November 30, 2025 • 39 mins
Michael Becker served in our Air Force for 26 years and nine months. He entered the Air Force as an Explosive Ordinance Disposal Technician and would eventually be the top ranking enlisted officer for one of our nation's largest Air Force bases.
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Speaker 1 (00:04):
We all owe them, but very few of us know them.
They are the men and women of our military and
first responder communities, and these are their stories. American Warrior
Radio is on the air.
Speaker 2 (00:25):
Hello, ladies and gentlemen, Welcome to American Warrior Radio. This
is our host, Ben Bueler Garcia. Occasionally we come across
someone who would make a great guest on American Warrior Radio,
but for various reasons, we have to delay having them
on now. Sometimes it's just simply a matter of bandwidth.
On other occasions, it's so out of an abundance of
caution given their rank and imposition in the military. Today's
(00:47):
guest is one such cat. Full disclosure. I've worked with
him over the past couple of years in my local
Air Force base and have been impressed by his leadership
skills and the fact that he is the very same
person whether he's talking to a senator, a gen or
just a knucklehead civilian like me. He served in our
US Air Force for twenty six years and nine months.
He began his career as an explosive ordnance disposal technician
(01:09):
and ended it as a command chief at one of
the Air Force's largest installations. Responsible for approximately forty six
thousand personnel and fifty one billion dollars in assets. He
retired on July eleventh of this year. Welcome to American
Warrior Radio. Michael G. Becker, United States Air Force retired.
Speaker 3 (01:25):
Oh thanks, Ben, that's great to be here.
Speaker 2 (01:27):
Can I still call you chief?
Speaker 3 (01:28):
You can call me whatever you want so I.
Speaker 2 (01:30):
Get dumb questions. In fact, it's funny, Michael. I heard
from one of my station owners and he says, my
favorite part of your show is Ben's dumb question of
the show. So I might have more than a couple here.
But as a civilian, can I address you as chief?
Or did I not earn that right?
Speaker 4 (01:45):
Because no, you can call his chief. I mean that's
what we were for so long. I like to say,
because it's hard. Whenever I see airman that I used
to work with, they always want to call me chief.
I'm like, hey, it's Mike, now, please feel free. But
I understand. You know, if I walked into like General
Goldfeind when he retired, he asked me to call him
(02:05):
just Dave, It's like, Wow, absolutely not gonna happen, but
I appreciate it, sir.
Speaker 2 (02:10):
Well, I will say, also, one of the tricks I
learned during my my lobbying career, Michael, was if you
can't remember someone's name, you just stick your hand on
and say hey, fella, or how you doing guy?
Speaker 3 (02:20):
And this or ma'am always works, you know.
Speaker 2 (02:23):
So, Mike, your retirement ceremony was one of the more
enjoyable I've attended over the years in supporting the military.
And it's not only because it involved an assortment of
adult beverages, but the creative method which with which those
beverages were distributed. I have something to do with Taylor Swift.
Speaker 3 (02:42):
Oh yeah, it was a blast. Yeah.
Speaker 4 (02:44):
So in our family, we are both big Swifties. Uh,
and then we're also huge Can't See Chiefs fans. And
I got to tell you there was a lot of
joy in our household when those two things came together.
But yeah, one of the one of the greatest experiences
of my life, you know, best dad moments my daughter's
sixteenth birthday. I took her out to La just she
(03:04):
and I went and saw Taylor Swift airs to a concert,
and we just had a blast.
Speaker 3 (03:08):
I absorbed so many good dad vibes. There.
Speaker 4 (03:11):
There was no line at the men's room, which was awesome.
There was no line to get a beer. It was
me and this one other dad that we're kind of
meeting every third or fourth song to get a beer.
Speaker 3 (03:20):
It was It was just a wonderful time. But yeah,
we're big swiftieth.
Speaker 2 (03:23):
So we've got a number of both young and older
military members tuning in on the American Forcess network. Mike,
So I want to talk about your advice for the
younger ones later. But as if folks are listening that
are coming nearer to retirement, is that your retirement ceremony?
Is that one you I mean at that point is
public affairs, and I mean those not public affairs, but
(03:46):
you know the staff out of the equation.
Speaker 3 (03:48):
Well, yes, and no.
Speaker 4 (03:49):
As much as I would have liked to have kept
the staff completely out of the equation, they also know
that I'm not to be trusted. So we have one
of the best protocol chief in the Air Force working
for US here at Davis Monthan, And even though she
wasn't technically in charge of the ceremony, she had she
had kind of strategic oversight. But also, you know, my boss,
(04:11):
Scott Mills is the guy that did it, and that
was mostly his plan. So you know with the fun game,
you know, passing out the beverages to Taylor Swift trivia.
You know, we did have to put in a bathroom
break in there. I don't know if you remember that part.
Speaker 2 (04:23):
It was got on.
Speaker 4 (04:25):
Yeah, the ceremony ran a little bit long. It was
described to me as kind of like being like Lord
of the Rings. Really good, but really long.
Speaker 2 (04:32):
Sorry. The record was I Attendant General Robin Rand's retirement
ceremony up with the Academy and approaching four hours.
Speaker 3 (04:39):
Oh that's that's brutal on Death March.
Speaker 2 (04:41):
Every every every second earned.
Speaker 1 (04:44):
Right.
Speaker 2 (04:44):
Yeah. So anyway, I I part of what I want
to talk to you about today, Michael is is it's
very common a theme that we get quite a bit
on American Warrior Radio is that the challenges of transition,
and you know, particularly like, how how old were you
when you enlisted?
Speaker 3 (05:00):
Twenty one?
Speaker 2 (05:00):
Okay, so yeah, all right, but for all practical purposes,
almost your entire adult life up until now.
Speaker 3 (05:07):
Oh yes, absolutely.
Speaker 4 (05:08):
And although I was twenty one by age and number like,
mentally and maturity wise, I was definitely not in my twenties.
I was I was still operating on a teenager's mentality when.
Speaker 2 (05:19):
When you and I spoke and I asked you what
you know, Michael, what are you going to do after
you retire? You just shrugged your shoulders and said, I
don't know. I might go fishing, which honestly surprised me
a bit given your your leadership position, countless of years,
as you probably spent preparing other airmen to retire, the
fact that you just kind of shrugged and said I
(05:40):
don't know. Now, you weren't just giving me a hard time, right,
because I mean, you're you're gone fishing lasted about two weeks,
and then next thing, I know, you got a job.
Speaker 3 (05:48):
Yeah.
Speaker 4 (05:48):
So I I honestly, you know, because I got that
question quite a bit, and I didn't have a thing
like some people come out and say, Hey, I want
to I want to sell real estate, I want to
operate my own business, I want to open a restaurant,
you know, all of these things. I'd never really had that,
especially the last five to seven years. I've really just
been so focused on my daily life. I used to
(06:10):
joke saying I lived fifteen minutes at a time. I'm
continually surprised by which direction the day takes me in.
So I didn't have a whole lot of time to
think about what was going to be next. Some things
that I knew. I knew we were going to stay
in Tucson, getting my son through high school with his
friends here, even though he never asked for that, he
(06:31):
absolutely loved it here, and he was a major contributor
towards us deciding to retire and stay here. And you
just kind of know when you know, and I knew
it was time to leave, but I didn't have a
concrete plan for what to do next. I was also
I've been very, very fortunate, like most of us, Like you,
I'm married up. My wife's a phenomenal person. She's a
(06:52):
professional in her own right. She has built a career
around all the craziness that I've drug her through over
the last twenty two and a half years ago we've
been married. She's a nurse. I always tell people when
you're out looking, find you a nurse, because she's had
a great job ever where we've been. She's always taking
care of us in the family and everybody else. That's
kind of her love and life. So we had that.
(07:15):
We've been fairly smart with our finances. You'll never get
rich on an NCO's salary. But you can absolutely do
well as long as you live smartly and kind of
stay out of debt. So I didn't have a whole
lot of pressure to feel like I needed to go
find this amazing job, and I just kind of left
it open all summer long.
Speaker 3 (07:32):
You know you saw me.
Speaker 4 (07:33):
I think right after the retirement, when I was maybe
I'll just go fishing, I decided to become a yes
man this summer. So whatever anyone asked of me, I
just said yes, whether it was a lunch, whether it
was a dinner, whether it was a happy hour somewhere,
whether it was going to go visit this thing. I'm
a part owner of a fledgling distillery here in town.
(07:56):
I just said yes, and it just kind of led there.
And I think through some good luck and and and
putting myself in a position to be a lucky person,
I kind of found the job. I'm in now, back
on the base, which is not what my plan was,
but I'm back working with Airman and helping the future
of the Air Force here in Davis Monthan in southern Arizona.
Speaker 2 (08:15):
Well, I know you were probably joking what you said,
You're considering maybe becoming a radio host. But why not.
I hope I waived your offers. There's there's no money
in this business.
Speaker 3 (08:23):
Trust you get paid in magic.
Speaker 2 (08:25):
Yeah. Yeah, you think the NCL is so, so I
are there there. I assume every I know the Air
Force has CHAPS a Transition Assistance program. I have to
assume that every branch has something similar. Is that required?
Speaker 4 (08:38):
Yeah, there are sections of the Transition Assistance Program TAP
that are mandated by law, not policy. It is law
passed home from Congress, sound by the president. But that's
just a small portion of what the military provides. Each
service kind of puts their own spin on it, their
own flavor. But there's about three or four mandatory things
you got to do. But the Air Force does a
(09:00):
great job building that program out. Everything from here's how
to interact with the Veterans Administration, the VIA Hospital, Here's
how to do a job interview since you may not
have ever had to do a job interview. Here's how
to maybe start translating your military stuff into a civilian resume.
And it really just kind of runs the gamut of
prepping you and in other places. And again, I know
(09:21):
you know this is not specifically for the Tucson area
of this audience. But here in Tucson we have again
amazing community gentlemen like yourself that run all these foundations.
There's another one. It's called edge Forervet's a guy named
Tom Murphy out of Fordham University started that. We provide
that for free to our airman here.
Speaker 2 (09:40):
Okay, Michael Ia, when we come back, I like to
talk more about your personal transition experience because I want
other folks to be able to learn from it. Ladies
and gentlemen, there's your host, ben Bler Garcia here on
American Warrior Radio. We're talking with Michael G. Becker, United
States Air Force retired stick ground Welcome back to American
(10:11):
Warrior Radio. Lazy and gentlemen, there's your host, Bendula Garcia.
We're chatting with Michael G. Becker. I've had the privilege
of working with the Chief. I like to call him
Chief Becker. I guess now I have to call him
Mike or Michael. For a couple of years. Here at
my local Air Force base, Davis Mountain Air Force Base.
We're talking a little bit about transition challenges because that's
something I hear a lot from members of our military.
And veterans who are trying to step into the civilian world.
(10:34):
And I think I shared with you, Mike that I
had a fellow on between active duty and Guard service.
He had like thirty two thirty three years, just a
huge amount of time. And he described it, you know,
he talks about how he I mean, he even kept
his uniform in the closet like it was ready to go, right,
like you would get up in the morning, have his
cup of coffee and throw on his uniform. And he
(10:57):
describes kind of standing outside the fence of the and
looking through that chain link fence and he's not part
of that club anymore. And he literally described it like
the phantom leg syndrome that you know amputees have, where's
like I've got an itch, but I can't scratch it
because that leg is is no longer there. This is
really fresh for you. I mean, you've this has only
(11:17):
been I don't do Mathem poppet, but what five months? Yeah? So,
how how are you? How are you doing? And did
you ever think that you would end back up on
a military base, And if so, was that bed Bourton.
Speaker 3 (11:29):
Yeah, So there's a lot there.
Speaker 4 (11:31):
I really feel when you talked about the uniform hanging up.
When I got home from my retirement ceremony, I took
off my top and later it on a chair in
my bar, and that's where it sat until about a
month and a half ago. And I didn't take all
the stuff off of it. I just left it there.
And I was like, well, maybe I should just put
(11:53):
this stuff in the laundry, because I was going through
my addresser and you know, like I don't need nineteen
pairs of agree socks anymore, you know, I don't need
all these brown T shirts. And so I started pulling
stuff out of there, and it really hit home. It was,
you know, I think I did by myself, but it
was I went down and got that uniform top and
you know, pulled all the velcrol off of it, threw
(12:15):
it in the laundry and kind of stacked everything up neatly,
just like I was going to put the uniform back
together tomorrow. And I left it sitting there for another
couple of weeks. And now I've picked it up and
put all that stuff away in a drawer. But it
was it was a thing to take apart that uniform
for the last time, because it's for most of us.
You know, if you do a long career, that's all
you've ever known. You've kind of wrapped your identity around
(12:36):
this this thing, and this uniform is the symbol of it,
because for twenty six and a half years, I didn't
have to figure out what I was going to wear
in the morning.
Speaker 3 (12:45):
It was just there for me.
Speaker 2 (12:46):
Do you think it's more challenging for someone like you
that's been in more than a couple decades versus someone
who just does their fore and gets out or it's
hard to say.
Speaker 4 (12:54):
Yeah, it's a different challenge. So you know, if you
do one enlistment you get after three four six years,
you know you're still not a fully formed human and
being in the military was a thing you did. When
you serve more than one enlistment, it really becomes who
you are. And that's where a lot of our vets
have trouble because they have wrapped, you know, kind of
(13:15):
their whole personality around this thing, and now they just
don't feel important anymore. Again, I've been incredibly privileged. I've
got an amazing family. I built an amazing friend group
here in town in Tucson over the last two and
a half years. So I never felt like lonely when
I retired, And that's what gets a lot of our
people like they feel like they're not important, they don't
(13:38):
have friends anymore. I was in, again, a very privileged
position that I've made a lot of friends and made
a lot of deep connections here in the city, and
I never felt lonely when I retired.
Speaker 2 (13:49):
So let's say you're a maintainer, just as an example,
and you still got access to the base.
Speaker 3 (13:55):
Yeah.
Speaker 2 (13:56):
Again, is it frowned upon for Mike to just go
into the hangar just kind of out and it smell
the grease?
Speaker 3 (14:02):
I would say, it's not frowned upon. It happens, Okay.
Speaker 4 (14:05):
I do remember when I was a young airman, we
had a tech sergeant that retired and for the first
couple of weeks he was coming by the shop every
afternoon and it was like, hey, man, like, you probably
need to find something else to do with your time.
Speaker 2 (14:18):
Well, you're getting in the way.
Speaker 3 (14:20):
Yeah, well, I mean we love you, but yeah, yeah,
you're just kind of hanging around.
Speaker 4 (14:23):
And now what we do is we just go to
the commissary and just park your cart in the middle
of the aisle and just stand there all right, or
when you're driving on base, you know, stop and have
a nice long conversation with the gate guard.
Speaker 3 (14:34):
Backup track, Yeah.
Speaker 2 (14:37):
What fifty cars landing behind you? So again I mentioned Mike,
we've we've got a lot of young people listening around
the world on the American Forces network. So what given
your experience, not necessarily with what you're going through now
with the transition, but over a twenty six plus year career,
what for those listening out there, what is your advice
(14:57):
to them or encouragement or frankly warning. I remember one of
the greatest lessons I ever learned in life was what
I didn't want to do?
Speaker 4 (15:03):
No, absolutely, And you know, I've actually gotten this question
quite a bit of time. One of the greatest things
about my last job is I got to sit down
and talk to every new group of airmen that came
to the base, and I frequently got that question like
what would.
Speaker 3 (15:16):
You do over again? Or you know, what advice would
you pass on?
Speaker 4 (15:19):
And the number one thing not to stump for the
military here, but we allow you to invest early. So
invest like an extra on hundred fifty dollars a month
to drink beer is cool, but one hundred fifty dollars
a month that you put away into the thrift savings
planned as an airman, you'll be a millionaire when you retire.
Speaker 3 (15:38):
So do that.
Speaker 4 (15:39):
Go to school as soon as you can, because most
of us don't come in with college degrees. That's why
we enlisted. And I always tell these young folks, hey,
it's fun to go out and party now, but I
promise you will never have more time or energy than
you do today. You're gonna maybe get married, you're gonna
maybe have kids. And I waited way too long to
finish my bachelor's and then get my masters, and it
was it was really hard because I was in leadership
(16:01):
positions by that point.
Speaker 3 (16:02):
So do it while you're young.
Speaker 4 (16:04):
Just do everything you can to be a lucky person
while you're in it's really not that difficult. Like show
up when you're supposed to show up where you're supposed
to show up, wearing the appropriate clothing, and just do
what you're asked. And it's really easy to shine.
Speaker 2 (16:17):
This may be inappropriate, but if you don't want to
answer it, I understand. Yeah, I live in the inappropriate Okay,
what was what was one of the most difficult things
you had to do as a command chief when it
came to your personnel. The most difficult thing for me
is always disciplined.
Speaker 4 (16:32):
I'm a bleeding heart, like I'm a softie, and I
truly want to believe the best in everyone. And when
we had to do discipline, when we had to my
boss was the final signature to process someone out of
the Air Force. That always broke my heart because a
lot of those people we were going to walk into
the gate, take their ID card, they were going to
(16:54):
get in a cab or aneuver, just start walking and
it's not our problem anymore. And it always felt like
it was my problems tell even though there was absolutely
nothing I can do to help that person anymore. So
that's the hardest part, is dealing with discipline and also
dealing with the fact, and this goes across society. This
isn't just the Air Force, but the fact that we
have our own people hurting our own people. So when
(17:16):
I look at a victim of any kind of a crime,
but the sexual assault stuff was absolutely the most heartbreaking
because that's somebody who raised their right hand to do
something hard. They wear the same uniform as you, and
you hurt them like that was the hardest thing to
watch people go through that, and again, something I won't
miss now that I'm out.
Speaker 2 (17:35):
Yeah, no, kid, I'll tell you what you talked a
little bit of Mike about. And I had this with
my brother too, who was OSI, And when he got out,
he showed me his resume and I looked at it.
I was like, you know, halfway through the second page
and I said, John, I have no idea what any
of this means. So we need to talk about translating it.
You know, if you were a sniper, say you were
a sniper, but you know, I'm sure that diffusing ticking
(17:58):
bombs as a good skill to have, but maybe not
necessarily transferable out there into the civilian world. So, Mike,
when we come back, I'd like to talk a little
bit about eods if you don't mind.
Speaker 4 (18:09):
Absolutely, It's one of my favorite topics. I'll make up
stories about that all day.
Speaker 2 (18:13):
Fair enough, ladies and gentlemen, Ben buler garca here in
American Warrior Radio we're talking with retired Command Chief Michael G. Becker.
Don't forget. You can find this podcast and over six
hundred and fifty others at American Warrior Radio Dot com.
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(18:34):
the other civilians out there understand what the men on
the movement of our military du and don't forget, lady
and gentle when they sign up to take the oath
and raise their right hand, they're writing the rest of
us a blank check, payable up to and including their lives.
If need be, we need to show appreciation for that.
Stick around. We'll be right back. Welcome back to America
(19:11):
Radio Laser. Gentlemen, this is your host, Bend La Garcia.
We're chatting with recently retired United States Air Force Command
Chief Michael G. Becker. He's literally five months out of
the Air Force, held a number of leadership position. In fact, Mike,
you were twice a command chief, that's correct, two different
Air Force bases.
Speaker 3 (19:28):
Yeah. I was at Malmstrom Air Force Base doing big
missiles ICBM nuclear deterrence, and then I came down here
to do rescue and attack. How cool is that?
Speaker 2 (19:35):
That's very cool? Is that unusual?
Speaker 3 (19:37):
Yeah?
Speaker 4 (19:38):
Yes, and no, again, I'm biased. I think I had
the two best installation command chief jobs in the Air Force,
and there's nothing more important than what we do in
the nuclear enterprise. That's what allows the rest of freedom
of mobility and movement for the rest of the US government.
And then here this mission here, especially on the rescue side,
(19:59):
that others made live. Everything we do at this base
is kind of setting around that eighteen year old kid
with a rifle on the ground, knowing that if they
get hurt, if it's their worst day, we're going to
bring them home. And if they're hurt and they're in
big trouble, we're going to come get them out of
it with our a tens. So it's pretty cool.
Speaker 2 (20:18):
You obviously, given that leadership experience, had an experience. I
have to repeat that word. It's not my first language. Sorry,
that might be a little bit different. But in retrospect,
now that you've had a very little amount of time
to think about it, Mike, what would you consider the
most valuable lessons that the Air Force or just a
(20:39):
military in general provided you. I know, I've I try
to live my life without regrets, but I regret maybe
not joining the military, if for no other reason, I
sure could have used a discipline, so I absolutely needed that.
Speaker 4 (20:54):
And it was interesting for me when I came into
the military because my father is a retired colonel of six.
I grew up on the military bases around the world,
so the lifestyle was not foreign to me. Like I understood.
I didn't always do what I was supposed to be doing,
but I understood why I needed to be in a
certain place at a certain time. So coming in I
(21:14):
was a few steps ahead of a lot of my
peers that didn't. And the Air Force really taught me
to be empathetic to that, and I think it probably
applies to whatever business you're going through, because all of
us kind of absorb the world through our own lens,
through our own experiences, you know, through our own patterns
of behavior, and we don't always have a lot of
empathy for other people, Like why can't they figure it out?
(21:36):
Like you just made a joke about being English being
your second language, right, maybe not everybody grew up in
which are the same school as you did.
Speaker 2 (21:44):
So technically my third language. But yeah, okay, so yeah.
Speaker 3 (21:46):
That's way better than me.
Speaker 4 (21:47):
I just got the one and I'm barely competent with
that one, but not everybody kind of had the same
experiences with you, so you got to kind of give allowances.
Speaker 3 (21:55):
And so seeing this cross section of life that we
live in the military, it really just kind of gave
me empathy for what other people are going through.
Speaker 2 (22:05):
I don't know, I kind of joke with you about,
you know, always checking if you had all your fingers
and toes, I do did you? So you proactively told
the Air Force you wanted to be I did you
wanted to refuse bombs?
Speaker 4 (22:18):
So, again, my father was a lawyer. I'd never heard
of explosive ordinance disposal coming up. But when I went
and saw the recruiter, I wish I could say it
was like this always dream of mine to be on
the bomb squad. I was honestly looking through the book
of the largest enlistment bonuses they had because I was
pretty broke, and so I was like, ah, what's that
and my recruiter said, oh, that's a yod He's like
(22:38):
that's a really hard school though, and I was looked
at him and I goes, it's the military, Like how
hard could it be? Spoiler alert It was incredibly hard,
and I really only got through luck. That's how I
made it through Yo D School because at the time
I went through, we had about a seventy five percent
of wash out, right wow, and I just was incredibly lucky.
But it also taught me that, you know, being glib
(23:00):
and being smarter than the average bear isn't enough. You've
got to actually put in the work. You've got to
do the study. You've got to prepare.
Speaker 3 (23:07):
Like I always say it broken record, do everything you
can to be a lucky person. And all tests are easy,
you know the answers. So that mean study, do the homework,
prep and you'll be fine.
Speaker 2 (23:18):
No one is going to potentially lose their life if
you're a plumber or a cook. Maybe if you're a
really bad cook, yeah maybe yeah, but I mean an
EOD or pair rescue or some of these other disciplines.
I mean that is yeah, there's no, there's not a
lot of second chances, I would guess no.
Speaker 4 (23:36):
And there's not really a great instruction manual. You know,
for certain things, we have technical orders, right, so if
you're looking at a piece of Soviet ordinance, you know,
I've got a book on it, and I know pretty
much how it works and how I could attack it.
And then you know, early two thousand and five, I
got sent along with the first trunch of about one
hundred other Air Force COOD guys to go replace a
(23:59):
large part of the EOD mission in Iraq. We had
some training in that kind of stuff. We had a
little bit of tactical training before we went into country,
but we really had to figure it out on our own.
And it was really kind of the lessons learned in
EOD school that made us all capable of just figuring
it out because there is no tech order for it.
There's no there's no manual to teach you how to
(24:20):
operate in combat.
Speaker 2 (24:21):
I'm a little bit surprised to hear that, but I've
only had one other EOD guy on the show in
the years i've been doing this mic. And have you
heard of Aaron Hale?
Speaker 3 (24:31):
Aaron Hale, the name really rings a bell.
Speaker 2 (24:33):
So he was Army EOD and they successfully disfused one
I ED with the robot, and then when he approached
to gather the evidence, there was a second I D
that had been hidden, and that was the one that
went off and got him and it blinded him in
both eyes. And he's now the He started a fudge
company it's called Eod Fight.
Speaker 4 (24:54):
That's why he's got a TikTok channel and yeah.
Speaker 2 (24:58):
Delicious stuff, shout eodfudge dot com lation.
Speaker 3 (25:01):
I've seen him, I've seen it. I've seen his cooking video, so.
Speaker 2 (25:04):
The best candies you'll ever have. But I just it
strikes me as so I've had different folks on the show.
Mike who Adventures for lack of a better term, ended
up being a major motion picture, and I'll never forget.
I was interviewing two pilots about a film that featured
one of their uh, one of their endeavors, and I
(25:26):
asked my soakin, how accurate was this from a civilian standpoint?
How accurate was this? And there was this long pause
and then they said, well, we were in Afghanistan and
that's where they left it.
Speaker 4 (25:37):
Right now, there's always a nugget of truth. You're probably
talking about the hurt lot.
Speaker 2 (25:40):
I was hurt a lot.
Speaker 3 (25:42):
It's our movie.
Speaker 4 (25:43):
We have to love it and we have to embrace it,
even though some of my brothers and sisters like to
give that movie eight it's a great movie at one
best picture. Is it accurate? There's there's nuggets of truth
in there. Every single operation in that movie comes from
the first couple of years of the war in Iraq,
and either me or somebody I know very well did
(26:03):
something very very similar. And it's again a movie, so
they've got to kind of do goofy things to make
it more entertaining on film. But just about everything, and
even some of the stuff like when you reached down
and pulled on a cord and a whole bunch of
bombs came up, like that happened to me, Like you
talked about Aaron Hale's experience, like that happened to me.
(26:23):
The first time I picked up the wire through it
and it was a radio was attached to it. Don't
ask me why I threw the radio. Just felt like
the right thing to do. The second time I found
one at my feet after we had finished the problem,
I just ran because you know, every couple feet you
get away from it, you're way safer if the explosion
goes off. And then I got a call from my
army security guy saying he's.
Speaker 3 (26:43):
Laughing at me. He's like, you found something, didn' you know?
I was like, oh, yeah, I did. It's about one hundred.
Speaker 2 (26:47):
Yards behind me, and were you in the bomb suit?
Speaker 4 (26:48):
No, I was just just helmet and body armor, carrying
a rifle, just running across the desert.
Speaker 2 (26:53):
Oh boy. So whether any particular will we got, We've
got gonna have to take a break here in a
couple of minutes. But I'd like you to think about this,
if there's was any particular sporty incidents or emissions that
you were on. And and it's kind of funny. I
follow a guy on X call a Happy Captain I
think is his his his tag, and he's an Army
(27:14):
EO D guy, and he always always putting up these
memes about and I guess if you're one of one
of your group, you can make fun of each other.
But he always puts up these memes just about how
long it takes EOD to get there. And I don't
know if there's any a kernel of truth in that
or not again.
Speaker 4 (27:29):
There and there's a there's an F word I'm not
allowed to say, but the answer to that is we
take so long to get there because f you, Oh,
that was our Because every time we show up at
a call, they've been waiting, and God bless him for waiting,
but they've been holding security on something for three or
four hours and then we show up.
Speaker 2 (27:47):
Well, let me ask you the practical question, why does
it take so long as it because there's just not
enough of you.
Speaker 4 (27:52):
There's one there's one team of me for pretty much
an entire battalion's battlespace. So you know, if if they
want us to rush and get through the problem quickly,
maybe then they don't have an EOD team tomorrow. So
we do everything carefully, we do everything methodically, and at
the end of the day, we're what's known as a
(28:12):
low density, high demand asset.
Speaker 3 (28:14):
It takes a long time to train us. It's a
lot of tax pair money.
Speaker 4 (28:17):
And it's also a capability on the battlefield, and if
you burn us doing something stupid, you don't have another
one just in the reserve.
Speaker 2 (28:25):
Do you like a fighter pilot Scott Kills on the aircraft?
Do you did you keep count?
Speaker 4 (28:32):
I counted for my first deployment two hundred and six
for the first one.
Speaker 2 (28:36):
Ladies and gentlemen, there's your host, Ben biler Garcia. We're
back with more with Michael G. Becker, United States Air
Force retired. We're talking EOD. You're not gonna want to
miss it. Stick around, Welcome back to American Warrior Radio Lason, gentlemen,
(29:10):
Ben buler Garcia your host here, we're talking with Michael G. Becker.
Michael retired from our United States Air Force five months ago,
twenty six years and nine months in the United States
Air Force. I remssed Michael this whole time more I'll
thank you for proudly wearing the uniform.
Speaker 3 (29:26):
It has truly been my pleasure. It has been a
wonderful life.
Speaker 2 (29:29):
I was geeking out a little bit about, you know,
things that went boom, and you know, I was thinking,
I played a lot with firecrackers when I was a kid,
so I thought, well, I'd be a natural for EOD.
But the decision for you was strictly financial. You were
going down there.
Speaker 4 (29:41):
It was strictly financial, and maybe the people that play
with fireworks shouldn't actually do it for a living.
Speaker 2 (29:48):
Very good point.
Speaker 4 (29:49):
I learned enough about explosives that now whenever I'm at
a fourth at July party and stuff, I just like
to sit in the back and watch.
Speaker 3 (29:55):
I don't need to light anything off.
Speaker 2 (29:56):
You had four five deployments, spended six six as EOD.
Speaker 4 (30:02):
Six as EOD, four of them really in combat and
the other two were at back bases around the Persian Gulf.
Speaker 2 (30:08):
Were there any particularly sporty situations that really jump out
at you.
Speaker 3 (30:13):
Yeah.
Speaker 4 (30:13):
The first go round I went there at the beginning
of two thousand and five, there was a lot of transition,
you know, not to go into a whole history lesson
on the war in Iraq, but we were transitioning phases
of the operation and we were realizing as a nation
and as a military specifically that this was not going
to be quick and clean and get out of there.
So we were settling in for the long haul, and
(30:35):
so were the bad guys. So that first deployment we're
also still developing we call them TTPs tactics, techniques and procedures.
It was tough to train people on that war because
we had never done that before, so we were kind
of figuring it out as we went along. So there
was a lot of sporty stuff that first go around
in two thousand and five, And then when I went
(30:55):
back in two thousand and seven during the troop surgeon
Baghdad and I spent all almost all of my time
there at Bagdad proper, things had changed, but they hadn't.
Things had just gotten bigger, more expensive, more sophisticated. We
went from driving around at home v's to driving around
in twenty five ton m wraps, these big, massive armored vehicles.
We had all this technology, amazing robots, all kinds of
(31:19):
electronics gear, but the enemy just adapted to that. They
went low tech when we went high tech.
Speaker 2 (31:26):
I was just going to ask that question because I mean,
no one can accuse the enemies and those two conflicts
of being dummies, and they over your time and deployment.
I assumed that they were also watching. Absolutely, they were
adapting both the types of devices and the detonation strategies.
Speaker 3 (31:43):
Absolutely. Yeah.
Speaker 4 (31:44):
And tactics are tactics. That hasn't changed, probably since Alexander
the Greats time. You know, you still want to ambush people,
You want to hit people where they're not expecting you
to hit them. You know, asymmetric warfare has been a
factor since we started throwing rocks and sticks at each other.
So dealing with that, and again, you know the fact
that they were so able to adjust on a dime
(32:06):
when we brought something out, a new piece of technology,
Like there's a great story about this. They were shooting EFPs,
explosively formed penetrators that were just cutting through our armor
like a hot knife through butter. And they were setting
them off with passive infrared sensors just like you'd have
in an alarm system on your home. Right, something drives by,
triggers it, it shoots it off. So we developed a
(32:27):
great idea. We called it a rhino. We basically put
a glow plug from a diesel engine in an ammocan
and put it on a stick fifteen feet out in
front of our vehicle, thinking it was going to trigger
the pr and it did for a while, and they
were shooting the rhinos off the front of our vehicles,
which was very, very cool because it worked. Then after
about a week they just started using the same trigger mechanisms,
(32:51):
just aiming the main charge forty five degrees back and
they were shooting back right through our engine blocks and
right through our cabs.
Speaker 2 (32:58):
Again.
Speaker 3 (33:00):
Wow, so they were.
Speaker 4 (33:00):
Really really smart. It was interesting. And then I went
to Afghanistan in two thousand and eight thinking I wanted
to see a different battle space. Afghanistan was totally different.
It's a totally different war, totally different level of technology,
totally different people. And I think most of the American
people that weren't actively involved in the conflict really kind
of put Iraq in Afghanistan together in the same bin.
(33:24):
I couldn't be further from the truth. It was Mars
and Venus just total opposites when it came to a
battle space, but still just as dangerous.
Speaker 2 (33:32):
I'm curious, with just a time we've got left, mic
and now that you've had a very little time to
be out looking back in now with quote unquote civilian eyes,
what sort of challenges do you still see for our
military families or now that you're wearing a civilian clothes.
Speaker 4 (33:47):
We're the same, but we're different. You know, generations change.
I don't really like to talk about generational politics because
people are people. But one of the things we still see,
especially with our military spouses and families, and we still
deploy all the time. We're not on the ground in
Iraq in Afghanistan anymore, but we are still heavily deployed
throughout the world. And when your military member leaves, one
(34:07):
of the hardest things to do for a spouse and
a family left behind is asked for help. I'll tell
a real quick story. So my wife was pregnant with
our first child. She's now a freshman in college. But
I was getting ready to deploy to Iraq in two
thousand and seven and we had just moved to Florida.
Didn't know our neighbors, because you know, we're not the
kind of people that's just going to walk door to
(34:27):
door and pass out cookies to say we're new to
the neighborhood. But they knew who we were. And the
gentleman across the street walked over to me one day
when I was cutting the grass. He's a retired chief
and he said to me, hey, Mike, And I was like,
I didn't really know you knew my name, okay, because
I understand you're deploying. Said wow, how'd you know that?
He's like, I know people. So he said, hey, I
(34:48):
know your wife's pregnant. And once you let you know,
my son's going to cut the grass while you're gone.
Simple effort like that. So I go inside and I
tell my wife I had this great conversation with our neighbor.
And she's first said, you know, how does he know
that I'm pregnant? And I said, well, you're walking around
the yard big as a house, which was the wrong
thing to say at that moment, but she was visibly pregnant.
(35:10):
But anyway, my wife didn't want to take that help.
She's a strong independent woman, but she did. And to
this day, my children, when they get on a couch,
they take off their socks. They don't know why they
do this. It was because my friend's wife always thought
the baby's feet looked hot, and she would always take
off their socks.
Speaker 3 (35:28):
When they came in her house.
Speaker 4 (35:30):
But we got through four deployments in four years at
that duty station, and my family wouldn't have stayed together
the way it did. We wouldn't have been as strong
as we were if my wife hadn't accepted a help.
My kids have another set of grandparents because of Bobby
and Gordon across the street taking care of them. They
picked up my kids from daycare, they took them to
the doctor. They just they allowed us to live our
(35:54):
lives even though I was gone more.
Speaker 2 (35:55):
Than half the time.
Speaker 4 (35:56):
So that's what I always tell the young spouse is
you may feel like you don't need it, but take
the help because people love you. This town Tucson, I'm
sure you feel it. Ben you do a lot for
deployed families. Take the help because people really want to
give it.
Speaker 2 (36:08):
To you, well, no matter where you're listening, I I
do take pride and my hometown here. I think we're
above average, you know. But I'm sure that no matter
where you are, wherever you're based in the United States
or even someplace overseas, you know there is there's a
support infrastructure out there. And that's the reason we do
this show is because people care about you and they
(36:29):
want to support you. So don't don't be too proud
to ask for help. Mike, we're just down about two
minutes left. You if I put you in charge, what
if you could change one thing at the Department of
War to better support our war fighters and their families?
Is it? And you can say I'm not going there, BBG.
That's that's fair enough too.
Speaker 4 (36:50):
But hey, I'm retired now I can say that I
want fair enough. No, I would just say, let's be real.
So if if you have an opinion and you're senior
leader in our military, awesome, you're a senior leader. You
get to have an opinion, Just don't couch it. And
this is a fact, like ponytails impact lethality, do they
(37:14):
you know? Because our women have to take their hair
out of buns to put on their their combat gear,
So don't tell me it makes them more lethal. If
you have a preference, cool, just say it's a preference,
and just just tell the truth. Just be open and
honest with your airman and soldiers, sailors, marines, guardians, coastguardsmen.
Speaker 3 (37:32):
We will fight any bear. Just tell us, tell us
what we're doing, and be open and honest.
Speaker 2 (37:39):
What do you think is the greatest threat facing our
families right now? And I'm not not our families, but
a lot of people talk about China, and yeah, that's
how this the next war is going to be a
lot different than the last one.
Speaker 4 (37:50):
Yeah, disinformation. The next war is not going to start
with a huge explosion. It'll start with maybe the internet
going out, or the electricity out work. Or let's say
we're mobilizing for a massive exercise somewhere and all the
folks getting on an airplane to go over there, look
at their bank balances and it says zero.
Speaker 3 (38:10):
Are we getting on an airplane? Or are you worried
about your family paying their bills?
Speaker 4 (38:14):
Yeah, so those are the things that we really need
to be focusing on as a nation.
Speaker 3 (38:17):
In my opinion.
Speaker 4 (38:18):
The lethality piece our military is the best in the world,
best that's ever been.
Speaker 3 (38:23):
It's not even close.
Speaker 4 (38:24):
Like we can break things and kill people all day long,
but we need to be able to take over our families,
and that means getting rid of the rest of the
support lockdown. Whether it's household goods, whether it's food, whether
it's getting paid every two weeks, all of these things
are incredibly important.
Speaker 2 (38:41):
I'm gonna share book with you that I had a
guest on who literally gave me chills, Michael, because he
was talking about that the next the next dimensions of
future Wars, and a lot of it is stuff like that,
and I just I hope that we're as good. You know,
we've got nerves out there that are taking care of that.
Speaker 4 (38:59):
Yeah, you don't have to blow up an F thirty
five on the ramp up at Luke Air Force Base
to impact flight operations. Maybe you just need to make
us feel like it's not safe to take one off.
Speaker 2 (39:09):
Fair enough, fair enough, Mike, has been a real pleasure.
It's a bit of privilege to have you on the show. Finally,
and best of luck on your new fishing expedition.
Speaker 3 (39:16):
Thank you so much, Ben, it's been a pleasure there.
Speaker 2 (39:18):
You go. Ladies and gentlemen, don't forget check out our
podcast at American Warrior radio dot com. Until next time,
all policies and procedures are remain in place. Take care
of it.
Speaker 1 (39:33):
You've been listening to American Warrior Radio. Archived episodes may
be found at americanwarriorradio dot com or your favorite podcast
platform
We all owe them, but very few of us know them.
They are the men and women of our military and
first responder communities, and these are their stories. American Warrior
Radio is on the air.
Speaker 2 (00:25):
Hello, ladies and gentlemen, Welcome to American Warrior Radio. This
is our host, Ben Bueler Garcia. Occasionally we come across
someone who would make a great guest on American Warrior Radio,
but for various reasons, we have to delay having them
on now. Sometimes it's just simply a matter of bandwidth.
On other occasions, it's so out of an abundance of
caution given their rank and imposition in the military. Today's
(00:47):
guest is one such cat. Full disclosure. I've worked with
him over the past couple of years in my local
Air Force base and have been impressed by his leadership
skills and the fact that he is the very same
person whether he's talking to a senator, a gen or
just a knucklehead civilian like me. He served in our
US Air Force for twenty six years and nine months.
He began his career as an explosive ordnance disposal technician
(01:09):
and ended it as a command chief at one of
the Air Force's largest installations. Responsible for approximately forty six
thousand personnel and fifty one billion dollars in assets. He
retired on July eleventh of this year. Welcome to American
Warrior Radio. Michael G. Becker, United States Air Force retired.
Speaker 3 (01:25):
Oh thanks, Ben, that's great to be here.
Speaker 2 (01:27):
Can I still call you chief?
Speaker 3 (01:28):
You can call me whatever you want so I.
Speaker 2 (01:30):
Get dumb questions. In fact, it's funny, Michael. I heard
from one of my station owners and he says, my
favorite part of your show is Ben's dumb question of
the show. So I might have more than a couple here.
But as a civilian, can I address you as chief?
Or did I not earn that right?
Speaker 4 (01:45):
Because no, you can call his chief. I mean that's
what we were for so long. I like to say,
because it's hard. Whenever I see airman that I used
to work with, they always want to call me chief.
I'm like, hey, it's Mike, now, please feel free. But
I understand. You know, if I walked into like General
Goldfeind when he retired, he asked me to call him
(02:05):
just Dave, It's like, Wow, absolutely not gonna happen, but
I appreciate it, sir.
Speaker 2 (02:10):
Well, I will say, also, one of the tricks I
learned during my my lobbying career, Michael, was if you
can't remember someone's name, you just stick your hand on
and say hey, fella, or how you doing guy?
Speaker 3 (02:20):
And this or ma'am always works, you know.
Speaker 2 (02:23):
So, Mike, your retirement ceremony was one of the more
enjoyable I've attended over the years in supporting the military.
And it's not only because it involved an assortment of
adult beverages, but the creative method which with which those
beverages were distributed. I have something to do with Taylor Swift.
Speaker 3 (02:42):
Oh yeah, it was a blast. Yeah.
Speaker 4 (02:44):
So in our family, we are both big Swifties. Uh,
and then we're also huge Can't See Chiefs fans. And
I got to tell you there was a lot of
joy in our household when those two things came together.
But yeah, one of the one of the greatest experiences
of my life, you know, best dad moments my daughter's
sixteenth birthday. I took her out to La just she
(03:04):
and I went and saw Taylor Swift airs to a concert,
and we just had a blast.
Speaker 3 (03:08):
I absorbed so many good dad vibes. There.
Speaker 4 (03:11):
There was no line at the men's room, which was awesome.
There was no line to get a beer. It was
me and this one other dad that we're kind of
meeting every third or fourth song to get a beer.
Speaker 3 (03:20):
It was It was just a wonderful time. But yeah,
we're big swiftieth.
Speaker 2 (03:23):
So we've got a number of both young and older
military members tuning in on the American Forcess network. Mike,
So I want to talk about your advice for the
younger ones later. But as if folks are listening that
are coming nearer to retirement, is that your retirement ceremony?
Is that one you I mean at that point is
public affairs, and I mean those not public affairs, but
(03:46):
you know the staff out of the equation.
Speaker 3 (03:48):
Well, yes, and no.
Speaker 4 (03:49):
As much as I would have liked to have kept
the staff completely out of the equation, they also know
that I'm not to be trusted. So we have one
of the best protocol chief in the Air Force working
for US here at Davis Monthan, And even though she
wasn't technically in charge of the ceremony, she had she
had kind of strategic oversight. But also, you know, my boss,
(04:11):
Scott Mills is the guy that did it, and that
was mostly his plan. So you know with the fun game,
you know, passing out the beverages to Taylor Swift trivia.
You know, we did have to put in a bathroom
break in there. I don't know if you remember that part.
Speaker 2 (04:23):
It was got on.
Speaker 4 (04:25):
Yeah, the ceremony ran a little bit long. It was
described to me as kind of like being like Lord
of the Rings. Really good, but really long.
Speaker 2 (04:32):
Sorry. The record was I Attendant General Robin Rand's retirement
ceremony up with the Academy and approaching four hours.
Speaker 3 (04:39):
Oh that's that's brutal on Death March.
Speaker 2 (04:41):
Every every every second earned.
Speaker 1 (04:44):
Right.
Speaker 2 (04:44):
Yeah. So anyway, I I part of what I want
to talk to you about today, Michael is is it's
very common a theme that we get quite a bit
on American Warrior Radio is that the challenges of transition,
and you know, particularly like, how how old were you
when you enlisted?
Speaker 3 (05:00):
Twenty one?
Speaker 2 (05:00):
Okay, so yeah, all right, but for all practical purposes,
almost your entire adult life up until now.
Speaker 3 (05:07):
Oh yes, absolutely.
Speaker 4 (05:08):
And although I was twenty one by age and number like,
mentally and maturity wise, I was definitely not in my twenties.
I was I was still operating on a teenager's mentality when.
Speaker 2 (05:19):
When you and I spoke and I asked you what
you know, Michael, what are you going to do after
you retire? You just shrugged your shoulders and said, I
don't know. I might go fishing, which honestly surprised me
a bit given your your leadership position, countless of years,
as you probably spent preparing other airmen to retire, the
fact that you just kind of shrugged and said I
(05:40):
don't know. Now, you weren't just giving me a hard time, right,
because I mean, you're you're gone fishing lasted about two weeks,
and then next thing, I know, you got a job.
Speaker 3 (05:48):
Yeah.
Speaker 4 (05:48):
So I I honestly, you know, because I got that
question quite a bit, and I didn't have a thing
like some people come out and say, Hey, I want
to I want to sell real estate, I want to
operate my own business, I want to open a restaurant,
you know, all of these things. I'd never really had that,
especially the last five to seven years. I've really just
been so focused on my daily life. I used to
(06:10):
joke saying I lived fifteen minutes at a time. I'm
continually surprised by which direction the day takes me in.
So I didn't have a whole lot of time to
think about what was going to be next. Some things
that I knew. I knew we were going to stay
in Tucson, getting my son through high school with his
friends here, even though he never asked for that, he
(06:31):
absolutely loved it here, and he was a major contributor
towards us deciding to retire and stay here. And you
just kind of know when you know, and I knew
it was time to leave, but I didn't have a
concrete plan for what to do next. I was also
I've been very, very fortunate, like most of us, Like you,
I'm married up. My wife's a phenomenal person. She's a
(06:52):
professional in her own right. She has built a career
around all the craziness that I've drug her through over
the last twenty two and a half years ago we've
been married. She's a nurse. I always tell people when
you're out looking, find you a nurse, because she's had
a great job ever where we've been. She's always taking
care of us in the family and everybody else. That's
kind of her love and life. So we had that.
(07:15):
We've been fairly smart with our finances. You'll never get
rich on an NCO's salary. But you can absolutely do
well as long as you live smartly and kind of
stay out of debt. So I didn't have a whole
lot of pressure to feel like I needed to go
find this amazing job, and I just kind of left
it open all summer long.
Speaker 3 (07:32):
You know you saw me.
Speaker 4 (07:33):
I think right after the retirement, when I was maybe
I'll just go fishing, I decided to become a yes
man this summer. So whatever anyone asked of me, I
just said yes, whether it was a lunch, whether it
was a dinner, whether it was a happy hour somewhere,
whether it was going to go visit this thing. I'm
a part owner of a fledgling distillery here in town.
(07:56):
I just said yes, and it just kind of led there.
And I think through some good luck and and and
putting myself in a position to be a lucky person,
I kind of found the job. I'm in now, back
on the base, which is not what my plan was,
but I'm back working with Airman and helping the future
of the Air Force here in Davis Monthan in southern Arizona.
Speaker 2 (08:15):
Well, I know you were probably joking what you said,
You're considering maybe becoming a radio host. But why not.
I hope I waived your offers. There's there's no money
in this business.
Speaker 3 (08:23):
Trust you get paid in magic.
Speaker 2 (08:25):
Yeah. Yeah, you think the NCL is so, so I
are there there. I assume every I know the Air
Force has CHAPS a Transition Assistance program. I have to
assume that every branch has something similar. Is that required?
Speaker 4 (08:38):
Yeah, there are sections of the Transition Assistance Program TAP
that are mandated by law, not policy. It is law
passed home from Congress, sound by the president. But that's
just a small portion of what the military provides. Each
service kind of puts their own spin on it, their
own flavor. But there's about three or four mandatory things
you got to do. But the Air Force does a
(09:00):
great job building that program out. Everything from here's how
to interact with the Veterans Administration, the VIA Hospital, Here's
how to do a job interview since you may not
have ever had to do a job interview. Here's how
to maybe start translating your military stuff into a civilian resume.
And it really just kind of runs the gamut of
prepping you and in other places. And again, I know
(09:21):
you know this is not specifically for the Tucson area
of this audience. But here in Tucson we have again
amazing community gentlemen like yourself that run all these foundations.
There's another one. It's called edge Forervet's a guy named
Tom Murphy out of Fordham University started that. We provide
that for free to our airman here.
Speaker 2 (09:40):
Okay, Michael Ia, when we come back, I like to
talk more about your personal transition experience because I want
other folks to be able to learn from it. Ladies
and gentlemen, there's your host, ben Bler Garcia here on
American Warrior Radio. We're talking with Michael G. Becker, United
States Air Force retired stick ground Welcome back to American
(10:11):
Warrior Radio. Lazy and gentlemen, there's your host, Bendula Garcia.
We're chatting with Michael G. Becker. I've had the privilege
of working with the Chief. I like to call him
Chief Becker. I guess now I have to call him
Mike or Michael. For a couple of years. Here at
my local Air Force base, Davis Mountain Air Force Base.
We're talking a little bit about transition challenges because that's
something I hear a lot from members of our military.
And veterans who are trying to step into the civilian world.
(10:34):
And I think I shared with you, Mike that I
had a fellow on between active duty and Guard service.
He had like thirty two thirty three years, just a
huge amount of time. And he described it, you know,
he talks about how he I mean, he even kept
his uniform in the closet like it was ready to go, right,
like you would get up in the morning, have his
cup of coffee and throw on his uniform. And he
(10:57):
describes kind of standing outside the fence of the and
looking through that chain link fence and he's not part
of that club anymore. And he literally described it like
the phantom leg syndrome that you know amputees have, where's
like I've got an itch, but I can't scratch it
because that leg is is no longer there. This is
really fresh for you. I mean, you've this has only
(11:17):
been I don't do Mathem poppet, but what five months? Yeah? So,
how how are you? How are you doing? And did
you ever think that you would end back up on
a military base, And if so, was that bed Bourton.
Speaker 3 (11:29):
Yeah, So there's a lot there.
Speaker 4 (11:31):
I really feel when you talked about the uniform hanging up.
When I got home from my retirement ceremony, I took
off my top and later it on a chair in
my bar, and that's where it sat until about a
month and a half ago. And I didn't take all
the stuff off of it. I just left it there.
And I was like, well, maybe I should just put
(11:53):
this stuff in the laundry, because I was going through
my addresser and you know, like I don't need nineteen
pairs of agree socks anymore, you know, I don't need
all these brown T shirts. And so I started pulling
stuff out of there, and it really hit home. It was,
you know, I think I did by myself, but it
was I went down and got that uniform top and
you know, pulled all the velcrol off of it, threw
(12:15):
it in the laundry and kind of stacked everything up neatly,
just like I was going to put the uniform back
together tomorrow. And I left it sitting there for another
couple of weeks. And now I've picked it up and
put all that stuff away in a drawer. But it
was it was a thing to take apart that uniform
for the last time, because it's for most of us.
You know, if you do a long career, that's all
you've ever known. You've kind of wrapped your identity around
(12:36):
this this thing, and this uniform is the symbol of it,
because for twenty six and a half years, I didn't
have to figure out what I was going to wear
in the morning.
Speaker 3 (12:45):
It was just there for me.
Speaker 2 (12:46):
Do you think it's more challenging for someone like you
that's been in more than a couple decades versus someone
who just does their fore and gets out or it's
hard to say.
Speaker 4 (12:54):
Yeah, it's a different challenge. So you know, if you
do one enlistment you get after three four six years,
you know you're still not a fully formed human and
being in the military was a thing you did. When
you serve more than one enlistment, it really becomes who
you are. And that's where a lot of our vets
have trouble because they have wrapped, you know, kind of
(13:15):
their whole personality around this thing, and now they just
don't feel important anymore. Again, I've been incredibly privileged. I've
got an amazing family. I built an amazing friend group
here in town in Tucson over the last two and
a half years. So I never felt like lonely when
I retired, And that's what gets a lot of our
people like they feel like they're not important, they don't
(13:38):
have friends anymore. I was in, again, a very privileged
position that I've made a lot of friends and made
a lot of deep connections here in the city, and
I never felt lonely when I retired.
Speaker 2 (13:49):
So let's say you're a maintainer, just as an example,
and you still got access to the base.
Speaker 3 (13:55):
Yeah.
Speaker 2 (13:56):
Again, is it frowned upon for Mike to just go
into the hangar just kind of out and it smell
the grease?
Speaker 3 (14:02):
I would say, it's not frowned upon. It happens, Okay.
Speaker 4 (14:05):
I do remember when I was a young airman, we
had a tech sergeant that retired and for the first
couple of weeks he was coming by the shop every
afternoon and it was like, hey, man, like, you probably
need to find something else to do with your time.
Speaker 2 (14:18):
Well, you're getting in the way.
Speaker 3 (14:20):
Yeah, well, I mean we love you, but yeah, yeah,
you're just kind of hanging around.
Speaker 4 (14:23):
And now what we do is we just go to
the commissary and just park your cart in the middle
of the aisle and just stand there all right, or
when you're driving on base, you know, stop and have
a nice long conversation with the gate guard.
Speaker 3 (14:34):
Backup track, Yeah.
Speaker 2 (14:37):
What fifty cars landing behind you? So again I mentioned Mike,
we've we've got a lot of young people listening around
the world on the American Forces network. So what given
your experience, not necessarily with what you're going through now
with the transition, but over a twenty six plus year career,
what for those listening out there, what is your advice
(14:57):
to them or encouragement or frankly warning. I remember one of
the greatest lessons I ever learned in life was what
I didn't want to do?
Speaker 4 (15:03):
No, absolutely, And you know, I've actually gotten this question
quite a bit of time. One of the greatest things
about my last job is I got to sit down
and talk to every new group of airmen that came
to the base, and I frequently got that question like
what would.
Speaker 3 (15:16):
You do over again? Or you know, what advice would
you pass on?
Speaker 4 (15:19):
And the number one thing not to stump for the
military here, but we allow you to invest early. So
invest like an extra on hundred fifty dollars a month
to drink beer is cool, but one hundred fifty dollars
a month that you put away into the thrift savings
planned as an airman, you'll be a millionaire when you retire.
Speaker 3 (15:38):
So do that.
Speaker 4 (15:39):
Go to school as soon as you can, because most
of us don't come in with college degrees. That's why
we enlisted. And I always tell these young folks, hey,
it's fun to go out and party now, but I
promise you will never have more time or energy than
you do today. You're gonna maybe get married, you're gonna
maybe have kids. And I waited way too long to
finish my bachelor's and then get my masters, and it
was it was really hard because I was in leadership
(16:01):
positions by that point.
Speaker 3 (16:02):
So do it while you're young.
Speaker 4 (16:04):
Just do everything you can to be a lucky person
while you're in it's really not that difficult. Like show
up when you're supposed to show up where you're supposed
to show up, wearing the appropriate clothing, and just do
what you're asked. And it's really easy to shine.
Speaker 2 (16:17):
This may be inappropriate, but if you don't want to
answer it, I understand. Yeah, I live in the inappropriate Okay,
what was what was one of the most difficult things
you had to do as a command chief when it
came to your personnel. The most difficult thing for me
is always disciplined.
Speaker 4 (16:32):
I'm a bleeding heart, like I'm a softie, and I
truly want to believe the best in everyone. And when
we had to do discipline, when we had to my
boss was the final signature to process someone out of
the Air Force. That always broke my heart because a
lot of those people we were going to walk into
the gate, take their ID card, they were going to
(16:54):
get in a cab or aneuver, just start walking and
it's not our problem anymore. And it always felt like
it was my problems tell even though there was absolutely
nothing I can do to help that person anymore. So
that's the hardest part, is dealing with discipline and also
dealing with the fact, and this goes across society. This
isn't just the Air Force, but the fact that we
have our own people hurting our own people. So when
(17:16):
I look at a victim of any kind of a crime,
but the sexual assault stuff was absolutely the most heartbreaking
because that's somebody who raised their right hand to do
something hard. They wear the same uniform as you, and
you hurt them like that was the hardest thing to
watch people go through that, and again, something I won't
miss now that I'm out.
Speaker 2 (17:35):
Yeah, no, kid, I'll tell you what you talked a
little bit of Mike about. And I had this with
my brother too, who was OSI, And when he got out,
he showed me his resume and I looked at it.
I was like, you know, halfway through the second page
and I said, John, I have no idea what any
of this means. So we need to talk about translating it.
You know, if you were a sniper, say you were
a sniper, but you know, I'm sure that diffusing ticking
(17:58):
bombs as a good skill to have, but maybe not
necessarily transferable out there into the civilian world. So, Mike,
when we come back, I'd like to talk a little
bit about eods if you don't mind.
Speaker 4 (18:09):
Absolutely, It's one of my favorite topics. I'll make up
stories about that all day.
Speaker 2 (18:13):
Fair enough, ladies and gentlemen, Ben buler garca here in
American Warrior Radio we're talking with retired Command Chief Michael G. Becker.
Don't forget. You can find this podcast and over six
hundred and fifty others at American Warrior Radio Dot com.
We're on all the streaming platforms. iHeart Pandora, Spotify, whatever
it is. Make sure you listen to these shows, and
please please share these important messages. It's so critical that
(18:34):
the other civilians out there understand what the men on
the movement of our military du and don't forget, lady
and gentle when they sign up to take the oath
and raise their right hand, they're writing the rest of
us a blank check, payable up to and including their lives.
If need be, we need to show appreciation for that.
Stick around. We'll be right back. Welcome back to America
(19:11):
Radio Laser. Gentlemen, this is your host, Bend La Garcia.
We're chatting with recently retired United States Air Force Command
Chief Michael G. Becker. He's literally five months out of
the Air Force, held a number of leadership position. In fact, Mike,
you were twice a command chief, that's correct, two different
Air Force bases.
Speaker 3 (19:28):
Yeah. I was at Malmstrom Air Force Base doing big
missiles ICBM nuclear deterrence, and then I came down here
to do rescue and attack. How cool is that?
Speaker 2 (19:35):
That's very cool? Is that unusual?
Speaker 3 (19:37):
Yeah?
Speaker 4 (19:38):
Yes, and no, again, I'm biased. I think I had
the two best installation command chief jobs in the Air Force,
and there's nothing more important than what we do in
the nuclear enterprise. That's what allows the rest of freedom
of mobility and movement for the rest of the US government.
And then here this mission here, especially on the rescue side,
(19:59):
that others made live. Everything we do at this base
is kind of setting around that eighteen year old kid
with a rifle on the ground, knowing that if they
get hurt, if it's their worst day, we're going to
bring them home. And if they're hurt and they're in
big trouble, we're going to come get them out of
it with our a tens. So it's pretty cool.
Speaker 2 (20:18):
You obviously, given that leadership experience, had an experience. I
have to repeat that word. It's not my first language. Sorry,
that might be a little bit different. But in retrospect,
now that you've had a very little amount of time
to think about it, Mike, what would you consider the
most valuable lessons that the Air Force or just a
(20:39):
military in general provided you. I know, I've I try
to live my life without regrets, but I regret maybe
not joining the military, if for no other reason, I
sure could have used a discipline, so I absolutely needed that.
Speaker 4 (20:54):
And it was interesting for me when I came into
the military because my father is a retired colonel of six.
I grew up on the military bases around the world,
so the lifestyle was not foreign to me. Like I understood.
I didn't always do what I was supposed to be doing,
but I understood why I needed to be in a
certain place at a certain time. So coming in I
(21:14):
was a few steps ahead of a lot of my
peers that didn't. And the Air Force really taught me
to be empathetic to that, and I think it probably
applies to whatever business you're going through, because all of
us kind of absorb the world through our own lens,
through our own experiences, you know, through our own patterns
of behavior, and we don't always have a lot of
empathy for other people, Like why can't they figure it out?
(21:36):
Like you just made a joke about being English being
your second language, right, maybe not everybody grew up in
which are the same school as you did.
Speaker 2 (21:44):
So technically my third language. But yeah, okay, so yeah.
Speaker 3 (21:46):
That's way better than me.
Speaker 4 (21:47):
I just got the one and I'm barely competent with
that one, but not everybody kind of had the same
experiences with you, so you got to kind of give allowances.
Speaker 3 (21:55):
And so seeing this cross section of life that we
live in the military, it really just kind of gave
me empathy for what other people are going through.
Speaker 2 (22:05):
I don't know, I kind of joke with you about,
you know, always checking if you had all your fingers
and toes, I do did you? So you proactively told
the Air Force you wanted to be I did you
wanted to refuse bombs?
Speaker 4 (22:18):
So, again, my father was a lawyer. I'd never heard
of explosive ordinance disposal coming up. But when I went
and saw the recruiter, I wish I could say it
was like this always dream of mine to be on
the bomb squad. I was honestly looking through the book
of the largest enlistment bonuses they had because I was
pretty broke, and so I was like, ah, what's that
and my recruiter said, oh, that's a yod He's like
(22:38):
that's a really hard school though, and I was looked
at him and I goes, it's the military, Like how
hard could it be? Spoiler alert It was incredibly hard,
and I really only got through luck. That's how I
made it through Yo D School because at the time
I went through, we had about a seventy five percent
of wash out, right wow, and I just was incredibly lucky.
But it also taught me that, you know, being glib
(23:00):
and being smarter than the average bear isn't enough. You've
got to actually put in the work. You've got to
do the study. You've got to prepare.
Speaker 3 (23:07):
Like I always say it broken record, do everything you
can to be a lucky person. And all tests are easy,
you know the answers. So that mean study, do the homework,
prep and you'll be fine.
Speaker 2 (23:18):
No one is going to potentially lose their life if
you're a plumber or a cook. Maybe if you're a
really bad cook, yeah maybe yeah, but I mean an
EOD or pair rescue or some of these other disciplines.
I mean that is yeah, there's no, there's not a
lot of second chances, I would guess no.
Speaker 4 (23:36):
And there's not really a great instruction manual. You know,
for certain things, we have technical orders, right, so if
you're looking at a piece of Soviet ordinance, you know,
I've got a book on it, and I know pretty
much how it works and how I could attack it.
And then you know, early two thousand and five, I
got sent along with the first trunch of about one
hundred other Air Force COOD guys to go replace a
(23:59):
large part of the EOD mission in Iraq. We had
some training in that kind of stuff. We had a
little bit of tactical training before we went into country,
but we really had to figure it out on our own.
And it was really kind of the lessons learned in
EOD school that made us all capable of just figuring
it out because there is no tech order for it.
There's no there's no manual to teach you how to
(24:20):
operate in combat.
Speaker 2 (24:21):
I'm a little bit surprised to hear that, but I've
only had one other EOD guy on the show in
the years i've been doing this mic. And have you
heard of Aaron Hale?
Speaker 3 (24:31):
Aaron Hale, the name really rings a bell.
Speaker 2 (24:33):
So he was Army EOD and they successfully disfused one
I ED with the robot, and then when he approached
to gather the evidence, there was a second I D
that had been hidden, and that was the one that
went off and got him and it blinded him in
both eyes. And he's now the He started a fudge
company it's called Eod Fight.
Speaker 4 (24:54):
That's why he's got a TikTok channel and yeah.
Speaker 2 (24:58):
Delicious stuff, shout eodfudge dot com lation.
Speaker 3 (25:01):
I've seen him, I've seen it. I've seen his cooking video, so.
Speaker 2 (25:04):
The best candies you'll ever have. But I just it
strikes me as so I've had different folks on the show.
Mike who Adventures for lack of a better term, ended
up being a major motion picture, and I'll never forget.
I was interviewing two pilots about a film that featured
one of their uh, one of their endeavors, and I
(25:26):
asked my soakin, how accurate was this from a civilian standpoint?
How accurate was this? And there was this long pause
and then they said, well, we were in Afghanistan and
that's where they left it.
Speaker 4 (25:37):
Right now, there's always a nugget of truth. You're probably
talking about the hurt lot.
Speaker 2 (25:40):
I was hurt a lot.
Speaker 3 (25:42):
It's our movie.
Speaker 4 (25:43):
We have to love it and we have to embrace it,
even though some of my brothers and sisters like to
give that movie eight it's a great movie at one
best picture. Is it accurate? There's there's nuggets of truth
in there. Every single operation in that movie comes from
the first couple of years of the war in Iraq,
and either me or somebody I know very well did
(26:03):
something very very similar. And it's again a movie, so
they've got to kind of do goofy things to make
it more entertaining on film. But just about everything, and
even some of the stuff like when you reached down
and pulled on a cord and a whole bunch of
bombs came up, like that happened to me, Like you
talked about Aaron Hale's experience, like that happened to me.
(26:23):
The first time I picked up the wire through it
and it was a radio was attached to it. Don't
ask me why I threw the radio. Just felt like
the right thing to do. The second time I found
one at my feet after we had finished the problem,
I just ran because you know, every couple feet you
get away from it, you're way safer if the explosion
goes off. And then I got a call from my
army security guy saying he's.
Speaker 3 (26:43):
Laughing at me. He's like, you found something, didn' you know?
I was like, oh, yeah, I did. It's about one hundred.
Speaker 2 (26:47):
Yards behind me, and were you in the bomb suit?
Speaker 4 (26:48):
No, I was just just helmet and body armor, carrying
a rifle, just running across the desert.
Speaker 2 (26:53):
Oh boy. So whether any particular will we got, We've
got gonna have to take a break here in a
couple of minutes. But I'd like you to think about this,
if there's was any particular sporty incidents or emissions that
you were on. And and it's kind of funny. I
follow a guy on X call a Happy Captain I
think is his his his tag, and he's an Army
(27:14):
EO D guy, and he always always putting up these
memes about and I guess if you're one of one
of your group, you can make fun of each other.
But he always puts up these memes just about how
long it takes EOD to get there. And I don't
know if there's any a kernel of truth in that
or not again.
Speaker 4 (27:29):
There and there's a there's an F word I'm not
allowed to say, but the answer to that is we
take so long to get there because f you, Oh,
that was our Because every time we show up at
a call, they've been waiting, and God bless him for waiting,
but they've been holding security on something for three or
four hours and then we show up.
Speaker 2 (27:47):
Well, let me ask you the practical question, why does
it take so long as it because there's just not
enough of you.
Speaker 4 (27:52):
There's one there's one team of me for pretty much
an entire battalion's battlespace. So you know, if if they
want us to rush and get through the problem quickly,
maybe then they don't have an EOD team tomorrow. So
we do everything carefully, we do everything methodically, and at
the end of the day, we're what's known as a
(28:12):
low density, high demand asset.
Speaker 3 (28:14):
It takes a long time to train us. It's a
lot of tax pair money.
Speaker 4 (28:17):
And it's also a capability on the battlefield, and if
you burn us doing something stupid, you don't have another
one just in the reserve.
Speaker 2 (28:25):
Do you like a fighter pilot Scott Kills on the aircraft?
Do you did you keep count?
Speaker 4 (28:32):
I counted for my first deployment two hundred and six
for the first one.
Speaker 2 (28:36):
Ladies and gentlemen, there's your host, Ben biler Garcia. We're
back with more with Michael G. Becker, United States Air
Force retired. We're talking EOD. You're not gonna want to
miss it. Stick around, Welcome back to American Warrior Radio Lason, gentlemen,
(29:10):
Ben buler Garcia your host here, we're talking with Michael G. Becker.
Michael retired from our United States Air Force five months ago,
twenty six years and nine months in the United States
Air Force. I remssed Michael this whole time more I'll
thank you for proudly wearing the uniform.
Speaker 3 (29:26):
It has truly been my pleasure. It has been a
wonderful life.
Speaker 2 (29:29):
I was geeking out a little bit about, you know,
things that went boom, and you know, I was thinking,
I played a lot with firecrackers when I was a kid,
so I thought, well, I'd be a natural for EOD.
But the decision for you was strictly financial. You were
going down there.
Speaker 4 (29:41):
It was strictly financial, and maybe the people that play
with fireworks shouldn't actually do it for a living.
Speaker 2 (29:48):
Very good point.
Speaker 4 (29:49):
I learned enough about explosives that now whenever I'm at
a fourth at July party and stuff, I just like
to sit in the back and watch.
Speaker 3 (29:55):
I don't need to light anything off.
Speaker 2 (29:56):
You had four five deployments, spended six six as EOD.
Speaker 4 (30:02):
Six as EOD, four of them really in combat and
the other two were at back bases around the Persian Gulf.
Speaker 2 (30:08):
Were there any particularly sporty situations that really jump out
at you.
Speaker 3 (30:13):
Yeah.
Speaker 4 (30:13):
The first go round I went there at the beginning
of two thousand and five, there was a lot of transition,
you know, not to go into a whole history lesson
on the war in Iraq, but we were transitioning phases
of the operation and we were realizing as a nation
and as a military specifically that this was not going
to be quick and clean and get out of there.
So we were settling in for the long haul, and
(30:35):
so were the bad guys. So that first deployment we're
also still developing we call them TTPs tactics, techniques and procedures.
It was tough to train people on that war because
we had never done that before, so we were kind
of figuring it out as we went along. So there
was a lot of sporty stuff that first go around
in two thousand and five, And then when I went
(30:55):
back in two thousand and seven during the troop surgeon
Baghdad and I spent all almost all of my time
there at Bagdad proper, things had changed, but they hadn't.
Things had just gotten bigger, more expensive, more sophisticated. We
went from driving around at home v's to driving around
in twenty five ton m wraps, these big, massive armored vehicles.
We had all this technology, amazing robots, all kinds of
(31:19):
electronics gear, but the enemy just adapted to that. They
went low tech when we went high tech.
Speaker 2 (31:26):
I was just going to ask that question because I mean,
no one can accuse the enemies and those two conflicts
of being dummies, and they over your time and deployment.
I assumed that they were also watching. Absolutely, they were
adapting both the types of devices and the detonation strategies.
Speaker 3 (31:43):
Absolutely. Yeah.
Speaker 4 (31:44):
And tactics are tactics. That hasn't changed, probably since Alexander
the Greats time. You know, you still want to ambush people,
You want to hit people where they're not expecting you
to hit them. You know, asymmetric warfare has been a
factor since we started throwing rocks and sticks at each other.
So dealing with that, and again, you know the fact
that they were so able to adjust on a dime
(32:06):
when we brought something out, a new piece of technology,
Like there's a great story about this. They were shooting EFPs,
explosively formed penetrators that were just cutting through our armor
like a hot knife through butter. And they were setting
them off with passive infrared sensors just like you'd have
in an alarm system on your home. Right, something drives by,
triggers it, it shoots it off. So we developed a
(32:27):
great idea. We called it a rhino. We basically put
a glow plug from a diesel engine in an ammocan
and put it on a stick fifteen feet out in
front of our vehicle, thinking it was going to trigger
the pr and it did for a while, and they
were shooting the rhinos off the front of our vehicles,
which was very, very cool because it worked. Then after
about a week they just started using the same trigger mechanisms,
(32:51):
just aiming the main charge forty five degrees back and
they were shooting back right through our engine blocks and
right through our cabs.
Speaker 2 (32:58):
Again.
Speaker 3 (33:00):
Wow, so they were.
Speaker 4 (33:00):
Really really smart. It was interesting. And then I went
to Afghanistan in two thousand and eight thinking I wanted
to see a different battle space. Afghanistan was totally different.
It's a totally different war, totally different level of technology,
totally different people. And I think most of the American
people that weren't actively involved in the conflict really kind
of put Iraq in Afghanistan together in the same bin.
(33:24):
I couldn't be further from the truth. It was Mars
and Venus just total opposites when it came to a
battle space, but still just as dangerous.
Speaker 2 (33:32):
I'm curious, with just a time we've got left, mic
and now that you've had a very little time to
be out looking back in now with quote unquote civilian eyes,
what sort of challenges do you still see for our
military families or now that you're wearing a civilian clothes.
Speaker 4 (33:47):
We're the same, but we're different. You know, generations change.
I don't really like to talk about generational politics because
people are people. But one of the things we still see,
especially with our military spouses and families, and we still
deploy all the time. We're not on the ground in
Iraq in Afghanistan anymore, but we are still heavily deployed
throughout the world. And when your military member leaves, one
(34:07):
of the hardest things to do for a spouse and
a family left behind is asked for help. I'll tell
a real quick story. So my wife was pregnant with
our first child. She's now a freshman in college. But
I was getting ready to deploy to Iraq in two
thousand and seven and we had just moved to Florida.
Didn't know our neighbors, because you know, we're not the
kind of people that's just going to walk door to
(34:27):
door and pass out cookies to say we're new to
the neighborhood. But they knew who we were. And the
gentleman across the street walked over to me one day
when I was cutting the grass. He's a retired chief
and he said to me, hey, Mike, And I was like,
I didn't really know you knew my name, okay, because
I understand you're deploying. Said wow, how'd you know that?
He's like, I know people. So he said, hey, I
(34:48):
know your wife's pregnant. And once you let you know,
my son's going to cut the grass while you're gone.
Simple effort like that. So I go inside and I
tell my wife I had this great conversation with our neighbor.
And she's first said, you know, how does he know
that I'm pregnant? And I said, well, you're walking around
the yard big as a house, which was the wrong
thing to say at that moment, but she was visibly pregnant.
(35:10):
But anyway, my wife didn't want to take that help.
She's a strong independent woman, but she did. And to
this day, my children, when they get on a couch,
they take off their socks. They don't know why they
do this. It was because my friend's wife always thought
the baby's feet looked hot, and she would always take
off their socks.
Speaker 3 (35:28):
When they came in her house.
Speaker 4 (35:30):
But we got through four deployments in four years at
that duty station, and my family wouldn't have stayed together
the way it did. We wouldn't have been as strong
as we were if my wife hadn't accepted a help.
My kids have another set of grandparents because of Bobby
and Gordon across the street taking care of them. They
picked up my kids from daycare, they took them to
the doctor. They just they allowed us to live our
(35:54):
lives even though I was gone more.
Speaker 2 (35:55):
Than half the time.
Speaker 4 (35:56):
So that's what I always tell the young spouse is
you may feel like you don't need it, but take
the help because people love you. This town Tucson, I'm
sure you feel it. Ben you do a lot for
deployed families. Take the help because people really want to
give it.
Speaker 2 (36:08):
To you, well, no matter where you're listening, I I
do take pride and my hometown here. I think we're
above average, you know. But I'm sure that no matter
where you are, wherever you're based in the United States
or even someplace overseas, you know there is there's a
support infrastructure out there. And that's the reason we do
this show is because people care about you and they
(36:29):
want to support you. So don't don't be too proud
to ask for help. Mike, we're just down about two
minutes left. You if I put you in charge, what
if you could change one thing at the Department of
War to better support our war fighters and their families?
Is it? And you can say I'm not going there, BBG.
That's that's fair enough too.
Speaker 4 (36:50):
But hey, I'm retired now I can say that I
want fair enough. No, I would just say, let's be real.
So if if you have an opinion and you're senior
leader in our military, awesome, you're a senior leader. You
get to have an opinion, Just don't couch it. And
this is a fact, like ponytails impact lethality, do they
(37:14):
you know? Because our women have to take their hair
out of buns to put on their their combat gear,
So don't tell me it makes them more lethal. If
you have a preference, cool, just say it's a preference,
and just just tell the truth. Just be open and
honest with your airman and soldiers, sailors, marines, guardians, coastguardsmen.
Speaker 3 (37:32):
We will fight any bear. Just tell us, tell us
what we're doing, and be open and honest.
Speaker 2 (37:39):
What do you think is the greatest threat facing our
families right now? And I'm not not our families, but
a lot of people talk about China, and yeah, that's
how this the next war is going to be a
lot different than the last one.
Speaker 4 (37:50):
Yeah, disinformation. The next war is not going to start
with a huge explosion. It'll start with maybe the internet
going out, or the electricity out work. Or let's say
we're mobilizing for a massive exercise somewhere and all the
folks getting on an airplane to go over there, look
at their bank balances and it says zero.
Speaker 3 (38:10):
Are we getting on an airplane? Or are you worried
about your family paying their bills?
Speaker 4 (38:14):
Yeah, so those are the things that we really need
to be focusing on as a nation.
Speaker 3 (38:17):
In my opinion.
Speaker 4 (38:18):
The lethality piece our military is the best in the world,
best that's ever been.
Speaker 3 (38:23):
It's not even close.
Speaker 4 (38:24):
Like we can break things and kill people all day long,
but we need to be able to take over our families,
and that means getting rid of the rest of the
support lockdown. Whether it's household goods, whether it's food, whether
it's getting paid every two weeks, all of these things
are incredibly important.
Speaker 2 (38:41):
I'm gonna share book with you that I had a
guest on who literally gave me chills, Michael, because he
was talking about that the next the next dimensions of
future Wars, and a lot of it is stuff like that,
and I just I hope that we're as good. You know,
we've got nerves out there that are taking care of that.
Speaker 4 (38:59):
Yeah, you don't have to blow up an F thirty
five on the ramp up at Luke Air Force Base
to impact flight operations. Maybe you just need to make
us feel like it's not safe to take one off.
Speaker 2 (39:09):
Fair enough, fair enough, Mike, has been a real pleasure.
It's a bit of privilege to have you on the show. Finally,
and best of luck on your new fishing expedition.
Speaker 3 (39:16):
Thank you so much, Ben, it's been a pleasure there.
Speaker 2 (39:18):
You go. Ladies and gentlemen, don't forget check out our
podcast at American Warrior radio dot com. Until next time,
all policies and procedures are remain in place. Take care
of it.
Speaker 1 (39:33):
You've been listening to American Warrior Radio. Archived episodes may
be found at americanwarriorradio dot com or your favorite podcast
platform
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