Air Force F-35 Pilot Chris Hubbard

Lt Col Chris "K-Rush" Hubbard graduated from the Air Force Academy in 2002, flew the F-16 as a fighter weapons instructor (Air Force Top Gun), and most recently commanded the F-35 training squadron at Luke Air Force Base, Arizona.  In this episode, we discuss the transition from 4th generation fighter technology to 5th generation and the impact it has had on training, tactics, and war.  Chris has published an article on the topic at the AF’s Air University, entitled “Modernizing 5th Gen Fighter Pilot Training.”

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Transcript

Ep 60 - Chris Hubbard

Chris: [00:00:00] Yeah. At 35 is a really good platform to quarterback, whatever it engagement. And the reasons for that are that it's multi-role is important. So being able to understand both the air fight and the surface fight and coordinate those efforts, having all those sensors, to be able to see the entire chess board, not only where your pieces are on the friendly side, but also the enemies pieces are as an important part of being a quarterback, right?

You don't want a quarterback that only sees half the field, that guy, that person's not going to be effective. We're not going to be the best at air to air. We got F 22 rappers out there. I'm not going to, I'm not the best cast platform. That's why we got the, a 10 out there. I can't carry the most weapons, gotta carry them internally to keep my style. So I'm not really the best at anything in my F 35 individually. But I do think it's the best platform to see the entire battlespace and operate operators that quarterback. 

Greg: Hello, my friends. Welcome to the Greg Krino show.[00:01:00] 

Welcome everyone to the Greg Krino show, where we talked to experts and people with unique experiences so we can become better critical thinkers and have a little fun in the process. Before we begin, please help me grow our audience by giving a five-star rating and friendly comment on your podcast app and share the show on social media.

If you would like to learn more about me and my guests, head over to GregKrino.com and subscribe to the newsletter. And if you have ideas for the show, please email me at GregKrinoshow@gmail.com. In today's episode, we have air force fighter pilot, Chris K rush Hubbard. Chris was a fighter weapons instructor in the F 16, which is the air Force's version of top gun.

He then transitioned to instructing in the F35. What's interesting about Chris is that he has instructed in the older fourth generation fighter technology of the eighties and nineties and in the new fifth [00:02:00] generation fighter technology of today in the same way, the smartphone has revolutionized how we socialize and do business.

Fifth generation fighter technology is revolutionizing how we conduct war. Chris has done extensive research on this, which he will publish soon and he will give us a preview today. So here he is Chris K rush Hubbard. Welcome to the show, man. How are you doing today? 

Chris: Thanks. I'm doing really well. Excited to be 

Greg: here.

Yeah. Fantastic. I'm excited to have you on, I was reading your article about fifth gen wingman. I want to dig into that because you got. Great things to say, and a lot of experience and things that I had not thought about before. So we'll dig into that. I don't know how much of that you want to put out there right now, but I think at least getting the ideas, just talking about them would be nice.

And then I'm sure it'll be published here pretty soon. It sounds like it's something that can be shared far and wide. Is that your intent with 

it? 

Chris: It is, there used to be, what's it called? There was a a magazine that came out through [00:03:00] Nellis and the weapons school, a weapons review magazine, and they went cold for a couple of years.

I don't know if the pandemic had anything to do with that, but that was the avenue I was looking to go through. And they were looking to stand back up, but they hit a couple of hurdles. So I'm looking at a couple other avenues as well, but I think eventually, yes, the idea is to get it published probably through some type of air force channel.

Greg: Okay, cool. Yeah. I'm looking forward to seeing that. It's fantastic. So let me just go over. Your bio here is because people are gonna love this. So you Safa air force academy, 2002 grad F 16 fighter pilot went to weapons school, which is the top gun for the air force. As people might understand it. And then into the F 35 became a squadron commander and you were training folks in the F 35 as well, and you're also an extreme athlete.

So we'll get into all that interesting stuff too. We'll just get right to the heart of the matter.

A lot of fighter pilots are gonna want to hear this. And I think a lot of [00:04:00] layman who are interested in fighter aircraft and interested in military tactics, but don't understand the pace of change that is happening and they see Ukraine Russia happening, and they're not sure how the military is ready for all this, but there's so many changes going on and you're digging down into the actual I guess you're digging down to the heart of the matter.

And that's, we're transitioning from, what's called fourth gen to fifth gen and that's affecting all of combat. So can you explain what that is? Fourth gen and fifth gen and just how we're going to deal with that change. 

Chris: Yeah. You bet. I'd love to, and I'm like most stories. There's a background 

 as you mentioned with my career highlights there, and I don't know about extreme athlete, maybe aspiring extreme athlete would be, would suit better. But yeah, longtime F 16 pilots. And then as part of our education professional education in the air force when I was a major, I did my, usually the normal thing would be to go to Maxwell air force base in Alabama and go through air command and staff [00:05:00] college.

And there's a couple other options out there. And the one that I got to go to was back to the air force academy to be a commander for a hundred cadets and a cadet squadron there. And it's a three-year program. The first year you get your master's in leadership and counseling. And then the second and third year, you're a commander of a hundred cadets and.

I start the story there. Cause that definitely shaped the way I think about teaching and instructing another person in the F 16. I wasn't an instructor as well. And as from your background in tactical aviation, that's a big deal to be able to teach somebody as complex, difficult and as risky as flying a fighter aircraft.

And so that kind of shaped me and how I think about learning and teaching and being an instructor. And then I was further shaped by going through this program and maybe even some more of the softer skills with the leadership and counseling training that I received during that year. And then certainly had to apply that.

When I am, I'm leading a [00:06:00] hundred cadets, 18 to 24 year old is a really interesting time period terms out in people's lives. And you just get everything, you run the gamut there of very high performers, who at tough places in their life, whether it be, parents have a medical issue, boyfriend left them, whatever it is.

And then at that same time for me, when I'm a commander at the air force academy, I had two kids. And so it wasn't apparent before then. So we got all these things coming together that revolve around teaching and learning and instructing and especially these different disciplines, right from parenting to commanding young men and women to teaching something as advanced as how to operate a fighter airplane.

Okay, so you got all of that. And then fast forward after that assignment at the air force academy, I went to Luke air force base here in Phoenix, Arizona, and transitioned from the F 16 to the F 35. So not only had I been out of the airplane, been out of tactical aviation for three years at the academy, but now I'm also [00:07:00] changing to a different airframe and learning how to do that.

So you can't teach an old dog new tricks. This old dog tried try to learn some new tricks there in the airplane. And then was selected to be a director of operations. So number two, in charge of a squadron and then ultimately a squadron commander. And, we have all this inertia behind our training system here at Luke and certainly everywhere of the way we've always done things.

And it's based upon, let's not throw away all that. It's certainly a lot of good ways that we've learned how to teach people in tactical aviation. How much do I push you? Say if you're my student Greg, how much do I push you? But I don't want to push you too close to that edge.

There's the safety aspect as well. And I want to put you in that learning zone. So I don't want you to be comfortable hanging out on your couch. Watching Sunday football. You're not ready to learn when you're in that zone. I don't want to push you so far, so you're scared. You're not learning when you're scared, but there's that just right.

Goldilocks zone where you're keyed up, you're ready to go and you're ready to [00:08:00] learn. And that's where we're trying to put you in that zone. Maybe different if I am teaching my three-year-old something, if I'm teaching a 20 year old cadet, something, if I'm teaching a fourth-generation F 16 students something, and I'm teaching a fifth generation, F 35 student something else, you got to tailor your approach. I think that makes sense. So I'll pause there and step back a little bit with the different between what I mean and what I mean by fourth generation, fifth generation fighters. So your fourth generation fighters are going to be your F 16 , end of the cold war, era development.

High performance supersonic high G. Air to air missiles precision guided munitions, avionics suites. And so those are that type of aircraft that had been around for a long time and are certainly still around and are effective. And then fifth generation fighters, I'm talking your F 22 and your F 35 and how these differ it's going to be super maneuverability.

So the ability to [00:09:00] continue to control the aircraft past a stall situation stealth, so multi spectrum stele. So not just radar energy, being low observable against that, but all spectrums including infrared and then the amount of sensors in the data lake. That the airplane has is going to be more and superior to your fourth gen airplanes.

And then the final piece of that is going to be the sensor fusion, which combines all of those sensors so that my brain is not as, is supposedly having to do less of that combining than I did in my fourth generation airplane, 

Greg: I do have some listeners that are very much layman as well, not even pallets at all.

So what about first, second and third gen? I know that's probably a little bit harder to summarize that because we didn't grow up in that area. You and I are both fourth gen guys. God, I'm probably almost even a third gen in some ways with the 10, but as I understand, first gen was basically guided missiles.

So post-World war II. We had a heat seeking missiles. Maybe that was that first gen. And then was second gen we added in more [00:10:00] radar. Do you remember the, the history of that leading up to the. So like the first three, what were those about, 

Chris: I'm with you, I'm focused on kind of the current and didn't look, although that may be a good area to take a peek back and see exactly what that was.

And it's funny, you and I have our guesses about what that was. I actually was thinking more of the first and second would be without that beyond visual range capability, which is maybe what you're saying, just those heat-seeking missiles when you're within close to the enemy. And then your third generation would be the stuff that was proceeding.

Say your F 15 and your F 16. So your F four type of Vietnam era is what I think of when I think of third generation 

Greg: airplanes. Yeah. And with that, with each big upgrade in technology, whether it's beyond visual range, missiles, or radar, and then more data link, we had to have a change in tactics.

Like I'm sure people have. I've seen top gun and there's the story about why they created [00:11:00] it? It's that basically the U S military got lazy thinking. Everything could just be an air to air missile fight, and they forgot about the basics of dog fighting. Then they created top gun to help us hone those skills.

So it's always this balance between we want to advance in generations and have our tactics change along with it, but we don't want to forget some of the older tactics as well. You have a great analogy here in your article about going from a flip phone to a cell phone.

Everybody now has a self or a, I said, I'm sorry, a flip phone to a smartphone. Now the smartphone has just revolutionized the way we communicate. It's not just on our talking, the flip phone was just talking and maybe you could have some basic texting. And that was about it. Now you have this next generation of foam that can literally do everything that we could ever imagine.

And so it's changed how humans have related to each other. That's a whole other conversation. You could get into social media and, media information and all the things, how it's changed our culture and kind of the same thing is happening with [00:12:00] fourth gen to fifth gen. So now we're going from the traditional F 16 with you.

Okay. We had PGMs precision guided munitions and laser guided bombs and J dams and maybe some basic data link. The point is that with these huge upgrades in technology, it's revolutionized how we train and do our tactics and thus affects how we do.

Chris: That's great. And yeah, no, I thought that was a great lead into kind of where I'm taking this and eventually getting around to the the point of your first question or the one thing I would add to the iPhone analogy is and you and your listeners probably certainly seen this in the news is why is the F 16 better at dogfighting than the F 35?

Or why are these very small that why can the S 15 go faster than the F 35 and those very small niche points which are true. And my response to that would be once again, comparing the iPhone to a previous generation of phone let's even say dial up phone that, we had in our kitchen when we were kids, it's an actual physical landline with the actual physical buttons.

And all that thing [00:13:00] could do was, call the neighbor or call across town. And I think I could say to you the call quality on that phone many times is superior to your iPhone. Just because your iPhone is doing it, doesn't have that landline. But I think just because that statement is true, you would never say that phone is superior to your iPhone.

Just because that one aspect is actually better. And I compare that to what's said about, say the F 35 versus the F 15 or F 16 in those very small instances. You still want your iPhone no matter what, you wouldn't, you're not going to trade that back for that previous landline, even though there are some things that that previous version did better, 

Greg: I had the same.

Epiphany with the age 10 when they were going to chop the a 10 and 2011, of course, a lot of us fought it for many reasons. And one of the biggest reasons was that the F 35 can't do close air support, as well as the, a 10. We're going to sacrifice close air support, that's going to affect our capabilities and for our ground troops and yeah that's true.

 [00:14:00] But then I joined the air operations center realm where I was doing the more operational level of war, where we incorporate F 30 fives and F 20 twos and all the other capabilities that we have into war.

And I can see why now we have the 35 and the value that it brings. And yeah, it might be true that it doesn't do this one thing as well. The question is, what other capabilities does it bring. And those are numerous and deep and yeah, we might have to sacrifice some previous missions a little bit, but if we can make up at Fort and all these other things, then it is worth it.

 Obviously a lot of this is a business decision by Congress and we have limited money, it's just the truth. We can't do everything at a hundred percent effort all the time. So we have to make some sacrifices. So I guess the point being that we went through this in the ATN community and as a former eight, 10 guy, now I can see it.

Of course the F 35 is now much more evolved and advanced than it was 10 years ago. So things change, but your point's well taken that [00:15:00] you could sacrifice one small thing, but you have to look at what else you're gaining 

Chris: for sure. Absolutely. So bridging from there. So what I guess would be the next question.

So what that the F 35 and fifth generation aircraft are different. I think we've established that as best we can in the last 10 to 12 minutes okay. So what after that and I think you touched on that some, that the tactics in the way we employ the airplane are also going to change and not really only the tactics.

But the three areas I cover in that paper are administration tasks the tactics, and then the performance under stress. And I think those two factors are, how I. Instructing and tactical aviation are those three areas, right? So your admin is going to be learning the systems of the airplane.

How does it work? What happens when there is an emergency with the airplane? How do you take off, how do you land? How do you fly in the weather? Just the very fundamentals of getting the airplane airborne and getting it home safely. The tactics are going to be, the fun stuff, how do you employ the airplane against the [00:16:00] enemy?

And then the performance under stress is the final piece that is incorporated in those first two as well. And it's how do you do both of those things under less than ideal conditions? Because it's one thing to be able to fly the airplane on a clear blue perfect day, but it's a whole different thing to do it when something's wrong with the airplane and the weather's bad.

And then same thing on the tactical side. It's one thing to drop a bomb on a target. That's not moving, that's easy to find and it's a whole nother thing to drop a bomb on it. Against one that doesn't want to be found, his mobile is trying to evade you and is maybe trying to shoot you as well. And so that's where the performance under stress piece comes into play.

The admin piece and how that's changed from fourth to fifth gen is that a lot of the systems are now automated, right? The autopilot systems are advanced the auto throttle, the ability for the airplane to do basic flying tasks is increased compared to what it was in my previous F 16. It doesn't mean that it's [00:17:00] all gone.

It doesn't mean that there is nothing for the pilot to do in those situations. And in many times it just changes the burden and exactly what we have to do as pilots. There's examples in commercial aviation where there's too much automation and the pilots aren't paying enough attention to what's going on because so much was automated away from them.

And the other example, I will bring up. You have to understand the automation. There's also examples in commercial aviation of the airplanes, doing something that it's been programmed to do, and the pilots looking at it. I don't understand what's going on here. And when you have that, that can lead to a dangerous situation when you don't understand what the airplane is doing.

So there's still training. There's still work to be done. There's still pilotage to be had, but it's a little bit of a different flavor than it was saying a fourth or a third generation airplane. So that's the admin piece and how that's changed. The tactics have changed pretty dramatically as well. And so I will step back to get the third generation aircraft to F four and the Vietnam.

[00:18:00] Where the basic mentality and I'm oversimplifying, this is the flight lead owns the formation and there are other airplane, usually four total that are flying with them. And basically the wingmen are an extension of the flight leads will right. Follow me. I'll take you to the target. I'll show you where to go.

I'll point you where to go. I'll take care of everything. Tell me if you see me on on fire. Other than that, I want you to be quiet cause you're only getting in my way. So that'd be your kind of third generation. And then in the fourth generation, That started off the same way, as things do, but then it more from there as the airplanes got more capable and the enemy got more challenging, right?

You don't have to give a lot more responsibility and authority to wait a minute for the enemies not capable, but when they are, then you need to start doing that. And so you saw in fourth-generation tactics that the flight leader in certain situations would delegate more authority and responsibility.

And example of that would be, based on these contracts is when I want you to employ your weapons. You don't need to ask me, you don't need my [00:19:00] permission as a flight lead, but once you reach criteria a, B and C, then that means you can go ahead and employ your missile or drop your bomb or whatever.

And then the fifth generation aircraft going to take that one step further where the Wigman is running their own timeline. And you know how far away I am from the adversary aircraft, how far away I am from the target, what I'm doing during each of those times, the Wingman's far away from me. So the women is not close very close in third generation aircraft case.

And then, miles, one to two miles in fourth-generation aircraft case, and then tens of miles in the fifth generation aircraft. So they're too far away for me as the flight lead to be telling them individually what to do, they're running their own timeline, own tactics and own priorities. Cool. So that's the first where the admin and the tactics have.

The final piece is the performance under stress and due to the different factors that we talked about that make a fifth generation [00:20:00] aircraft unique, the advanced sensors, the sensor fusion the scenario that stresses out a fifth generation pilot is going to be different than the one that stresses out a fourth generation pilot.

And we've seen, we've really need to ratchet up the scenario to be able to do that. As a simple example, would be more adversaries, more enemies on the ground, more friendly aircraft out there, more complexity in the battle space is what's required to put that student in the learning zone. 

Greg: It's a lot of stuff you're throwing at us. The things that would stress me out as a late third gen fourth gen pilot would be maintaining visual with my flight lead. I remember as a wingman, if you get stuck in the clouds in a non radar airplane, like the a 10, you would spend 90% of your energy trying to get back together and get visual with the flight lead again and, getting your proper airspace.

And it was hugely task saturating. And then when we came up [00:21:00] with the eight, 10 C, and then we had more moving map and a little bit of data link, and we could spread out a little bit more, then I can use my moving map to look down and see where my flight lead was and use that to aid my visual acquisition of the flight lead.

And I could dedicate a little bit more time toward other things, but those other things became pretty numerous as well. It's a whole different mentality. And now you're throwing in with fifth gen where you're tens of miles apart. Now the actual stick and rudder and immediate separation is not as big of a factor.

You might even have different weather conditions when you're tens of miles apart, there could be a thunderstorm in your flight leads area, and it could be clear blue sky in your area with completely different threats and targets and whatever. So that's what I was concerned about as a third gen wingman.

And I can see how, I guess the training would have to evolve. So I guess that's my next question, or maybe the next part of this conversation is how are we going to change the syllabus to reflect that? Because [00:22:00] you can't teach a student all of this stuff in the six months that we have. Most of your basic courses were about 40 rides or whatever, and maybe.

10 or 15 simulators. I'm not sure what it is now, but so yeah. How is all that changing? 

Chris: Yeah, you bet, and you really nailed some key factors there too, that I want to touch on real quick. The last one you mentioned there about being tens of miles and having different weather potentially, which is exactly spot on.

And then that also made me think, and you really have a different presentation with the enemy, right? What you're seeing tens of miles away compared to what I'm seeing is going to be a different let-down for the enemy, a different lay down for the friendly forces. And so that's why you need to be able to execute at that higher level because you're not just seeing the exact same thing that your flight.

The second thing I want to cover there is how you talked about one of the highest priorities for a fourth generation wingman is maintaining that visual and that deconfliction with your flight lead. And that was huge for me in my 10 years in the [00:23:00] F 16. And it was job number one, because if we're fighting each other. And we're battling each other and we can't figure it out between each other. How the heck are we going to fight the enemy? And so it was the Wingman's job to de-conflict that means not get in the way of the flight lead and that required maintaining your eyes on.

And then even towards the end of my fourth generation career, with the improvements in the data link, we could fly a little bit further away from our flight lead with the help of the data link to let us know exactly where he or she was at that time. And so I go through all that because in the fifth generation fighter world, that number one thing that we had the wingman to do, which w which sometimes took 90% of your energy is now taken away.

And that's huge, right? The number one concern, the number one thing we trained wingman to do is now off. We don't have to do anything with that entire piece. What can I now do with that 90% of them? I can make them more lethal against the enemy, which is of [00:24:00] course what we want. So getting to the meat here of, how has training changed and.

How can it continue to change? And I think it's also important to point out at this part of the interview, that these are not my ideas solely in and alone. I have a long list, which you probably saw at the end of my article of a dozen to 15 people that have contributed to the ideas that I'm going through today.

Which I think is obviously healthy to have those different points of view and not just be me. And then many of those folks on that list are mentors to me and folks that put me through my initial F 35 training. So I credit a lot of these ideas to them. The only credit I can possibly take is trying to combine all of these into one place at one time.

With that being said, the three things that I think have changed with training come from fourth gen to fifth gen, and then we need to continue to keep our eye on our trust. Wingman's mentality and then changing our definition and threshold of what basic actually is for a new fifth [00:25:00] generation wingman on the trust aspect.

We need to trust our wingman to execute more independently. And I've already covered why it's, because they're doing their own thing and they're far away. And if we keep the same mentality, say let's even compare it to a third generation mentality of don't say anything other than tell me if I'm on fire.

Other than that, I want you to shut up and just follow me and I'll take you to. The target and I'll take it to the bad guys. That's not going to be effective in the fifth generation fighter world for reasons that we've already covered. And that sounds like something that's easy, a lot of those paradigms are tough to break.

I know it was for me coming from the fourth gen world into the fifth gen and they told me what we're allowing our wing men to do. And they're at 35. I said, we're allowing them to do that when you kidding me. So it takes some amount of time to get used to what we're actually allowing them to do.

So the success or failure of this mission depends on this guy over here with 50 hires of the airplane. Is that what you're telling me? And I said, yes, that's what I'm telling you. So that trust is a huge aspect of it. The second is going to [00:26:00] be training the mentality and that mentality is a specific one and that's to succeed in an opaque and dynamic environment.

So you're not going to have the complete picture of what's going on. You're not going to have a. Set problem. The problem sets, going to lie on a spectrum. And then your solution set is going to also lie on a spectrum with many gives and takes. So I remember, especially in early in my F 16 career, there was usually not all the time, usually a set answer for a given problem set.

If you see three bad guys out there and you have four good guys and the bad guys are X miles away, we knew the tactic that we were going to run. It was just a matter of being able to recognize you're in that situation, execute appropriately, practice it enough time. So you could do it quickly and knew where the faults were and knew how to capitalize on that.

And if you read enough about it, practiced it enough, then you would become proficient in the airplane. In the fifth generation world, dealing with an enemy is advanced and complex as the [00:27:00] one week could potentially face. The potential to see these scripted scenarios it goes down and the potential to see something that you've never seen before in your training goes up.

So how do you teach a wig man, to be able to be ready for that and prepared and execute and be successful? If we're in that scenario, it's probably a critical, it's probably something that's very important for our us interests in our ally to be successful against that. And so we need to train that from day one.

In how we get our women wing men to think differently. I don't want to give them scripted a one plus two equals three problem sets. And then the final one is raising our threshold of what is basic for a wing man. So we have at Luke air force base here, which is one of the school houses for the F 35.

One of our courses is called the basic course or B courses, what we call it. And that's pilots that come right from pilot training, never flown a fighter aircraft before. And the F 35 is going to be their first fighter and we're going to teach him how to fly it. And so the [00:28:00] level that we are going to graduate a student from that program compared to the level of where we're going to graduate, say an F 16 and F 15 and eight, 10 pilots can and should be at a higher level.

And it's not that one person. Better than the other smarter than the other. It's just that one person has an iPhone and one person has a dial up phone. You would expect the iPhone to be able to be more capable and handle more situations and more challenging ones. And that's exactly what's going on in this situation.

So trust trusting our wingmen more mentality to succeed in opaque and dynamic environment, and then raising the bar for what is basic for a wingman, 

Greg: going back to the trust aspect. So when I was a flight lead in the eight, 10, I would trust my wingman to input, coordinates and elevation of a target.

And that was about it. And I said, you can maintain a situational awareness about where the threat is and where the friendlies are, but I don't want you writing down all this stuff. How much is that changing with the fifth gen? Like [00:29:00] how much are you actually trusting him to do? Is it just more targets?

Or is it the nature of what he's actually doing? He, or she's actually doing like how much trust? What would that contract look like if you could stay in the unclass environment on that? 

Chris: Yeah, it's certainly, a trust, but verify, applies, especially at the beginning when they're learning how to do something.

And I think the point I'm trying to make as if we never trust them and never challenged them to do that, then how do we know they can or can't handle it? And what we've seen is a lot of time, the limiting factor is not the student. It's how good of an instructor am I, in your specific example of allowing a wingman to, in this example, write down, coordinates or take a nine line how good can I instruct that?

Certainly there is an upper limit of what a student is able to do based on their experience based on what the airplane's capable of and based on what I'm asking them to do at that time. But we want to find where that limit is. And if you stop them at [00:30:00] halfway and go, ah, I don't trust them to go past halfway.

There's no way they can do that. Then you'll never know if they're able to achieve more. And I think that's what I'm really getting at this aspect is, we ask them to do more. We work really hard on our game as instructors on how to do that. And I found a lot of times that the limiting factor is me being able to explain how to do that and exactly what I do and how do I prioritize correctly.

And if I can get that part it really unlocks a lot for the wingman to be able to execute better. And then my final thought on that is, and you even mentioned it in your question. In the a 10 or F 16 or F 15, they're busy doing their main task of deconflicted from their flight. And so I took that off their plate, and it's amazing how much more can be put on their plate when one stats away.

Greg: And how much would you tell them to do so if you're going out in this battle space, however big it might be, and the big categories again, it's still in my third gen fourth gen [00:31:00] mind, you have targets threats, friendlies, of course, there's artillery and clearance the T standard, TT FAC orb that we learned when we were winging, but the big ones are our targets, threats and friendlies D and then as a flight lead, I would prioritize which targets we're going to hit.

And when, and with what kind of ordinance do you have the wingman and the fifth gen prioritizing all of that stuff or are you as. Prioritizing most of it and telling him or her what to hit, are they literally deciding and prioritizing on their own or does it depend on the situation? 

Chris: Yeah, I think it depends situation certainly applies here.

I definitely think we need to lean forward on exposing the students and challenging them as much as we possibly can. But I think you can definitely reach a scenario, which you probably reached here in your question. As I think about it, where, you do need some amount of hours under your belt and experience in these scenarios to be able to work [00:32:00] through it.

We can dial it up. Where you will get to that point where the eight, 10 pilot with 1500 hours is just going to have that much more experience to draw from than the one with 50 or a hundred hours. And I think the same is going to apply in the F 35 land. A lot of times I'll come to that and I'll go let's see what they do, we're in training here. Let's see what they do. And. Even if they do mess something up then we have something to debrief and learn and try to fix the other thought that comes to mind. There is the quality of our simulators are a lot better than when I was in the F 16. You would know all about this with the single seat and not having a two seat option.

Our simulators are very good to be able to prepare that student day one to take out the airplane by themselves. We don't have the luxury of a D model with which is the two Cedar and the F 16. What were some ways that you guys would make sure that student was ready to go on day one without someone in their bags?

Greg: The big thing was we were lucky because the eight, 10 was just very easy to fly. You couldn't really screw it up. If you put the throttles all the way up, you're not going to over-speed it. Hey, you might go faster than you're supposed to do in the [00:33:00] pattern, but you're not going to break the airplane unless you're going to die, which is you wouldn't be in a instrument type of situation, but a the aid sandwich is very easy to fly.

B we would make sure they knew all of their bold face procedures. So all the memory items that you have to know where you don't have the time to reference a checklist, we call that bold face in airline world. We call the quick reaction items. So we knew that they knew all of that. And then we would go through the simulator and we would test them on all those memory items.

And then the simulator and the eight, 10. It's not full motion. At least it wasn't when I was there, but it was pretty good. The stick reaction time, the throttle reaction time. Performed relative to the real airplane was all pretty good. So yeah, that's how we would do it and then we would chase them.

So we would have two eight tens going up together. They would have their own discrete frequency. So you have your air traffic control frequency, where, you know the students talking to the tower and departure and approach and all that. And then [00:34:00] we would have our own discrete frequency where only me and the student would talk to each other.

We call that Fox mix of the FM radio. And we use that like a telephone. So I would literally go there on the very first flight. We would start up the engines. I would stand there on the ladder. All the students started up the engine. So if we got that done safely, then I would tell the crew chief, Hey, this is a new guy.

Make sure you watch him. And so we have a lot of people watching you. Then I'd jump over to my plane. I would start it up real quick. And then we would read a taxi out together and you would literally chase the student in close formation and you could tell them to go faster or slower up or down. And so that's how you would do it.

And students would fly formation literally on the first flight. And a lot of that's a Testament to flying the T 38 beforehand, which is a much more difficult airplane to fly. If you don't, if you can fly at 2 38, you can fly an eight 10, no problem. I think the eight 10 community got lucky with just a good T 38 training platform before that another being the eight, 10 is just [00:35:00] easy to fly in general and then just pretty.

Simulators and good procedures and nobody ever had any problems. I can't think of any students that had a major malfunction. I know there's some that had, that did end up losing an engine or whatever, but it's, it was not really a big event. So I think we, we got we did that for forever.

We still do that in the 10 that's. That's how it's all done. So the very first flights by herself. 

Chris: Awesome. And listening to you. It's amazing the similarities to the F 35 and how we initially train those students on those first rides. And it really speaks to like, I'm talking about changing the way we train our wingmen a bunch, but let's not forget a lot of the same fundamentals apply and it's the exact same thing we would do on a student on their first ride, as far as, going out with them to the airplane, making sure they're all set and good to go fly in chase off of them as well for their first ride.

Some things change and some don't and that's really good. The other thing [00:36:00] I thought about there listening to you, we get back to that advanced example you gave Hey, are you really getting your women to do these advanced things with low hours under their belt?

One thing that comes up there is, especially in the fifth generation world is being comfortable with failure. And I guess that really doesn't apply to fifth gen only that could apply to any discipline that you're trying to do. Where, how do you see failure? Do you see failure as a reflection on you and your character and your ability, or do you see failure as part of the learning process?

And that's easier said than done man, we all got egos and we all want to, we all want to win, but seeing failure as part of the learning process really allows us to push our wingmen to that edge, to that learning zone of stress. Fail at a couple of things during the sortie and then dive into the debrief and find out why did that happen and how are we going to get you better for next time?

The other part of our training system here that I briefly touched on in that article is that we have what's called a human performance [00:37:00] team, which is something that I never had when I was going through the F 16 basic course, or was a young Lieutenant or captain in the F 16 world. And what our human performance team does here is apply a lot of the expertise that say a professional sports team uses to get their athletes, to perform their best on game day.

So I'm talking about stuff like strength and conditioning coaches, mental performance coaches, nutritionists. Soft tissue, massage, fifth physical therapists. And not only do we have all the experts in these different disciplines available to our pilots, but they also work together as a team. So we're getting that one.

Plus one equals three, right? If my physical therapist is talking to my strength and conditioning coach, and they're trying to get at my, whatever it is, neck problem that I'm having together versus just a singularly, it's amazing the results they've been able to have. And they're putting these new students on these training programs that they can [00:38:00] use throughout their career in the airplane.

The air environment is especially the tactical one is really difficult on the body, the neck and the back injuries. I'm sure you have tons of buddies like I do with issues there. And we're trying to tackle that through things such as the human performance team. 

Greg: I now feel I'm starting to feel old. Now, when I look back at how the training has gone, I'm thinking, man, it's a becoming a different world. We know we have the civilian instructors who are experts in a certain part of the eight, 10, or a certain part of our tactics.

They would teach us things, but we never had people that would teach us how to learn. Like we didn't have the, the metaphorically speaking, like the misuses and the mental health conditioning, but we never had that. We just had civilian instructors who were old, a 10 pilots, and we had current eight, 10 pilots.

We had our basic or 40 something ride syllabus and the ideas had not changed in 30 years. And now, it's, there's so much more involved. [00:39:00] I'm jealous of the kids nowadays. 

Chris: Yeah. And it's a win-win in my mind too. It's a win. And the fact that it's pennies on the dollar, the resources we spend on this, let's say.

Put all my students give them 2% better performance and retention and in longevity, throughout their careers and through their time, even here at Luke while they're training, that's money well spent for what it costs to get an effective F 35 story and everything that goes into it. And if I can get just that little bump up from their training, then that's going to be money well spent.

So that's the win on that side. And I feel like the second part of the win is the taking care of your people and, the retention and the valuing our most precious asset, which is our people, right? You can have all the coolest planes in the world, but if you don't have, people who are fired up motivated in shape and feel like they're valued by your organization, then you don't have much of a fighting force.

And so I think [00:40:00] the human performance stuff is a real win-win from those perspectives. 

Greg: What type of skills are. Succeeding now in F 35 training and which type of skills are just not as important as they used to be like, what are students having trouble with and what are they succeeding at that might be different now versus what they were in, late nineties and early two thousands when you and I were first 

Chris: starting out.

What a great question. It's amazing this, especially the younger folks coming through the basic course, right? So the straight out of pilot training the younger generation compared to me it's amazing how they're able to take to, for example, the F 35 has two big touchscreens, basically two huge iPads that you're interfacing with the aircraft on you have your hotels, your hands on throttle and stick which you're interfacing with the aircraft that way, but then everything else, there's no buttons all over the cockpit and then switches, like there used to be it's all through these two interfaces and, a dinosaur like me trying to transition [00:41:00] from the F 16 to the F 35.

And that interface was a challenge, but it is amazing how. These, this younger generation is able to take to that quickly because they grew up that way. And that's really all that they know. And not only that interface method, but the amount of information that's displayed, right? The amount of apps I have on my phone compared to the amount of apps on a 20 year olds phone is probably way different than their ability to manage all that's going on is really impressive.

And it's fun to watch. So I think those are the kinds of skills, I don't really want to call it video game, but it is at the same time, that ability to process information, determine what's important at what time, filter away, unnecessary information and do all that while you're operating an airplane, I think is a skill that.

It's similar to what we used in fourth generation flying, but it has a little bit different flavor. Now that it's done on an, on two iPads with a touch interface and with tons of data, the one thing, cause I get this question a lot. One thing I like to compare F 16 dash 35 and the F 16, [00:42:00] I was constantly wanting more information from my airplane.

So I'm constantly adjusting the radar, adjusting the electronic warfare system object, adjusting the targeting pod to give me more information for the most part. And this is not, a blanket statement for the most part. The limiting factor was the airplane. Certainly there's times that this guy's brain was eliminated factor, but for the most part, I was trying to get more information out of the airplane and it's reversed in the F 35 where F 35 was able to gain so much information.

And even with the sensor fusion and combining that information for me, it still ends up being that I'm the limiting factor. With my brain, the there's too much information coming from the airplane and I have to learn how to process and sift through all that information. 

Greg: Is there a danger that flying skills are 

Chris: decreasing?

I really don't see that. I talked about how the admin part it has changed a little bit with the automation for the airplane. So it's still challenging, maybe just in a different way. And then [00:43:00] in the same way that we kept many of the same ways that you flew with an a 10 student we haven't changed that a bit on their first sorority.

I would say from what your example was in the same way, we haven't really changed a bit how we deal with emergencies. We have a monthly emergency procedure simulator to make sure that we are doing that correctly. We have our testing that we go through to make sure that we're reading our publications and we understand them, we have someone in the squadron, that's a safety officer that briefs us on the latest mishaps and how we can avoid that in the future. And so a lot of those things that we've developed in our air force to make us really safe over time, still breed through, into the F 35. So to answer your question, I haven't seen any increase in that at all.

Greg: Okay. That's good. I know in the airline community it's becoming a concern that we have so much automation and like right now on the 7 87, you could literally turn the autopilot on it 200 feet after takeoff. [00:44:00] And if you hit all the right buttons and know what you're programming, it will take you all the way to landing and touchdown.

And you could never touch the yoke or the throttles if you don't want to. Even when we land now, we landed with auto throttles. Manual landings right now are done with only the yolk being manual and the throttles being an automatic. So all this stuff is changing and it's a little bit of a concern because we have people who are transitioning or going right into the 7 87.

They could possibly get. Back to the 7 37 as a captain, which is a much more manual type of airplane and they have no flying skills. And so the airline industry is starting to wake up to this and I'm wondering if the same danger or the same concern exists in the military. Probably not.

 I'm sure if you're a fighter pilot, you flown more hands-on normally anyway. I'm just wondering how much they're having to go back and teach basic skills or if the new students are lacking at all in some of these basic skills, but it sounds like they're not, which is a [00:45:00] good thing.

Chris: I haven't seen that in. I think it maybe is a different problem. Set would be my guests there. When we're doing the tactical portion of our sorority, it's very engaging and you are definitely not only managing the sensors and the battlespace and the displays and the information, but you're also flying the very much so flying the aircraft.

So maybe it's just a different problem set there. I think it is something to keep an eye on in the future. The F 35 is just at the beginning of its growth period. I think it is something to keep an eye on just because we're that way now doesn't mean we don't start automating more of these tasks, even the flying as the airplane developed.

So it's definitely something to keep an eye on. One thing I wanted to touch on, if I could, Greg Pretty high level with, what can a fifth-generation wing men do? And I was pushing the envelope there. Hey, we need to challenge them. We need to get them out there and get them into the complex scenarios.

The biggest challenge is being able to instruct them. And certainly you can find a scenario that's too challenging, like we talked about, [00:46:00] but we do try to, push them really hard. The other part that goes along with it that I think is worth, in the same breath capturing both sides of this is that the fundamentals are also extremely important.

And I think that can be somewhat counterintuitive. You just told me that you want to go super high end fight and the most advanced topics and challenge the students. And now you're telling me you want their fundamentals to be really good. Why are you talking about both? And I think it's important to cover that a little bit.

So yeah, we'll go to these high end scenarios, the challenge, the student, but in that they're going to fail. We talked about the importance of a growth mindset, failure being part of the learning process. When they fail, it's usually one of their fundamental. That breaks down. And so you're really stressing the system stress in the suit and to see which of your fundamentals do you not have down as much as you think you have down?

Is it fundamental? A Nope. That works good. Under pressure, fundamental B work. Great. Under pressure. Ooh, fundamental C broke down. You must not have fully mastered [00:47:00] that. Let's go back and master that. We'll cover it in the debrief, what you did wrong, what to do differently. Maybe we can get you in the simulator to cover fundamental C and then we'll test it again.

Maybe in a slightly different way to see if you've now mastered fundamental C. And I think that's really important to cover that when you're going to these high end, you still need to make sure that your fundamentals. Are our rock solid because it really comes back to that. You're going to fall back to that in a chaotic situation.

And most of the time we've seen that's where the failure level is that even though I'm pushing you up here and to explain that maybe in another way, if I don't push you enough, Greg, if I just keep you at a level where I'm not stressing you out, then maybe fundamental a, B and C are fine. They're good enough because it's just not that difficult of a situation.

It's only when I ramp up the difficulty, the situation that fundamental C starts to have that problem. Does that make sense? 

Greg: Yeah, absolutely. Now what about a flight prep? I know from a tens, what I would do in a normal cast ride, a normal, [00:48:00] closer support ride, I would talk to the glow, I'd get the ground picture.

I would talk to Intel and get the overall threat picture. We would, have our location that we're going. We knew the frequency. We knew who we were talking to. We knew what kind of load out we had on the airplane. We had an idea with the weather, what we get through all these things. And then we would go into our brief that would last anywhere from an hour to an hour and a half.

And then we'd step out to the airplane. We'd come back, we'd fly for about an whatever two hours come back and debrief, go through all the tapes and everything. Is that structure still basically in place? Are you still having the same basic concerns when you do your flight prep? Is it just a matter of a larger piece of airspace or are they adding other things that I don't know if you can talk about, but are there any other basics that they add onto that plate for the flight peppers?

The flight prep, basically the same as it was 20 years. 

Chris: Yes. And what a great question. I think it's really important to cover that. So that makes me think of really two [00:49:00] pieces that have changed. I would say for the most part that the basic structure is the same and in a lot of times, for good reason, right?

There's so many hours in the day, there's only so many hours in the day. There's certain tasks that they need to accomplish. We have to have time to get ready and to debrief and still eat. And they still have to have time to go to their human performance team, which I covered earlier. The basic answer to the question is a yes, a lot of those fundamentals remain the same.

I will cover two things that I think have changed. The first one is that because they're going to have this more responsibility and authority compared to say, when I was in my fourth gen, is that they are more involved in the planning and preparation process. I equate this a lot too. My fourth generation mind when I think of what I would have a number three do, and a four ship formation.

So I'm the flight lead is number one, but my number three, which is called an element lead is the backup flight. And then they also can execute as an element being [00:50:00] two aircraft. And so a lot of times I would have to have my number free. They could be operating independently from me, say tens of miles away.

And so they would need to understand what I wanted to do, what my priorities were how to coordinate our efforts between each other. And they really needed to understand why I was doing things and what I was going to do and in what order but not necessarily. So my number two and four, they need to know a little bit as the wing men, but they didn't need to know as much as the number three, cause they're not going to be executing an independent timeline, independent actions from what I'm doing.

And I really equate that mentality of a number three to now my entire four shift because everybody's running their own timeline, own priorities. And so I interact with my wingman, my number two and number four in many ways, the same way I interacted with my number three. In my fourth generation. That's a 

Greg: great, yeah, that's a fantastic way to get into my third, fourth gen mind.

That's a great analogy right there. So your current number two right now is like your old number three and a four ship in terms of the [00:51:00] delegation and responsibility and the level of understanding that they have to have. So that's a great way to put it. 

Chris: That's exactly right.

The second aspect of that as far as, and this is gonna apply to pre-admission and this is also going to apply to post-mission in the debrief is increased use of why questions and increased dialogue between myself and the students. It just bridges right. To what we talked about. But the number three needs to know why a lot more than a number two or four needed to know why in fourth-generation land.

They needed to know why, because if things change based a change from the original plan, if they know why I wanted to do something, then they can adjust to those changes. Now we're in a. We're in a more chaotic, more complex situation. And so I need my women to understand why, so they need to ask why.

And that might've, I might've been poo-pooed in my F 16. If I would have asked, constantly asked my number one, why we're in mission planning and he's laying out his game [00:52:00] plan to go, Hey, why are you doing that? Hey, why are we going over here? Why do you want me to shoot two missiles over here, man?

It's shut up, man. Come on and be like, just do what I tell you to do, but now we encourage that. And actually in brand new students, all I'll pull that from them. So they understand that's okay to do that. Maybe they don't want to ask the squadron commander flight lead, why?

And I'll make them ask why at a certain time in the planning so that they know that's okay. And that's part of the normal process to do and so that's the pre mission stuff. And I think post-mission, it's also important for them to ask why in my F 16 debrief, I certainly was allowed to ask questions, but definitely up to a certain point.

Here, we try to open that a little more and let the wingman ask more why questions? And I'll also ask the student more why questions and that's maybe even more of a paradigm change. So just because a student got something. Doesn't mean, they did it for the right reasons. And so I'll ask them, Hey, why did you go over here?

Why did you shoot that [00:53:00] missile? Why did you drop that bomb here? Why did you turn around? Cause I care about that answer of why they did something and that they didn't just get it right accidentally and we can get into their thinking because I'm trusting them to act more like an element lead and run their own timelines.

I need to make sure that they're thinking correctly. And so we'll get into those whys. One book that I read that I love is Annie duke, who's a famous gambler. She wrote a book called thinking in bets and she, and apparently professional gamblers. I didn't know this, have a word for this. And it's called resulting judging your thought process on the outcome, right? So you may have done the right thing and made the right bet in betting, but it's a game of chance and a game of luck and you may have lost, but you still do the right thing. And if you look at that, the wrong way, you're going to get the wrong feedback.

And then conversely, you could have add the entire correct tire, wrong process and wrong thought thoughts going in and you got it. Correct. And then that's going to be bad feedback to you, right? Because you're going to go, oh, Hey, that worked, but you shouldn't have done it that way. And that's called resulting that's [00:54:00] judging your process that you put into it based on the outcome and the same thing applies to aviation that I'm getting out here just because they had the correct outcome doesn't mean that they went through the correct process to get there. 

Greg: That's interesting. Also you had mentioned how the current wingman in the like your current B course or your recent B course graduates are already top performers and already ready for large force exercises like red flag.

Why do you think that is? Do you think that the pilots are actually better or the capability of the aircraft has just exceeded everything else? And it's no longer a huge challenge to be in an LFE? Like it was. 

Chris: Yep. It's more of the second, we're still getting the same students, for sure.

I don't think that has changed. But it's definitely the capability of the airplane combined with the different way of training. A lot of the things that I've covered in this interview if properly applied can really [00:55:00] accelerate a student's growth, you covered at the beginning Hey, these B courses are only seven to eight months long.

You're not really gonna change the amount of reps they get or the amount of time they have. And so what we're attempting to do and. Through a lot of the things I've covered is to be able to make the training system more potent. So you combine that potent training system with some tools that we have such as a really good simulators, some of the human performance team, making sure they're properly keyed up different techniques for debriefing.

Like I've talked about using the why questions to get into their mentality. And so you combine all of that with the training system improvements with the capabilities of the aircraft. And we've seen that really allows a higher level than maybe they could have in the FC or that I could have in the F 16 when I was at the same amount of hours in the airplane.

And I think a stark example is what you notice there with being able to execute those large force exercises. The difference being in a large force exercise with an F 35 versus an F [00:56:00] 16 is pretty large, right? Just that amount of information that you have about what's going on around you. I equate it to maybe in the F 16, I saw, a quarter of the chess board and I'm trying to figure out what moves to make.

And here in the F 35, I'm able to see the entire chess board and decide what's going on much better to have that full picture of the battle space. And what's going on around you. It's just going to make the decisions easier, where to move your chest pieces. If you can see the entire. 

Greg: I'm going to reverse this a little bit here.

So you just mentioned how the basic course is anywhere from seven to eight months. I think for me, it was around six months and it was like 40 rides. And the general trajectory was your first few rides were basic flying instruments, formation, things like that. Then you get your instrument checkouts.

So you're able to fly the airplane in the weather. Then you move on from there to, this is just a 10, you would do basic fighter maneuvers, dog fighting. If you will, then you got into basic surface attack, just how to drop a bomb. And then you got into surface attack [00:57:00] tactics where you would drop a bomb, but out on a tactical field with varying target locations.

And then you got into close air support at the. Both medium altitude, which is up, 10, 20,000 feet above the ground down to low altitude, which is down to 300 feet for a basic student down to a hundred feet for everybody else. But you get down low and do a close air support mission with two to four airplanes, then you'd add in night and things like that.

So that was the culmination. What's the basic trajectory of training in the F 35 now. How does it differ? Cause you can't just do all those things and then still teach all these advanced concepts at the same time. How do they break it down? 

Chris: Yeah. The basic flow hasn't changed a whole lot, say from F 16.

And I think the F 16, I, that's certainly is my background and it also is a good comparison tool because of the multi-role aspect. At 16 and F 35, both being multi-role meaning air to air capability and air to ground. So the general [00:58:00] flow in and you hit it, how do you fly the airplane, then you're going to go through your air to air portion, and you're going to start small, just one V one, one good guy in one bad guy.

And then you're going to add increasing numbers of both friendly and adversary aircraft. And that's really where the, it starts to differ. So say an equivalent sorting in the F 16, I'm going out, me and my flight lead versus two enemies, in the F 35 and a corresponding sorority, it's going to be me and my flight lead in for enemy aircraft.

So I think that's the major difference I would point out Greg, is that we're just adding two numbers is one way to increase the challenge. And I think you'll see that throughout the syllabus that we're just ramping up the numbers because of the ability of the airplane. Is that much more? And then the final change I would say is towards the end of the program, when we are.

Doing their type of graduation exercises of their final missions, in the F 16, it would be say four blue airplanes [00:59:00] versus two enemy aircraft. And let's call it to enemy surface, to air missiles on the ground. And we're going out to Bama target in enemy territory, where, and then maybe for the end of the B course in the F 35, they're actually executing as part of a large force exercise.

So anywhere from, 15 to 25 friendly airplanes, 15 to 20 enemy aircraft, and five to 10 at enemy surface to air missiles. So you're just adding complexity and numbers compared to where we were in the fourth generation. So in that allows it to stay about the same amount of time span seven to eight months.

So we're not really increasing that a whole lot. We're just adding numbers and complexity to the individual sororities. 

Greg: F 30 fives all over the world. Now, many countries have them. How much confidence do should we have as Americans that all of our fancy stuff isn't going everywhere? Like how many variations and how do we work with other countries without giving them too much?[01:00:00] 

Chris: It's a concern, right? Especially this day and age with, everything being interconnected and internets and online, and they're obviously, maybe not, obviously there is certainly a process to ensure that our information is being kept secure. The one thing I will speak to that, that I think from my perspective is because, I'm not a security expert or any of that sort of thing.

But I will say that there's a balance there, right? We could keep everything. To ourselves a hundred percent and that probably would increase the security and decrease the chances that are important information gets into the wrong hands. But you got to balance that with the ability to number one, establish relationships with these allies that are important in anything.

Name, any name, any conflict name, anywhere we've been, we're not going to go there alone and we're going to need the support and partnership of our allies. And then also the inter-operability piece. I remember flying with other countries and yet we both fly F sixteens and we both fly [01:01:00] with link 16 data link.

But man, it was always hard that first day, that first week to actually get everything working. And when it did, we're using similar terms, but they met different things and it was hard to get onto the same page. We're balancing the threat of losing our critical information to our enemies versus being able to inter-operate seamlessly flying the same airplane training at the same location, using the same terms training off of the same tactics manual.

And I don't know the exact right balance that's right there, but I think it's important to understand both sides of that coin. 

Greg: Yeah. It's a concern it's security versus flexibility and efficiency, and sometimes you can be so secure to where it actually ends up harming your security because nobody can work with you.

So that's always the trick. What about Ukraine? Russia? I know you're not an expert in that. I'm not either. How do you foresee the F 35 or just the advancement of fifth generation technology? How do you see that integrating. Now with, against [01:02:00] China and Russia and what can it bring to the table?

What should we be concerned about? What are the kind of the vulnerabilities? Can you speak to that? 

Chris: I can't really speak too much about that. The current situation of number one, I don't know. I'm not plugged into those channels with exactly how they're using the airplane.

And probably even if I was, it wouldn't be something that I would be able to discuss. I definitely am happy to discuss more of a broad picture. What the F 35 can bring to the table. Some of these things we've already covered, right?

With the differences in what defines a fifth generation airplane, this stealth piece, the sensor fusion, the advanced sensors that just our other assets in the air force don't have and bringing those capabilities to any theater, any fight are going to be extremely important. These enemies they've seen what we've done, since desert storm and how capable of the U S air force is.

And they're working hard to get back on par and in some areas and, even more advanced. And so having an asset like the F [01:03:00] 35 with those capabilities is going to be really important to bring to the fight and whatever that fight looks like. And my final thought on that would be the quarterback aspect of it.

And I think the F 35 is a really good platform to quarterback, whatever. In engagement and the reasons for that are that it's multi-role is important. Being able to understand both the air fight and the surface fight and coordinate those efforts is important when you're controlling multiple assets in the battlespace having all those sensors to be able to see the entire chess board, not only where your pieces are on the friendly side, but also the enemies pieces are as an important part of being a quarterback.

You don't want a quarterback that only sees half the field that, that person's not going to be effective. 

Greg: Yeah. Great analogy. Yeah. 

Chris: Yeah, I think that's what really, I think brings the F 35 brings the fight. We're not going to be the best at air to air. We got F 22 rappers out there. I'm not going to, I'm not the best cast platform.

That's why we got the, a 10 out there. I can't carry the most weapons. I got to carry them [01:04:00] internally to keep my Estelle. So I'm not really the best at anything in my F 35 individually. But I do think it's the best platform to see the entire battlespace and operators that quarterback. Yeah.

Greg: You're like a Tom Brady, 

Chris: sense. 

Greg: At least we hope, my last at 35 type of question is what about six gen there? There's all these concepts out there. What would six gen look like? And do you have any. 

Chris: No, isn't that neat. I really look forward to seeing what that ends up. I don't have a whole lot of ideas about that. I love reading open source as much as anybody to see what's coming down in the future. I'm currently on a career intermission program, which is basically a year away from the air force, which is why I tried on the beard for size.

Greg: And I was going to say, you're looking at you're all ready for retirement. 

Chris: That's right. And I got to kind of test drive what retirement life is but for my family, my wife is in the military as well. And just for our family .Situation and PCs, timelines that work better [01:05:00] for me to take a year off.

And it's been great, time with the kids and everything, but I'll put the uniform back on here in June. And, there are many things that keep me motivated to serve our country. I really enjoy working with the younger generation as you probably have seen, whether that's cadets at the air force academy or teaching young students here at Luke air force base, how to fly the F 35.

But the other piece that really excites me is where the F 35 is going, where the air force is going with things like six generation platform. So I look back to jumping in and putting the uniform back on and being a part of that as the air force. 

Greg: And what about sources of information? So for the layman who wants to keep up on the latest fighter technology or latest military tactics, obviously open source things where should they go?

Chris: I like podcasts. There are a lot of good Pasco podcasts out there. Check out the Greg Corino show shameless plug. You're 

Greg: invited back on man. Very easy to go. Awesome. Thank you. Yeah. You 

Chris: bet [01:06:00] aerospace advantage by the Mitchell Institute is a great one to check out. Have you ever seen that 

Greg: one?

No, I have not. So aerospace advantage by the Mitchell Institute, you said? Yep. Okay. I'll check that one. 

Chris: And I think that's probably my best recommendation other than judge, just jumping on the standard Google for the topic that you're interested in and then standard disclaimer applies there. Don't believe everything you read type of thing. Verify your, verify, your source, like who is telling this information? What is his or her background just before you believe everything? I have to remind myself of that all the time. Yeah. 

Greg: That's a good outlook. Anything else you want to talk about on military before I ask you about your athletic achievements here?

Cause I've heard they're extensive or at least at only adventurous side. 

Chris: No, I think we covered everything that I wanted to. Thank you. Yeah. Happy to dabble in that a little 

Greg: bit. I saw a picture on Mount Rainier. Do you, is it a mountain climbing? What's 

Chris: your, I really do like [01:07:00] the mountaineering aspect of.

Yeah. And I think for many different reasons, it's tough to break down sometimes. Why do I do what I do? And I think one aspect would certainly be, I like the challenge of it, it really gets back to the learning stuff that we've been talking about. If you're in your comfort zone, then you're not learning whether that's in an airplane or whether that's just in life in general.

And so I enjoy getting out there and maybe jumping into a situation that I wouldn't have been comfortable with getting the correct training so that I can do it safely. And then I love the connection with nature too. Just flying one of the most advanced machines in the world by day, and then disconnecting that for some period of time, whether it's, an afternoon, a weekend or a week, I think it's important to get back to nature and step away from the, from technology for a little.

I like connecting with others in that manner, I would say I'm definitely the person who doesn't like huge groups of people. But I'd like establishing those close [01:08:00] relationships maybe with a small group or something like that. So having, your adventure buddies to go out with and connect in nature and something challenging, say like back country skiing or climbing a mountain or rock climbing or hiking, camping.

I definitely enjoy that sort of thing. The learning aspect to, as a common theme throughout this, I always want to constantly, I don't want to be the person that's oh, no, that's not something I could possibly do. And I think, challenging yourself in one aspect of life with learning.

Has some applications to others. And what I mean by that is when I get humbled in the mountains because, oh man, I'd never done that before. And I have to really rely on a mentor and instructor to help me through a tough situation. Guess what, that's exactly what the new F 35 student feels like when I'm trying to teach them how to do something in advance in the airplane and they maybe have trouble with it.

And it's easy to forget what that feeling is like. And I think the mountains get me back into that humility mode sometimes and what it's like to be a beginner at something. And that helps me be a better instructor when I'm teaching somebody [01:09:00] how to fly the F 35 or I'm trying to be.

Parent and a father to my kids. 

Greg: Yeah. I've sensed a lot of parallels with mountaineering and tactical flying. You have the physical aspects. Obviously there's a lot in flying with just being in a hygiene airplane and the physical parts of trying a flying stick and rudder and speed and coordination.

And then you've got the elements you're dealing with weather, whether it's, oxygen levels or like I said, G-Force levels. And then you have the tactical puzzle that you're trying to solve. And mountaineering is very much like that. You're up there and it's low oxygen levels and you're dealing with sicknesses and you have to manage your equipment and you have to figure the right route.

It's really interesting. I've seen a lot of military people. That are also into that sort of thing. And people who are into the Mountaineer, who would make great soldiers are great pilots if they have that opportunity. So yeah it's cool that you do that. 

Chris: What a cool parallel.

I, I hadn't really thought of it in [01:10:00] that manner. That's very insightful. And that actually made me think of some other, the preparation is really important when you're going to step out into the wilderness in the same way that it's important and tactical aviation. And then the other aspect is the.

Learning from failure, in, in back country skiing, they'll do a very extensive, very thorough debrief. If there's a, an avalanche for example, and there's a fatality, they'll just like an aircraft accident. They'll go out and investigate. What were the conditions? What was the group dynamics, who did, what, when and what could they have done better to maybe prevented the accident in much the same manner that we do in aviation when there's an accident.

So there's a lot of parallels there. You're 

Greg: right. Yeah. Yeah. So have you, so you've done a Rainier then, right? Have you, what what other mountains have you done? 

Chris: Yeah, Rainier. A bunch of fourteeners when I was at the air force academy in Colorado, I enjoyed going up a lot of fourteeners Mount Whitney, which is the highest in the lower 48 out in California, which is a fun hike.

[01:11:00] Humphreys is the highest out here in the state of Arizona where I'm at now. I was stationed at Aviano and that's really, I think, where I developed a lot of that passion for getting out in the mountains. Aviano is in Northern Italy, the foothills, the Dolomites, which are the Italian Alps and just the amount of adventure there.

 People will say the Alps is where it all started for a mountaineering and an adventuring. And so a lot of fun adventures in the mountains up there as well. 

Greg: I know my listeners have heard me say this a thousand times, but I've done Whitney and I did it. I tried it one. With very little preparation and I failed and it was awful.

And then on the second try, much more preparation, took it a lot more seriously. And it was a lot different result. I made it and, but still it was challenging, man. You add in all the equipment and where you're going to sleep and what you're going to bring.

Oh. And weather is huge. It's really, the parallels are really interesting with tactical flying. So w one last one is how did you get K rush? 

Chris: Yeah, you bet. I knew that question was [01:12:00] coming. I know. I 

Greg: got to ask it. I got to 

Chris: ask it. Yeah. Yeah, no, no problem. Happy to oblige.

So it is an acronym. Oh, I guess I'll say first it didn't have the hyphen. So it was just crushed. And then I moved from one squadron on base to the other. I was at cannon air force base in New Mexico. And we were shutting down the F 16 operation there, and my squadron was the first to shut down and I moved to a sister squadron.

The squatter that my wife was in, we were lucky enough to be able to serve in the same squadron together, which was awesome. And her squadron that I moved into already had a crush with a seat. And so her squadron mates had always called me K Russ just to differentiate between their crush. And so it just stuck there and that's what I just became and just carried it forward from there.

So that's where the hyphen came from. The actual name itself is an acronym. It stands for. Rowdy undisciplined, supersonic Hubbard being my last name. And it's a little bit of a Jekyll and Hyde type of thing. So I am pretty [01:13:00] conservative, dude. Yes. I try to go out in the mountains, but if you go out with me, you'll see, like I'm not going to go out there and hang it out.

If it's bad conditions, I'm turning around type of thing. I certainly want to go have a good time, but I'm not the one that's gonna, risk it too much or end up free solo on El cap or anything like that. But sometimes, when you're a young women and in your initial qualification training, you really want to lean forward and show everybody that you got what it takes.

And you're an aggressive fighter pilot. And there was a sorority I went out with In my initial training there with the squadron commander and I pushed it a little too hard. I kept going out the top of the airspace. The airspace was Capitol lower than it always was. And I just didn't hear that it was kept low.

And so all my shots, I was above the airspace and the squatter commanders reviewing the tapes. He goes, do you know what you're outside of the airspace here? I said no, sir. I don't and mean it kept happening over and over. So there was the killing, the rowdy, the undisciplined, the supersonic part.

And if you get to know me, you'll see that I'm definitely more of the conservative [01:14:00] aviator, certainly want to push it up when I have to, but I'm definitely going to be more of the calculating type. So I think it's a little bit of a Jekyll and a high type. 

Greg: I see that's funny. I always have to ask that.

It's interesting how the community comes up with these call signs. People heard mine, it's frag. It's not rocket science, how that happened almost fragged myself and then, but then other ones are just a playoff of a name or there, or who knows. So it's pretty cool, man.

Anything else you want to hit before we sign 

Chris: off here? No, it's been great. Thank you very much for inviting me on. This is my first podcast and I really enjoyed it. You have a really laid back manner and a really inquisitive mind. I look forward to getting to know you. I know we just had this brief time, but I think especially the way you're responding to my answers and synthesizing some of the information I look forward to.

Hopefully just talking with you, maybe even off the podcast line in the future, 

Greg: how do people get ahold of you if they want. Learn more contact you. [01:15:00] 

Chris: Yeah, you bet. Facebook and Instagram. I'm with my full first name, Christopher Hubbard. You can find 

Greg: Chris. Thanks for so much for coming on. I learned a lot and I'll have you on again as one of our F 35 experts or whatever else comes down.

Chris: Thanks, Greg. I appreciate it. 

Greg: That is it. My friends. Thanks for listening. If you liked the show, please consider a five star rating and friendly comment on your podcast app and share the Greg Krino show on social media. If you want to learn more about me and my guests, head over to GregKrino.com and subscribe to the newsletter.

And finally, if you have ideas for the show, please email me at GregKrinoshow@gmail.com. Take care and see you on the next episode.