The 160th Special Operations Aviation Regiment is America’s most lethal and versatile projection of combat power. When our Special Operations Forces require precision insertion, extraction and fire support, the pilots of the 160th deliver. Born from the need to develop an aviation regiment capable of anything, anywhere, anytime, the 160th SOAR is the only Special Operations Unit to have been deployed continuously since inception.
To discuss the critical role of the 160th SOAR, their command team of COL Steve Smith and CW5 Pete Sullivan invited Fran Racioppi for a ride on an MH-47 Chinook and demonstration of the AH-64 Little Birds in action.
From the tail ramp, we discussed the mission of the 160th, their interoperability supporting Green Berets, Navy SEALs and Army Rangers; and the various aircraft in their arsenal.
We also explored the recruiting, assessment and selection process for pilots, crew and maintainers; the culture of an organization that has a no fail mission; and how technology is changing aviation as they prepare to combat both near peer adversaries and terrorist organizations.
Watch, listen or read our conversation from the workhorse heavy lift aircraft responsible for the delivery of personnel and equipment in the harshest environments.
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Colonel Smith and Chief Sullivan, welcome to the Jedburgh Podcast.
Thank you. Super excited.
We’re sitting in an MH-47, the modified one. This thing is badass.
Thank you.
You flew us out here, chief. This is an impressive piece of machinery.
It’ll get you out of hell in a quick heartbeat.
It will also bring hell in a quick heartbeat. I was a Bradley platoon leader. I used to say that that was the most feared ground-based platform that we had because not only did you bring great firepower to the fight, but that ramp dropped, and you had a whole bunch of pissed off dudes running out the bag. This is the aerial platform of the Bradley.
It’s the heaviest assault aircraft for the regiment. It will do more than you can probably imagine. It’s capable of a lot more than you would think. The way we employ it is like no other unit can.
That’s coming from someone with experience, because rumor has it, you got 30 or 35 deployments in this thing under your belt.
Somewhere in there. It’s brought me back every time, and everybody else at the same time, which is more important.
I appreciate you guys having us out here. This has been something that I’ve been looking forward to for quite a long time. The 160th Special Operations Aviation Regiment is one of the premier organizations within our US Military and within the Department of Defense. We look at our Special Operations capabilities across the entire joint force, whether we’re talking about the Army, the Navy, the Marines, or the Air Force. It doesn’t matter.
This is an organization that is called upon by any one of those service components to bring people into our nation’s most dangerous and most high-profile missions. We’re going to talk about the history here in a second. You’ve been around 40-plus years and have been involved in damn near everything that this country has done and led the way for so long. I want to kick it off by talking about the mission of the 160th. What is the mission of the 160th?
Our mission is to provide precision rotary wing support and ISR support to our ground operators or our SOF operators, the SOF mission set. That’s in a nutshell.
Let’s think about the history for a little bit. The organization, much like SOCOM and the entire Special Operations capability of the US military, was born out of these ideas that came out of the early ‘80s. We had to build these capabilities for precision strike. Talk for a second about the formation of the organization, what the nation saw, and why this capability was needed. We have a lot of helicopters in the Army, but they don’t all happen to be like this one.
It’s great. It came out of conventional aviation, the unit here, already at Fort Campbell. Volunteers from Fort Campbell from the 101st, 159th, and 158th built the building blocks of the 160th. It involved the aspect of Black Hawks and Little Birds. They brought on the 47 capability a little bit later within the first couple of years.
That formulated the historic brand of where we started off as a small unit. It’s grown into a battalion, and then later is formed into a group. Overall, years later, we’re a complete regiment with two operational battalions out of Fort Campbell. We have a third battalion out of Savannah, Georgia, and then we have a fourth battalion out of JBLM, Washington.
We’re spread strategically to have two organizations on the East and West Coast, and then the hub of that being here on the Brown compound. We’re out at Range 2/9, our operational range, where we use a lot of our arrow gunnery. We train with the ground forces out here. It has been super unique to have the infrastructure that Fort Campbell provides, our partnership with the 101st, our relationship with the 5th Group, but then also the co-location of our operational ranges here. We have another mount site that we use. That’s been able to be the base for our building blocks for who we are as an organization.
The organization falls under the Army. It seems like yesterday, but I’m starting to realize it was a couple of years ago. It was episode 17 or 18 where we sat down with General Clay Hutmacher. He was a former commander who sat in your seat years ago as the Commander of the 160th, and then went on to be the first commander for USASOAC, the US Army Special Operations Aviation Command. That falls under USASOC.
You sit in an interesting spot because, like Green Berets and Rangers, you fall under the Army Special Operations Command, but you’re an asset of SOCOM. You have interaction, and you support the SEALs and the other service components. Talk for a second about interoperability. It’s easy for me as a Green Beret to say, “I only care about Green Berets, and I only care about the way we do things,” but the reality is you don’t get that option. You have to worry about everybody.
Interoperability between the SOF operators is a unique thing. Each one of them provided a different aspect of how they would employ the aircraft. A statement that we say with Pete and the crew chiefs in this 47, or you take a Black Hawk, is that the back of the airplane is the ground forces. That’s their workspace. We get customer input. We get ground force, which we call our customer. We’re customer-oriented. We talk to our customer about what the back of the aircraft needs to provide. Does it need to be able to have a retrans platform? Do you need to wire stuff so you can get some situational awareness?
Each one of the ground forces has some uniqueness in what they want to be able to communicate, what they want to see, and the situational awareness before they get on the ground. The delivery mechanism is that each one of them relies on our flight leads, our FMQs, and our BMQs to explain where they want to land on the X or land near the objective. There’s not much deviation between a SEAL, a MARSOC, or an RSOF Operator. They’re expecting Pete to understand the ground scheme of maneuver and then be able to put them in the best position to affect that mission. That’s the uniqueness that makes them very interoperable.
On the ground force, there are only so many ways you can go inside the front door, whether you want the nose of the aircraft facing directly perpendicular to the door, but a lot of that will happen where Pete can put this 47 or where our Black Hawk flight leads can put a Black Hawk or a Little Bird go into a rooftop. They’re going to ask a number of different things. That mission planning or that discussion that we have prior to lifting off the ground is not unique to any of the ground forces. They’re all looking for us to give them the critical problem-solving that makes our flight leads and our mission operators pretty important to the overall mission execution.
That mission planning and discussion we have prior to lifting off is not unique to any of the ground forces. They rely on us for critical problem-solving, which makes our flight leads and mission operators essential to the overall mission execution.
A plan is only something to deviate from. Once you start the battery and start the aircraft, bump plans happen and everything else. All those are determined while your mission planning is co-located with the ground force, if that’s the case. Every ground force will treat the same target differently. It’s great to have the aspect of not what you did last time, but to hear the different avenue that you didn’t maybe breach what they’re trying to do, if that makes sense.
You never take the same scenario and apply the same tactic. If the ground force scheme of maneuver or ground tactical plan dictates this, all I want to do is best support their plan from an aviation aspect. They’re my customers. They’re my responsibility until the wheels are on the ground or the skids are on the ground for a Little Bird.
When they’re on target, they’re my responsibility if there’s a CASEVAC to where I can get them out, whether it’s hoist, ladder, rope, or QRF, all the different things. That’s what makes, in my view, the regiment great. We will determine all of our contingencies in that mission planning scenario. Our evaluations to get people to where they need to be in the regimen, I’ll take those into effect as lessons learned, and use those in the future for teaching points or lessons learned.
Let’s talk about that for a second. We all know coming out of Special Operations the SOF truths. There are two here that apply to this world, and we’ll dig into both of them. Let’s start with number one. People are more important than hardware. There’s a lot of hardware within this organization, but you brought up people. Talk for a second about the assessment and the selection process for someone coming into the 160th.
For enlisted officers or warrant officers, we have 66 MOSs, Military Occupational Specialties, for the Army enlisted. We have 17 warrant officers, and we have 22 commissioned officers.
Within one regiment?
In one regiment. I’ll tell you something else later when I nerd out about HRC, Human Resources Command. All those MOSs that we hold all go through the same training pipeline. They all have the same vision, mentality, and toughness to complete our Enlisted Green Platoon and our Officer Green Platoon, commonly known as EGP and OGP.
Those durations vary based on MOSs and, if you’re an aviator or a crew chief, what aircraft you’re going to fly or crew in. It can be a 6 to 9-month process between the different MOSs after you’ve completed your 3-week ground phase of what we call our Green Platoon, if you will. I know I’ve used that term twice, but that’s shooting, medic, land nav, combatives, road marches, etc., in the first three weeks. Once they graduate from there, if they’re in aviation MOS, they will then go to their proper schooling that we house in-house.
Let’s talk about the different aspects of that. We have the enlisted ranks, officer ranks, and warrant officer ranks. As Green Berets in the Special Forces Regiment, we have it here in the 160th, but it’s probably almost more closely aligned within this organization than others. Talk for a second about the difference between the three and what are the jobs that are held by each one of those.
I’ll start with the warrant officer first. In my career, I got here in 2005, along with the RCO. We were in the same Green Platoon class. What transpired for me to go through what I did is that we have three levels of a pilot or an aviator in the regiment. You have a BMQ, Basic Mission Qualified. You have an FMQ, Fully Mission Qualified. You have a flight lead qualified.
A BMQ is somebody who graduated from the Green Platoon. They successfully completed their 6 to 9-month course. They are primarily a planner, learning the relationships and the responsibilities of what the FMQs and flight leads have to put up with. After 2 to 3 years or maybe 1 to 3 years, depending on the seniority of that aviator who assessed, and I’ll get in the assessment process in a second, they will be put up for an FMQ evaluation, which is usually off-site or what have you.
There are contingencies laid out there. There’s a script, a white cell, etc., to open up the guardrails and see which way the candidate will go. However, we also have to be responsible for that candidate. It’s the responsibility of the flight lead not to make the person successful, but to make sure that they don’t do something to the aircraft that’s not proper.
After 1 to 3 years as a BMQ, you become an FMQ. The difference between BMQ and FMQ is not the qualifications of the person. All the air refueling, hoist, ladders, and fast ropes, the BMQ is qualified in that. He or she is not responsible for the aircraft when the customers are going out the back. When you’re an FMQ, you might be the pilot command of Chalk 2, or you could be flying with the flight lead up front. Usually, the FMQs like to have their own aircraft so they can make their own decisions, and they’ll fly with a BMQ.
After 4 to 6 years as a Fully Mission Qualified or FMQ, you’ll be put up for a flight lead board. That is not guaranteed for everybody. Some people don’t need to be flight leads. I don’t mean that disrespectfully. There are people who are engineers by trade and want to go into a different realm of developing for the regiment. Some people want to be maintenance examiners, and they want to go the maintenance test pilot course route. Either way, most of the people here will be FMQs, and that is a successful career in the regiment.
If you get put up for flight lead, mine was seventeen days long. It was for contingencies. JPRA gets involved there. There are so many things that the white cell script regimental stands do. We plan them 6 to 9 months out. They might cost a dollar or two. The flight lead is the one whom the pressure is on. If I had ten aircraft in my flight lead eval, every one of those people in my briefings in my cell learned something that made them a better person because of the reps they got to see, the air mission briefs that we go to, the rock drills, etc.
You’re working your duty day. The ground force changes the plan at the last minute as per the script to tell you, “We don’t want to go there. I know you only have ten more minutes to plan, but this is what we want to do,” and you come together. It’s hellacious, but it’s fun. It’s a lot of working and then some flying, but there’s more working than flying, if that makes sense. There are injects for a reason because something can change at the last minute. You have to be able to develop a plan for that change for a real mission because the enemy gets a vote.
With the progression of our warrant officers, the backbone of any great organization and what makes DoD so successful is our non-rated crew members, our non-commissioned officers, and our enlisted team. A majority of our formation, like any SOF formation, we are entrusted with the true operator mentality of our non-rated crew members and the crew chiefs that man and crew this airplane and also man and crew the Black Hawk. We also have crew chiefs and maintainers with our Little Birds. We do the exact same mindset with our MQ-1s.
When you look at the organization, the two pacing items for us are warrant officers, the folks who are flying the airplanes. As Pete highlighted, we’ve got multiple MOSs and warrant officers. We have our tech warrants and our aviation warrants. They’re the ones that we use as our technical experts. We have a lot of continuity. Most of our warrant officers come to the organization. As Pete highlighted, he’s going to serve his entire Military career after assessing and being assigned to the 160. He’s going to spend his whole time there. He has the opportunity to stay within the regiment and do that.
Our non-rated crew members are the non-commissioned officers and enlisted soldiers. They have an opportunity to get to about the E-7 level before there are some career decisions. We have the opportunity to bring back a pretty good chunk. About 33% is what I’ve talked to the sergeant major about. We have an opportunity to bring some of those back to an experienced level of transitioning from a war fighter and manning the airplanes to being a non-commissioned officer for one of our key staff.
At the E-8 levels, we move them into leadership responsibilities, which are first sergeant jobs, master sergeant jobs, and lead section, the NCOIC of our commo section. That’s where the big cut for us is. We’re going to keep some of the talent. We’re fortunate we get to keep the top talent. The truth is, we’ve got so much talent at the E-6 and E-7 level that when it’s time to make that professional transition, not everybody can stay. That’s been a luxury because of our ability to give back to Army aviation and to the greater Army force.
With all the different MOSs that come through the regiment, the success rate of non-commissioned officers that serve inside the regiment, who are Night Stalkers, and then they go back out to the rest of the force, they excel. We see them serving in multiple jobs as first sergeants. If they decide to go beyond that, their selection rate to sergeant major is extremely high from the numbers. We’re above DoD or Department of Army standards, where Night Stalkers are continuing to get promoted to the E-9 rank. The ability to retain talent at the E-7 level, we can maintain that. We keep a lot of our non-rated crew members on the aircraft to the E-7 level. At the E-8 level, it changes.
From a commission officer standpoint, it’s a unique thing. I don’t know if there are many branches inside of the Army that have the uniqueness of commissioned officers. I’ll focus on the aviation aspect, but that’s not our secret weapon. It’s all the other support MOSs from an officer standpoint that do that. I’ll make sure I highlight that at the end.
With the focus on the aviation MOS, we go to flight school with our counterparts. We’re lockstep. We go to our first assignments. There are commissioned officers and warrant officers. We start, and we’re both brand-new. It is no different inside the 160th. If you graduate Green Platoon as Pete and I did, we both went to our companies. We’re both BMQs. That’s where things start to separate.
There are a lot of sets and reps that are put on the warrant officer to progress, make FMQ, and become a flight lead. From a commission officer standpoint, it’s an aviation risk. We’re training our commission officers to be air mission commanders to understand the scope and to help and assist with 2nd and 3rd level contingencies.
We’re building future Army leaders. All the sets and reps that you get in the company staff positions, all those are building blocks to bring folks back to be battalion commanders. That’s where the aviation risk starts to happen at the battalion command level. It happens inside conventional Army aviation, and it’s no different here inside of that.
One thing that I think is super important is we talk about a lot of what happens from the warfighters in the aircraft. That, I would argue, is secondary to the talent base that we have with all the support MOSs. Every single person who serves in the 160th is a Green Platoon graduate. They are a Night Stalker. There is no support staff that doesn’t have sets and reps as a Night Stalker. They carry the brand as well, if not better, than the folks that stay because they are going to eventually promote themselves out of jobs, and they’re going to go serve in the greater Army. That’s our way to continue to give back to the brand.
That’s Special Operations truth number 5, the 2nd one that I mentioned a couple of minutes ago. That’s that most SOF requires non-SOF support. When we look at an organization like this, you could arguably be the most proficient pilot in the Army, but this aircraft goes nowhere without a maintainer or a fueler.
Correct.
They’re part of the unit.
100%. There have been times when they’ve flown with us on missions. They need to be there because we might go do something and have to leapfrog, jump, etc. They’re counted as crew. They’re there. They’re on the manifest. They’re not, in my terms, second-class citizens by any means. We don’t have a medic kit with us or anything else, but when this thing’s outfitted with our medics, that person’s going with me. I’m responsible for that person. That’s what it comes down to.
We have a Night Stalker, one of our former regiment commanders, who made it to the geo level. His conversation or his statement that he says many times is, “Your importance has nothing to do with the proximity to the target.” Our Night Stalkers treat everything. What’s unique is that every single staff section has the same progression, whether it be BMQ or FMQ.
We establish a BMQ and FMQ progression in everything, from our refuelers to our ammo handlers, our comms, and our logistics. There are BMQs. There’s a progression pipeline. There are SOPs on how it takes to move from being a new Night Stalker to a seasoned Night Stalker. That is something they carry forward, not only inside the organization, but they bring to others how sets and reps and standardization will help overcome a number of things.
The standard is a standard. Regardless of what your job is, if you can’t meet the standard, then you won’t be employed in the regiment, if that makes sense. When you progress from a BMQ to an FMQ, regardless of your MOS, you’re the lead for the trip for your specialty for what you’re supposed to do. They have to own that, which is not a bad thing.
How cross-trained is everybody? I’m asking from the pilot’s standpoint because there are multiple airframes. You mentioned a few of them. You have the 47s. You have the Black Hawks. You have the Little Birds. How do you cross-train across different aircraft?
No, but you’ll do experiences, like the case that we’re going to talk about. One of those AHS is going to fly my 47 pilot that I flew out here with, and they’re going to go shoot gunnery, case in point.
When you look at how to best leverage talent, a number of organizations will say cross-training. Some of our MOSs will cross-train. Our ammo handlers and our refuelers look at trying to be interoperable. The word that I started from the beginning of our mission is precision rotary wing support. You can’t be precision if you do anything else.
As an individual who grew up in a company that did both ATPs, ATPs being both missions of attack and assault, as an attack and an assault pilot, what I would say is I felt like I was good at both, but I was not what I think the Night Stalker needed to be. You need to make the most professional contributions to your platform. You need to be the best 47 pilot. I need the best Little Bird pilot. I need the best Black Hawk pilot.
That was in full display when we took off. I’ve been in a lot of these helicopters. I’ve flown with you guys. I’ve flown with the 101st and the 82nd, a lot of them over my time in the Military. I was on the headset flying out here. There was a point where you were testing the hover. I looked out the back and was like, “We’re on the ground.” You guys were talking. We were in the hover, and you were going through the systems and everything. I’ve never been in a 47 that was that immobile in the air. The only thing I was thinking to myself was, “I feel like I’m on the ground.” It was that rock solid, which comes from decades of experience.
Decades of experience and a little help from our systems. Fair enough. This aircraft will make the pilot look good if it’s employed the right way.
From an MH-60, we have 2 variants. We have the assault variant. We deliver the ground force or cargo, but our focus is on delivering the ground force to the objective. We have an attack variant we call Adapt. That is for half support and then for CAS.
In the Little Bird community, we have two types of Little Birds, the MH-6, which is flights pure, and then we have the AH-6, which is fires pure. They don’t intertwine as far as a fires guy won’t go fly a lift, and a lift guy won’t go fly fires. That is their only job. If you’re a fires guy, you’re a fires guy.
Even though you’re flying the same aircraft.
Same aircraft, different configuration.
It goes back to precision. You asked about interoperability. An assault Black Hawk pilot could fly in an attack platform, but that finishing aspect, they don’t train for it. They’re not trained to pull the trigger. A change to our techniques and procedures is an attack Black Hawk pilot doesn’t do assault work. Everyone has to land, so there’s a certain level of proficiency that they all have. If you want to take an attack Little Bird pilot and land in a dusty HLZ, that is inside the capabilities. Landing on a rooftop and dropping it off the ground force, that’s probably not what you’re going to do with an attack pilot and vice versa. You’re not going to put in an assault pilot, somebody who is infill, and put them on a gun.
We’re having a lot of conversations about what the next fight is. Whether that’s been in our conversations with the current and former Sergeant Majors of the Army or Senior Commanders, everybody is on the same page that we don’t know where the next fight is. We are, as a big conventional force, discussing things like Large Scale Combat Operations. The term LSCO is getting thrown out.
We know, and you know intimately, that the risk of terrorism still exists. The counter-terrorism fight is still there. What I think the Army and DoD are trying to do is try to figure out where we’re going to be employed next. The only way to do that is to train for everything. As we talk about the different capabilities, can you talk for a second about what you are looking at in terms of that next fight? How are you preparing for everything?
The regiment has two missions. We can’t always look at one adversary because something else might happen that we have to react to fairly quickly. That’s our ownership. We own that. We have different teams in our regiment that work, give us briefings, if you will, and showcase what is going on in the world. If we were only focused on Fran and Nick came out and did something out of the blue, we’d be blindsided.
That could happen.
Correct. We can’t be so, and this is my term, naive to think we are going to do LSCO before we might go do something else for counterterrorism. Being able to adapt, being able to understand, being able to comprehend, and knowing what’s going on in the world is a greater responsibility than just LSCO.
We have to look at the fact of denied air penetration and crisis response. It is those two things, and they both can build upon each other. Modernization efforts to make us rapidly deployable, more lethal, and more survivable in that environment will have some translation to LSCO. When you’re talking about an Integrated Air Defense System, being able to penetrate that IAD’s platform, you pick the threat or you pick the enemy. Those things that will make the aircraft survive there will also translate to crisis response. We live in those two spaces.
Back to your question of how you see the future for LSCO and what we can do, you highlighted it. We don’t know the real next big horizon. What we’re doing is how you make countermeasures for some of the systems that we know are across the world. We are building countermeasures for that. We are able to extend range, so fly further and fly longer. That’s crew endurance. Overall, our attack platform is to be more lethal.
If we can increase our range, our survivability, and our lethality, we have a major advantage over any adversary.
If we can increase our range, survivability, and lethality, we have a major advantage over any adversary. If it’s a counter VEO, we got high marks on that aspect. If you’re looking from an LSCO standpoint of near-peer threat systems, they’re more capable to be survivable in that environment. It’s going to take a number of different modernization efforts to make this war machine that we’re sitting in, a Little Bird, a Black Hawk, and an MQ-1 survivable in the next battlefield. We’re in alignment with where the Army wants to go. How many systems do you put on the aircraft? Do those systems need to be layered with other things? We’re looking at those. That’s the space we’re living in.
The only thing I’ll say to that with systems and hanging things on the aircraft, what it does takes away from the ACL for ground force people like yourself. We can make this thing weigh 54,000 pounds and I can take nothing to the target, or we can assume some risk somewhere and take off equipment, so I can put more ground force on the ground. The aircraft doesn’t care about what it weighs, but if the ground force has a plan, I want to support that plan.
When we look at technology and how technology is coming into the aviation space, I had an opportunity to sit down with the former Chief Security Officer at Boeing and have a detailed conversation about where aviation is going and how technology is advancing aviation. We’re seeing unmanned rotary wing Black Hawks flying with no pilot. How are you thinking about that, and how are you incorporating unmanned vehicles into the regiment?
I’m not an expert there. We have made a major shift from the global war on terror to where we’re at on the LSCO environment. Man and unmanned teaming is the future. We are looking at that. We’re talking about whether it is a manned or an unmanned aircraft, or a selection of whether you can do manned or unmanned.
If you put Pete in a one-manned platform, and then a bunch of unmanned systems or unmanned helicopters fly along with it, Pete is still the overall flight lead. We still see that the future flight leads inside the organization, a human will be in the loop. From a 160th standpoint, in the next ten years, you will still have Night Stalkers on the mission. What they’re surrounded by, their wingmen may be unmanned, so we think there’s an opportunity for the future. In the next five years, I don’t see many scenarios where we’re taking a bunch of Night Stalkers out of the aircraft and putting them in an unmanned system.
Let’s talk about the culture of the organization. The organization has been at the tip of the spear across all of DoD since its inception. These aircraft flew the first teams that went into Afghanistan. We talked about Alan Mack earlier, a good friend of mine and a very close colleague of yours for many years. He pushed the limits of these aircraft during that time and brought back so many lessons learned over the years.
The organization has also borne its share of loss because, by definition, this is a high-risk activity and the margin for error is quite small. Talk about the culture of the organization and what it means to be a Night Stalker. Define Night Stalker. We’ve also thrown out the term NSDQ or Night Stalkers Don’t Quit. What does that mean?
I’ll start with the culture first. War fighters who are trainable, and who are lethal is what you want. You want somebody who has a little bit of grit in the regiment. Don’t let a speed bump become a roadblock. Understand how to navigate it and how to get around it. Not everything is going to go right the first time, but you can’t make the same mistake three times and expect to be successful. That’s part of life.
The people we have here, the Al Macks, because you mentioned them, some of those people are still flying our aircraft and training our newest aviators coming in here, and the crew chiefs as well. Our CMSIs or Civilian Mission Simulator instructors have the legacy of the, “Here’s why,” the things you don’t see in our manuals and everything else of why something is written a certain way. Having the gray beards in our community still allows us to understand why we’re doing it a certain way, if it’s still the right way to do it.
People are what make our regiment great. First and foremost, we can’t do it without the people. Having the edge to want to compete, win, and defeat, that’s the mindset you have to have while you’re here. Be proud of yourself, whether you showboat or not. To understand what you did was something that could have come from the direction of the president. That’s how important certain things are.
Whether you’re humble or whether you’re a showboat, there’s a certain place for that to happen. I’m repeating myself, but it’s the people and the culture. It’s who we are. Our Thor teams, our strength coaches, our dieticians, our behavioral health, and our medics, all those people make us great. They all have the common goal, and that goal is to win.
To add on to what Pete’s saying, it’s our shared purpose. There’s that statement where they asked the janitor at NASA, “What are you here to do?” and he says, “I’m here to put a man on the moon.” What we are here as Night Stalkers is to get the ground force on the objective and back safely. That is to protect the ground force and deliver that ground force plus or minus 30 seconds. That’s our creed.
We’re customer-focused and purpose-driven. In our creed, Night Stalkers don’t quit. There are multiple times when you see some of the most complex things. You can go to the Army aviation, and our people can solve that. Secondly, it goes back to the same thing that Pete highlights. Our people are critical problem solvers. From our maintainers to our ASD folks, our ammo handlers, our commo, and our logistics, they’re problem solvers.
A comment I made in a previous brief is that if you give a Night Stalker a kite, they would still solve the problem. They’d figure out how to take it to the ground force or to the objective with a kite. That’s something that makes this aviation organization super efficient, but also purposely driven to be able to solve that. I was talking to my wife. I was sitting here, and Jess said, “Make sure you highlight the fact that your people, if you give them a problem, in 24 to 48 hours, they’re going to be able to solve that.” That’s something we see every single day.
In order to get to where you’re sitting, you had to make a whole bunch of choices in your life and in your career. Talk for a second, each of you, about, first of all, why join the Army, and then second, why put yourself up for assessment and selection and come to the 160th.
You’ve got to talk first, being a baseball player before that. You’ve got to at least talk about a baseball thing as a professional baseball player before doing this.
Full disclosure, I was a boarding school kid. I was recruited to play baseball and football in college. I was an all-American in college at baseball. I did not play football in college. I was in the draft after my junior year. I was in the Astros as a pitcher. I did that for three years. Frankly, I hated pitching because I’m an extrovert and at first base. When I was a first baseman in college, you’re not an umpire and a runner. At first base, I could be in the entire game and have a good time. You put me on the mound and I’m miserable. It was not the fact that I can be by myself and everything else, but that’s who I am.
I went back to school after baseball and got my degree. I wanted to work for the government. I thought that it’d be something I’d be good at. I felt like I was a fairly confident individual. I was Eleven Bravo in the Army. I lost a bet when I was an EIB grader to go to flight school. The bet was during EIB when I was grading. When EIB was over, I put in my flight packet, and then six months later, I was picked up.
I flew 47s in flight school. I was in Korea for a year. I was assessed from Korea with a guy named Al Mack. He assessed me. I’ve been here since 2005. I wouldn’t change anything. I’ve had the highest of highs and the lowest of lows in the regiment, but because of the people I’m around, they’ve made it the best of the situation that it could be.
I’ve asked Pete this many times. For Pete, being an extrovert and wanting to be on a team is the highlight that I hear from him multiple times. He is a natural leader. It makes sense to be in the best organization. Army aviation as a whole is a phenomenal culture. You can go to any aviation brigade inside the Army, and you have a tremendous culture. Standards matter in aviation. What I see here is that we have some of the best and brightest that we get to bring in. When you get somebody like Pete that says, “If you’re going to be in your organization, and you’re going to be in a top-tier organization,” naturally, he’s drawn to lead that. People want to follow Pete.
What brought me here is that I came from a very humble background in Western North Carolina. We grew up pretty poor. We had a ton of opportunities. My father served. My stepfather served. I saw a lot of things as a kid growing up. They got out of the Military when I was in fifth grade. I saw the community. I saw the friendship. I saw the camaraderie, the brotherhood, and the sense of belonging. That was rooted in who I was as a young kid growing up.
In North Carolina, there were few opportunities. At the beginning, I was very selfish. I was looking for a way to help me get through college, and the Military offered that. Once I got in, I got hooked. I was hooked immediately by leaders who cared about me and leaders who opened doors and opportunities. Up until this point, it has been a meritocracy. You come in and show up with a good attitude to take care of people, then you have the opportunity to lead.
I don’t know another formation other than DoD serving your country. Nothing’s greater. I can’t imagine working on Wall Street, making a ton of money, working for some hedge fund when it talks about making money, working for some small mom-and-pop thing, or even being an entrepreneur. Nothing compares to serving in this nation. This is the greatest nation in the world. Sometimes, we don’t always push it. I was hooked very early on.
Nothing compares to serving in this nation. This is the greatest nation in the world.
I got around aviators and had an opportunity to go into aviation. There were some bright, very influential leaders in some of my assignments. My first assignment was Honduras. Similar to Pete, I’ve only done one other assignment other than 160th. I was in Honduras. During that period of time, I had a Night Stalker who was a battalion commander and was influential. He said, “Steve, the 160th is the place you need to try out for,” and I’ve never looked back. It has been a blessing for me and my family. It offers opportunities.
The young Steve, my version of myself when I look back on my life, I could have never scripted a more Cinderella story of somebody that grows up in Western North Carolina, and then the next thing you know, I’m the regiment commander. I still have moments that I pinch myself and go, “I can’t believe they picked me.” Once in a while, I have some inferiority or imposter syndrome where I’m thinking, “Pete’s going to come in and say, “They found out you need to leave.” I’m almost past that.
It has been a storybook career getting up to this point. It’s not over. As unit leaders, all we can do is give back. That’s why we’re sitting here. We’re proud of our organization. We are the best. Every single person who serves in the DoD, I want them to have the same feeling. I want them to go, “The 160th is another unit, but our unit’s the best.” I am somebody who loves this organization almost as much as my family because this is my family. That’s it.
When you hear the term Night Stalkers Don’t Quit, what do you think? How do you feel?
It makes me proud, first and foremost, but also, what makes me proud is being the history that I’m trying to live up to for the people who can’t.
Starting the organization, when ground forces saw a Night Stalker solving problems, it was like, “You’re not going to quit.” What I see each and every day is we’re trying to live up to that creed or that motto. That’s a pretty hard motto to live up to, not quitting. I see young men and women who come to this organization. They’re brought in very early, and they believe in it. They treat everything as a no-fail. They’re driving out to Range 2/9. They set TOTs. Our maneuver folks in a HEMTT set TOTs. They’re like, “I will be out there at 12:00,” and they will be out here at 12:00, plus or minus 30 seconds.
They have that mentality of treating everything as a real mission. Sometimes, we have to tell them, “It is not a real mission. You could be a little bit late. We don’t want you to get a speeding ticket.” Sometimes, we have to do a little bit of coaching. That motto is a hard thing to live up to. Sometimes, it’s not a realistic thing because there are moments where the enemy has a vote and the environment has a vote, but when you live that kind of creed where you’re going to treat everything as a no-fail, that’s a pretty magical place to be.
Every time we step into the aircraft, we treat it like a real-world mission. From the moment we leave the dayroom or hangar, everything we do has purpose. Every set, every rep—we make it count.
What’s next for the organization?
What’s next for the organization is we’re looking at the next horizon. You already brought up LSCO. How do we become more survivable in the future? How do we show our Army leaders that Army aviation is a capable and survivable platform and a survivable asset in the next flight? That’s a tough thing to do when you’re looking at a number of things that show drone warfare and the ability for small, unmanned systems to be able to make these airplanes vulnerable.
What we have to show is how we use some of our other secret weapons, which are mission planning. Plan for three levels of contingencies. Find places to hide. Use terrain. Use the cover of darkness and use the cover of bad weather to be able to give us a tactical advantage over our enemy. That’s what we’re looking for in the future. How do we become more survivable? How do we become more lethal? How do we extend that so we can reach out a little bit further and we can stay outside of the enemy’s reach while we put together the force and employ that to be able to deliver the ground force?
We have to be comfortable when we’re uncomfortable. Some of that might be in the weather, whether it be over land or over a mountain and not being able to see out, but understand that the aircraft has capabilities. As long as you employ those capabilities correctly, you’ll be okay. You’ll get the ground force on time, plus or minus 30 seconds.
The nation owes this organization a debt of gratitude. We were talking about what the nation has seen, which is a very small fraction of what this organization has done and continues to do. We’ve seen the movies and the books. It’s the stuff that never gets talked about that affects our national security as a country.
You mentioned a lot of times that what this organization does is when the president says, “We’re going to go do something,” this is one of the first units out the door to go do that. On behalf of my team and I, we are not immune to the fact that your entire organization put a lot of effort into bringing us out here. We couldn’t be more grateful. This is an organization that I will always be eternally proud to have been in and around.
To be able to come out here with you and have this opportunity, there is nothing like it. It’s a once-in-a-lifetime experience that I never thought I’d ever do again, so I appreciate that. I appreciate you welcoming us in and telling us the story because we also know that there aren’t a whole lot of organizations that have been able to sit across from you and talk about what this regiment does. We’ve got a lot more work to do. That’s the environment that we live in. It will change, but I know under your leadership or under those who are coming up behind you, we have nothing to worry about.
Thank you.
Thank you.
I appreciate it.
Thanks, Fran. I appreciate it.
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