gonna do the diamond airline roll, then we're gonna do the the on 30 loop. Whatever the sequence is for the show we're doing, and we all know it, no doubt. Zero questions. And yet, as the leader, I'm still gonna say we're behind the crowd, so I get the diamond roll or whatever the maneuver is. And then as we roll out to start actually into this rolling maneuver and formation, I'm gonna say, use the pole rolling out the diamond roll. Like, duh, we all know we're doing the diamond roll, and you've told us twice. But it's also really important to take the time to say, here's where we are and here's where we're going. And then we're gonna do the synchronicity piece or the synchronizing via up we go. And as I, you know, use voice inflection to talk about how fast I'm moving and when I, you know, start and stop on the G and go go. And when I stop, the stick stops moving. I'm also now only gonna move in one axis at a time. I'm not gonna roll and pull, I'm just gonna go fore and aft and then left and right, or add power while not moving the stick or whatever it is. Again, from a leadership standpoint, I'm self-limiting. I've taken one axis completely out, and the other axes, I'm only moving one at a time. While all that's happening, I've already told them where we are and where we're going twice. Seems really repetitive, knowing that we all know what's happening. And then as we go into it, if something's changing, I'm gonna talk about that too. If we need more pull, I'm gonna say a little more pull. I'm not just gonna add more pull. But on that, when they hear a little more, they know what's coming. On the P and pull, we all start moving our sticks at whatever voice inflection I'm using. A little more pull or a little more pull. That's gonna be a different amount of pull, right? So when you zoom out, you go, hey, I'm doing all these things to limit myself. I'm gonna take away an axis, I'm gonna only move one axis at a time. I'm gonna tell you what we're doing before we do it, and I'm gonna update you to any changes when they happen. And then you go, Well, what are the rest of the guys doing? They are completely free and empowered to do whatever they need to do to maintain their positions. I'm not telling them how to do it. I'm not looking over my shoulder saying, hey, you need more rudder over there. Uh, it's up to them to figure that out. And so when you then go, okay, if that's our team and the leader is talking about what they're doing, uh, even though it's repetitive, telling us where we are and where we're going, stating the changes and limiting their movements while things are changing, and at the same time telling everyone else to do what you need. You can go full throat, slam the rudder on the floor, put a cross control your throttles. I don't care what you do. Your job is to maintain alignment, and it's going to be different for every one of you. There are no two pilots that are using the same inputs to maintain position as we continuously go through a roll or whatever it is that we're doing, which is dynamic, right? Just like the the world we're all operating in. It's never steady state. It's constantly changing in every variable, and yet we're using these tools to stay aligned all the time. And so I think that actually gives you some great agility too, because you then recognize things are changing. You have the ability to change together because you know what, hey, something's changing. You just told me a little more. Okay, we're going to change. I know I'm going to be empowered to do what I need if I need to do something different. And I know he's going to stay predictable or she. And so it creates clarity in where we're going and the ability to recognize change and then adjust to it together. So it's really kind of this powerful thing. I wasn't thinking about any of this while I was flying, by the way. Yeah. But with the benefit of some hindsight, it's all kind of come into focus.

Brian "Ponch" Rivera 1:22:33

So this is huge, Moose. Uh the connection here in the past, I always thought the Blue Angels were, you know, a complicated uh system. They're more like a jazz ensemble. Uh, I think that's what I'm hearing from you, from uh Guido. Uh can you talk a little bit about mission command, uh, implicit guides of control, and anything else that you're picking up Moose uh from this?

Mark McGrath 1:22:50

Yeah, I was jotting notes down on this timeline because uh what what Guido was hitting uh brief enhances eFAST, right? Builds orientation and enhances EFAST. So Boyd's acronym of EFAST, Einheit, finger spitzing good fuel, uh off trucks, tactic, and share punct, enhances Einheit, mutual trust by debriefing and being honest and candid that I as a 03 can tell an 05 this was this is what happened, this is what you did, and you can read it back to me or whatever. That builds that that that uh mutual trust. That's Einheit, the finger spitzing fuel. So together, by debrief, by effective debrief, by learning, we're on the world of reorientation together. We're augmenting our intuition as a as a team because I number one have an orientation, so does number two, number three. We as a squadron have an orientation together, and we build that intuition together by effective learning, reorienting, debrief. The AlfTruck, you just kind of said it yourself. I I can't look and see what they're doing because I trust them, right? Well, that is decentralized command. There's an Alf Truck Tactic, there's an implied contract that I'm not gonna fly in the Guido. I'm gonna, he's gonna trust me to do the right thing, just like I'm trusting him to do the right thing. So it's decentralized and empowered, even though it still looks on the surface, as Ponch is kind of saying, it really does look like a complicated centralized activity. It's actually not, it's a free-flowing decentralized activity. And then the last thing, the schwerpunkt, you know, we're all uh the the effective debrief on the world of reorientation allows us to learn together um uh to keep us focused on our schwerpunkt of a successful show. Um and and do and then delivering that, you know, accomplishing that mission, or the schwerpunkt of integrating a new airframe, the schwer punct of, you know, uh replacing a teammate or bringing in new teammates or whatever. That effective debrief and that constant candor and that constant decentralization. So yeah, that's that is so critical. And I just was writing that stuff down because uh I I think I'm looking at the blues in a different way anyway. But now I'm really looking at them differently, having an insider view to say, no, these are not robot automatons. These are these are humans that are subject to human factors and the laws of physics that in order to thrive, they have to constantly destroy and create perception. They have, but and they do that, one of the ways that they do that is by effective, candid, open debrief. And that enhances those things, the mutual trust, the off-track, and everything.

Brian "Ponch" Rivera 1:25:30

Yeah, we'll we'll dive into some more debriefing here in a second, guys. I want to just come back uh what I'm hearing from um Guido. Uh going back to flow triggers, we we talk about flow quite a bit on here. So concentration, uh, you're saying the conditions for that. We're changing who we are when we walk into a brief. The way you uh explained that, I didn't recognize that when I was rushing the team, that that's that time progression is actually how you change intent, identity, and intelligence, get prep prepared for something. That's huge. Shared clear goals that's in there, good communication, close listening. Uh, they're shutting down their stuffs, they're getting focused on things. Clearly they're familiar. Blending egos is really about you know removing rank and all that, getting prepped up. We'll talk about that in the debrief. Uh, and of course, that shared risk is already out there in the environment. So those flow triggers, that's what you're doing, is you're you're bringing folks in. And I think this goes for any organization, any high-performing sports team. If you're not doing this, you need to start doing this now. You need to learn how to do this all the time. It's a process. By the way, teamwork or teaming is known as the process of teamwork. It's a complicated, repeatable thing, and it scales through different organizations. So I'm I'm picking that up from you, Guido. And then when we get into the debrief, you brought up psychological safety earlier. Not a lot of folks in the military have come across that term psychological safety. We get that from Amy Edmondson. It's actually uh, she identified it with some others that saw it in the healthcare setting where emergency room teams were trained by aviators. All right, this is kind of cool. In the Navy, we kind of kicked around the idea of calling it uh removing fear in the organization. But when we get to the debrief, can you walk us through the most important aspect of what you do as a leader to create the conditions for people to be their full self and help us out with that?

Debrief Ownership And Psychological Safety

Ryan "Guido" Bernacchi 1:27:07

Yeah. Oh, what a great question. So it's funny because I had not heard the term either when I was flying in the fleet, a psychological safety. And the first time I heard it, my last job was at the Naval Academy. I was running essentially the school of leadership there, although nautical terms for everything, so we didn't quite call it that. But I had another aviator that was a faculty member and uh she was a lieutenant commander, and we were working through some challenge that the faculty of about 50 people were just going through. And so she came in to chat with me and she said, Hey, uh boss, I just want to thank you for the psychological safety to discuss this. And in my head, I'm like, what the fuck did she just say? And of course I said, like, oh, well, you're welcome. But I'm like, as soon as she left, I was like, psychological safety, what is it? You know, on Google. And I'm like, oh, oh, we've been doing this for like our whole careers. It's just a it was just a name I hadn't heard, right? And so you could you could talk about vulnerability, you could talk about coachability, but creating psychological safety, actually, I I think of it often as lowering the current, the courage quotient. Like how much courage does it take to actually say something, whether it's a safety issue, uh the boss isn't performing very well, or it's you know, how how do you lower that to that, to the absolute lowest level? And I would argue that it always takes some courage to speak up, right? No matter how psychologically safe it takes, it's still an act of of some that might be a very small amount, but it's it's take some courage to say, hey, I I don't think that was right, or I I see something over here I don't like, or whatever it is, right? But the goal is, especially for safety, but equally important for performance, is how do you lower that to the absolute lowest possible level and keep it there? And so I think that's that's what you were asking, is how what was my approach to that? I think um I certainly I certainly would rather err on the side of humility than than overconfidence or cockiness in any environment. And I think you know this is counter to the to the Hollywood image of what we what we did onch, but you you and I know that's just not the way it is. And then the the aviators out there that are that are really doing well in in the air and as leaders are. incredibly humble and approach these environments as one that's it's essential to our safety and our performance to to check your ego at the door. And so I think it starts with with whoever's running the the debrief. You have to be the one that does that first. But you also, you know, talk is cheap and actions are going to do all the talking. So are you actually humble? Well you you you have to embody that you have to you have to feel it and believe it. But then you also have to exemplify it and this is what I would call um what you really want to do is is exemplify your your accountability and coachability. I don't have them necessarily a term exemplary coachability or something but it's um the idea is that you you're going to walk in and and start the conversation with what you did wrong. Hear all the mistakes I'm aware of and then invite people to chime in. What did I miss? And if it's just everyone's staring at you and crickets you call on people right you there's somebody you know will always speak up right and you hey Ponch did you see anything else? Yeah uh you also did this this this and this okay thanks and then we get the ball rolling but you have to actively seek that add-on it's not enough for you just to say everything you're aware of because you may not know that something's going on and what happens when you don't talk about it is everyone assumes you're you know it but you're not saying it. And it and you know for me you know if if I debriefed 60 points on average of errors that I made in a show, 50 to 60 things I would write down, you know, that there were often two or three times as many things I didn't know happened. But if I didn't create space for them to say, hey this also happened they're going to assume that I knew about it and just don't want to talk about it. So it creates, you know, you start you start growing elephants, right? And they get really big and you don't even know they're there because you don't even know you made the mistake. So you have to create that that opportunity for people to chime in and you have to really incentivize it. Call on people and when they bring something up you say thank you for saying that I was not aware of that. And then you write it down. Just the simple act of thank you for bringing that up and you write it down. You can write down what anything you want. But the act of them seeing you record that is incredibly important because you've now taken that on board and you've validated them saying it. And I think that that then creates a whole different environment from that point on for everyone else to then chime in and and then saying hey I'm stuck on this I don't get it can can you help me understand this better? Can you help me fix this is the next important thing because now you're you're repeating the request for people to chime in and provide coaching to you. And man how great is it when when the boss is the one being coached yeah well we can all exhale like instead of having to tiptoe around this or hope he figures it out on his own he's actually asking us for help we can help him and take the blue angel example you got three pilots that know exactly what they're doing and they just finished doing it at an unbelievably elite level the week before and now you're brand new and don't have a clue and you're asking for help okay we can do this together. So you've enrolled them in the process and you're now going to get much better. It's the same thing when you're I'm looking for what am I what are blind spots, right? Just ask that asking that question what what are we not thinking about here? What am I missing is so important for leaders to do in any context. And when somebody does speak up it's gift wrapped but you've got to incentivize you got to reward and say thank you. And that's I think how you start driving that courage quotient down or you really start opening up that psychological safety. And the last thing I'll say on this is is putting it in a future context. So forward looking coaching gets you to the future right we're no longer assessing you know or or critiquing what went wrong. We're thinking about how we can do it better. But you can do that and this is where your words really do become your actions is is you say, hey thanks for that. I'm going to fix it. So you're expressing gratitude and a commitment to doing better in the future the the blues we add, you know, you've heard it but we would at the end of every debrief we would each go around that point and say I'll fix it all and I'm glad to be here. And at first that sounded like an absurd statement to me because like how are you going to fix all those 50 things you just talked about or a hundred things. Like well you're you're not but you're committed to doing it and you might fix two or three of them tomorrow and you might invent new ways to screw it up also. So add those to the list. In fact you will but over time these errors are going to get really small in amplitude and they're going to become much more you know spread out. And while I might have had 60 debrief points on the very last show that we flew which was magnificent they were really really small. And in fact that was the only show we didn't debrief or only flight we didn't debrief is the very last one because you're done the team's over so we just walked out and I guess what I hated it I really wanted to talk about because this is so cathartic right and so that that positive forward twist of a statement that you make it doesn't have to be those words but I mean there were many times especially early on I didn't feel glad to be there in this at the end of a debrief where I had just been wirebrushed for an hour and a half. And we get really efficient outdoor debriefs are 30 40 minutes but and they go by fast. But you you just destroyed right you are utterly crushed and you got to go back two more times today and get back in a jet and figure it out. But by the time you say the words this is where your words you become your actions and the power of your words is when you say I'll fix it all knowing what that means it's a commitment to improve and I'm glad to be here if I didn't feel it when I said I'm by the time I said glad to be here when the last three words came out by the time the period dropped on here I felt transformed and I actually did feel glad to be there. That's how powerful that commitment to the team is and that also enrolls people and invigorates them and starts opening up this this trust that can eventually lead you into this harmony range. So I'll I'll pause there because I was no I wonder if we could keep you for a few minutes.

Brian "Ponch" Rivera 1:35:27

I have I want to go a little bit deeper. This is cool. Yeah so I've got two questions for you actually uh first question is one they never sat down and went over how you do an effective debrief it's just part of our culture.

Ryan "Guido" Bernacchi 1:35:37

My question to you is when you join the blues do they give you a new process to do that uh is is is or is that just something that you did naturally so the the blues process I would say really is a a very like focused refinement of of the fleet process the top gun SFWT curriculum you go maneuver by maneuver you know intercept by intercept and you you write down all the points that each pilot that participated the controller the ground crew whatever everybody gets a chance to say what they could have done better what they and we'd also talk about what we liked you know hey this went well this didn't so I think that's important to not lose track of like what worked and what didn't work is you know what worked is also important. It's okay to celebrate some wins and feel good about those but you know in general especially early it was much heavier on all the things that went wrong than what went right but we we became very efficient and so so you get to watch it as a as a khaki newbie right you just observe for six weeks. Yep and you watch these guys go around the room and very efficiently get through the entire thing. And then inevitably you know the very first flight we went out on we didn't do very many things you know did some turns and some speed changes and put the speed brakes and the smoke you know switches in and out and whatever. There wasn't a whole lot to talk about but it took me like an hour. You know it should have taken like like eight minutes. And so right away on the very first time they're like okay hey good job getting the points what we need you to do is not talk about why or how just what went wrong.

Brian "Ponch" Rivera 1:37:05

What?

Ryan "Guido" Bernacchi 1:37:06

And then the next day inevitably you start telling a story about why you screwed up the the level speed change with the afterburner and you got in the thing and it happened and that's why and they're like to say I was late getting out of burn speed change and we ended up turning outs fast. That's it. Yeah late on the speed change.

Brian "Ponch" Rivera 1:37:22

I I wanted to ask you this this is so Simon Sinek talks about the the why the how and the what and I say when we talk about debriefing it's the what the how and the why what happened how did it happen why did it happen and this is important when you do a debrief of the blue angels it's not just the the team that's flying it includes the ground crew and there's other I think the flight surgeon does a lot but they're providing you context of what happened and I Moose and I talk about in debriefing uh and and Scott Tannenbaum talks about this quite a bit is that it's important to understand what happened from multiple perspectives because we do not as individuals have a deep understanding of the big picture. And uh Adam talks about this Moose and that is attunement and I believe the uh it's it's the attunement to the environment we we have to know what's important so the next time we go out there we can see it. Any thoughts on that Guido?

What Happened First Then Why

Ryan "Guido" Bernacchi 1:38:07

Yeah um I love Simon and the way he frames things and and yeah different than then you know in trying to start with why for a pitch or um and the order you guys go is tell me again it was why what how no what happened because we all understand that yeah what happened and we'll figure out the how and then the why or the multiple whys not going with the five whys by the way so yeah so so I I think the nuance here and it's much the same way in a fleet like tactics debrief is the real key in in breaking this down when we're all together in the room, when the whole team is assembled is establishing what happened. It's really important to say this is what happened for accountability and for everyone's awareness. Then you get into okay well how did it happen and why did it happen? You're not always going to do that because so much of it is we all know why it x percent happened like 60% of what went wrong we all we don't need to talk about it. In fact you're just gonna piss us all off. But some of it we do need to unpack. And so but it's but it's really important for accountability and for trust that we just establish a set of here are all the things that went wrong and what else am I missing? Now I think this is the trick from a leadership perspective is you leave it to either your you have maybe a designated you know someone who's running the training in this case it's number four you know fleet debrief it's your your SFTI your patchware or or your flight lead or whoever it is, your LSO. You leave it up to them to their discretion to to decide what we're gonna unpack and and how far we're gonna go into it. And that's often very constrained by time. But it's also you want to leave some of that nuance and that the art of all of this to the people you're counting on to help the team develop because you can't talk about it all. And and knowing how far you push today, like we're not going to solve it all today. So let's just go to the next level of understanding of all right, hey boss here's here's what kind of went wrong. It was really in the setup right or think about it from a carrier landing you know there's there's a million things you could do from the 180 to the wire that you could do better. But right now we're just gonna focus on that initial turn off of the 180 because that's where everything kind of went off track. Eventually we're gonna talk about the whole thing but we're not going to do it all today. And we would often have a kind of a a separate debrief after where I would just sit down with the diamond pilots and we'd really kind of unpack some things that were in their heads or my head or whatever. But in in the big room we need to account for everything that happened and then pick a few things that we're gonna dive more deeper into so that the team can benefit from the learning. And I think that's the that's the like hey is this benefit everybody that we dive into this together? Is that mutual learning the organizational learning that's occurring then let's let's take some extra time and and dive a little further into how and why if not then let's save that for a separate discussion. Let's let's honor everybody's time and say these are all the things we're working on and we're gonna we're gonna subdivide into teams and do do you know break out and do these in in you know in other ways but let's just be clear on everything that we're working on here. Everything that could have gone better.

Brian "Ponch" Rivera 1:41:15

Does that make sense? Oh absolutely I tell you what man this has been incredible and I'm gonna turn it over to Moose to kind of bring it home but um we'll keep you on after we stop recording here in a moment but this has just been absolutely insane. So much more to dive into with you uh with and we ain't we didn't get in get into Top Gun yet and everything else you've done in your career.

Mark McGrath 1:41:33

But Moose uh want to wrap us up yeah I mean we laughed we cried we learned you know and I think that my my intent for anybody that's listening to this that's at a sports organization or a you know public relations firm or you know an asset management shop that you're not looking at those posters and you're not just looking at those you know those painted on flight suits that you guys wear and all that that you're understanding that there is a lot more complexity and human dynamic that goes behind it that they can too and they don't they don't have to be a naval aviator they don't have to be even in the military or they don't have to have ever been in the military. It's always the challenge with what we talk about from a strategic orientation standpoint is that this is not unique to the military. We figured a lot of these things out in the military and you can take them and apply them once you see those concepts you can't unsee them.

The Fuzz And Closing Thoughts

Ryan "Guido" Bernacchi 1:42:26

It's impossible to unsee yeah I love that moose I I couldn't agree more I you know the blues are um are such a uh manifestation of these of these things put on public display but everything we did there other than you know maybe some we we would use some really uh wacky parameters like 70 degrees nose low to 2200 feet and 7G is the level you would never do that in the fleet you know and be leveling at 200 feet or 150 feet off the ground you would never do that but our approach to all of it to the way the maintainers um maintain these airplanes is such an incredible way to the way we would prepare to fly, study schedule like uh and then come together to you know to create this focus and alignment together and then go out do it and go to school on it every single time is exactly what what the what the high performing certainly military units are doing and not just in aviation I think this is across our our armed forces but also I think you see it in the high performing sports teams. And I think you know we didn't really get to harmony but I what I found is maybe that's a place to end is when the alignment and the synchronization would would really come together and really mesh, it would unlock a level of harmony. And the way we would talk about it you could feel it when it happens right it's like it's in the air it's electric and we would call it the fuzz. And so we would say I was feeling the fuzz there on that yeah we were so locked in. And to your point that's when people start they start taking they step out of their mechanics to do something that just makes sense in the moment to each of them but each of those pieces makes sense together. And where we would see that would be um I think the first time I saw that there's a maneuver called the barrel break which is really tough for the boss to fly but when you get one right and you start consistently doing it you come up and over you start about 450 miles an hour you end up almost falling out the sky together about 90 knots a little over miles an hour. And when one is going really well and the wingmen are feeling it they they let the jets fall in. They actually get really really close and you can feel them that they're they're kind of just like riding a buffer of air as you've fallen over the top of this loop and it just happens. They just all collapse in and and they love it and you can tell something good is going on and you can feel it in the radios you can feel it in the air and when you get to that it does go beyond all of the mechanics that you could put into this or the calls I'll make no one's talking about this happening. It just is happening and it is magic when when it does happen. So and it's called fuzz right yeah feel feeling the fuzz we call it it gets fuzzy. No it feels good. And I think it's I don't know that you know you guys are you do such a brilliant job of putting all the the theory and the science together but it's something about the alignment and synchronicity occurring at a at a more unconscious level.

Brian "Ponch" Rivera 1:45:27

Yeah well we'll leave it at that that's been awesome brother we'll keep you on for a few minutes but thank you so much.

Ryan "Guido" Bernacchi 1:45:32

Yeah okay you bet great being here with you guys awesome thanks Guido thanks moose yeah I love talking with you guys