Special Missions Unit

Summary

The Antihero Podcast: Special Missions Unit – Detailed Summary

Introduction

In the February 10, 2025 episode of The Antihero Podcast, host Brent Tucker, along with co-host Tyler and guest Jonathan Howard, delve deep into Jonathan's unique journey from a distinguished military career to entrepreneurial success in real estate. The episode offers an unfiltered look into the challenges and triumphs faced by those who bridge elite military operations with civilian ventures.

Military Background

Jonathan Howard begins by sharing his extensive military background. A 12-year combat controller for the United States Air Force, Jonathan initially aspired to join the Navy SEALs. However, due to misleading information from recruiters and personal physical challenges, he pivoted to the Army's Special Forces instead.

"I actually wanted to go be a SEAL... the recruiter told me I had to do four years ship duty first. That didn't sound good to me." [14:00]

Despite setbacks, Jonathan's determination led him to excel in various military roles, including serving in the Honor Guard and Mortuary Affairs, where he processed remains from combat zones.

Transition to Real Estate

After retiring from active duty in January 2018, Jonathan ventured into the real estate market. His entry was serendipitous, born out of necessity during a period of financial adjustment post-military service. Starting with a modest condo in Navarre, Florida, Jonathan and his wife began remodeling and renting out properties through platforms like Airbnb and VRBO.

"We bought a little condo on Destin Harbor, remodeled it, and started renting it out. It wasn't long before we saw significant profits." [135:00]

His approach contrasted sharply with neighbors who opted for cheaper rentals, focusing instead on higher-end properties to attract more lucrative clientele. This strategic differentiation quickly paid off, allowing Jonathan's real estate ventures to flourish.

Formation of the Special Missions Unit (SMU)

In the early 2020s, Jonathan became involved with the Florida State Guard's Special Missions Unit (SMU). Unlike the National Guard, the SMU operates solely under state authority, providing enhanced operational flexibility and direct alignment with Governor Ron DeSantis's directives.

"The SMU was created to do whatever the governor needs. We're not bogged down by federal funding or bureaucratic red tape." [76:12]

The SMU's mission is broad, ranging from disaster response to addressing state-specific security concerns, making it a versatile force within Florida's defense framework.

Mission During Hurricane Helene

One of the SMU's first significant missions was during Hurricane Helene. Activated to assist in disaster recovery, Jonathan recounts the challenges faced, including logistical hurdles and inter-agency conflicts.

"We were activated for Hurricane Helene. Our mission was to clear roads and assist in flood-stricken areas, often operating under challenging conditions." [82:06]

The team faced resistance from local authorities, particularly in North Carolina, where National Guard units were underprepared, leading to Jonathan's frustration with leadership and operational inefficiencies.

Rescue Story and Dr. Phil Appearance

A standout moment in the episode is Jonathan's recounting of a life-saving rescue operation in North Carolina. Alongside his colleague Charlie Keeball, they orchestrated the rescue of an infant born prematurely amidst the hurricane's devastation.

"We received an urgent call for a life-or-death rescue. Navigating damaged infrastructure and coordinating with inexperienced pilots, we successfully saved a baby named Mason." [168:37]

The successful mission garnered public attention, culminating in a surprise appearance on Dr. Phil, where the team was commended for their heroic efforts.

"Being on national television, seeing the baby thrive, it was an emotional moment that underscored the importance of our work." [121:03]

Challenges with the National Guard and Authorities

Jonathan expresses deep concerns over the National Guard's preparedness and leadership during critical missions. He highlights systemic issues, including inadequate training, poor leadership decisions, and a lack of support for state-level special units like the SMU.

"The National Guard's inability to respond effectively forced us to rely on private companies, which hindered our mission's success." [86:00]

These challenges not only impeded disaster response efforts but also strained inter-agency relationships, emphasizing the need for improved coordination and support.

Leadership and Recruitment Issues

The episode delves into broader issues of leadership within military and state defense structures. Jonathan criticizes toxic leadership and the misalignment of recruitment practices, which often result in underprepared personnel being thrust into high-stakes missions.

"Toxic leadership creates weak men below. Leaders need to empower and support their teams, not hinder them with poor decisions." [127:44]

He underscores the importance of mental readiness and proper training to mitigate PTSD and other combat-related stresses, advocating for a culture that prioritizes resilience and preparedness.

Real Estate Success and Business Strategies

Jonathan's entrepreneurial journey in real estate is a testament to strategic planning and relentless execution. By focusing on high-quality property renovations and targeting premium rental markets, he transformed modest investments into a booming business empire.

"We went from making $60,000 in our first year to generating over $61 million in annual revenue within four years. It was all about making the properties exceptional." [150:05]

His success is further amplified by his innovative approaches, such as implementing flexible rental policies, offering pet-friendly accommodations, and leveraging platforms like Airbnb to maximize occupancy and revenue.

Current Activities and Future Plans

Having sold multiple property management companies and a brokerage, Jonathan continues to expand his real estate ventures while maintaining involvement with the SMU. His focus remains on scaling his businesses, mentoring fellow veterans through programs like SkillBridge, and exploring new avenues for growth, including construction and title services.

"We now manage over 35 properties, employ around 15 real estate agents, and are continuously expanding into new markets to sustain our growth trajectory." [152:23]

Conclusions and Insights

The episode encapsulates the resilience and adaptability required to navigate both military and civilian landscapes. Jonathan Howard's story is one of overcoming setbacks, leveraging specialized skills, and fostering entrepreneurial spirit to achieve extraordinary success.

Key takeaways include:

1. Adaptability: Transitioning from military operations to real estate entrepreneurship showcases the importance of adaptability and leveraging transferable skills.
2. Strategic Differentiation: Jonathan's choice to focus on high-end rentals rather than budget options underscores the value of strategic market differentiation.
3. Leadership and Support: Effective leadership and inter-agency support are crucial for mission success, both in military and civilian endeavors.
4. Mental Preparedness: Proper training and mental readiness are essential for handling high-stress situations and preventing burnout.

Jonathan's journey serves as an inspiring blueprint for veterans and entrepreneurs alike, highlighting that with determination and strategic planning, one can successfully bridge different worlds and achieve remarkable outcomes.

Notable Quotes

• "Everything happens for a reason. If I hadn't gone this route, I wouldn't have met my wife. Everything is God's plan." [30:28]
• "A good review is a good review. Customer service means dealing with the unexpected, even the weirdest requests." [139:48]
• "Leadership not given authority to act decisively results in missed opportunities and frustration on the ground." [124:07]
• "The SMU operates solely under state authority, providing flexibility and direct alignment with the governor's directives." [76:12]

---

This comprehensive summary captures the essence of the episode, highlighting Jonathan Howard's multifaceted journey and the critical discussions on military operations, leadership, and entrepreneurial success. It provides valuable insights for listeners who seek inspiration and understanding of the intersection between elite military service and business acumen.

Transcript

[John Howard]

So I'm like man, like basically my expenses are like 20 ish thousand per condo and I'm making like 40 plus actual profit per con each on each condo. And I'm like this is crazy.

[Brent Tucker]

So tell her we're in the wrong business. Shut it down.

[Tyler]

We're here printing T shirts. $2 profit margin. Hold on, we're not recording. Do you want to buy a shirt.

[John Howard]

To support military dance?

[Tyler]

People want to see their sausage get made.

[Brent Tucker]

An appropriate level of inappropriateness. Something happens in my family tonight. The Delta Force isn't, isn't coming to rescue my my family, my kids like it is. First responders that are that are going to save my my family.

[Tyler]

They want the culture to be down. They want people that not want to be cops. And the people that do want to be cops are now walking into the job scared to do the job.

[Brent Tucker]

I'm going to try to act like it didn't happen, although we, we all know it did.

[Tyler]

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[Brent Tucker]

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[Tyler]

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[Tyler]

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[Brent Tucker]

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[John Howard]

You can say it again.

[Brent Tucker]

It's not natural, it's still everyone say exactly what you just said.

[Tyler]

I said to hit record like five times.

[John Howard]

I Never heard that. We can make the, we can make the camera blurry.

[Brent Tucker]

Yeah. No, without trying. That's not how it works, Drew. It's not cool when the whole camera's blurry. Just blur my face. But you're, you're a problem solver. It's creative. I get that. Like at the end of the day, my face is on purpose. Yeah. At the end of the day my face would be blurred.

[John Howard]

It's true.

[Brent Tucker]

What'd you fly in here on? A cirrus was like a single single prop.

[John Howard]

Single prop does about 200 knots.

[Brent Tucker]

200 knots?

[John Howard]

Yeah.

[Brent Tucker]

Why can't you talk in a mile an hour like a normal person? Like when you come, when you become a pilot, do you have to talk in knots?

[John Howard]

That's just what the plane shows. But it's basically 200 miles an hour.

[Brent Tucker]

Or, or say weird things like ground speed. Like what is air speed different than, than ground speed? Like what's your mile an hour?

[John Howard]

I'm usually talk, I'm usually.

[Brent Tucker]

That's not.

[Tyler]

He gives you the temperature in Celsius.

[John Howard]

It always shows that. Celsius.

[Tyler]

That's so cool.

[Brent Tucker]

It is cool.

[Tyler]

You could just be like, hey, I'm like you when you, when you were running late. I was like, oh, this flight must have been delayed. I had no idea you flew yourself here.

[John Howard]

Yeah, the battery was dead. Cuz it went in for its annual maintenance at the end of December. It had been sitting there and then they left one of my light switches on and it just completely, just like a car a little bit different. It's a 24 volt system.

[Brent Tucker]

Okay.

[John Howard]

So they had to bring like a specialized, like he's like, oh, I'll just put on the char. I'll put on the charger for you tonight. And I was like, N D, I, I, I gotta go now.

[Brent Tucker]

I, I hate that you had a good excuse. Cuz I was gonna say. Oh, so you're recording right now?

[Tyler]

Yeah.

[John Howard]

Oh, I'm talking away from the microphone.

[Brent Tucker]

It's, it's just cannon stuff. I was like before you had a good excuse. Like so you were late and you fool yourself here. No excuse. So did you get a plane after you became rich?

[John Howard]

Yes.

[Brent Tucker]

It's like, it's like a rich guy checklist.

[John Howard]

Like made it.

[Brent Tucker]

Gotta get my own place.

[John Howard]

I started flying 10 years ago, almost 11 years ago, when I was still in the air force.

[Brent Tucker]

And you got your license then?

[John Howard]

I did. Okay.

[Brent Tucker]

It sounds weird because it's two different things. So there's a lot of people that have like you know, a bunch of hours or so many hours, but didn't get their license.

[John Howard]

Yeah. So turn this down. Okay. There. Is it too high? No, that's, that's perfect now. It's very good. Yeah. So first guy, first pilot. I drop ordinance with these F16s up in Vermont. I was doing, I was doing my JTAC raiding over there. Once we got done, he's like, hey, you want to go fly? Like in our plane? We'll just go up, we'll get a couple guys, we'll go fly somewhere, have some lunch. I was like, yeah, that'd be cool.

[Brent Tucker]

In an F16 or. No, no. Okay.

[John Howard]

And we went up. We're just like flying around these little fbos and like crossing the lakes. And I was like, man, this is really cool.

[Brent Tucker]

Yeah.

[John Howard]

I was like, I mean, at this point I've flown, but I'm, you know, C130s and stuff like that.

[Brent Tucker]

Okay.

[John Howard]

I was like, you know what, when I get back to Destin, I'm gonna do my pilots license. And then I was doing my degree with Embry Riddle. So I was like, oh, I'll get some, I'll get six college credits for it. That turned out to be false because I already had my air traffic control license. So like I remember when I went to like the education office, I was like, oh, here's my pilot certificate. And they're like, oh, great. And they're like, yeah, actually you don't get. I was like, I just paid all this money just to do this. But that's when I started flying and then bought my first plane in 2022. And then I bought a, a, a brand new one in last year. Same plane. But is it a fixed gear or is it retractable? Fixed gear? Yeah. Sirius SR22. Is it a low wing or.

[Brent Tucker]

Lots of questions here.

[John Howard]

I just, I'm interested.

[Tyler]

Nerding out back there.

[John Howard]

You might know it as.

[Tyler]

Do you have a model train set too?

[John Howard]

People, people call it the parachute plane because the plane has a built in. The built in like parachute ballistic parachute.

[Brent Tucker]

Does it really?

[John Howard]

So there's like a, like a handle on the ceiling. You just pop it.

[Brent Tucker]

No way.

[John Howard]

Plane will just. It'll come right down.

[Tyler]

So you can crash your plane into city blocks, but you land safely?

[Brent Tucker]

No, no, the whole plane is on a parachute.

[John Howard]

So like this a five seater plane. So everybody in the plane is going to be good. Like it just comes down, it just drops. I think it's like 20ft per second. It drops.

[Tyler]

Is that aftermarket or is that no, that.

[John Howard]

That's. That's what they're known for.

[Brent Tucker]

But there is an aftermarket company that. That does that correct there.

[John Howard]

Yeah. On some planes.

[Brent Tucker]

Okay. Yeah. Right. On some planes.

[John Howard]

Yeah. This one is actually like a jetpack built into the plane.

[Brent Tucker]

Right.

[John Howard]

It just shoots right out.

[Brent Tucker]

Does it still have that new plane smell? Is it the same thing as a new car smell?

[John Howard]

Pretty much.

[Brent Tucker]

Pretty much.

[John Howard]

Got 150 hours on that plane, so.

[Brent Tucker]

Nice.

[John Howard]

Yeah.

[Tyler]

Trying to correlate that. That seems pretty new.

[John Howard]

Yeah.

[Tyler]

Basically I have 150 hours on my car.

[Brent Tucker]

Depending on i4, that's just like three trips to Tampa and back.

[John Howard]

The good thing is it's. It's the time and fuel efficiency.

[Brent Tucker]

Right.

[John Howard]

Well, I mean, it's. It's a great. It's the best tax write off you'll ever get, I'll tell you that.

[Tyler]

Really?

[John Howard]

It's 100. Tax, write off the fuel, the maintenance, the purchase amount, my hangar fees, everything. And then, like, I do business in Naples, Florida, and panhandle. That's like eight and a half hour drive. And the plane's about hour and 50 minutes.

[Brent Tucker]

Yeah. People don't take into account, like, how long Florida is.

[Tyler]

You're living.

[Brent Tucker]

Like, you get friends that come to Florida. Like, hey, I'm coming to Florida. I want to come visit. Like, oh, cool. Where you gonna be? Like, yeah, Pensacola.

[Tyler]

Like Alabama.

[Brent Tucker]

Yeah, that's. Yeah, that's eight hours away from me. I can get to North Carolina quicker than I can get to.

[Tyler]

That is weird. That is weird.

[Brent Tucker]

The Panhandle.

[John Howard]

Yeah. I flew to Asheville hour, and I think it was an hour and 40 minutes when I left the Panhandle. But fuel wise, it's good too. Like, because jets is where it starts to get pricey, like the fuel amount. But like, I mean, for me to. From Panhandle to destin, that's about $250 in fuel for me.

[Tyler]

That's nuts.

[John Howard]

If I drove my truck, I'm gonna spend 400.

[Tyler]

Yeah.

[John Howard]

That's crazy. Yeah.

[Brent Tucker]

Easy, easy. All right. Yeah, we could. We could.

[Tyler]

Staring at you. Welcome back to the anti Hero podcast. Part Delta force, part street cop, all truth. I'm Tyler, owner of Refractive Wolf Apparel. Use promo code antihero and get yourself 15 off the best and outsider graphic tees, stickers, hats, flags, beanies, ranger panties. We have everything from summer, spring, fall, winter. This shirt right here, this hat right here, go to refractableapparel.com promo code ANTI HERO and get 15 off.

[Brent Tucker]

Let them see the bottom of the shirt.

[Tyler]

Tyler oh, yeah, Guns. Got it.

[Brent Tucker]

No government lashed out. I approve. And I'm Brent Tucker, owner of First Responder Coffee Company and First Responder Cigar Company. Use discount code FRCC15. That's FRCC15. To get 15.15% off the world's best coffee and cigars.

[Tyler]

And of course, this episode is brought to you by Ghostbed. Sleep so good it's scary. Go to ghostbed.comantihero and get yourself 50% off. That's 50% off. Or use promo code antihero at checkout and get 50% off. These guys are an OG sponsor. They support the show. They love the show. They've been here since the beginning.

[Brent Tucker]

They.

[Tyler]

They fully support all the. The. Our message and all the things that we bring to light. And they're big fans. So go to Ghostbed. When you support them, you indirectly support us. Ghostbed.com forward/antihero. 50 off.

[Brent Tucker]

You know, it's weird. I've kind of always wanted to do that weird sound every time you say scary. I wanted to do that for a long time. And I don't just now send it.

[Tyler]

We don't have a ghost button.

[Brent Tucker]

Oh, can you get without in the sound bar a little ghost button?

[John Howard]

We can make that happen.

[Brent Tucker]

Okay.

[John Howard]

Yep.

[Brent Tucker]

As you got. We're figuring out the show as we go. Yeah, that's. And yes, 111 right now figured it out. I think we figured out the audio. That's. That's good. We're getting there. Hey, guys, don't. Don't forget to subscribe to our Patreon. We're actually just about to revamp our whole Patreon. Offering you. Offering you even more. And really upping the, like the giveaways. We have some really cool ideas that we want to do for our Patreon. So yeah, please, if you want to support the show, go to our Patreon. Subscribe or become a member. It is. It's probably the cheapest Patreon that, that I've seen. Very, very affordable. It's. You can skip one cup of coffee a month and, and get a bunch of great content.

[Tyler]

Yes.

[Brent Tucker]

And don't forget our Thursday night lives. Every Thursday night, 8:00pm Eastern Standard Time. Highlight of my week. And we'll be yours too, if you tune in. I promise you. It's nothing like this one.

[Tyler]

Breakdown after breakdown after breakdown.

[Brent Tucker]

And John, I hope you get to come back for life. It's. It's much different.

[John Howard]

Yeah, definitely.

[Brent Tucker]

It's a good time.

[John Howard]

I think actually maybe next week because I think I got something going On Naples.

[Brent Tucker]

Hell yeah.

[John Howard]

So we'll probably. I would say, I would do it this Thursday. I mean, maybe might still do it. But can.

[Brent Tucker]

Can we wrap your plane as like an anti hero?

[John Howard]

Hey, if you guys want to sponsor the fuel.

[Tyler]

Gets it written off.

[Brent Tucker]

Yeah, bring that to me. We just talked about that. That's off. Yeah, we'll. We'll pay for half the rap job. You pay for the other half. We'll figure out the details.

[John Howard]

We'll figure it out. We haven't even rap anti hero Pat. Flag flying in the back. Yeah.

[Brent Tucker]

Like you said at the beach. Yeah. You know, like that 200 foot long flag. I. We're gonna come back to that. I like that idea.

[Tyler]

We haven't even wrapped our trailer yet. We've been talking about that for a year.

[Brent Tucker]

Oh, and any. Any other announcements? We good?

[Tyler]

No, we're good to go.

[Brent Tucker]

All right, let's get right into it. With us today, we have Jonathan Howard. He was a 12 year combat controller for the United States Air Force. He got into real estate after that, sold four companies. That's a very interesting story that I'm looking forward to. And what kind of really put you on our radar and got you here is your work with the special missions unit for the Florida National Guard. So Desantis is little Delta Force.

[John Howard]

State guard.

[Brent Tucker]

State guard, which is different, not the National Guard. And that's. We actually had a little bit of conversation before this. Yeah. And I was like, I think I know why they did this. Has to do with authorities, but. Which is. We'll get into that. Super interested in that. I don't know, maybe nationwide. Not everyone heard that. That news, but when, when it came out that there was gonna be a special missions unit, like basically at Desantis's beck and call, which is kind of how it got reported. And we'll see exactly how that works here in a little bit. It was big news here in Florida, so I knew about it. And you're one of the first people I've. I've met from there.

[Tyler]

So does every state do it?

[Brent Tucker]

Ask a good question.

[John Howard]

I was told there's 14 states that are doing it right now. Were we first? We're the first with the smu. Yeah, very first.

[Brent Tucker]

So actually the great state of Florida.

[John Howard]

Like I can tell you, Texas has been in contact with me and, and other people, like trying to get info because they want to do the same thing and they got a ton of retired operators living out there.

[Brent Tucker]

I know we'll get to it. But is one of your missions ripping Like Corona, like face masks off people's faces.

[John Howard]

You don't need to wear them.

[Brent Tucker]

Tell me that's one of your missions.

[John Howard]

Has not come down the pipeline.

[Tyler]

You just sit at the airport.

[Brent Tucker]

All right.

[John Howard]

Florida doesn't really have it too much.

[Brent Tucker]

We're going to email. We're going to email DeSantis immediately after this. At least get it on his radar.

[Tyler]

Suggestions?

[John Howard]

Suggestion.

[Brent Tucker]

Let's talk about first the, you know, the combat controller party. We get requests every now and again, like, hey, you guys should have some controllers on. Yeah. Or. Or PJs, like the air Force part of the special operations. And we definitely have one for sure already lined up. One of our. One of the guys I worked with in the 2 4, but you would be the first Air Force special operation guy that we had on. So you got, you got that going for you.

[John Howard]

Yeah. Awesome.

[Brent Tucker]

Tell us about that one. What made you join that? Let's see. Let's start with there.

[John Howard]

Well, I didn't start as a cct.

[Brent Tucker]

Okay.

[John Howard]

I actually wanted. Actually, let's give the full story. I actually wanted to go be a seal. I went to the Navy recruiter, got fed a bunch of bs. He said I'd have to do four years ship duty while they do my background check, figure everything out. He was like, why would he do that? He was like, you think we just let anybody become a SEAL with your secret clearances and all this stuff?

[Brent Tucker]

Not anyone can become a seal, but anyone can try out, essentially.

[John Howard]

So he basically told me I had to do three years regular Navy, and then from that point I could apply to be a seal. And I was like, oh, that doesn't really sound that good to me.

[Brent Tucker]

What year is this?

[John Howard]

Oh, 50405.

[Brent Tucker]

Yeah, we had Google back then, right?

[John Howard]

Yeah, I was still kind of like on like dsl dial up.

[Brent Tucker]

Small town Texas, right?

[Tyler]

Small town Texas.

[John Howard]

So I went right next door to the army recruiter and I was like, hey, I was like, talk to me about Green Berets, Special Forces. I want to do that.

[Brent Tucker]

And yeah, that was search time. We were trying to get. And we had. We were trying to raise the numbers.

[John Howard]

I got fed more bs.

[Brent Tucker]

No way.

[John Howard]

He goes, recruiters. He literally. He literally says, yeah, we don't really have Special Forces anymore. What? He goes, we kind of stopped doing that after Vietnam. And that's literally what he told me. And he was like, but if you sign up for 11 Bravo infantry, we got like a $15,000 sign on bonus right now. And I was like, oh, what about like sniper or Something like that. He goes, yeah, that kind of ended after Gulf War. That's not really a thing no more. What? Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah. So I was just like, okay, what about, like, Ranger? And he was just like.

[Brent Tucker]

That ended after World War II.

[John Howard]

He was like. He was like, well, if you're good enough going through the, like, 11 Bravo, then you can apply to be, like, the real infantry, the Rangers. And I was just kind of like.

[Brent Tucker]

That'S one of the worst recruiting stories.

[Tyler]

That's not even disconnect of information. That's just him straight lying.

[John Howard]

Oh, that's just.

[Brent Tucker]

Yeah. I mean, the whole world essentially knew just four years prior to that the Green Berets spearheaded the invasion, you know, of Afghanistan. Like, they. They were, you know, at the time really one of the most popular special operation units because they were the first ones in, like, tier one or not like. Or not Tier one. You know, they. They were the first ones into Afghanistan. They ran amok.

[John Howard]

You know, knowing what I know now, he probably tried out and failed.

[Tyler]

That's what I was thinking.

[John Howard]

For sure.

[Brent Tucker]

Yeah, for sure.

[John Howard]

That's how a lot of leadership was I met throughout my career. They were just like. I mean, I had guys try to stop me from going to selection.

[Tyler]

We've had that talks with tons of.

[John Howard]

People, and I'm just like, man, this guy must have failed out or something. They all got the same story. Oh, I hurt my leg. And I'm like, I know guys that broke their leg and they'll hold a metal.

[Tyler]

Well, like, as a leader, why would I would not want you to go better yourself.

[John Howard]

Toxic leadership.

[Brent Tucker]

Toxic leadership.

[John Howard]

Leadership. Let me ask this. What about. Do recruiters have certain quotas that they need to meet in certain areas, and that's why he's pushing people different direction?

[Tyler]

I don't know, Is that a. I.

[Brent Tucker]

Mean, is that a myth?

[John Howard]

Yeah, but, like, I think they just.

[Brent Tucker]

Have quotas for signups, not particular signs. But we'd have to ask Lee.

[John Howard]

Lee would know.

[Brent Tucker]

Lee would know.

[John Howard]

My little brother would know. I do know they have quotas for, like, certain jobs, but, like, any type of special operations job is always a high demand. So that. That's always like, if you're like, you want to do that? Like, they want you to go, yeah.

[Tyler]

That'S a good commission right there.

[John Howard]

Yeah.

[Tyler]

For the recruiter. JV team for life.

[Brent Tucker]

Tyler, how many critical incidents do you think we've covered so far in this podcast, man?

[Tyler]

At least five, six.

[Brent Tucker]

And. And. And they're not going to stop. You know, there's, you Cannot stop them all. So they're going to happen. And you really have, you know, two charters of that. Obviously one is to stop them from happening, but since you can't stop them all from happening, you owe it to the people that you protect and depend on you to react to those situations in the most effective and efficient manner. And right now, really, whether you know, you're a fire department, ems, law enforcement, you're stuck with essentially radios.

[Tyler]

And Apollo is the best way to manage resources during these events because it's designed by first responders for first responders.

[Brent Tucker]

It gives first responders a common operating picture which allows them to see where everybody is in real time, overlaid onto a map to see where they are. You can drop pinpoints and let them know where they need to go. And without constant talking on the radio, everybody knows where the incident is, where it's happening, and where they need to be.

[Tyler]

Apollo's an app based application. This is just download and go.

[Brent Tucker]

It's an app and so it works with Androids, it works with iPhones.

[Tyler]

Apollo makes sure on the back end everything works and you can just plug and go. They handle all the licensing, all the encryption compliance, all the security. It's all handled by Apollo. It's crucial to know where everyone is and what they are doing in order to effectively control chaos in one of these, either natural disasters or shootings or anything like that.

[Brent Tucker]

So if you want to learn more about Apollo, scan the QR code and ensure your department is ready to react to any crisis in its most effective and efficient manner possible.

[Tyler]

JV team for life.

[John Howard]

So I actually went to the Marine Corps and I was like, you know what?

[Tyler]

Yeah, you around every.

[John Howard]

I mean, my grandpa was a marine. I was like, I'll go, I'll go get a marine. So my, my dad was Air Force. He was avionics on A10s and love A10. Like way back in the day.

[Brent Tucker]

Yeah.

[John Howard]

And then my sister was actually active duty Air Force.

[Brent Tucker]

Okay.

[John Howard]

She just did like logistics warehouse stuff. And I wanted nothing to do with the Air Force. I was like, those guys are a bunch of sissies. You know, this is not for me. I'm going to military to do military stuff.

[Brent Tucker]

Their special operations program is just, I don't say best kept secret. That's not really what I want to say. But it goes, it flies under the radar. Yeah.

[John Howard]

No one. No one.

[Tyler]

You don't, you don't think of it right there first.

[John Howard]

I mean, most people don't know about it even like the recruiter didn't Know much about it.

[Brent Tucker]

Yeah.

[John Howard]

So like, when I went to the Marine Corps, I was going to do that. And then it was actually one of my, my best friends tells me about Air Force Special force doctors and PJs. So he's telling me like, dude, there's these PJs. They're like special Force doctors. And I was like, what? That's kind of cool.

[Brent Tucker]

Oh, their pipeline's ridiculous. Yeah.

[John Howard]

So not know much about it. I go to the recruiter, I'm like, hey, like, what do you know about these PJs? And he had like a little pamphlet he pulled out. He was like, I don't know too much about him. He goes, he was. I think he was aircraft mechanics or something. He's like, I know, I know about them. He's like, they're really popular in the Air Force. But he's like, it's like a two and a half year pipeline. And I was like, okay, that sounds kind of cool. He goes, there's also these combat controllers. And he goes, they're air traffic controllers. Doesn't say anything about being a jtac. Airstrikes. He's like, yeah, they just. They jump into airfields and they, they're the air traffic controller. And I was like, that sounds boring. I was like. I was like, I don't want to do that at all.

[Brent Tucker]

He's not wrong with the description of the job. But he left out a really cool part. Very well. Yeah, but a really important part about dropping bombs on foreheads.

[John Howard]

He really didn't know though. Then he was like, he's like, there's this other one, Tac P. He goes, I don't know much about him. He goes, I know they live with the Army. And he goes, they do army stuff, but he's like, they like basically coordinate aircraft for the Army. And I was just kind of like.

[Brent Tucker]

Oh, you know, I respect that recruiter, though, because everyone else you talk to, he's the most honest.

[John Howard]

Yeah. Oh, he was. Yeah.

[Brent Tucker]

He's just very.

[John Howard]

Actually, I ran into him at Herbert Field after I got my break.

[Brent Tucker]

Really?

[John Howard]

And he was just like, I can't believe he did it.

[Brent Tucker]

Oh, that's awesome.

[John Howard]

Proud of you. Whatever. So he accidentally misled me. I didn't sign up for CCT at that time or PJ or PJ. So I went to MEPs and I failed my depth perception.

[Brent Tucker]

Okay.

[John Howard]

And I failed my uncorrected eyesight. I wore contacts and they were like, your eyesight was. It was, it was 2270 uncorrected and they're like, yeah, you're disqualified from anything that requires a flight physical. So, whoa. My recruiter's like, well, I can fast track you right into the Air Force right now. We'll put you as security forces, as a cop.

[Brent Tucker]

Sf.

[John Howard]

Sf. Right. And he was like. And then once you're in boot camp, the medical stuff doesn't matter no more, and you could just try out for pj. And I was like, no, not true. It's not true at all. Yeah, he honestly did not know. He was like, yeah. He's like, once. Once you're there, you can. You can try out for it. And I was like, okay, cool. So, I mean, two months out of high school, boom, I'm in boot camp. And I think it was like, the third week they start doing our physicals. And. Same thing. Depth perception, uncorrected eyesight. Can't do it. So I'm like, I can't do any of these jobs. Like, not even Sears. I found out what Cyr was from the recruiters, okay? And they're like, yeah, you can't do. Seer can't do that. Tap. He was like, yeah, we can talk to you. And I was like, cool, let me go. Tap. P. He goes, what's your job? And I said, security forces. He goes, can't touch you.

[Tyler]

I was about to say, they can't touch you.

[John Howard]

He goes, can't touch. He goes, they're in critical man right now. And they. They were. Massive push for sf. Sf.

[Brent Tucker]

Yeah.

[John Howard]

Straight. All right, there we go. So he's like, I can't touch you. Can't do nothing. And I was just like, well, I guess I'm gonna be a cop.

[Brent Tucker]

Yeah.

[John Howard]

And they told me I had, like, a couple weeks to figure out what I wanted to do, like, before, like, I finally do my job or whatever. And the honor guard came down from Boland Air force base in D.C. and they were flipping their rifles around. That is pretty cool. They said, if you're 5 foot 10 above, right, and you have, like, excellent on your PT score, okay, come talk to us. So I go up to the guy. He looks at me. He goes, can you bench press 225 three times? I said, oh, yeah. And he goes, you're gonna be a pallbearer. And I was like, well, I'm security forces right now. He goes, I'll change. I'll change it right now. And he literally changed it right there. So I actually went up to D.C. and I. I carried caskets my first time in the air Force.

[Brent Tucker]

Do you know if they still do that, that 5, 10 in shape thing? Because isn't that body shaming?

[John Howard]

Right. It's probably different now. You probably had to actually be the opposite of what they wanted then.

[Brent Tucker]

Yeah.

[John Howard]

Probably gonna have some purple hair color.

[Brent Tucker]

Yeah. I immediately got mad like, I don't like that. That's not very inclusive, but okay.

[John Howard]

Yeah. So I went to the honor guard and then my instructor in the honor guard was actually in the CCT pipeline.

[Brent Tucker]

Oh, really?

[John Howard]

Yeah, he had just come back from ATC school. Awesome guy. Just retired like, I think this past year. Lives up here in Florida, Neil. And he basically just smoked me all the time. He just smoked us all the time. He treated us like we were like little controllers.

[Brent Tucker]

And did you work at Arlington?

[John Howard]

Yeah, I did.

[Brent Tucker]

Did. All right. I've heard some. I've heard some honor guard stories and let me know if this is true. They said I might get this a little bit wrong, but I feel like it'll. It'll resonate. Like they would wake people up in their beds like in the middle of the night and be like, go find Medal of honor winner. So and so three minutes and they gotta run and take a piece of paper and like. Yeah. You know how you kind of shade it. Yeah, shade it to get the imprint of the tombstone and come back in that time frame. And if you don't, you get. You get smoked. You ever heard any stories like that or some. Some hazing stories from honor guard or.

[John Howard]

Things like probably the army honor Guard.

[Brent Tucker]

Okay.

[John Howard]

Because only the army guards the Tomb of the Unknown Soldier.

[Brent Tucker]

It was. It was Tomb of Uncertainty.

[Tyler]

I thought he was gonna say only the army does dumb show.

[John Howard]

We would do ceremonies on the tomb, like arrival ceremonies or like wreath laying ceremonies. But only the army is the. They're the only ones that actually guard it. Okay, I know they're. So the tomb job is even like a. More specialized in the honor guard. Like you have to be like, basically the best of the best there.

[Brent Tucker]

Yeah.

[John Howard]

And they have a pretty rigorous selection process for that.

[Brent Tucker]

Have you ever gone to the. Changing the guard for the Tomb of the Unknown soldier in D.C. super cool.

[Tyler]

That.

[Brent Tucker]

If anyone hasn't seen that, that is really cool. Take your kid to see it.

[John Howard]

Just. Oh, yeah.

[Brent Tucker]

Dead quiet. Dead quiet. They, they, you know, they go through all their structured, you know, movements, and if anyone talks or says something, I love it. They shut them up and, and go right back to it. It's. It's just the reverence during that ceremony is. Is just. You have to witness It.

[John Howard]

There's a power there.

[Brent Tucker]

There's a power.

[John Howard]

There's an energy. It's like. It's like a real strong, quiet energy that you just feel.

[Brent Tucker]

It sounds weird to say, but it's true. Unless you experience it. Well, Drew, have you. Have you been there and.

[John Howard]

Yeah, I've been there. And one of the things is it is such a long walk just to get there. Yeah. People are probably so tired they don't want to talk. Of course, that's a joke. But yeah, yeah, yeah. It is an amazing, amazing atmosphere.

[Brent Tucker]

A little bit.

[John Howard]

It's a cool experience. If you've never gone to it, It's. It's definitely something you got to do. But yeah, so we did all. I did all the honor guard stuff. We do, like, ceremonies of the tomb. My main job was a pallbearer, so I did. I just carried caskets, like all day.

[Brent Tucker]

Yeah. What. What year is this that you're doing this?

[John Howard]

0607.

[Brent Tucker]

So a casket heavy, unfortunately, a casket heavy time.

[John Howard]

So the Air Force only had like one team that would go out and do the funerals.

[Brent Tucker]

Okay.

[John Howard]

Because we don't have as much like the army and the Marines, man, they had like multiple teams going every day out there, like all the time.

[Brent Tucker]

So they were.

[John Howard]

They were busy.

[Brent Tucker]

Yeah.

[John Howard]

You hear like the shots going off here and then like literally a couple of sites over there doing another one, just funeral after funeral. So it's a busy job. Yeah, but it was really good. I mean, the discipline was really high. I mean, you to get, you know, two haircuts a week, uniform inspection every day, uniform inspection after lunch. So they had really, really high standards, which I think was good for me being like 18 year old kid, you know, just having someone be like, this is what you're going to be doing and if you're not, we're just going to smoke you.

[Brent Tucker]

Yeah. So you know who told me those. There's a couple more, but it's topics for another day, those honor guard stories. Mike Glover. Oh, really? Yeah. Mike Glover was in the honor guard. Yeah.

[John Howard]

But yeah, so sorry, that was all.

[Brent Tucker]

I had more than that. But yeah, that's all I had.

[John Howard]

No, that's cool. But yeah, I went from. With Montergard and then actually went over to Mortuary affairs at Dover Air Force Base.

[Tyler]

Now at any point in this, are you. Do you have anxiety about missing the war or you just like enjoying it?

[John Howard]

No. No.

[Brent Tucker]

Yeah. Your whole point of joining was special operations and being first, you know, first line guy.

[John Howard]

So because of my instructor who was Telling me about what CCT actually does, I was like, that's what I want to do. And I was a six year enlistee, so I couldn't retrain until my three year mark.

[Brent Tucker]

Okay.

[John Howard]

So then I ran into two other guys in the honor guard who were getting ready to leave for CCT pipeline. One of them just retired, the other one still in the guard. But we would do all of our pool sessions together there at the Navy side of the base.

[Brent Tucker]

Yeah.

[John Howard]

So we did all our water con stuff. And so it was actually like a good preparation. Because I will say if I would have went in at 18, although I, I would not have quit, but I probably would not have met the standards for the physical fitness, especially the water stuff.

[Brent Tucker]

I'm telling you, I've said about my own career and I think most people in their life will look back and say this every misstep, you know, in my career. But I didn't get what I wanted. If you, if you keep a good attitude and you keep working hard, like when I look back at that, they, they actually were. I don't know if I would go back and change any of those missteps.

[John Howard]

Everything happens for a reason.

[Brent Tucker]

Everything happens about you to say that.

[John Howard]

Because like, if I wouldn't have gone this route, I would have met my wife that I've been married to now for 16 years.

[Brent Tucker]

Wow.

[John Howard]

So like, you know, everything happened for a reason.

[Tyler]

But like, which is just a universal way of saying that's God's plan.

[John Howard]

Yeah, it's God's plan, right? Is it odd or is it God? It's always God.

[Brent Tucker]

Write that down, Drew.

[Tyler]

Yeah, that was a good one.

[John Howard]

Yeah, I forgot where I heard that. But I heard that. I was like, oh, I like that as an honor to God. But I mean, yeah, that's where I, I started getting like really into training, learning how to do watercon. So I was like, like preparing myself to, to go.

[Brent Tucker]

What's the cons short for in water Water Confidence. Confidence.

[John Howard]

Yeah. Just because on the controller side and the PJ side, you have to go to dive school.

[Brent Tucker]

Right.

[John Howard]

So. And that's usually what eliminates everybody.

[Brent Tucker]

Weight belt swims, 50 meter underwater.

[John Howard]

Tank treads.

[Brent Tucker]

Tank treads, yeah.

[John Howard]

Basically just kind of get drowned ditching Dawn. As always, we always say either pass out or freak out. If you pass out, the cadre love you. If you freak out, they just come.

[Brent Tucker]

And just destroy you.

[John Howard]

So it's like just, just pass out.

[Tyler]

Is the Air Force have their own.

[John Howard]

They have their own dive they'll take. They'll take a couple of them, send them over army dive, a couple more Marine Corps. But yeah, majority of us go to Air Force dive, unfortunately, where we just get smoked more.

[Tyler]

What do you. Wait, wait. What do you think? Before Brent weighs in, what do you think is more challenging? Air Force or Marines or Army?

[John Howard]

Well, I'll tell you, the Marine Corps dive, I don't want to say it's the easiest, but it's the gentleman's course. Oh, they don't even do. They don't even do one man confidence test.

[Brent Tucker]

He's right so far.

[John Howard]

Go on. Yeah, army dive is the same for free fall too. Like, I went to Navy free fall, army freefall. And army dive is the most like tactical. You'll get trained tactically on how to do, like, actual stuff. Like when I went to Navy free Fall, we just jumped out of planes all day, nothing tactical whatsoever. So we go to our units and they're just like, we got to teach you how to actually do. Same with light dive. The Air Force dive does a very good job with it. They lots of tactical stuff. I mean, closed circuit, open circuit. But the army goes like, they do like. What is it called? Over the horizon boat stuff. They do a lot of advanced stuff that nowhere else does. So army is the best on that side. And when I say Navy, this isn't the SEAL dive. Right.

[Brent Tucker]

They have their own separate credit where credit's due. And I think it's pretty much understood we'll say it. The Navy has the best dive school through, you know, a combat dive school through their SEAL program.

[John Howard]

Yeah, I've never heard of anybody going through Navy or SEAL dive other than SEALs. Because the Navy Dive School in Panama City is EOD, right. So it's in hard hat divers, and.

[Brent Tucker]

They'Re search divers, rescue divers. There's a bunch of other, like, kind of dive. But combat dive is, you know, is what we're talking about.

[John Howard]

Combat dive.

[Brent Tucker]

When I went through the. The army school of combat dive, Special Forces combat dive school in 05. Now I don't know if it's still true because I'm old. I still think I went to dive school just a few years ago. And I was like, that was 20 years ago. Gosh, that hurts. But we were the first all army class. So, you know, no more. No more Air Force or Marines were in the course. And I don't know if that. If that changed. And I knew they were there before that, but I don't know if it stayed all army or not because you guys stood up your own Program.

[John Howard]

Yeah, we stood up our own program. But I mean they usually take like the two top physical and send to army because they don't want to send someone not, not going to be like, you know, messed up.

[Brent Tucker]

Yeah. And I could be wrong. This, I don't even make it to sound like some like, you know, like chest beating thing. But the reason we were told that the Air Force and make no mistake about it, even though they weren't in my class, I heard all the time, like the biggest studs that come through our class are the Air Force guys because they're fresh out of their pipeline and they've been training for this for, for a year. Yeah. Yeah. If not longer.

[John Howard]

Yeah.

[Brent Tucker]

And SF guys have, you know, SF guys are team guys. You know, they probably just got back from deployment and you know, they're, you know, they're not always in dive shape, which is a different type of shape. But anyway.

[John Howard]

Yeah. Because you might not go to dive school until 10 years.

[Brent Tucker]

They said that, you know, the, the army dive school was too hard for them and doesn't mean what really what, what I mean is as, as far as they would lose guys, not a lot of guys, they would lose guys. And, and for them to lose a guy in dive school like that far into their, into their pipeline was almost, I'm not saying like it couldn't happen, but they're like, we need our, our own pipeline and have our own standards and be a little bit more in, in control of that. Does that, that resonate at all? You hear anything like that?

[John Howard]

I think it's mainly because the amount of people they're they're sending, like when you combine the PJs and controllers going through.

[Brent Tucker]

Yeah, we probably didn't have enough slots.

[John Howard]

Yeah, yeah. Because like.

[Brent Tucker]

Yeah, we maintained the line. Share the slots.

[John Howard]

I'm trying to think when I went to dive school with the PJs, we, we probably had like 30, 35 students.

[Brent Tucker]

Yeah, that was as much as my whole dive school was. Yeah, that's probably bigger than my dive school. And you know, and that would have been, you know, all army, like we, we couldn't have supported two other branches going through our dive school.

[John Howard]

Yeah, no, there's just a lot, a lot of people going through that spot.

[Brent Tucker]

And they'll send a couple rangers to our dive school. Even though they don't have dive teams. It's usually like a, you know, a reenlistment, you know, candy forum or an opportunity for them to, you know, get another badge.

[John Howard]

But yeah, that's, yeah, but, yeah, so that's how.

[Brent Tucker]

How long is how. So you went to Panama. Is this in Panama City?

[John Howard]

Yeah.

[Brent Tucker]

How long is your dive school?

[John Howard]

If I remember, I think it was eight weeks, I want to say. I think. I think it was four weeks. Open circuit. Four weeks, closed circuit.

[Brent Tucker]

Nice.

[John Howard]

Pretty sure it's what it was. I might be off a couple weeks there, but I think that's what it was.

[Brent Tucker]

Okay. So did you go to Dive Soup by chance?

[John Howard]

No. No.

[Brent Tucker]

Okay. I did. You don't have to call me Dive Soup, though. I mean, you should, but you don't have to.

[John Howard]

I was trying to remember. I remember there was a Dive Soup class at the unit, and I was trying to remember if I did that, but I don't think I did that.

[Brent Tucker]

Yeah, yeah. How long we got off topic? Just.

[John Howard]

Oh, yeah, yeah, sorry. So Honor Guard.

[Brent Tucker]

Honor Guard still?

[John Howard]

Yeah, once the mortuary did that and services. So I went there, and this is just unique.

[Brent Tucker]

Sorry to interrupt you. Tell them a little bit about Mortuary Affairs. I didn't get. I didn't get any interaction with Mortuary affairs until the end of my career with. With one of our teammates. Death. I had to go to a Mortuary affairs in Syria. I won't get too much into that, but that was my first time really dealing with them. I was like, I don't even know that we had this. What is Mortuary Affairs? What do they do?

[John Howard]

Yeah. So anyone that dies, basically, dod, even civilians overseas, they go to the Port Mortuary in Dover Air Force Base. They all go there. Doesn't matter where they're killed. So that's like, the first stop they go to at Dover, Delaware. So, you know, I. I was 19. I was about to be 20. And I remember my master sergeant came up to me. He was like, hey, John, he was like your country boy from Texas, right? I was like, yeah. He was like, you hunt, you fish? And I was like, yeah. He's like, you clean animals? And I was like, yeah. He goes, how does that bother you? The guts and all that? Does that bother you? I was like, no, it don't bother me. He goes, okay, we're deploying you. And I'm like, yes. Finally. Like, I'm gonna go out there. Time to get it on, right?

[Brent Tucker]

Yeah.

[John Howard]

Where am I going? And he's like, you're going to Dover. And I was like, dover? And I was like, he's like, yeah, Delaware. And I'm like, you mean the place is, like, two hours down the road.

[Tyler]

From D.C. technically, it's a deployment, son.

[John Howard]

Yeah, he's like. He's like, yeah, you're going. He's like, a lot of people there, they can't handle a job. A lot of people have, like, you know, problems with it. So you're going by yourself? And I was like, okay, so here I am, you know, E3 or. No, I just. I think I just put on E4. And I mean, I literally just go up to Morts, where I knock on the door. I'm like, hey, Airman Howard here reporting for duty. And they're just like, huh? Like, they really. They're just like, we. They didn't know. Like, they're like, oh, we weren't expecting you for, like, two more weeks.

[Brent Tucker]

And I'll be back in two weeks.

[John Howard]

So guy brings me in the bag. He literally just sits me down like, a little table like this, like. Like the little cafeteria. He's like, you ever seen a dead body before? And I was like, no. He's like, all right, well, I'm just gonna bring you back there and see how you. How you react to it.

[Tyler]

Okay?

[John Howard]

He just walked me in the back. And we process every morning at 7am for the bodies. And I remember there was just bodies laying on gurneys, like, blowing up from IEDs and stuff. And I was just like, is that real? And he was like, oh, yeah, that's real. And I was just like. And that's when it hit me. I was just like, oh, yeah.

[Tyler]

Like, I've been The county coroner's office, when I go there. And, like, the first time I ever went there was seeing bodies. Like, they. They. They were covered. But you'd see people's tattoos.

[John Howard]

Yeah.

[Tyler]

And I'd be like, that's. Like. That made it real for me. Like, that person got that tattoo.

[Brent Tucker]

That's a real.

[John Howard]

Yeah, because, I mean, we were seeing bodies that were just like, burning from, like, inside the Humvees and stuff. And you would just see, like, maybe a little ink. There might just be a little bit of a torso, things like that.

[Brent Tucker]

Again, this is surge time. Like, we. We got bodies coming back.

[John Howard]

I was.

[Brent Tucker]

I was.

[John Howard]

On average, I was there. I did two rotations there. I was there four, four and a half months each time.

[Brent Tucker]

Okay.

[John Howard]

I think I usually did about. On average, about seven bodies a day. Like, they were just coming in by the time they. They got all flown on. I think the least amount I probably did was like, maybe three a day, because this was summertime, too. During the fight.

[Tyler]

What do you do?

[John Howard]

So I was in a thing called. It was literally called all around crew. And because my honor guard experience, I would do the dignified transfer off the plane. So I would do the transfer off the plane. If they didn't bring in the honor guard, sometimes, like, the army would bring in their own honor guard stuff like that. But we would do the transfer off the plane, and then in the morning, I would be the. I'd pop the transfer case, and then we start vacuum out all the blood and water from all the ice bags that had melted. Okay. So we vacuum that out. We'd stick it up on the EOD scanner. They go through eod, and then once it came out, I would help with fingerprinting. They had, like, an FBI person there.

[Brent Tucker]

What are they looking for on, like, an IED scanner?

[John Howard]

Sometimes they'll still come with, like, 40 mic grenades.

[Brent Tucker]

Okay. Okay. That's what I was hoping that.

[Tyler]

Yeah.

[Brent Tucker]

Okay.

[John Howard]

Yeah. So there's nothing like, like, the enemy plan. You know, they might have a grenade on them or, you know, maybe some kind of ammunition, US Ammunition. They grab it. But sometimes they might have some explosives.

[Brent Tucker]

Okay.

[John Howard]

And then we do the fingerprinting. And then that was basically where I kind of stopped for the day. And then I waited around to what they called viscera dissection. This is kind of actually how I met my wife. She was there. She was military as well.

[Brent Tucker]

It's a love story.

[John Howard]

She was autopsy. So she would hand me the bucket of guts, and I would take the bucket of guts, and we basically wash all the intestines, and we flush out the stomach.

[Brent Tucker]

Okay.

[John Howard]

And then we chop in little pieces, and we put it in a thing called shake and bakes, like a preservative powder.

[Brent Tucker]

Okay.

[John Howard]

And then once I would do that, I would take it back to her, and they would put it back in the body and then sew the body up.

[Brent Tucker]

This is. This is nothing we brought you on the show for, and I love it.

[Tyler]

But they have to.

[John Howard]

This is my favorite valley.

[Tyler]

They take a piece of every organ.

[Brent Tucker]

Right.

[Tyler]

And test it.

[John Howard]

Yeah. So, I mean, you have to basically cut them up in, like, small pieces, kind of like those lighter size, because if not, they'll just kind of, like, rot. And so you just put it, like, literally, you're just kind of, like, shaking, like, shaking it in this preservative powder, and then you put it back in the body, and then they just sew it all back.

[Tyler]

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

[John Howard]

But you got to flush out the intestines, the stomach, all that stuff. I had. I had some issues with that for a while because, like, I would actually like be cutting like the chest plate. Like, like literally like ribs. Yeah, things like that. Where I was just like, I couldn't eat ribs for a while, dude.

[Tyler]

I mean like I said in that corner's office and the mortuary and stuff, have they use bolt cutters and saws. Like these aren't like. Yeah, these aren't like special tools that. These were orange from Home Depot. Like.

[John Howard]

Yeah, they're devices. Yeah. Like when you hear that saw going on the back of the skull, they do everyday cut everyone's skull up on the back and you're just like, why.

[Brent Tucker]

Do they do that?

[John Howard]

To pull the brain out? Because we actually take the brain out. Same thing. We put in the preservative powder and all that.

[Brent Tucker]

So man, I got questions on this one. I hope everyone else listening to this is like, I don't know, intrigued as I am about this.

[John Howard]

This is just really the first time I've ever publicly spoke about this. Which is kind of cool because I.

[Tyler]

Mean you, but you weren't, you were used to the guts and stuff from hunting, but did you. Is this something you had to get used to?

[John Howard]

Oh yeah, very way different. Like, I mean when you're looking like you can see like spinal cord and you can see like what's up when the stomach's all cut open and flipped up and you're just like, oh, oh yeah. And then I'm looking at someone who's my age, there's another 19 year old, 18 year old there and I'm just like, I don't like this. Yeah. You know, so it actually I always say that's kind of where I develop my hate. Like that's where, that's where my hate really started because like I knew I wanted to go be a controller. But like from that moment on I was like, all I want to do is go kill bad guys.

[Brent Tucker]

Yeah.

[John Howard]

Like I just, I just, I just developed this hatred because I was just, I couldn't believe like being active duty, I didn't realize how many people were dying.

[Brent Tucker]

Right.

[John Howard]

And like, I feel like they weren't really, they don't really put that in the media.

[Brent Tucker]

Right.

[John Howard]

That much.

[Brent Tucker]

Yeah. That's not, that's not for public consumption, you know, of sorts.

[John Howard]

And I want to start seeing like literally I said like almost seven bodies a day. Sometimes it even be more if there was like a massive IED that would go off or something.

[Brent Tucker]

Man. Now that you say that, I feel like especially during that time, every special operations pipeline should have sent their students down there and walked them through and said, this is what you're training for.

[John Howard]

It's what makes it real. Because it also, you know, what could happen to you.

[Tyler]

Yeah.

[John Howard]

Like when, like when you're seeing it, you're just like, that could be me.

[Brent Tucker]

Right.

[John Howard]

You know, you see what a pressure plate does to someone's calves and it dies.

[Brent Tucker]

And I've said this all the time, when it comes to special operations and ptsd, who see the most action but have the lowest, you know, occurrences of ptsd, it's because they're mentally ready for it. Like they've been told, you know, their whole pipeline, you're going to carry your dead teammate. Like you're like, you're going to get wounded. And so when you're prepared for it doesn't rock your, your psyche the way it does for other people. And I bet that that's me. That's a tough way to. To get hardened. But yeah, definitely, I'm sure your psyche.

[John Howard]

It made me like really big on, like, how to do tourniquet placement. Because a lot of guys that would come in wouldn't have tourniquets done properly.

[Brent Tucker]

Yeah.

[John Howard]

And they were bleeding out from just not having tourniquets done.

[Brent Tucker]

Simplest of things.

[John Howard]

Yeah. That was before a lot of them were using the cat tourniquet. They were using that old one, that metal one. I can't remember that thing's called.

[Tyler]

I can't remember either.

[John Howard]

But yeah, you would see just a lot of bad place tourniquets on. On people and they would like. I would see guys that would have like shrapnel through their thighs and they would have like a tourniquet that wasn't barely on their thigh. And then it'd be like death grip on their calf. I'm like, why don't you put the tourniquet on the calf? The wounds up here in the thigh.

[Brent Tucker]

Yeah.

[John Howard]

So just a lot of improper training. I would see.

[Brent Tucker]

It's a tough question, but I don't know, I gotta ask it. Of the total eight or nine months, you know, you spent like processing dead bodies, is there one that stands out to you? Is there one that, for whatever reason, like, you remember, you don't have to have an answer. No, no. That one there was just like my body, it was just something that's.

[John Howard]

I actually remember that on the second rotation I was there. So I actually went that second rotation. I went from there to CCT selection. So at this point I was like. I was already like signed up, ready to go, but there was a seal that came in, actually remembers Now a name. I don't know if I should say it, but I remember.

[Brent Tucker]

Absolutely you should say it because last name was Brown. You die two deaths, you know, when, when you die the first time when no one speaks your name again.

[John Howard]

His first name was John. His name is Brown. I remember him. I remember looking him up. I think he was from Arkansas, I want to say.

[Brent Tucker]

But it affected enough to go look it up.

[John Howard]

Yeah, yeah. Well, I actually volunteered to stay. I wasn't doing the dignified transfer on that one. And I was like, no, I'm volunteering to do this one. And I remember his. His team was there.

[Brent Tucker]

That's Gold Squadron. That was a tier one seal.

[John Howard]

Was it? Sure.

[Brent Tucker]

That's SEAL Team six guy. Absolutely.

[John Howard]

But yeah, I remember his team was there and I just felt this like, like I needed to like, be there, just like escort the body. So I actually got my buddy to volunteer with me on that one. And yeah, we, we did the whole dignified transfer. Brought him back to the mortuary, made sure he was in the refrigerator until the morning. Then I volunteered again to come back that next morning because it was like my off day. And we helped with that, with that one. But there was that one. There's a couple other ones I didn't like working on the females. Those always kind of bothered me because usually they would come in from like, IED blast. I never had them from a gunshot. And they were just like so mangled where I was just like, I don't want to touch this.

[Tyler]

Yeah, we talked to a. We talked to. One of our first episodes with us was we had a cop come on that had to. That had to kill somebody at a parade. And it caught him off guard. And he, he had a lot of PTSD problems. But he's like, it wasn't the fact I shot somebody. He was like, I was not prepared to shoot a woman. Like, a woman is somebody that we protect that doesn't, you know, that doesn't put themselves in a situation. We don't use force on women. And he was like, I was ready to shoot a combat age male. And so, like, I don't know if it's like the same mindset where you're like, you're, you, you're. It's not okay, but you're used to seeing combat age men come in and then you see a woman come in and it's like, oh, it's almost, Almost as bad as a kid.

[John Howard]

Yeah, man.

[Brent Tucker]

You know, I want to read this because you, you brought him up and I just think it's important, you know, we got to honor our, our. Our heroes. You're talking About Adam Brown, 36, of Hot Springs, Arkansas. Died March 17, 2010 in the Konar Province, Afghanistan. While supporting. While supporting OEF, Brown was assigned to East Coast Base SEAL teams. Brown was awarded the Silver Star, Bronze Star with valor and Purple Heart. He was posthumously awarded the Silver Star. Brown, who served with the elite SEAL Team 6, was survived by his wife and two kids and his parents. This is a quote from the guy. I either want to die in combat doing my job right now or live till I'm 98 years old and see my great, great grandkids. I don't want anything in between. None of us do a warrior's death, you can't get any higher than that. It's horrible for the family. They don't want to hear it. But that for us, the guys at our command, we're okay with it. That's our duty, the highest calling. If that happens to you, you hope you're in the right frame of mind, that you're okay with it. I've seen a lot of people go not well. Have they been able to do another take on it? They probably would. They'd probably want it to go better. I remember everything else about Adam also, but I always remember the end, you know, for the first impression. Last. Last relationship. And your last impression is with you forever. Adam died. Well, that quote was actually from Adam's brother in arms during an interview with with the time. Anyway. Super, super cool. Yeah, powerful stuff, man.

[Tyler]

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[John Howard]

Revenge is an act of passion. Vengeance is an act of justice. Injuries are revenged.

[Brent Tucker]

Crimes are avenged.

[John Howard]

Almost a century ago, big pharmaceutical companies re engineered medical school curriculum and faculty with one goal. Putting profit before progress. Anyone pushing back against the medical matrix they carefully crafted was threatened, silenced, censored, financially ruined, or worse. They are the problem. We are the solution.

[Brent Tucker]

Initials Mike Juliet Alpha. You're clear to engage with weapons. You're clear to engage with weapons.

[Tyler]

And of course, we got to give a shout out to our boys in 09 holsters. Custom built ruggedized duty gear made in the USA for cops by cops, a Leo and veteran owned small business. They do an upgraded solutions for duty gear including cases for portable radios, body cameras, tourniquets and pretty much everything you need to carry on duty. So go to 09holsters.com and use promo code ANTIHERO10ZULU9. That's ANTI HERO10Z9 and get yourself 10% off your order. JV team for life.

[John Howard]

Yeah, there was. There was fee like that, that would. That would stand out to me and stuff.

[Brent Tucker]

But yeah, yeah, dude was a. Dude was a legend.

[John Howard]

Yeah, no, he was. I think, if I remember, I want to say I had heard that I think they were getting. I think they got pinned down by like a machine gun nest or something like that. I think I heard that he actually like had maneuvered up like the side of a mountain or a hill or something to like try to like get that position.

[Brent Tucker]

Yeah.

[John Howard]

And that's what got him hit.

[Brent Tucker]

They don't give away silver stars.

[John Howard]

Yeah. Yeah. I'd have to look it up and see for sure. But yeah, that one was like. Was pretty close to me just because I was, I was. I think I left for the pipeline June of 2010.

[Brent Tucker]

Yeah.

[John Howard]

So that was March and then I was there till May.

[Brent Tucker]

Okay.

[John Howard]

So I was there from January, I think till May. I think I went home for a few weeks and then went in the pipeline for cct. So. Yeah.

[Brent Tucker]

How long is that pipeline is?

[John Howard]

Two, two and a half years.

[Tyler]

Wait, your pipeline is. Can you go straight? Can you count boot camp? Like, can you sign up into that pipeline?

[John Howard]

You can, yeah, you can. That's where, you know, I couldn't do it because the eyesight.

[Brent Tucker]

Yeah, not you, but other people.

[John Howard]

So I should. Because I know people are going to ask this. They're like, well, how'd you get in? Did you get Lasik or prk?

[Brent Tucker]

Right. Yeah.

[John Howard]

So the first time when I was at the mortuary in 08, I remember seeing on the Air Force Times, like in the shop at. And now I know who the guy is. Jared Peaches. Awesome guy. I think he just retired or is about to retire. Great controller. Actually. They do the Ones Ready podcast, if you know what I'm talking about. They basically help like train.

[Brent Tucker]

One's ready, one's ready, one's ready.

[John Howard]

They help prepare like kids to go into the pipeline for all branches. Good people. But I remember seeing his photo on the Air Force Times and it said there was only like. I think it's at like 140, like combat controllers, like active and guard.

[Brent Tucker]

Yeah.

[John Howard]

And that they were basically waiving medical requirements to get people in. And then if you could pass then you could like get Lasik, stuff like that. So that actually opened the door for me where I was like I could apply for it. I got my waiver done with my flight physical and then did my pass test and then I was just waiting on my three year mark. Yeah. To cross train. So that's how that, that worked out. But yeah, I went right from mortuary right into the pipeline. And yes, about two years to get your JTAC rating. It's about another half a year to a year. So that's why I always say it's about maybe two and a half years or so.

[Brent Tucker]

And there's an essentially for you, there's, there's your six year commitment almost, you know.

[John Howard]

Yeah, pretty much. I mean a lot of guys that go right into boot camp, I mean especially if they do a four year commitment, I mean you're taking you know, two years of just pipeline, you know, half a year to year your JTAC rating, probably get one rotation and then it's like you're already done.

[Brent Tucker]

Now I could be wrong on this, but I believe because I wasn't an X ray, but I believe the X ray program and I wonder if it's similar for you guys. You could sign up I think for a four year commitment. Maybe it was a minimum six. I don't remember. But this is something I think was right is like after you got like when you got your Green Beret, like I kind of almost unbeknownst to you, if you didn't know it, you get like involuntary extended for another three years.

[John Howard]

They don't do that.

[Brent Tucker]

Okay. Like you get, they're gonna get, they're gonna get their, their, their work out of you.

[John Howard]

So yeah, they don't, they don't do that. Well, they try to get you is with the bonus, the reenlistment.

[Brent Tucker]

And they do, they do get you.

[Tyler]

I remember seeing the Green Beret realistic bonuses. I'm like, gosh, because they were losing them all contracting companies and, and combat during that time.

[John Howard]

That's the funny thing about leadership. It's like they're always wondering why like a young E4 controller gets out and I'm like, well L3 is going to pay him like 200k a year. Yeah. And not to deal with none of your nonsense.

[Brent Tucker]

And that's the other part. I mean half of it's money, but the other half is, is your nonsense. And if, and if the culture was good, the Money wouldn't entice them, that they'd stay with their brothers. But I always said we can't fight the enemy and our command because they.

[John Howard]

Always change the bonus. Like whenever enough people re. Enlist. Like, oh, let's pull the bonus back down some. And then people.

[Brent Tucker]

And now you're creating the vacuum again.

[John Howard]

Yeah. And then they're like, oh. And it's like every couple years they do. It's like, oh, why did. Why no one re enlist?

[Brent Tucker]

Right.

[John Howard]

You reduce the bonus in half. Yeah.

[Brent Tucker]

And the amount of money it takes to create one of you guys.

[John Howard]

Yeah, it would.

[Brent Tucker]

Would. Is so much more than just give the guys who are already there a bonus. Keep them. You'll save money.

[John Howard]

I don't know if this is accurate. This is what I always heard when I was in the pipeline. And so this is back in 2010, they said it cost $7 million to get one guy through the pipeline. That was in 2010.

[Brent Tucker]

For as long as it is. I don't.

[John Howard]

Yeah, because, I mean, we go to air traffic control school. I mean, airborne free fall dive. I mean, just your. Your entire schools, your advanced skills training. Yeah. It's a lot of time.

[Brent Tucker]

So tell us, and what was the first unit you were assigned to?

[John Howard]

23Rd Special Tactics Squadron, Herbert Field. That's how I ended up in Florida. So, yeah, I've.

[Brent Tucker]

I. As a. As a contractor. I trained those guys in CQB.

[John Howard]

Oh, cool.

[Brent Tucker]

Yeah, some really good guys. Like in 21, maybe 20. Something like that.

[John Howard]

Yeah. A lot of my boys are still there. A lot of them. It's like we're getting old. Like, a lot of them are like chiefs now or team sergeants. Yeah, fours.

[Brent Tucker]

I'm like, after this run. Some of those. I can't remember their names off top of my head, but if you tell me their names, I'll. I'll remember those guys. They were really good dudes. So we had a good time doing CQB down there with them. They were. They were. They were solid the. For the listeners and. And probably honestly for me, I know what they do like, in combat. But what is. But sometimes what your job in combat and what your actual charter is can be two different things. What does CCT stand for? And what's. What's the actual charter of the job?

[John Howard]

Yeah, cct, Combat Control Team.

[Brent Tucker]

Okay.

[John Howard]

So that's basically what that CC the team is. It's a small jump team to go take over an air force. So historically, jump in with the Rangers. Like what they did in. Was it Panama or Grenada? And One of my instructors actually was in that. But jump in with a five man team, take over the airfield, establish the airfield rangers, set up security, do everything. So what they did in Baghdad, and that's kind of like the bread and butter, it's like the core of what a combat controller does.

[Brent Tucker]

Airfield seizure.

[John Howard]

Airfield seizure? Yeah, everything. Airfield seizure. Airfield seizure, landing zones, Setting up austere landing zones like in Africa on a dirt Runway, making your own markings, you know, like surveying an airfield, establishing it. So we know everything. Like what we need for glide slope for planes to come in, how much link they need with.

[Brent Tucker]

And take dirt samples to see how.

[John Howard]

Hard it is as well. Yeah, that's a big one. Make sure they're the. It's not going to collapse when a C17 lands on it.

[Tyler]

Yeah, yeah.

[Brent Tucker]

Here's. Here's some cool stories that not everyone knows. And I, and I read it through Relentless Strike. You remember that book?

[John Howard]

Yeah.

[Brent Tucker]

Relentless Strike. Don't know how that guy got all that information. It's a good book, but one of it was talking about like the invasion of Afghanistan and the. Traditionally, you know, CCTs don't do unilateral missions. They're usually attached to someone. Just like I said, they're attached to the Rangers, attached to Green Berets, attached to. Yeah, they attached to. Every special operation unit wants to drop bombs. But they were doing essentially unilateral free fall missions by jumping out in the middle of the night to places where they would want to set up a farp and they would jump out just by themselves in Afghanistan, middle of the night, take all these samples, establish these dlss, dirt landing strip. And I was like, that's a, that's a really cool mission that I never heard that they did.

[John Howard]

What's that?

[Brent Tucker]

Not well known, but it's a super cool mission. Hey, you and three other guys gonna jump. Just you. Because no one else can get in there until we get the airplanes down there. Yeah. And just you on the ground the middle of the night of Afghanistan.

[John Howard]

I want to say it was called Operation Iron Claw or something. This is when they had the, Was it the Iraqi hostages like in the 80s? This is like what started JSOC.

[Brent Tucker]

Eagle. Eagle Claw.

[John Howard]

Eagle Claw, yeah.

[Brent Tucker]

Or Desert One. Yeah. The Tehran embassy hostage situation. Yeah.

[John Howard]

A controller jumped in, if I remember correctly. He jumped.

[Brent Tucker]

No, they'd have to.

[John Howard]

Yeah, like in the middle of the night. And basically set up like infrared lights in the dirt. That way the aircraft knew like where to land. Whoa. Yeah, he did that, like, I believe was a one man show, I could be wrong.

[Brent Tucker]

That's super cool.

[John Howard]

I should know as a controller. But yeah, he. I remember him jumping in, set up like IR lights, like hidden in the dirt. Yeah. That way when the C130s come in with those like rocket packs.

[Brent Tucker]

Yeah.

[John Howard]

They can like stop themselves. He said that all by himself. And then we all know how that kind of mission kind of went. And that's what the development of JSOC went.

[Brent Tucker]

I hate keep doing this, but it's, but, but it's cool information. And I don't know, maybe if you guys ask me on Patreon, maybe I'll tell you, I know exactly what one of those lights look like.

[John Howard]

Yeah.

[Brent Tucker]

Ask me after the show something really cool about one of those lights.

[John Howard]

Yeah, yeah. So, yeah, mainly bread and butter is the core of a combat controller. But the secondary effects of that is the jtac, which is a rating. Right. It's a certification joint terminal attack controller. And that's what gives us the qualifications to drop bombs.

[Brent Tucker]

Okay.

[John Howard]

Kind of makes sense for controllers to do it because we're air traffic controllers. So when we're stacking our aircraft overhead, you know, if we got helos here, 15s here, you know, our 10s here, 15s here, gunships, whatever, fast movers, bombers overhead, ISR overhead. And it's familiar to us, just talking aircraft. So especially over the last 20 plus years, JTAC has been like basically the primary mission of a controller. Not so much airfield stuff, a little bit here and there, but that sounds.

[Tyler]

Like so much responsibility.

[Brent Tucker]

And I'll be the first to say this, like, we'll send green brace to JTAC schools. And especially early on, some of the SF teams would call in there. A lot of them would actually call in their own airstrikes because you had to be JTAC qualified to do that. But that is a perishable skill. And like any other skill, something has to be maintained and you get better, obviously the more and more you do it. And, and it really is like it's dangerous to have someone else go to that school and say they're qualified to do that. I'm not saying they're not qualified to do it, they absolutely are. But who you really want doing that are the people who do it for a living.

[John Howard]

Yeah, yeah. I mean, even like when I was with my, my third group team, the SF team, I think three of the guys had all been to JTAC school, but most of them hadn't even talked to an aircraft in years. And they're always like, yeah, man. They're like you like.

[Brent Tucker]

And it is a, it's and for. And you guys probably have the same thing. I know it's a certification that kind of expires so you can, you can go to the school and have it. But to, to actually call in, you know, airstrikes, you have to be up to date on your certification.

[John Howard]

We have to do so many requirements like types of bombs that were, we're, we're doing live ordinance, you know, type of like bomb on target, bomb on coordinate. We have to do like, we have basically like checklist that we have to do every so many months to keep, to maintain that qualification. And then kind of like pilots you basically get like a, like an annual review. So you're just getting like a review every time. With like real aircraft. You guys spend so much time like they actually have a simulator, like a JTAC simulator. So you're in there working. So once you start going down the JTAC road, that's pretty much all you're going to be start doing. And everything else is just kind of like stay fresh on jump, stay fresh on this. But like JTAC is, is really what you got to be.

[Tyler]

What, what's this is sound stupid question, but I have no idea what's the like do you guys use a software? Do you guys have like a jtac? Like how do you control all those aircraft and how do you track them?

[John Howard]

And literally talking and writing it down. Really? Yeah, literally a lot of what we do is just like talk on target. But like some guys may be a very good operator, but not a good JTAC because you have to be able to multitask. Yeah. You have to know like, because like I might be talking to six F15s overhead. Plus I got three helicopters on the ground, gunships overhead. So there's a lot of multitasking.

[Brent Tucker]

Yeah.

[John Howard]

And, and you're with your moving with your team at the same time as you're doing this. But yeah, you're, you're literally talking. I say writing down, but you don't even have time to write the stuff down, especially when you're in the pitch black and I can't. But hold on guys, let me pull up my little pad and write this down. So it's really just like you're storing it in your head and, and you're going with what's in your head.

[Brent Tucker]

Some most impressive things I've seen this happen on my oda, you know, like, you know the wide side controllers, how good they are across the Board and, you know, we'd go on these valley clearing operations and we'd have, you know, assets stacked, you know, for us, especially at night, to protect us. And I remember seeing our controller with a rucksack flop passed out, like literally sleeping and controlling aircraft. I mean, obviously, like what kind of was sleeping. And he'd just wake up, I mean, and he's any control of the stack, he'd about go right back to bed.

[Tyler]

Poor guy never got to remember, never.

[Brent Tucker]

Got to remember with his eyes still closed. You know, get, get back on it, answer everyone, maneuver people control the stack. I'm like, that's pure exhaust. That's ridiculous.

[John Howard]

There's a lot of stories like that. I mean, I've known guys that have controlled, like, been in gunfights for like 30 plus days straight when they were doing the VSO stuff, the village stability operations, when they're just sitting there on the roof, just gunfight call, radio bringing air. I mean, they just go over and over.

[Brent Tucker]

And someone might say, man, like, you think that's impressive? Like, did you really trust that guy? Like, he's, he's controlling aircraft in his sleep. And the truth is, yes, he can do it.

[John Howard]

He can do it.

[Brent Tucker]

Yeah. He never, he never messed up. He never gave us a reason to question him. Every CCT I worked with were great. Yeah, well, you guys, you guys, quality controls there.

[Tyler]

The guys, we literally do it to sleep.

[John Howard]

Yeah, yeah. Because kind of same thing, it's like we don't want to send, you know, the shit bag to an oda. ODA is just going to eat him alive, you know, you don't want to send the weakest, smallest guy there. It's just like, no, I know new guys that become a team and they'd be like, you're not allowed to do cardio until you gain like 30 pounds.

[Brent Tucker]

Because like, you got to be too something to do something.

[John Howard]

Yeah, they're just like, you're, you're just too small though. As the Air Force guy, you show up, they're just like, oh, look, Air Force guy's here. Right?

[Brent Tucker]

So it's so true. It, it, it is. You judge, you judge by its color, by its cover. You absolutely do.

[John Howard]

And as a controller, we always say you're always the new guy. Because I'm not going with the same team every time I'm getting attached to this team, wherever I go, I'm always the new guy.

[Brent Tucker]

I'll say this, and I'm sure at the beginning it was a little more of an uphill battle, but because of, you know, of what great controllers did before you. It became an easier up and it's still, it's always going to be uphill. You're still the new guy, you always have to prove yourself. But I assure you it got much easier because we never got a bad one. So we never really had to quote, you know, truly like question them from, from, from zero. You know what I mean? Like the presence has been set.

[John Howard]

They won't send any controller out. That's not like very, very squared away. Like as an, as a new controller on team, I mean you just get treated awful, which as you should, I mean you need it. But they're trying to prepare you to go to your oda. Yeah because like if you show up acting like a clown in your oda, they're just going to be like, nope, give me a new controller. They're just going to kick you right out.

[Brent Tucker]

I can only speak for Roda, but I believe this to be true across the board. We treated them really good. We treated our controllers really good. And because they deserved it, I got.

[John Howard]

Treated very good by third group when I was with those guys. We even worked with some seals out there. Same thing. Always treated very well, never really heard because I mean for the controllers, the Green Berets, the SF dudes, there's a very close relationship there. Even where our units are stationed, Fort Bragg, Pope, like we're always very close with those guys.

[Brent Tucker]

7Th group moved down to Eglin, so yeah, right there.

[John Howard]

So we do a lot of training with them when we can. Same like Fort Lewis, McCord Joint Base Lewis, McChord. So we're very close to the SF community a lot and the SEALs. So you know, we're not going to send anyone bad there. They want everyone to be squared away. If they're not a very good squared away controller, doesn't mean they're, you know, not a good controller. Just not a good jtac. That's where they'll just kind of do like the surveys and that kind of stuff like in Africa.

[Brent Tucker]

Can you talk about that a little bit? Like what the non combat actual missions, I know they go down to Africa and do things as well in South America. Like what's, what's your jobs down there?

[John Howard]

Lots of surveys, just setting up airfields.

[Brent Tucker]

And when you say surveys, it's like.

[John Howard]

You know, when I say survey, unpack.

[Brent Tucker]

That a little bit.

[John Howard]

Yeah, so literally making like what you would think of like a land survey but for an airfield that will go into a database for pilots to know and see. Oh that way, like, if they're flying into like a, an unknown location, they actually have something they can pull up on a chart and be like, okay, here's the Runway, here's the width, the length, here's the obstacles.

[Brent Tucker]

Right.

[John Howard]

That kind of stuff.

[Brent Tucker]

So people don't really know this, but you don't know where the next war is going to break out. I had no idea I was going to end up in Syria. We have no idea. All these places. If something were to happen, like, people have no idea, like, how much information we have. And we can send planes right now because of that. There's a lot of forward thinking. Our military does a lot of things wrong. But there's some things that the military does very impressive. And that's one of them.

[John Howard]

And it's not just like in the middle of nowhere, like they might be doing like helicopter landing pads on rooftops. Like actually during Benghazi, we actually had a controller team that was like right across the water. I think it was Tripoli. They were doing surveys over there.

[Brent Tucker]

Yep.

[John Howard]

For basically that reason, they were setting up like HLZS over there. Of course, they got denied to go.

[Brent Tucker]

Yeah. If you don't say you heard a different story about Benghazi, it will send, it will send those guys into another tizzy. Just steer away from it.

[John Howard]

But yeah, stuff like that. So they're always doing HLZs, that kind of stuff. I mean, even like there's humanitarian stuff like Haiti, when they're going to Haiti.

[Brent Tucker]

That's. Yeah, that's a good point. Forgot about that.

[John Howard]

There was that. I was actually at the mortuary receiving those bodies when that happened. And then like Japan, the tsunami, the earthquake they had over there, controllers jumped into the airfield. Re established the airfield.

[Brent Tucker]

That's right.

[John Howard]

So, yeah, forgot about that. So it's not always just like wartime. Like, there's things you can do as a controller that's not just like wartime, which, which is pretty cool.

[Brent Tucker]

But it definitely trans transfers over to wartime skills. Yeah, it's great. And you don't always get. Get that, you know, in your job.

[John Howard]

Like when I was doing the hurricane stuff in North Carolina, like a lot of those controller skills, that was like a controller, like playground for me, basically.

[Brent Tucker]

Yeah.

[John Howard]

Like I'm setting up HLZs everywhere. I'm talking to pilots, telling them like, these are the obstacles coming in, all that kind of stuff.

[Brent Tucker]

We'll get to that here in a second. We took a lot of time on, on some other stuff. Yeah. But real quick, kind of the end of the combat controller Stuff that, that I want to ask is we had a lot of things that, that you're an interesting person. So it's why you're here. How'd you, how did you get attached to third group and just tell us. And did you work with the, the sif? You know as well? Yeah, tell me that. Yeah. How you. Did you go right to the SIF or you work in the ODA first?

[John Howard]

And this is if.

[Brent Tucker]

Okay.

[John Howard]

I was brand new jtac. I literally just got my JTAC rating. I was already a staff sergeant because I was across training. So I had my seven level. Just like you're kind of like levels in your skill set, right? That my team start was like, you're going to be a seven level. What was it, the two one at a pope? They had just. No, they, they were deployed. My unit wasn't deployed. This was when ISIS was taking back over Iraq.

[Brent Tucker]

Okay.

[John Howard]

In 14.

[Brent Tucker]

Yep.

[John Howard]

So they were taken back over. There were already like Winchester or no more JTACs available to two one. So they said, we need a seven level JTAC because to go to the SIF, you had to be a seven level, not just a JTAC.

[Brent Tucker]

Right.

[John Howard]

So I got put in for that. I remember my. I, I got my JTAC rating. Come back home, they're like, hey, we need an NCO to go this trip in Montana for like a land nap trip. I was like, oh, man. My wife just got back from her six month deployment. So I went there for like a week. I come back, I'm with her that weekend. That Monday I met Mustard. My team sergeant comes up to me and goes, hey, would mama be mad if you deploy tonight for, for 13 months?

[Brent Tucker]

Thirteen months.

[John Howard]

And I was like, what's the SIF.

[Brent Tucker]

Doing for 13 months?

[John Howard]

This is like when it was like kind of like unknown what was happening. So like, the orders were just like, it's gonna be a 13 month orders. It w up being like six and a half, seven still.

[Brent Tucker]

That's pretty. That's still long for, for them as well. Yeah, yeah.

[John Howard]

So they were. I was like, I was like, you know, she'll understand. She won't be happy about it, but she'll understand. He's like, okay. He's like, you're leaving at midnight. And I'm just like, oh, all right.

[Brent Tucker]

So it's like right out of a movie, man. Like, yeah, sometimes it is just like, right, a movie.

[John Howard]

So he was like, hey, just go home, gather what you need, then like come back here like this evening, get ready to go.

[Brent Tucker]

You got time to pack and kiss her twice. Come right back.

[John Howard]

So I told her, I mean, I told her, she's like, hey, she gets it. I mean she was like, yeah, like go do what you got to do. W up actually leaving like the about 6am but went up to Fort Bragg, linked up with, with B23 and they were just like, all right, getting the C17, we're going. And it's awesome. Yeah, we just, we just took off, kind of took off into the unknown because there wasn't really. That's when Obama was sending only 300 like soldiers back in Iraq. Yeah. And then we were kind of like split the teams up. Were like summers Iraq. I was over like in the UAE area where there were B23. And then we would just basically get kind of alert if like for you guys were like the main mission force to go do stuff, the CAG operators. And then sometimes we get alert for things. But I kind of told you that earlier. But it was like, we get green light, we're going. I mean whether it was like a hostage rescue, a high value target and then it would just get shut down real quick. It'd just be like, oh, red light, we're not going. But yeah, it was kind of a mess of a lot of that in that world. Yeah. But it was kind of cool because I got to see kind of behind the curtain of like what the tier one guys were kind of doing and which is a lot different and just seeing like their authorities and how easy they could just move. Because one of the guys on my team was a. I think he was CAG for seven years. I think he told me and like, just see how much easier it was for them to move like and go do missions. I mean, there's still a lot of approval and there were so many eyeballs on what was going on, but it was just like very professional, like a very professional way of getting things done.

[Brent Tucker]

But how did you know, how did you go from, you know, the, the SIF team, nsf, you know, and, and then get a part of the, the smu, the Special Mission Unit for the State Guard of Florida.

[John Howard]

Yeah. So got out of the military. January of 18. That was, that was my last out. Got out, went into the real estate world. I was already kind of in it when I was in the military. We can get more into that later. But went to the real estate world and then the State Guard didn't come on my radar until I think the end of 22 or early 23. I had just sold my big business in 2022. So I had a lot of free time.

[Brent Tucker]

Okay.

[John Howard]

And I was. I was basically retired at this point.

[Brent Tucker]

Okay.

[John Howard]

I was only working if I. If I wanted to work. And State Guard got put on my radar. The guy that was putting on the training, the selection process for it, actually, you know, one of the guys, Eddie Gallagher, he was on the show. Yeah, yeah, Eddie was cadre for that.

[Brent Tucker]

Okay.

[John Howard]

But it was, it was done up in the panhandle and I got asked, they're like, hey, like, you want to do this SMU thing? And I was like, yeah, that sounds pretty cool. Kind of mentioned it to the wifey.

[Tyler]

Who thought you were. Who thought you were done.

[John Howard]

Yeah, you know, I guess she's gonna hear the full story now. Sorry, babe. But I told her it was just hurricane work. And I didn't tell her, like, everything else that it potentially could be. She's like, you wanna do hurricane work with the State Guard? And I was like, yeah, it'd be fun. You know, just hang out with some of the boys again and stuff. She's like, okay, yeah, go do that. But yes, I went through the selection class. October of 23.

[Brent Tucker]

How long was the selection class?

[John Howard]

Two week class.

[Brent Tucker]

Okay.

[John Howard]

And nothing like it. Very professional, very grown up. It was like you're already expected to have the skill set and we're just assessing where you're at skill wise and also personality wise. Yeah, that's a lot of things people don't realize, like when it comes to the team stuff like you have to be able to get along with people and have the right personality. You could be the fastest runner, bench press thousand pounds, be the best shooter.

[Brent Tucker]

But go ahead with it. We're not looking for the. The best man for the job. We're looking for the right man for the job.

[John Howard]

True. Yeah, Very, very true. So, yeah, I went through selection. It was, it was really good. Very professional. It was also kind of cool to like, gut check to see where I was at, because we were doing, you know, shooting cqb, fast roping T, triple C, that kind of stuff. Full mission profiles.

[Brent Tucker]

So. So what's. What's the charter for the special Missions Unit for the State Guard?

[John Howard]

What do you mean charter?

[Brent Tucker]

Yeah, what's. What, what is their. What's their mission statement? What were they created to do?

[John Howard]

Created to do anything that the governor basically wants.

[Brent Tucker]

So pretty wide open.

[John Howard]

Very, very wide open. Like whatever that mission set is that he wants. I'm not sure if they've officially put out the full mission set, so. I'm kind of a little careful what I say on it.

[Brent Tucker]

Yeah.

[John Howard]

But it's whatever he wanted. Basically. From what I was told, Desantis wanted his own, like, basically J sock team to. To go do whatever he needed to get done. Because under that previous administration, thank God it's gone, they weren't getting any help, especially down in South Florida with human trafficking, drug trafficking. I was literally told through the grapevine that Coast Guard would not, like, even talk to Desantis. And I don't mean, like, Coast Guard with local guys here. The guys like us, like D.C. coast Guard.

[Brent Tucker]

Yeah.

[John Howard]

Up at headquarters. Because, like, no one in that federal government wanted to speak.

[Brent Tucker]

Yeah. It's always fun. The ground. The ground guys, regardless of who it is, always get along. Always get along. It's. Yeah, it's. It happens at a. It's just like a headquarter level.

[John Howard]

It's like the FBI. Like, I know. I know some guys that are FBI and like, what is going on at the FBI? And they're like, oh, that's the seventh floor boys. And you got. Okay, you've heard this before. Yes. They call them. They're the seventh floor boys out of D.C. and that's where they send the people to go do, like, the Mar A Lago raid and all that. That's just like their whole left wing, wacko liberal. That's why we see those guys in kit. They're all bulging out from their kit. They're fat. Like, these guys aren't. They're not. They're not meat eaters. They think they are, but they're not.

[Brent Tucker]

So. And you. And you correct me rightfully so, when I had a habit, slipped and called it the. The National Guard. Tell them the difference between the Florida National Guard and the Florida State Guard.

[John Howard]

So National Guards, like what everyone thinks of, like, Army, Air Force, Navy, whatever. Right. So Army, National Guard. But there's. They're federal, Right, Right.

[Brent Tucker]

They have a state mission and a federal mission.

[John Howard]

The State Guard has zero to do it. Federal. There's no federal. There's no even federal funding. It's only state funding funded. So we only answer purely 100 to Governor DeSantis. That's it. And that's why it's so good. We don't have all this bureaucracy and all this federal nonsense. You know, we don't have all these, like, weird training programs we got to go to. Like, he's just like, get the job done, whatever it is.

[Brent Tucker]

How. How. How many people? How big is it?

[John Howard]

It's small.

[Tyler]

Is it DoD?

[John Howard]

Not no, no DoD at all. It's purely state.

[Tyler]

So they. They don't take any consideration about, like. Like, if somebody was rated, like, if they got out and then they're rating, it's not on their DD214. But it is a. It's a rating where you. You're non. You can't go back into the military.

[John Howard]

No. That's good.

[Brent Tucker]

Are you basically saying essentially, like, can 100 disabled guy.

[Tyler]

Yeah. I learned this the hard way when I got out. And then a couple years later, I tried to get back in the Guard. I tried twice, and I didn't tell the second recruiter. He said the same thing. He's like, it's saying right here, you're not fit for duty. Like, physically.

[John Howard]

Yeah.

[Tyler]

And I was like, that's insane. I'm in better shape than when I was in the Army. And so we.

[John Howard]

We kind of have, like, our own fitness standards. Like, a lot of the guys are. Are beat up and broken. I mean, there's. There's a lot of guys on the team are, like, in their 50s. You know, they've been operating since the 90s.

[Brent Tucker]

Yeah. But all the experience, those guys.

[John Howard]

Lots of experience. I mean, like, actually, the guy that put me through selections on my team, and he started off as marine recon in 1992, I think it was.

[Brent Tucker]

Wow.

[John Howard]

And, like, still getting after it. But I mean, like, he's got his bumps and bruises and injuries and stuff, so, like.

[Brent Tucker]

But we're not asking him to climb mountains of Afghanistan and go on raids.

[John Howard]

He would love that.

[Brent Tucker]

In full kit and stuff like that. Well, it's an open.

[John Howard]

Yeah.

[Brent Tucker]

You could be asked to do some. Some stuff. I'm sure he's still in.

[John Howard]

Oh, he's still in good enough shape. Yeah, he's in good shape. Oh, yeah.

[Brent Tucker]

On this. On the State Guard, are you guys still maintaining, like, a classic rank structure?

[John Howard]

Yeah. So we use army rank.

[Brent Tucker]

Okay.

[John Howard]

So exactly how it looks. We have.

[Brent Tucker]

That's because no one can keep up with Navy rank. I still cannot keep up with Navy rank. Like, it's. Yeah. Tell me your E grade or your O grade. I don't. I can't keep up with you. Yeah, it's saying that, but it's true.

[John Howard]

It is true. It's. It is true. And then they throw their occupation into their rank as well. They do that as well. It's a little. Little confusing sometimes, but. Yeah. So use army rank. It. Yeah. I can't say nothing bad about it. Like, it's. Everything about it. It's just.

[Brent Tucker]

Are you guys still. So you guys doing drills as well or is like kind of an on call only status?

[John Howard]

Yeah, so it's pure volunteer. Like, if you can make it, you can. Like some guys still contract overseas, so they might be gone for two or three, three months at a time. So what we try to do is do like once a month training. That way if you're in town, you can make it. You can make it okay. But the training's awesome.

[Tyler]

Is the pay comparable to National Guard like a mutual.

[John Howard]

Not even close. We only get paid. Doesn't matter what your rank is. So whether you're officer enlisted, you're, you know, a colonel or sergeant, it's 160 bucks a day. So that's what you get paid.

[Tyler]

So you're doing it as a sense of duty. You're not doing it.

[John Howard]

That's. Everyone's doing it just because they actually want to do it. There's, there's not. Like I was telling them off camera, but it's like after you go to the gas station and buy your energy drinks and leaky chewies, you probably got like 40 bucks left over from your. So there's not much money in it. But it's just, it's fun. It's, you know, I think the best thing about it. And this is where the governor and everyone below him, the leadership is very smart. When they wanted to stand this up, they said, we don't know what you guys do as operators. Like, we don't have this operator an experience. So they're like, you guys write the book. You write the rule book on how this looks like. Hold yourself. We're giving you all the rope to hang yourself with. Yeah, don't do it. But they're like, write your own standards. Write what you guys need. Because you guys actually did this in real life. And that's how, that's how it is. So when we're like, hey, this is what we need, this is what we want to do. Here's our rule book. They're like, okay, sounds good. Unless you guys do something crazy where you wind up on CNN news. Yeah, you know, like, you're good to go.

[Brent Tucker]

Right?

[John Howard]

And that's where. And that's why we're very selective on like, who we're letting in because we have to protect the unit.

[Brent Tucker]

They say that, listen up on the news, you're good to go, but you ended up on the news and you're still, and you're still good to go. Let's, let's talk about that a little bit.

[John Howard]

I Thought I was gonna get.

[Tyler]

Did they. Did they have to write a social media policy? Because viral video.

[John Howard]

We actually had a social media policy. Basically. It was like I had to get approval, you know, from public affairs and all that. And I very believe in following the chain of command for a reason. Because there might be something, I don't know that's going on, but I guess to give the whole story. We got time for it now, right?

[Brent Tucker]

Yeah, we got time now here for it.

[John Howard]

Very first mission we did, the SMU was Hurricane Helene. We got activated for that. We were actually doing our weapons qualifications and getting everything ready for the hurricane. And then like, yeah, Helene's coming right here. So we got activated for that. They didn't really know what we were going to do. But like, I love our commander. He's awesome guy. And the reason why he's really good is because he was E5 in the military. He was. He was an E5 PJ. He was a pararescue guy. Yeah, E5. Now he's the O5. Literally, like, he jumped. He just jumped, the whole rank structure. Right. So he went from E5 to OH5.

[Brent Tucker]

Without any of the paid benefits.

[John Howard]

And he was like, this, this is. I should say this is before I even, like, knew who he was. So I'm still trying to figure him out. But he was saying the right things. And he said, you know, we're gonna go out, we're gonna do what others can't do, and we're gonna find work and, and look for work. Like, we're just gonna go look for work and get after it. And I was like, perfect.

[Brent Tucker]

I love it. Because you guys have the authorities to do it.

[John Howard]

Yeah. So we literally just load up the trucks, chainsaws, whatever we need, boats, everything. And right as the eye passed, we just went right into Perry, Florida, and we were just chainsawing trees. I think we did 46 miles of roads, like to clear the road, to go there in like a five hour period. So we drive for a little bit down tree, get out there, cut it up, throw it and go. Because we were just trying to get into like basically ground zero where all the flooding was with the boats. So we just pushed through. And a lot of like, agencies can't work during the night for like safety reasons because of downed power lines and trees and stuff like that. I mean, like this sheriff and all them are out there, but there's. It's kind of limited. They don't really want them working. But with us they're like, I guess you guys are replaceable. Go do what you want to do, you know? But that's where we're like, we're. We operate in the night. This is what we can do. So we made it to Perry and Steinhatch at first light. The water was just starting to go down. It was about chest deep at that time. But, like, we were able to get there because we just pushed through all night. So the state was now kind of seeing, like, our capabilities. And they're just kind of like, wow, these guys are really like, they're motivated. They want to go get work and get after it.

[Brent Tucker]

You guys have night vision by chance?

[John Howard]

Yes, we do. We're working on getting some better ones.

[Brent Tucker]

Okay.

[John Howard]

But yeah, we. We got some night vision goggles. So we did. We did Helene here in Florida. And then I should say, this is when I met my buddy Charlie Keeball. He's a former soft tap, and he was with Aerial Recovery. Aerial Recovery's awesome company. I work with them now. They're a non profit, and they do human trafficking and natural disasters. And I know it seems like two very different missions, but it's the same mission. Because wherever there's a natural disaster, Disaster.

[Brent Tucker]

Absolutely.

[John Howard]

That's where the human traffickers go.

[Brent Tucker]

That's right.

[John Howard]

Because it's easy to make people disappear.

[Brent Tucker]

They're gonna take advantage. Yeah, absolutely.

[John Howard]

I didn't know this either until I met my buddy Charlie. So me and Charlie had talked on the phone a few times, and I was actually trying to get him to come join the smu. He's like, oh, I'm busy with Aerial Recovery. So the first time we met up was in Tallahassee, and our commander used to work with Aerial Recovery. He was in Ukraine with them as a medic. So there was a very, like, already a rock relationship established. So we were working kind of side by side with them. And most of their guys are all former soft. Actually, the guy that. That started Air Recovery is a retired Green Beret. I think it was a fifth group guy. So we were kind of like learning things from them, like, with disaster recovery work, and it was. It was a really good working relationship. So the very next day after Helene passed, we start hearing about Helene now in North Carolina, and we're still out in Steinhatch and Perry, and they're like, oh, did you guys hear about all the flooding? And everything's going on in North Carolina? And I'm like, I thought North Carolina would be safe from a hurricane.

[Brent Tucker]

Like, I put my foot in my mouth on a live. Do you remember what I. The comment section, you said, how does.

[Tyler]

That, how does there a 20 foot tidal wave or something like that?

[Brent Tucker]

It wasn't that being from Florida, that's what I know about hurricanes of sorts, which is, you know, unless you're on a Gulf town, like, like why. I didn't understand why the death toll was so huge. Because at the end of the day, flooding in Florida happens pretty slow. Yeah. I mean, we're flat, like, it's not, we don't get usually a very high death toll with, with hurricanes. We just don't. And so when that high death toll started coming out, I'm like, oh, yeah.

[Tyler]

You said, why can't you just get to.

[Brent Tucker]

Yeah, the flooding doesn't happen real fast. Can't I quite. What is going on here? And then people explain to me, like dams broke or like massive mudslides, which we don't, which we don't have. Yeah. You know, so like, I, I didn't know it was, it was, it was an honest question that people took a little bit.

[John Howard]

Yeah.

[Brent Tucker]

Out of ignorance. Which they weren't wrong. I was ignorant on it.

[John Howard]

I would have thought during a hurricane, go to the mountains, safer, like high ground, you know, 2500ft, 3000ft elevation. It makes sense to me.

[Brent Tucker]

Yeah.

[John Howard]

I never thought about it. So Charlie and everyone's talking about it, and Charlie, he, he goes, hey man, you want to get, you want to get in your plane and go up there tomorrow? He goes, we're already sending a ground team up there, like right now. Aerial recovery. At the time, the, the state guard was not activated at all for North Carolina. So I was like, let me ask the wifey, you know, been gone. So I was like, hey, babe, can I go? And she was like, yeah, absolutely. Go. So as we're doing basically like putting all our gear, refitting our gear, I let my leadership know, hey, I'm going to leave with Ariel tomorrow. I'm going up there with Ariel, North Carolina. You guys cool with that? And they're like, yeah, absolutely, man. They're like, go, go do it. They're like, you might even see a few more of us up there later on. And I was like, okay, cool. So as I'm going to get my plane, which Harley Commander's calling, and he's like, we just got activated for North Carolina. I was like, no way. He goes, yeah, man. He goes, we're trying to figure out the logistics of like, how we're getting up there. But he goes, why don't you just. Since you're already going up There get intel, because there's not really a lot of intel that was being shared. Like, it was. It was kind of quiet. It was weird. Like, they weren't really saying what they needed. Like, North Carolina wasn't really putting out, like, a ton of information.

[Tyler]

We talked about that. You know, they dropped the ball.

[John Howard]

And maybe they just didn't know what they needed because they just. I don't know, but it was just kind of weird. They were being very, very quiet with us.

[Brent Tucker]

You could listen to your citizens that need help. They'll tell you what. They'll tell you what, what you need. Real quick.

[Tyler]

We were. Yeah, we talked. We talked to a couple people who knew that did volunteer work. They went there and they were saying that the state entities, the National Guard and stuff, were ill prepared, ill equipped, ill manned, and there was more civilians up there volunteering than there was state assets.

[Brent Tucker]

And this could be for him, specifically where he was. But he said, like, the na. He didn't even see the National Guard until, like, the. How long was he there? Six, eight. He's there for a while. He's like. I didn't even see him to the very end. Like, finally get to where. Like, someplace they need to be. They were basically in the rear with the gear, kind of waiting on orders to go do something. And he felt like they weren't very proactive. And basically it was civilians that. And volunteers and nonprofits that went forward and carried the load. He didn't have good things to say about fema, and he didn't have real good things to say about the National Guard there.

[Tyler]

And then. Then they tried to come in and lay down the rule of the land. And all these entities were like, no, we've been here for weeks.

[John Howard]

It was a mess. It was Wild West.

[Brent Tucker]

And I'm not trying to get you to badmouth anyone. No, no. I'm just looking for the truth about it.

[John Howard]

I'm gonna badmouth people in this world. Yeah.

[Brent Tucker]

And if they deserve it. Yeah, and if they deserve it, they deserve it.

[John Howard]

That's what I'm known for.

[Brent Tucker]

Yeah.

[John Howard]

Now, I will say, on the National Guard side, I ran to a bunch of helicopter pilots up there, and those guys were working day one. Like, even, like, the night before they were working, they were out there doing rescues. Actually wound up speaking to one of their air bosses, which is funny, because we kind of, like, had a conflict at first because he thought I was just like, totally, like, like shitting on the National Guard. And I was like, no, because he was only seeing, like, clips of My videos.

[Brent Tucker]

Yeah.

[John Howard]

And I was like, no, that's not. That wasn't my intent. My intent on that was just like, there were so few of them, but the ones that were there, dude, they were working like 24 hours around the clock. They were. I mean, like, most of these guys were doing like 60 rescues a week. Yeah. Like in a week on the helicopter.

[Brent Tucker]

And I'm not like discounting that. Like, awesome work on them, like, great. But you have thousands and thousands of ground guys that could be on the ground doing things because that's where all the non profits and the civilians and, you know, rescue workers were on the ground. Like they needed. They need boots on ground as well.

[John Howard]

Here's what I was told by a North Carolina National Guard guy. I guess there's 78, like, units or divisions in North Carolina that are National Guard. And Roy Cooper, I call him weak Roy. The governor. He's no longer the governor. Thank God. The guy sucks. He only activated six of 78 units.

[Brent Tucker]

That's crazy.

[Tyler]

That is.

[John Howard]

Yeah. So.

[Brent Tucker]

Oh, man, that pisses me off.

[John Howard]

Oh, it's.

[Brent Tucker]

If you were a resident of North Carolina, that is like, that is. That's treasonous. Like it really is to your state.

[John Howard]

So here's what he did, though. So he only activated. Let's go with that six number. Because that's what I was told. Right. I can't confirm or deny, but that's what this North Carolina guard said. Right. We were running into private companies out there for profit. And when I would ask them, like, how did you guys get here? And they said, we bid on the job. And I'm like, what do you mean you bid on the job? And they were like, well, North Carolina put out a notice for us and you bid on it and if you want it, you come out here and do the hurricane recovery. So they had time to basically put out requests for people to come there, pay them to do the job, but not activate every helicopter asset we had in the nation.

[Tyler]

I can tell you later on the disaster industrial complex. Yeah, essentially the military industrial Congress.

[John Howard]

I spoke to an extremely high ranking person over at, actually at socom and I, I sat down with him for about three hours and I was like, why weren't you guys being allowed to come up there? And he told me they had the 160th. Like, he spoke to their leadership at the 160th. The helicopters for people that don't know, the special operations helicopter divisions. But they had them at, I think it was Fort Campbell and Savannah, Georgia. They were, they Were requesting to go to North Carolina.

[Brent Tucker]

Hell yeah.

[John Howard]

So was Bragg. I mean I had still a lot of my friends up at the, at the tier one level. They're texting me like man, like we're trying to come out there and they're just right down the road.

[Brent Tucker]

Right.

[John Howard]

The reason why the military did not come until like a week later and this is coming from very high up rank. They were told not even to think about North Carolina because they were going to invade Iran. They were completely deploys to go over to Iran. So they were actually deploying him to go over to set up like they were ready to go full on war. Because that's when Israel was having a little missile.

[Brent Tucker]

That's right.

[John Howard]

So there they literally just shifted the focus of the military to go all the way over there.

[Brent Tucker]

I hate that because they're not wrong, you know, by, by, you know, by, by doing that. But they're not right either by saying hey like we have people in need and like, I don't know, that's a tough situation to be fair.

[Tyler]

You know, our people in need, our people need us, our country. But we have assets going to that. Your job is to, is to focus on invading Iran.

[Brent Tucker]

Especially like PJs and what they're made for which is you know, rescue. I mean they're, you know, what's the word I'm looking for? Like kind of high risk, you know, rescue. Like they're tailor made for North Carolina.

[John Howard]

It's like what they do.

[Brent Tucker]

Yeah. And you, you get a, you get a bunch of PJs and the 1/60th that can put a bird anywhere in any environment at any time of day or night. And the amount of good they could have done would have been off the charts.

[John Howard]

So I'll tell you on, I think it was day three after the hurricane passed, I ran into a like unit of PJs from Arizona.

[Brent Tucker]

Really?

[John Howard]

The Tucson PJs and 2 6. No, the 26 is Canon Air Force Base in New Mexico.

[Brent Tucker]

New Mexico, yeah. I've trained those guys too.

[John Howard]

This is, I forgot the Tucson unit. But they're just a purely a rescue unit.

[Brent Tucker]

Okay.

[John Howard]

Not the special tactics side of the race.

[Brent Tucker]

Yeah, yeah.

[John Howard]

So again it's just when I always tell these stories to people and they're like this doesn't make sense. I'm like, yes, yeah, exactly.

[Brent Tucker]

I mean one of the, one of the things they specialize is collapsed structures.

[John Howard]

Yeah.

[Brent Tucker]

You know, they have all the tools for collapsed structures.

[John Howard]

Well, this is the weird part of the story.

[Brent Tucker]

So and they're medics.

[John Howard]

Yeah, they're rescue specialists.

[Brent Tucker]

Right, they're rescue specialists.

[John Howard]

Especially like the, the PJ units up in, actually in Arizona and in Alaska. They're rescuing people in the mountains all the time. Like this is what they do. So I'm at the Astral airport. We're just there refueling in, in the helicopter. And I see two Blackhawks, Air Force Blackhawks sitting there with two full PJ teams. I go up to him like, hey guys, like former controller. And we start chit chatting. I'm like, so what are you guys doing? Basically exchanging intel because I just came off a mission, right? And they were like, we're waiting for Title 10 orders. They're like, we can't do anything. And I was like, what? And they're like, well, we flew from.

[Brent Tucker]

Arizona, where they work under Title 32.

[John Howard]

To Georgia to link up with that PJ team in Savannah, Georgia, the PJ unit over there. But for whatever reason, the, the Moody Air Force base there got put on lockdown, so the PJ's there couldn't leave. But they were able to take their helicopters and go to North Carolina.

[Brent Tucker]

Was this a reserve unit or an active duty?

[John Howard]

I don't, I can't remember which one. Moody.

[Brent Tucker]

Gosh. I got, I got questions about that, about authorities and, and why they were waiting on them and, and why it wasn't given or if they even truly needed them. To be honest, I'd have to, I'd have to a little bit more about that. I got questions about that.

[John Howard]

Yeah, they had all the time, you would think from the time they took from Arizona to Georgia to North Carolina, someone could have been like, this wasn't like a 30 minute flight over.

[Brent Tucker]

Yeah.

[John Howard]

You know, like, so it was just, it was really weird, man. There, there was a lot of, there was a lot of weird stuff going on.

[Brent Tucker]

And I can tell you from 20 years of service exactly what the problem is. No one wanted the responsibility of saying yes in case something went wrong. So it's easier for them to go, I don't know, let me send it up the chain. You make the call. And that guy say, I don't know, you send it up the chain. You make the call. Yeah, I would bet money I'm right on that.

[John Howard]

Well, I heard our Vice President of the United States say, we can do it all. We can help the people in North Carolina, we can help Ukraine, and apparently we can prepare an invasion to Iran.

[Brent Tucker]

And she's right. We can do it all.

[John Howard]

But we didn't mismanaged.

[Brent Tucker]

Yeah. Mismanaged, I guess, to kind of give.

[John Howard]

You a little more story on how the. Before I made the video and all that. Why I made the video. So when I got to North Carolina, we landed there at the airfield. It was called Rutherford. Literally no plan, just me and Charlie and we get out, and the first guy we run into, I swear this guy was an angel, like, godson sent this guy because he disappeared. He vanished from the earth. This kind of young dude, I'd probably say mid-20s, kind of like almost kind of surfer looking, just kind of like shaggy ish hair. He walks. He literally just like walks up to us and starts chatting, and we're like, hey, man, like, we're here to come do the rescue work. Like, do you know these helicopters? Like, we're pointing these helicopters over. You know these guys? Oh, those guys are the power line. They're out doing rescues. I'm like, do you think he gets a connection with a helicopter? Because, like, we already have aerial recovery down at Late Lure, which was like the ground zero. And we were like, we just need to get a helicopter, get out there and see what's going on. He goes, yeah, let me see what I can do with you guys. Pulls out a radio, like a ground air radio, right? And was like, do you guys have a need for a radio? And I was like, yeah. I was like, I'm actually an air traffic controller, right? I could totally use that radio.

[Brent Tucker]

But I was like, wonders with that radio.

[John Howard]

But I was like, don't you need it, right? And he's like, no, I don't need it. I'm good. I was like, but he's like, I have another one. I was like, okay, man. Like, sure. Like this probably a 6, $700 radio. I'm just like, okay, yeah, yeah, let's take it. Never see that guy again.

[Brent Tucker]

Yeah.

[John Howard]

As we're in the fbo.

[Brent Tucker]

What's fbo?

[John Howard]

Fixed Base operations. Like a little. Little building. We're trying to get intel, like, what's going on. Like, because they have a TFR up, temporary flight restriction over the area. So we're trying to figure out, like, how can we get in this TFR area. This guy Zeb walks in love, this guy. And he owns his own helicopter. So is it odd or is it God, right? He's not even supposed to be at that airfield. He's supposed to be flying to Asheville. And the only reason why I'm even at that airfield. I was going to go to Asheville as well as Phil didn't pick up the phone. And online it was saying the airfield was shut down. So I looked up Rutherford, which was like right beside it on. On foreflight, and I called. The guy actually answered. I was like, hey, are you guys open? He was like, yeah, we're open, but get here before dark. We don't have a generator for lights. So I was, all right. So same thing as the odds are. God, I think I had a 48 knot tailwind from Destin to North Carolina. I was there like an hour and 40 minutes.

[Brent Tucker]

Wow.

[John Howard]

Actually, I think it was an hour and 35. I mean, I was screaming outside up there.

[Brent Tucker]

How do you not have a generator, though?

[John Howard]

They got one later. Yeah, this is like a small airfield. This isn't like a commercial airport. Just private planes.

[Brent Tucker]

I'll argue then they need a smaller generator, which would be even easier to get. But that's.

[John Howard]

They did get one about.

[Brent Tucker]

Okay, he's got all the answers.

[John Howard]

This guy's. And his pilot, Mark. Mark's. Mark's his pilot. They were flying to Asheville and something happened on the helicopter. Like a check engine light basically came on. And they're like, oh, we got to put it down. So they put it down at Rutherford where we are. That angel dude I tell you about literally goes up to them and was like, hey, these two army guys need a helicopter ride. Can you hook them up? And guy vanished. We don't know. We asked everybody who this guy was, like, later on, because it was the same people there every day. And they're like, we have no idea.

[Brent Tucker]

Who you're talking about.

[John Howard]

This guy didn't fly away in a helicopter, didn't take off in a plane. Just literally vanished. League. So Zeb comes in, he's like, hey, are you the army guys that need, like a helicopter ride? We're like, yeah, man, we do. He goes, well, I gotta go fly these people. I could be back here in an hour and a half if you still need that ride. We're like, yeah, let's exchange numbers. And he's like, well, just text me if you don't need it, because if not, like, you know, I'm not coming back here.

[Brent Tucker]

Right, yeah, just come back here for you guys. Which is awesome of them.

[John Howard]

So we stay in contact with them. We actually don't go out in the helicopter that day with them because our aerial recovery team that was on the ground was nearby, and they picked us up and then we went in. But the next day, that's when we were. We actually got started in helicopter work. But long story short, we go to late Lure. What a mess that was politically. We go to the first checkpoint. There was one deputy sheriff there, and he literally stops us and goes, oh, they're talking about area. Because we're in these trucks that say aerial recovery, these big trucks, okay? And he's like, they're talking about you guys, all. The radio. You can't come in here. And we're like, what do you mean we can't come in. In here? He's like, they called on the radio like, you guys aren't allowed to be here. And we're like, okay, get. Get some authority up here. Whatever he calls a police cap up. Guy's cool. Mainly because Charlie was threatening them. He started pulling his phone out, started recording them, but they were like, yeah, man, you guys aren't allowed to come here. I don't know what's going on. They start saying, this turns out to not be true. I'll say this now, but they were like, the speaker of the House of North Carolina is denying you guys access into late lure. And we're like, I'm like, who's this? I'm like, what's the speaker of the House like? Oh, Congressman, this. I'm like, why is a congressman denying us this? Doesn't make any sense. We're like, well, we already have a team there on the ground, and they're there with the mayor of late, lore. Like, they want us there. And he was like, well, I'll escort you up there. You can meet with your team, but I'm just letting you know what they're saying. So we go. The next checkpoint there was like, I don't know, four or five deputies there. He stops. There's like, hey, you guys, you're good to go. Go to the next checkpoint. We go to the third checkpoint. There's like basically like an MRAP right there. Like an armored SWAT vehicle. A bunch of. Oh, man. Seven, eight deputies there. They're just standing there like young dudes, like, all in great shape. They're like, yeah, you guys can't go any further. They already called you guys on the radio. We're like, no, we already went through this. The captain escorted us up here. He's like, no. They just called it out again. God. And we're like, no, man, this is bs. Our team is literally, like, one mile over there. Let us through. He's like, not happening. It gets a little confrontational, and I'm like, all right, let's just chill out. These guys are just. They're just privates. They're just deputies. Yeah, they don't have. They can't. They get. They can't make any decisions. And I start chat with them. I'm like, what are you guys doing? Like, are you doing rescue work or like.

[Tyler]

And they're like, like, kind of. What do you realize what you're doing? Like, what do you realize what you're stopping?

[John Howard]

Well, they're mad because they can't do anything. They're like, our only orders from our sheriff is to stand right here at this checkpoint. Wow. And at this time, it's a one lane road because there's mud and tree logs on one side. So they're like, they can only stand there. They're like, we're pissed. Like, we want to go do work. They won't let us again. Comes out with threats. Charlie's like, you're about to go viral all over the Internet. Pulls his phone out and they're like, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa. They're like, let's send you up to the fire chief. We go up to the fire chief, who's the guy in charge of the area. Turns out he actually retired like half a year ago, I think it was. I can't remember. And they brought him back because the other guy didn't know how to handle it. So now I have a retired guy here who's great, but not capable of handling this. What it turns out to be the reason why they're denying this entry is there's one of these for profit companies there. And they got into a little basically ego match with our aerial recovery guys. And they were telling the fire chief to kick us out. And like, literally they were making little comments like, oh, these guys look like a bunch of Navy seals. One of them even said like, oh, I wouldn't wrestle you guys like me here. Like, just little comments like that, right?

[Brent Tucker]

And we're like, hey, man, thanks for the compliment.

[John Howard]

We're like, we're just here trying to do work, right? Like, we're here to rescue people. Like, not trying to figure out who's in charge. Just let us know, like on this map where we can go do work, right? Like, we'll work together. We have Starlink. They didn't have Starlink. We have, like, we have Starlink. You guys can get on the use our WI fi. Because they were like, we don't have no way to talk to the guys over there. We're like, hey, we got WI fi. Do you guys want to work together? Long story short, we shake hands.

[Tyler]

Did you get through?

[John Howard]

Well, it was toward the evening. And you have to be out by dark. They won't let you stay in the area. So shake hands like, all right, be back here at 7am in the morning. We roll back up there.

[Brent Tucker]

Sounds like North Carolina needs, needs an smu.

[John Howard]

Oh, they need it, they need it back.

[Tyler]

That's what I'm saying. Like, okay, we highly advise and we're telling you, don't come in past dark. But if there's guys going, let us through. We know the risk, we want to go in at dark. They still didn't allow that?

[John Howard]

Well, no, they. You couldn't do only 7am to 7pm that's when they shut the checkpoints down with the deputies. So you couldn't do anything outside that time. Like it was full.

[Tyler]

Like, would you have if you could?

[John Howard]

Oh yeah.

[Tyler]

That's what I'm saying.

[John Howard]

Oh yeah, absolutely.

[Brent Tucker]

People needed.

[Tyler]

At 7pm all the pain and suffering stopped.

[John Howard]

We brought our own flashlights. You can use ours. And that's where we need the power of the military. We need night vision, we need thermal, we need all this stuff. Like, let's figure out who's actually flashlight.

[Tyler]

Can I use this?

[John Howard]

This was. People are suffering. These guys are arguing and having a piss off contest. Good, great.

[Tyler]

Yeah.

[John Howard]

This was like what, day one after the hurricane, Day two after the hurricane. So this is like critical. This is critical time, right?

[Brent Tucker]

Yeah.

[John Howard]

And. And there's all this talk about the late Lord dam potentially getting ready to breach and blow. So there's like that going on. So anyways, we come back the next morning, 7:00am Actually, I think we're there. 20 minutes prior, 15 minutes prior. No one's there. Some deputies roll up, Fire chief rolls up, National Guard guy rolls up and I'll talk a little bit about this National Guard guy. He was awesome. He was a great guy. I think he was at E6. And we're chit chat with him like, hey man, like, how many people you got here? Like, what's your capabilities? And talking about how the National Guard was not prepared. Not prepared. He was like, well, the only thing we can do is where we can walk. We don't have any other capabilities. He goes, all my, all my soldiers beneath me are just college kids. He goes, they have. He's like, if I let them go out and do work, they'll turn to a rescue mission.

[Brent Tucker]

Yeah.

[John Howard]

He was just straight up honest. He was like, he's like, so we're just gonna go like knock on doors. Like we have no way to go, like cross rivers or go up in the mountains. He was like, we're just gonna go knock on doors and see if there's like basically any old people. Because he's like these, he's like, these kids. He kept calling kids. These kids don't have the skill set to be here. He's like, that's what I'm working with. He's like. And it drives me crazy.

[Brent Tucker]

As an nco, that's a generation, that's a culture, a generational culture problem as well, that we don't have men anymore. Like no 18 year old should be called a kid anymore. You're a man. Those, those kids used to go to World War II and, and kill younger, younger than eight. Younger, yeah. They'd lie about their age to go kill Nazis, you know, like that's just that that's. Something has to change.

[John Howard]

And like, I would get a lot of. I. But you also have to give them a chance. And people up, people up above gotta make the decision and quit being scared about liability. And they're gonna be turned into a rescue mission. Let those young men prove themselves. It all comes down to leadership. Right? Like leadership not given NCO's authority to go do what they need to do and run these privates. Like, that NCO should have been like, you guys are gonna find out today. Trial on fire.

[Brent Tucker]

That's right.

[John Howard]

Either gonna live or you're gonna die. You joined? Yeah. This is the job you want the college paid for. Well, guess what? This is what it is.

[Brent Tucker]

Yeah.

[John Howard]

And that NCO was very frustrated because he was like, I literally just have like this one Humvee and that's it. Like a shovel. He's like, there's not much I can do. I could feel his frustration. He was trying to be professional, but he was just like super frustrated. And he was even making. I got some bad comments on this online, but I made a post about the National Guard soldiers I saw were sleeping in trucks all the time.

[Brent Tucker]

Yeah.

[John Howard]

Because that's what they were doing. And even he was like, yeah, he's like, my, my, my, my troops over there just sleeping in the truck. I'm kind of like, well, hey man, like, you're the nco.

[Brent Tucker]

Yeah.

[John Howard]

Like do something. Go rough those kids up, you know? But like wherever we would drive around and there would be like a National Guard vehicle. They would literally just be sitting there like, I'm not kidding, like feet up in the window, playing on their phones. And I'm just like, for real. Like it was for me as a former.

[Tyler]

This is your state.

[John Howard]

Right?

[Brent Tucker]

This is your state.

[John Howard]

There's work for you to go do right now. But. So that's the kind of stuff that was happening there. But anyways, do you guys have a.

[Brent Tucker]

Direct line to DeSantis?

[John Howard]

Yes.

[Brent Tucker]

You know, or.

[John Howard]

I mean, our director does.

[Brent Tucker]

Okay.

[John Howard]

So it goes, you know, our. Our unit director direct to Desantis is.

[Brent Tucker]

Is there any time. And you may get this part of the story, you know, is there any time, like, man, we. It's time to make a phone call. Desantis has to call the governor, and, like, someone's got to. Someone's got to let us work. Or is it. Or is it still early? Like, we're. It's not time to make that call yet. We're still figuring it out.

[John Howard]

So I want to be careful how I say this, because I heard this through the grapevine. I don't know if this was true or not. So I. I got to be careful. This isn't. This isn't concrete, but I was told what I heard was DeSantis called the governor of North Carolina and basically offered our. His assistance and said, I'm going to send my SMU guys up there with FDLE law enforcement officers because they sent 20 FDLE law enforcement officers with the State Guard. And I was told he was denied. They said, you're not coming up here. And this is Cooper or Stein. This is Cooper.

[Brent Tucker]

Okay.

[John Howard]

Yeah, this is Cooper. He denied DeSantis sending us up there. The reason the Florida State Guard got sent to North Carolina was because of all the trapped Floridians at their second homes and Airbnbs in the mountains.

[Tyler]

There you go. I like it.

[John Howard]

So that's the whole reason, other than, like, we want to go help, right?

[Brent Tucker]

Yeah.

[John Howard]

But that was the actual reason. What I was. What I had heard was basically he said, your guys are not coming up here. And I was told DeSantis said, the only authority I need to go into your state is knowing I have trapped Floridians in your state, and they're coming up there whether you want it or not. I love that guy. And basically, like, kind of hung on the phone. I can't say that's true, but that's what I heard, and I hope that's true.

[Brent Tucker]

Yeah.

[John Howard]

Because, like, that's leadership. Right? And then.

[Brent Tucker]

Yeah.

[Tyler]

And then the smu, he. You know, it's kind of like, all right, boys, you're on your own. Like, go make it happen.

[Brent Tucker]

Yeah, I love that. I love that. I love that. The leeway that you guys have.

[John Howard]

Yeah. So he sent us up there to go do that.

[Brent Tucker]

Obviously, have more Leeway in Florida. Oh, yeah, Way more.

[John Howard]

So anyways, that Michigan team was there in the morning. The for profit. This is when we find out they're there for profit. They're being paid.

[Brent Tucker]

What's the name of that company?

[John Howard]

It was called Michigan Task Force something. So there were actually like, firefighters that put together, like a private company and they get paid. I forgot the guy's name.

[Tyler]

I like the hustle.

[Brent Tucker]

I like the hustle.

[John Howard]

Charlie. Charlie has this guy's entire life. We. We background search this guy. This guy was a douche, but he was the one that was causing all the issues that was denying us.

[Brent Tucker]

And by the way, I'm not upset for a for profit company coming. Coming in here to help. Like, no, no. If. If that's an option and there's funds and release funds available and that's how we can get them in.

[Tyler]

Suspicious, though, that if they're denying all this free help, that.

[Brent Tucker]

Right. How they operate is. Is a whole.

[John Howard]

What I did was, is they didn't want a state guard and a nonprofit there outshining them. And they're there.

[Brent Tucker]

Not wrong.

[John Howard]

That's kind of what I think it was. So, long story short, because I want to hang up on this guy. There's bigger things to move on to. But after he comes up to us, he pulls the fire chief and deputies aside, he comes up to us and he was like, what's your authority to be here, here? And I'm just like, you, I'm an American. I'm like, you got to be kidding me. Like, we're going through this right now. So he. I actually had orders on my phone, like, from the state. And I pull up my phone, I hand it to him. I literally, like, I hand my phone, he pulls it like this, that quick. He goes, this is useless. Like, didn't even read it. I was like, what?

[Brent Tucker]

You're useless?

[John Howard]

And I was like, hey, man. Like, I'm here based on my authority is my governor. That's why I'm here. And I start questioning him. I'm like, what's your thought authority? He's like, well, my authority comes from Michigan State. And I was like, we're closer. Yeah. And I was like, I was like, why does Michigan State have authority here? He goes, because North Carolina gave it to Michigan. He's like, we were asked to be here. You weren't.

[Tyler]

Are you guys in uniforms or any badges?

[John Howard]

A little bit. I had my, like, State Special Missions unit shirt on in my hat, which. That is our, like, our field uniform. Yeah. Say, and I Identified himself. I was like, hey, man, like, I'm. I'm a master sergeant in the State Guard. This is who I am. Trying to kind of establish that credibility with him. This guy was just like, nope, like, not happening. So anyways, I hear him griping to the fire chief about how he needs a helicopter. I should say at this time is when the State Guard guys are on their way up with helicopters. So I'm trying to be cool with him. I'm like, hey, man, like, I got helicopters coming. They can come help you, like, wherever you guys need to go. He's like. He's like, I already told you, like, always, like, let's put his hand like that. I already told you, I can't work with you. I don't know. I don't know your capabilities. I'm like. He was like, I can't have helicopters out here landing. I was like, look, dude, I'm an air traffic controller. I can land these helicopters. I can deconflict them. I have radio. I can talk to them. No, like I already told you, I can't work with you. It's just all this nonsense, right?

[Brent Tucker]

And this is. This is always a problem or a mentality problem that people in the government and this guy, even though he's. He's for profit, is working with the government and he's a product of the government is. They're always looking for no. Like, he's looking for a no. He's not looking for a yes. If you're looking for yes, you can. You can find one. But if you're looking for a no, he'll find one real quick.

[John Howard]

He was looking for any reason to deny us. So I'm talking to my commander. I'm also talking to my buddy who was a former Green Beret, Pat Harrigan. He just got elected to congress in North Carolina. Thank God.

[Brent Tucker]

Nice.

[John Howard]

He was running for Congress at the time. I'm texting him, like, hey, man, you get some kind of political pool here?

[Brent Tucker]

Yeah.

[John Howard]

Because I'm still, like, in the dark about what all is going on. And Commander's like, oh, this is. This is crazy. Like, we're gonna call North Carolina, see what's going on. And he calls me back. He's like, nah, we're not really getting help. And I was like, really? He goes, you know what? He goes, this disaster area is so big. Let's go find work somewhere else.

[Brent Tucker]

Yeah, that's what I was thinking.

[John Howard]

So he goes, we actually share a locations resided on the phone. He goes, hey, we're going up to this town over here. That's where we're going to stage out, kind of get a game plan figured out. He goes, hey, man, if they don't want us there, they don't want us there. Like, I'm like, you know what? Good point. So me and Charlie are like, yeah, let's get out of here. This is when the Zeb, the helicopter guy, he texts us because this is about probably 8:30 in the morning now or something. He's like, hey, the fog's clearing up. We're flying in. You guys need a helicopter ride? You want to put some work in? He said, we got some locations that we want to go check out where people are stranded. We're like, yeah, let's go. So me and Charlie go to the airfield back at Rutherford. This is when everything starts going kind of crazy. This is what made social media go kind of crazy, actually. Let me just take one step back. No, I'm sorry. Yeah, no. We go to the airfield, they're flying in. Charlie gets a text for a mission, and it just says, one year old baby, life or death. Here's like, the address. Here's the contact for the person. Charlie calls the number as the grandma answers, and she's like, yeah, like our Premature Baby, it's 11 day old, not one year old. Yeah, they were. They don't even live there. They got stuck there during the hurricane and they're at her sister's house. The baby got born premature during the hurricane, so. Or right before the hurricane, and they couldn't travel. So they're like, we need a helicopter pickup. So I'm like, okay. So Charlie's like, all right, we're gonna come get you guys. And they're just saying, like, it's life or death. Like, it's like, critical. You have to get here now. Helicopter's coming in. I talked to. There's two people around the airfield. It's a dad and his, like, son. He's like 13 years old, helping him out. His name's Tristan. And I was like, hey, can your dad hot refill the helicopter? Like, refill the helicopter while the. Without shutting the helicopter. Yeah, the blade spinning for everybody out there. And he's like, I don't think he can do that. And I was like, he's like, let me call him. The radio calls his dad. His dad comes over. He's like, yeah, man, we can't hot refuel the helicopter. He's like, that's not. Like, we're not allowed to do that here. I was like, no, I Was like. I was like, dude, we just have to get this done, like, right now. And I wasn't really telling him why. He's like, why are you being so pushy about it? Like, what's going on? I was like, this baby's gonna die. He's like, baby's gonna die. I was like, yeah, this baby's gonna die. Don't do it. He goes, done. And, like, he just literally ran to the truck. Helicopter's coming in on final, sits down. I'm talking on. Thank God I had that radio talking to Mark. I'm like, hey, like, don't shut down. Like, they're going to hot refuel. He gets up there, he's refueling the helicopter. At this time, the SMU is now established in this town called Alford, North Carolina. Guess where the baby is. Alford, North Carolina.

[Brent Tucker]

No way.

[John Howard]

Yeah. As odders, it got right where the boys are.

[Tyler]

So I forgot I was hosting a podcast for a minute. I was just sitting here listening.

[John Howard]

So guess What? We have PJs on the SMU and medics, right? And Charlie's like, hey, send out this mission to your team in the SMU chat and see if anybody's, like, right there. So I sent it out. I should say. That's how I found out. They were right there. Announced North Carolina. My. One of my best friends, Paul's very senior pj, he's like. He calls me up. He's like, I'm here. Like, I have to address. I'm like, what do you mean you're at the dress? He goes, I was like, two minutes down the street from it.

[Brent Tucker]

That's awesome.

[John Howard]

And I was like, there's no way.

[Brent Tucker]

Yeah.

[John Howard]

And he's like, I'm banging on the door. No one's answering. And I'm like, hey, Charlie. I'm like, what's going on? Like, he's there at the house. He goes, oh, I told them to go look for an open area to land the helicopter. He goes, tell him to go out back. So he goes out back, he finds them. The baby is blue. Like, the skin is blue. Like, it's just not breathing well. It's having all kind of issues. Byron, which I believe you guys have met, he's also a paramedic. He was there with Paul. They don't have any oxygen with them. And then I might get this part of the story wrong, but from what I remember, this is how it went. They saw, like, a fire chief truck, like an F350 or whatever, like, driving down the road, and they like, wave it down. They're like, hey, do you have oxygen? He's like, no, but we have it at the station like, a few miles down the road. So they hop in the truck with him, or he ran down there, got oxygen, brought it back, and once they put the oxygen on the baby, it's literally like, brought the whole color back to the baby. Like, yeah. So that happened as that's happening. We're now in the air. I'm literally looking, like, on Google map because I got like two bars of service up there. I'm like, I don't know the pilot. This is the first time I'm talking to him, right? Yeah, we're just trying to figure each other out. I'm like, hey, man, like, what's your capabilities? You prior, like, Army Blackhawk pilot? What's going on? He's like, nah, I fly Gulf Streams for flexjet. He's like, I used to fly for, like, United Airlines. He's like, I got like 22,000 flight hours. I'm like, oh, wow, this guy's got a lot of flight hours. I'm like, have you ever landed, like, in a field like this? And he's like, nope, never done that. I'm like, okay. I was like, well, I'm gonna spot everything for you. Like, here we got power lines here, here, here. I was like, PJs are going to mark HLZ. They're texting me like, oh, the grass is like three feet tall, this stuff. So I'm like, telling him, he's like, okay, weather is not the best. And we see them land.

[Brent Tucker]

What's he flying? Do you remember bell 406? Okay.

[John Howard]

Oh, sorry. 407 helicopter. This is like a kind of like.

[Brent Tucker]

Your standard, like, news helicopters. What it kind of looks like?

[John Howard]

Yeah, but like the luxury version. It's like a $6 million helicopter. Seven passenger. Like, you can sit in the back of it and, like, literally stretch your legs all the way out.

[Brent Tucker]

Okay.

[John Howard]

Like leather seats. I mean, this is not like the rescue helicopter, but I mean, it turned into. So we land the field, they come running out. There's a bunch of clips of that, but, like, Byron and Paul come out, they had the baby in a car seat, the mom and the grandma, and we just throw them in the helicopter, we just load them in there. No time for a briefing, nothing. Just, hey, get in, strap in, we're going. We lift off. We're talking to the Asheville hospital now, and we're coordinating that to have the doctors ready to receive this baby. And as we're coming into the hospital. Mark goes, find me a place to put down on the ground. I was like, there's a helipad on the roof. He goes, right, I don't want to lay on the roof. I've never done that. And he's like, yeah, it's real windy.

[Brent Tucker]

Okay.

[John Howard]

And it's rainy.

[Brent Tucker]

Yeah.

[John Howard]

And he's like, I don't want to do that.

[Brent Tucker]

I'm stacked against you here.

[John Howard]

I was like, all right. I was like, I'm looking. So I'm looking. And there's two helicopter pads on the ground in the parking lot. There's two helicopters in them. And I'm just like. I'm like, all right, go run the hospital. We do, like, a loop around the hospital. And I was like, mark, you're going on the roof.

[Brent Tucker]

Yeah.

[John Howard]

He was like, man, I don't want to do it, but I guess we got to. And he's coming in, and of course, now the devil's against us. It's not God, but he's got a direct crosswind on this helipad. It's just, like, pushing the helicopter. So he's fighting that, trying to come in. And actually thought. At one point, I thought he was going to abort the takeoff, because when we were probably, like, two, three feet above the pad, a gust of wind came from behind us and actually pushed the helicopter first forward. And I could. I could see that. I. I could see over the building. I was like, oh. And then he kind of, like, brought it back and, like, set it down. He just. He kind of just dropped it, which. Not the best, but, I mean, he just, like, kind of killed the power and just hit the ground. And then, yeah, we jumped out, brought the baby in.

[Brent Tucker]

Yeah. You can't tell me we weren't a little nervous with. With all this going on, especially with that. That tailwind push and inexperienced pilot. Like, it's got to be nerve wracking.

[John Howard]

And I said, he doesn't know me. So I'm telling him, like, oh, yeah, I'm spotting for you. I know this, this, and this. And he's kind of relying on me for spot informing. Yeah, he doesn't know me for more than 10 minutes, you know, so, like, we're just figuring each other out. So we rushed a baby in there. There was, like, I think two doctors and three nurses, and they just grabbed that baby. They're like, thank you. We got it. And they just took it. I went down the elevator and, like, man, I just felt, like, such a relief. Like, my emotions were Running like super, super high. Like, I actually wanted to cry.

[Brent Tucker]

Yeah.

[John Howard]

I didn't know why I wanted to cry, but I just felt like this, like, I just wanted to cry. Did you get the.

[Brent Tucker]

The baby's name or the mother's name?

[John Howard]

Mason.

[Brent Tucker]

In any way in contact with them? It's cool things like later on life, like, hey, like, I was the guy that saved you, and you're 11 years old.

[John Howard]

So they brought. They brought us on Dr. Phil.

[Brent Tucker]

11 days old, blue.

[John Howard]

They brought us on Dr. Phil and surprised us.

[Brent Tucker]

Really?

[John Howard]

Yeah.

[Brent Tucker]

I think I love that story.

[John Howard]

Maybe a month. He almost made me cry on Dr. Phil.

[Brent Tucker]

Yeah.

[John Howard]

I think it was about a month after the hurricane. Charlie did get a hold of the grandma. She got a hold of him through Facebook and she actually sent us photos and was like, hey, the baby's alive. It's. Well, we were like, oh, no way. This was actually. That was probably like a week after we rescued it. I was like, I can't believe that. Like, I was just like, this is crazy. But then we got asked to go on Dr. Phil and we went on Dr. Phil and we didn't know. I should have known something was up because they're like, you can't leave your room. Like, if you need food or water, bathroom, that's fine. But, like, if you need anything, just let us know. We'll escort you. They're like, you can't go walk around because of privacy. And we're like, oh, okay. The grandma was there, the baby. They wanted to bring the mom and baby, but because it was still so premature. Yeah, they couldn't do it. So we're sitting there and then like, he just, like, I forgot what he said. But basically, music cued, doors open, and grandma walked out. And I was just like, like, no way. And I, I was, I was like, I was literally biting my lip and I was like, don't you cry on national television.

[Brent Tucker]

Don't you cry.

[John Howard]

Don't you do it. And every time I'd look at her, she was sitting. She sat right across, right? I'd look at her. I just, like, I just wanted to, like, tear up. But then they did a video with the mom and the baby. So they've invited the entire SMU for the baby's first birthday, which they're going to do at Disney this coming up here in September. So how the whole team's going, I love it.

[Brent Tucker]

And it's. It's something kind of unique, you know, to, to this panel right now. I've with. With the Sentinel foundation. You Know, I've. I've saved babies overseas, and it's something I'll never forget. And when you get asked, hey, what's, like, you know, what's. What's your. What's your best. I forget how they asked it, but, like, what's. What's your most memorable moment? You know, as. As a. As a. As a sheriff. And you talk about the time you got to save a baby. Yeah. Like, it's just powerful. Like, there's just nothing better in life.

[John Howard]

Than saving a baby.

[Tyler]

Well, he's talking about afterwards.

[Brent Tucker]

Yeah.

[Tyler]

I would have the same thing. You're just thinking about it, and you're like, there's no reason why I'm getting emotional. Like, emotional. Like, start tearing up, and it's like, everything went well. There was. You know, and you're just like, I don't know why I'm tearing up right now.

[John Howard]

It's like that quiet energy at the tomb of the own soldier. Powerful quiet energy. Like, you feel it, and you're just like, I don't know what this is. I've never felt this.

[Brent Tucker]

Yeah. I mean, there's really nothing more. Choose my words. But I think I'll stand behind the statement, you know, nothing more valiant as a man than to save a baby.

[Tyler]

Yeah.

[Brent Tucker]

You know, I think.

[John Howard]

I think it's a. That. That fatherly instinct that's in every man, even a man who's never had a baby. You, in that moment, you have this father instinct to take care of this baby.

[Tyler]

Yeah. And that's. I mean, the. The running joke of toxic masculinity, how it's been. How it's been categorized and then weaponized against actual masculinity. So then masculinity then just took the term toxic masculinity. Like, okay, you want to call me toxic? I'm the one waiting these waters, rescuing these people.

[Brent Tucker]

That's right.

[Tyler]

You know, we're the only ones, the ones that you, you know, demonize as toxic. We're the ones out here.

[Brent Tucker]

Absolutely. It's masculinity that allows us to do that. And you know who didn't have enough masculinity to do that were those National Guard guys, where he's like, I can't take these guys out. Like, they'll be a liability if they were more masculine and our culture put more. Didn't. Didn't talk about masculinity as being toxic, but talked about as being a great trait for a man, we wouldn't have this problem. Yeah, no, it's 100 true topic gets me going.

[John Howard]

Failure of leadership. Failure leadership again. Poor leaders up top create weak men below. Yeah. That's literally what it was.

[Brent Tucker]

Well, I want to talk about. I mean, that's a. That's a great story. And. And the SMU stuff is, to me, super intriguing. Ironically enough, something we didn't even know coming or the Mortuary affairs things. Like, it's. It's. You've led a unique life, and it's. And it's not over yet. You got a lot of good things left to do. But one thing I want to talk about and is the real estate business. Like, you know, we're business owners, you know, entrepreneurs. You know, we're just real intrigued about that and how you go. You were very successful in that. And there's. You should be.

[Tyler]

I've had questions since the very. You said I entered the real estate world. And I was like, I have questions already.

[Brent Tucker]

Yeah.

[Tyler]

How do you do that?

[Brent Tucker]

Yeah. And you said you started with real estate while you were still in. Didn't you say that?

[John Howard]

Yeah.

[Brent Tucker]

Tell us about the real estate part of your life.

[John Howard]

Yeah. So literally an accident was not planned. I never thought I would be in real estate. Didn't want anything to do with real estate. It was my. My third reenlistment. I got my bonus. How much? 70 something. Thousand.

[Tyler]

You didn't get it in installments?

[John Howard]

All. How did that work? No, I got half up front, and then the rest installments, and then Uncle.

[Tyler]

Sam took us 28.

[John Howard]

Something like that. I wish I would do about how you're overseas. Yeah, I was deployed. Yes. I got all tax free. Right.

[Brent Tucker]

Which is crazy. That tax money is what's paying your bonus. And they're like, we're gonna tax the tax money. That's never made sense to me.

[John Howard]

But so we. We had a house in Navarre, Florida, and we wanted to buy, like, a little condo just to, like, keep our boat on the water instead of, like, paying for storage and all that.

[Brent Tucker]

Okay.

[John Howard]

And we had always kind of had a plan, like, oh, it'd be cool to have a little condo out here, and this. I mean, they were pretty cheap back then. Cheaper than what they are today, but.

[Brent Tucker]

They weren't cheap back then. They were normal price.

[John Howard]

Yeah. I paid 250,000 for it. Right. To me, that was a ton of money.

[Brent Tucker]

Yeah.

[John Howard]

So I bought this little condo right there on the Destin Harbor. Had a boat slip, boat dock, and it was kind of like my weekend project. I'd go over there, I'd remodel it because it was like 1980s, you know, flooring, paint, all that stuff, countertops. And then we started renting out the house in Navarre and I was living there at the condo. So now one of my best friend, Eric, he owned the condo below me. This guy's a veterinarian, okay. And he was in the Airbnb game, rent his properties out. So I would just chit chat with him here and there. And I didn't really think much about it. He's like, oh, yeah, I rent my condo out, like, kind of like Airbnb. I'm like, oh, okay, cool. You know, nothing was on my radar at all. A year later, me and the wife had use or lose leave, where we had to use it. So we, we had like, I don't know, 90, 80 days or whatever. So we took a 30 day block and we went over to Europe, went over to Italy. So that was like July of 16. I haven't really been in real estate that long, but this is what got the wheels spinning. So I'm telling Eric and his buddy this, and they're like, what are you gonna do with your condo when you go to Italy? And I was like, I'm not gonna do nothing with my condo.

[Brent Tucker]

Right?

[John Howard]

He's like, dude, your condo is so nice. It's nicer than ours. He goes, put it up on Vrbo. He's like, I bet you make $2,500 a week. And I'm like, I'm making like a thousand dollars a week in the military as like a staff sergeant. I'm like, what are you talking about? 2500 a week? So that's how much money you guys are making downstairs? He's like, not that much, but we're making about 2,000 a week. And I'm just like, what? Like, how come no one's talked to me about this?

[Brent Tucker]

Why don't you talk about me?

[John Howard]

Why don't you talk to me sooner about this? Like, how come no one's talking about this? So I tell the wife and she's like, absolutely not. I don't want strangers in our condo. Not happening. Don't bring it up.

[Tyler]

She finally told you no?

[John Howard]

Yeah, she was like, this is the only time she admits I'm right. But she was like, not happy. Don't want that. And I let it go for a couple days and I'm like, hey, you know what, babe? We could really use that money for this trip. Like, I mean, going to Italy is not cheap. Plane ticket, all this. She's like, fine, if you want to do that, then you do It. It's all on you. I want nothing to do with it. I'm like, okay, sounds about right. Not knowing what I'm doing. I put it up on VRBox. I don't block the calendar for four weeks. I have it wide open three days. It books for six weeks. And, yeah, so now I gotta live my buddy's house for two weeks when I come back. But 2500 a week.

[Brent Tucker]

That's right. You'll do it.

[John Howard]

And I'm just like, I cannot believe this is actually happening. And now. So that's what got the wheel spinning. That got the wheel spinning, I should say. She was in Okinawa, Japan. I was at Herbert. She was in Okinawa for a little short tour over there. So she was coming back that like, February of 17, and she's like, let's rent that condo full time. And I was like, yeah, I think we should.

[Tyler]

Where would you live?

[John Howard]

We were going to buy another house.

[Tyler]

Okay, got it.

[John Howard]

So we bought another house and started renting that condo full time. And I think that first year we did, like, not knowing what we were doing. I think we made like $42,000. And like my entire expense, like, mortgage everything on that condo. Utilities was like $20,000 a year or something like that. So I'm just like, this is crazy. Like, this is big money to me.

[Brent Tucker]

So you rented out for as a total of 60, and you made 40 in that first year is what you're saying. You brought in 40 with 20 expenses and made 20?

[John Howard]

Yeah, I mean, like, made like 20. I think I did like 42. And basically I made like 20. 22,000.

[Brent Tucker]

Right.

[John Howard]

And I was like, this is great. Like, this is a, you know. Yeah, dirty E5 over here. This is great money.

[Brent Tucker]

Just an extra $20,000 in your pocket for the year.

[John Howard]

Yeah.

[Brent Tucker]

So I don't think anyone will turn that down.

[John Howard]

I'm telling my buddies about this other. Other controllers, and they're like, hey, man, they're like, why don't you get your real estate license? We'll start buying up all these little cheap, crappy condos in Destin and we'll turn them in like Airbnbs. That's not a bad idea. I said, getting my Realtor license can't be that hard. Every old lady in Destin's got one.

[Brent Tucker]

That's right.

[John Howard]

So I went to the exam, did it right there on base. Did it. I wasn't even advertising myself as a realtor. I'm still on team, right? And we go buy these.

[Brent Tucker]

Was a real estate license process hard? Was it difficult.

[John Howard]

Lowest bar to entry I've ever seen in my life. When I went to the realtor, like, I'm probably gonna get in trouble. All this. When I went to the real estate thing where they like, you do this whole swear in.

[Brent Tucker]

Yeah.

[John Howard]

They were like, you guys should be proud. You just passed the hardest test, like, in America. And I was just like, everyone, everyone's like, yeah. They're like, they're taking. I'm like, compared to what? Like, what have you guys done that was harder than this? You. You to like take a class to get prepared for that test. Is that. Well, I paid an online course, like maybe 100 bucks. Yeah. Or something like that. It was pretty simple. I just did the online. Like, you got to go through like the however many hours.

[Brent Tucker]

There's about 300 more realtors in the market after this.

[John Howard]

They come and go. They come and go all the time. Especially during COVID There were so many that joined.

[Brent Tucker]

Oh, I'm sure.

[John Howard]

But so, yeah, I got the license and then we bought these old condos and we would fix them up and I would take.

[Tyler]

But you would put in the. The work. Like you were in there working.

[John Howard]

I did about 90 of the work.

[Tyler]

Yeah, that's. That's a difference. When people are like, oh, that sounds like a great idea. Like, well, no, you're in there from sun up to sundown rebuilding the entire place.

[John Howard]

Oh, yeah. It was me and the wife mainly.

[Brent Tucker]

And trying to stay on budget and making and then finding out some things were more expensive than they were supposed to be. You know, there's still stress to it.

[John Howard]

You know, no risk, no reward. Right. That's right. So we would literally load up our credit cards at Home Depot buying all the remodel stuff.

[Brent Tucker]

Yeah.

[John Howard]

And I'm like, hey, once spring hits will pay them off with the rental. Rental income. So we're in there, I mean, we're scraping popcorn ceilings, we're pulling carpet. We did all these remodels. Only thing I didn't do was like the tile work and the plumbing. Everything else I pretty much did myself, set them all up and they start renting really good. I remember by like that summer of 18, they were already all like, the expenses were paid off, not the mortgage. But that first year on those condos, which was now going into our second year, all three of our condos made like upper 60,000 because we actually knew what we were doing on Airbnb. And so I'm like, man, like, basically my expenses are like 20 ish thousand per condo. And I'm making like 40 plus actual profit per con each on each condo. And I'm like, this is crazy.

[Brent Tucker]

So tell her we're in the wrong business. Shut it down.

[Tyler]

We're here printing T shirts, selling them for $2 profit margin.

[John Howard]

So this is kind of what got me bigger in the real estate world. All my neighbors were only doing like 20 grand. Like all of them. And it's because of how they would do it. They, they were giving me advice when I first started. They're like, oh, just go to the thrift store and buy the cheapest furniture because renters are just going to tear it up.

[Brent Tucker]

Okay.

[John Howard]

And we were like, no, we're going to go like higher end and get a higher end client. And they would be like, oh, you can only run it for like three months out of the year during the summer. You won't get buy after that. I was doing like 320 days a year.

[Brent Tucker]

Wow.

[John Howard]

On my properties, do you use a.

[Tyler]

Like a website that books it for you or do you.

[John Howard]

Actually, at this time, it was just TripAdvisor, VRBO and Airbnb. That's all we were doing. We didn't have a website or anything. So we were, we were doing that. And then I would, I would meet, like, other realtors or neighbors and they'd be like, oh, yeah, my management company only made me like 20,000, 23,000. I'd be like, oh, yeah, I made like 68,000 on my condo in the same complex, same view and everything. And they're just like, what? How'd you do that? So then realtors started coming to me, hey, I want you to manage my client's condo, because if you make them money, they'll go buy another one. And it's kind of became this domino effect where I would start taking on properties to manage. I did this right when I went on terminal leave of November of 17 when I went on terminal leave and I started managing properties in real estate. So I would take these properties that literally were doing like 20 grand. Now they're doing 60 plus thousand. I would take a house that was doing maybe 65, 70. Now it's doing 120. And we just kind of kept building that little empire like that. And there was no witchcraft, there was no secret sauce to it. It was make the property nice.

[Tyler]

Yeah. Oh, okay. Just make it nice, not short. Change it.

[John Howard]

Yeah. Because everybody wanted to go cheap on it.

[Tyler]

Cheap, cheap, cheap, cheap.

[John Howard]

And we're like, no, no. Like, we're gonna go. I literally remember, invite my listing description. I Had no cheap, itchy toilet paper hands. And I had a lady session. Literally booked that property because of that.

[Brent Tucker]

That's awesome.

[John Howard]

Like, and we put, like, French presses in there for coffee and stuff like that. People loved it.

[Brent Tucker]

Yeah.

[Tyler]

So when you're going to an Airbnb, that's what I think of. I want to. I want a luxurious one.

[John Howard]

And then, like, we have dog, like, little. We have like, four shih Tzus. And my wife, I would not have expected that. Yeah, he's married. She. We're not gonna travel probably. We're at least gonna have one of those dogs with us. And no one was doing pet friendly, so we would do pet friendly. Charge, like, double the price of what everybody else was doing. And I. I still remember my very first Airbnb customer when I started in 17. Like, when we actually, like, went full blown with it. She booked the condo in January of 17. And she goes, I booked your property because your listing description. Well, one pets. She told her husband, I'm not going anywhere unless I can bring her dog. He wanted to go see that destin. I can see that she brought the dog. And she said, the fact that you said no cheap, itchy bed sheets or cheap toilet paper is why I booked your condo.

[Brent Tucker]

Yeah.

[John Howard]

And she had money, and they. I was like, okay, this is where we kind of go.

[Brent Tucker]

Yeah, this is my clientele.

[John Howard]

So, yeah, we. We started doing that. I do a lot of things. So I got accepted into law school down in Naples, Florida, and I was making good money in real estate, I should say at this time. Now people are asking me to sell them real estate. Like, guys on team, like, hey, man, you know what you're doing? Sell me a property and then manage it for me.

[Brent Tucker]

Okay.

[John Howard]

So I was kind of doing that back and forth. I was making really good money, but I was like, I really want to go to law school.

[Brent Tucker]

Why?

[Tyler]

I'm just sitting here going, man, are you bored?

[John Howard]

I really.

[Brent Tucker]

A negative way, like, a true, like, true inquisitive way. Why? Why?

[John Howard]

The real. The real reason was I myself, I. I got in trouble when I was in the military. I got Article 15. Did you? Yeah, I got Article. I'm not the clean cut. Like, everybody thinks, right? So, like, I. I got an article 15 real quick.

[Brent Tucker]

What'd you get it for?

[John Howard]

Steroids. Yeah, it was. It was bad.

[Tyler]

You weren't tear enough.

[John Howard]

I. I could probably do a whole episode on this, but yeah. All right.

[Brent Tucker]

That's ridiculous.

[John Howard]

They. I had testosterone, right? And they were trying to get me with international drug Trafficking. Gosh.

[Tyler]

You just had testosterone.

[John Howard]

You didn't have testosterone. Testosterone. I think I had. I think I had echo poison in the bag. Who cares? So I was with. I was with my third group team. Careful attack. And everyone got, like, caught with all this stuff. Army doesn't even get in trouble with it. They're just like, yeah, we know. These guys do it. No big deal.

[Brent Tucker]

Yeah.

[John Howard]

At first I'm told I was just gonna get, like, a little piece of paperwork. Lor. And then the base letter of recommend.

[Brent Tucker]

Lor.

[John Howard]

Base commander hated special tactics. He hated controllers.

[Brent Tucker]

Yep.

[John Howard]

And he tells my commander, if you don't court martial that guy, I'm gonna piss test the entire squadron. And we already know how that's gonna go. So I get caught with it coming back from deployment.

[Tyler]

Okay.

[John Howard]

So they were trying to charge me with international drug trafficking, intent to distribute, using military aircraft to distribute.

[Tyler]

Horrifying, dude.

[John Howard]

Oh, yeah. Like, they were coming at me. I had two bottles of testosterone. I do that like a month now. Right. Like. Or whatever. Right. I know you guys do trt.

[Brent Tucker]

So right now we call it trt. And it's cool.

[John Howard]

Yeah.

[Brent Tucker]

So, I mean, like, as long as.

[Tyler]

I'm Sam get his.

[Brent Tucker]

And by the way, it is cool.

[John Howard]

Yeah, it's great. So that was coming down top of me. They're like, you're gonna go to jail for probably a year. Dishonorable discharge. You're never gonna be able to own a firearm ever again. They were coming at me hard, and I was right. Before this, I was being put in for NCO the quarter.

[Tyler]

Imagine that.

[John Howard]

And I was just like, I had never been in this. I mean, I got paperwork here and there, but I never trouble something like this. And I was kind of like their, you know, golden boy or whatever. And now it's just like, they were treating me like I was from hero.

[Brent Tucker]

To zero real quick.

[John Howard]

Oh, yeah. And I. And I saw this previously with, like, even team sergeants that would have, like, three Purple Hearts, nine Bronze Stars, you know, 14, 15 deployments, and they're at, like, 17 years. They get a DUI and they're like, burn them. You know, and you're just like, I hate that. Dude's actually got some mental health issues, like, legit. Been, like, blown up and shot multiple different times. He's got some n.3 divorces.

[Brent Tucker]

Yeah.

[John Howard]

You know, most of them.

[Brent Tucker]

It's one mistake. Are we going to burn a guy over one mistake? Mistake?

[Tyler]

One mistake. That was probably because of all the trauma and the PTSD and that the coping mechanisms that Weren't offered to him that maybe he could have used.

[John Howard]

Yeah, yeah, we can do. Maybe we'll do another episode sometime. But like, I actually took the steroids for a reason. I was actually very anti steroids.

[Brent Tucker]

Yeah.

[John Howard]

I was a power lifter my whole life. And I was always like, you can't cheating all this. But I basically had an injury pre deployment to where I couldn't even do like a push up. And that was something else my. My unit tried to burn me on because I was saying like, no, I took it because I had a shoulder injury. And they were like, there's no medical records of this because we didn't keep medical records at the unit to keep you on flight status. If you went to the main hospital, they would document it.

[Brent Tucker]

Right.

[John Howard]

First thing I did when I actually landed in country when I was in uae, I actually went to a doctor. I said, I can't even do a push up. And he documented all this stuff. That. That was a big, big saver for me.

[Brent Tucker]

But sound like he still got an article 15.

[John Howard]

Yeah. So.

[Brent Tucker]

Which is significant.

[John Howard]

It was. So they tried to. This is actually kind of goes into how my real estate career got started.

[Brent Tucker]

Okay.

[John Howard]

Because I was on the sideline for like three and a half years because of this. They were keeping me like a prisoner during that last four years, that last enlistment I did. I was. I was very. That's it. I will say this. I did break the rules. I took testosterone. I should have done it. Right. I shouldn't have done it. But I think the punishment.

[Brent Tucker]

Disagree. Go ahead.

[John Howard]

Was way beyond what they should have done. They PCs my wife to Japan without me for two years, man. Yeah, that's why she was in Japan. Oh, yeah, they moved her. They. They told me like, oh, just let her go. Japan, you're gonna get an lord. You can go join her in a few months. And then that's when they. It just. It all changed over.

[Tyler]

Now you're back. This is big for me too. And Eddie told his story and we had a marine on here that told his story. And when you're going through something like this where everybody's against you and you're not with. With your partner, you're not with your support.

[John Howard]

Source of support.

[Tyler]

Like, that makes it that much harder.

[John Howard]

And we were just separated for a year. Yeah, she was deployed six months. I was deployed six months.

[Brent Tucker]

Yeah, you broke the rules. You know how that that should have went. I'm your boss right now. Hey, that's against rules. Don't do that anymore. Okay.

[John Howard]

Wink yeah, right. That's the very simple paperwork. But no, they wanted you turn to your boss.

[Brent Tucker]

I talked to him.

[John Howard]

Yeah, they wanted to burn me.

[Tyler]

Well, that, that commander that was gonna pissed us, everybody, he kind of it up.

[John Howard]

And my commander told me, he said, I only get so many, like, wild cards to play, and I'm not gonna waste it on you, because if I do that, you know what's gonna happen to all your boys on team? They're all gonna get busted. And I was kind of like, I, I understand your position. Like, I get it.

[Brent Tucker]

But like, I don't agree with it.

[John Howard]

I get it. But I was asking them guy was like, hey, man, just discharge me right now, like with a general discharge. And I'm good. I'll just, I'll go join my wife in Japan. I was like, just kick me out right now. Like, I'm good. And they were just like, no, man, you're getting court martialed. So they were setting me up for a court martial. Had a really good NCO who was, was a tier one controller. And he goes, dude, I saw the same thing happen. And he goes, three guys got caught with this. The one guy that hired a civilian attorney got, got. Got it basically taken care of. He goes, go hire a civilian attorney. Because the Jag wasn't really doing much for me. I literally, I called the JAG officer. They're like, well, once we actually get a court date, then we'll talk about your case.

[Brent Tucker]

But this is what I hate so much about that. It says this is the precedence they're setting. Hey, if you go pay a lawyer a bunch of money, you'll get out of it. Well, it's either right or, or it's wrong. Like, why are we now playing this game? And this happens in the civilian laws. Do you want to point an attorney.

[Tyler]

Or do you want to hire your own?

[Brent Tucker]

That's right. Or you want to represent yourself? Okay. And you know, I've had people get burned by judges because they didn't hire. They didn't play the game, they didn't hire. How dare you represent yourself. Well, the truth is the truth. Does it matter if I have to pay a lawyer 10 grand to speak the truth? Or can I just.

[John Howard]

Oh, yeah. And the Jag I had did not care about this case. She wanted something big and sexy.

[Brent Tucker]

She wanted a murder.

[John Howard]

She doesn't care about me. Some testosterone. She doesn't care. She literally is like, oh, don't contact me until we basically get all this stuff. So I find this amazing attorney, former Green Beret he was a. He was a Zulu. He. I think he did 17 years on the team. He crossed over to be a JAG in the reserves. Now he's.06 in the reserves as a civilian attorney up in the panhandle. This guy's amazing. What's his name?

[Tyler]

What's his name? I was about to say let's give him some.

[John Howard]

I will look it up, but he's in Navarre. An amazing, amazing, amazing guy.

[Brent Tucker]

It's not Jensen.

[John Howard]

I'm pretty sure his first name is Robert.

[Brent Tucker]

Okay.

[John Howard]

I'd look up his last name, but there's not many Green Beret former Green Berets in Navarre, Florida. He's there because chances are good there will be somebody who watches the show who's in trouble.

[Tyler]

No, you're right, Drew.

[John Howard]

I kind of became the legal person or SME. Subject matter expert at my unit during this time. I became, like. People always made a joke that I had a law office and a real estate office at the unit during this time that was going on.

[Brent Tucker]

So essentially, long story short, like, all this. All this got you thinking about where I was being a lawyer.

[John Howard]

That. And where I was seeing, like, my teammates just getting burned bad, like, where they weren't getting help. Long story short, I wind up getting my rank back and full medical retirement.

[Brent Tucker]

Nice. Earned. Good.

[John Howard]

Yeah. Even the judge came up to me afterwards. He's like, what they did to you was wrong. Wrong. He actually apologized to me. He was like, what they did to you was wrong.

[Brent Tucker]

Nice.

[John Howard]

And even the court reporter, too. She came up to me. She's like, I just want to thank you for your service. And she's like, what they did was wrong.

[Brent Tucker]

Love it.

[John Howard]

And that's why I always say I kind of have, like, a little connection with Eddie there, because, yeah, I feel. I feel his pain, like, what he went through, and his was even worse. Right. I mean, yeah, he had a lot.

[Brent Tucker]

More on the line going on, but it is similar.

[John Howard]

But I don't think a lot of civilians realize how much that happens. In the military, this stuff happens all the time. So because of that, I was like, you know what? I'm gonna go to law school. I'm gonna do my real estate business, because at this point, I was making a couple hundred grand a year, but I was like, I want to do the law stuff as, like, pro. Like, pro bono kind of stuff, and, like, basically take care of the vets that are getting screwed. Yeah. In military treatment court. So that was kind of the plan. Went to law school. It was amazing transition for me. Because it really helped me transition to the civilian world. Because now I. I just turned 30 when I was going there. And there's other veterans that were there. Another SF guy I was real close with. But I have all these, like, younger kids kind of, like, looking up to me, and I kind of had to be like the big brother for them. And I was also kind of like the voice between, like, them and the teacher. So it was like, a really good fit. I'm stupid. I have horrible grades. Like, the very. I'd get, like, a C plus. I'd be like, yes. You know, and all the students were like, I had to get a B plus to maintain my. My, My. My scholarship. And they're like, what do you have to do to maintain. Maintain your GI Bill? I'm like, oh, I just gotta pass.

[Tyler]

Yeah.

[John Howard]

But anyways, the business was getting so busy starting the second year of law school, and I said my grades were awful. The wife was already talking to me about dropping out. She's like, I need. Because she was staying in Destin, running the company when I was down in Naples. So I did not go back to law school. And that was a great. Everything happens for a reason. We started just working on the business full time. That's when I then opened up my own real estate brokerage. Because before that, I just had my license hung with another brokerage. And then, you know, six months later, Covid happens. And then that was a scary point because we had to shut down the business. And we were like, oh, man. Like, I had just hired, like, my first actual employee. And I'm thinking, like, I don't know how I'm going to pay for all this. And then, well, I think we were down for two and a half months. And then Governor DeSantis opened up, like, Memorial Day weekend. And from that point on, the business doubled every quarter for the next two years. Management and sales. Like, what I did in entire just real estate sales in 2020, we had already done by March 21st.

[Brent Tucker]

Wow.

[John Howard]

Like, it was just insane. Like, we were just selling. I think at this point now, business grew to where I had about 35 people working for me.

[Brent Tucker]

Oh, wow.

[John Howard]

I think I had about 15 real estate agents.

[Brent Tucker]

What were you guys doing annually the last year?

[John Howard]

21. We finished the year off with 61 million and some change.

[Brent Tucker]

Wow.

[John Howard]

Yeah. And, like, total revenue.

[Brent Tucker]

Wow.

[John Howard]

Not bad for a C plus. Like, when I started the company in, like, November 17th, that first year, I think we did, like, 60 grand. So I'm always like, we went like, 60 grand to like 61 million in four years. That's insane.

[Brent Tucker]

Insane growth.

[John Howard]

And everything was just growing. Like, I was like, okay, I'm gonna have my own laundry facility. I'm gonna have my own cleaners. I'm have my own gear rental bicycles, golf carts, baby cribs.

[Brent Tucker]

Bring it all in.

[John Howard]

We were just doing lawn care. Did my own lawn care. And then I got approached by a company called Avant Stay, a national brand. Early 2022, when I was buying my first plane. And they were like, we want to buy your company. They're like, we like what you built. It's our kind of style. And they gave me a. Had a great offer. I denied it, said, nope, not happening.

[Brent Tucker]

Really?

[John Howard]

They came back, brought me another offer, and I was like, well, I was.

[Brent Tucker]

Like, well, I know you may not be able to say for whatever reasons.

[John Howard]

I can't for contract reasons, but if I guess it, I'll tell you, I'll say this. It was enough.

[Brent Tucker]

You should be proud of it. That's. That's amazing.

[John Howard]

It was enough where I didn't have to work again if I didn't want to.

[Brent Tucker]

That's awesome.

[John Howard]

So it was enough to where I was like, hey, you know what? If we want to live, like, just a good, nice lifestyle, we can just chill on this.

[Brent Tucker]

Yeah. And now you make 160 bucks a day.

[John Howard]

160 bucks with a special missions unit, bro. That was one thing. Like, people in North Carolina, like, you're only here to make money. I'm like, if you only. I flew my own plane here, I.

[Brent Tucker]

Spent my own money, Right?

[Tyler]

Yeah.

[Brent Tucker]

When I got paid here, it was going to recoup with just me flying here.

[John Howard]

Like, oh, yeah, I'm sorry. I'm being paid 160 a day. Yes, you're right. I'm here for the money, you know, like, because I was gone for 21 days.

[Tyler]

The Podunk deputy sheriffs are making more than you.

[John Howard]

Yeah.

[Brent Tucker]

Yeah, they sure are.

[John Howard]

21 days. But yeah. So that's how my. My law school venture went. And then it went to the real estate. So. Yeah. So now I have sold three property management companies. I sold one brokerage, and then I just reopened up another brokerage back in November.

[Brent Tucker]

You just can't help yourself.

[John Howard]

I still have a long care company, lawn care. I have a title. Title company. Naples, Tallahassee and Panhandle. Or Naples and Panhandle. And then, yeah, the brokerage. And then build houses. Build houses in Naples and up in Santa Rosa Beach, Destin area.

[Brent Tucker]

I love it, man. I love it. What a. It's like I said, it's far from over. You've lived a very cool life and you got a very cool story.

[John Howard]

A big thing I do with the company is like, do you guys know what skill bridges?

[Brent Tucker]

I do, yeah.

[John Howard]

So for people that don't know what skill bridge is, I basically tell people it's like a work release program. Your last six months in the military.

[Brent Tucker]

Right.

[John Howard]

So they're still getting paid by the military, but they can come learn a skill set. So I just try to bring over, like, veterans I know to come work with me for six months to kind of get their little jump start real estate. So I'm doing that, like, actually right now with one of my good friends who actually picked me up at the airplane when I got in trouble, which is great. He was an officer. I forgot he was even there until he told me, like, a month ago. I was like, oh, that was you? I was like, can you believe it?

[Brent Tucker]

Before I let you go, I got. I got a question for you. Yeah, Tyler, Got anything else by chance? Any other questions?

[Tyler]

No, I kind of just want to quit everything and just sit in a dark room for a while.

[Brent Tucker]

I'm going to go sit in my truck and reevaluate my life for a little bit. Where'd I go wrong?

[John Howard]

Everything happens for a reason. You guys trying to end the show right now? Yeah, because I got something else on might be good for you guys that might want to cover.

[Brent Tucker]

Absolutely. What do you got? We're on a time constraint.

[John Howard]

I know. Tim Kennedy anymore big topic for you guys?

[Brent Tucker]

Oh, man, I. I had. I was gonna ask you. I was gonna ask you this. I can't believe I. I can't believe all people. I forgot to ask. I'm not sure what you were doing out there because Tim Kennedy was on scene. So, like, just time to sit back and watch. I mean, this guy's rescued 12,000 people in 10 days in Afghanistan. Like, he's. He's a national asset. What? Like, what were you even doing there? Like, once he got there, you didn't have anything to do.

[John Howard]

So I'll tell you this. Like I.

[Brent Tucker]

Or no or no?

[John Howard]

Oh, sorry.

[Brent Tucker]

Or is that not or no? Like, Tim Kennedy didn't come in and save North Carolina.

[John Howard]

He did not. He wanted to by himself. He didn't want to be a team player.

[Brent Tucker]

What?

[John Howard]

Yeah.

[Tyler]

No, not that same Tim Kennedy.

[Brent Tucker]

Are you just trying to tear down fellow vets? Is that what you're trying to do right now?

[John Howard]

That's what I'm trying to do. So, you know, I thought about how if I even wanted to talk about this on the show, and I will say, like, I. I have nothing against the guy. I don't know him, and he's an SF guy. SF community deals with their own, you know, and they do. Like, everything I know about him is what I've heard from other Green Berets.

[Brent Tucker]

Yeah.

[John Howard]

And I'll tell you things that stand out to me is when people talk about other guys. Operator, skill level. Level. That's how I know, like, when someone's not good. Like, people would be like, oh, that guy sucks. I hate him. Or this, or, you know, whatever. I understand. I've got haters, too. But, like, when people are like, you know, Tim. Tim's a good guy, but, like, he's dangerous when he's operating with the teams and you're just like, oh, like, when you hear people talk about his operating skill level, it's just like. Which they say is very poor. It's just kind of like. That's like a whole different kind of level of. Other than just being like, oh, this guy's so sucks.

[Brent Tucker]

Right.

[John Howard]

You know, and this is.

[Tyler]

They're trying. They're like, hey, I mean, he's. He's a good guy.

[John Howard]

And this is coming from guys that were on team with him. I know a lot of green braids, and there's a lot of green guys. They just don't like him. But I followed him on social media for years. There was times I'd unfollow him, like, oh, he's just doing too much. But I was always like, you know, he's putting the right stuff out there. He's bringing awareness to things. He's. He's. He's bringing. He's trying to do good, even though we might think it's douchey or whatever. Whatever. But I'm like, I can overlook how he says, you know, I'm a Ranger qualified Green Beret sniper. All that, because you know what? He did raise money for this event. So I'm like, you know what? I guess I can't have both. Right? And, like, he's a. I thought he was a good ambassador for the community. And then I started hearing about the Afghanistan withdrawal from guys that were actually there. And this is when I kind of started hearing about him being like a crisis chaser.

[Brent Tucker]

Right.

[John Howard]

And they were like, he messed up. We left our allies in Afghanistan because of him. Because he went and took a bus.

[Brent Tucker]

Five or six buses.

[John Howard]

Yeah. And picked up random Afghans off the street. And then Drove them to the plane. But these buses were slotted for, like, our terps, people we were actually working with because they were, like, on the hit list for the Taliban.

[Tyler]

Oh, my God.

[John Howard]

And then he just went and picked up random people, said, get in the bus. You're going to America. And then flute drove them, like, through this. Checkpoints, no checking out who they were, right to the plane, and basically prevented people that need to be on that plane. So when I heard that, like, maybe two years ago, I was kind of like. And I'm hearing this from, like, very calm conversations between multiple team guys that were actually there in Afghanistan. I was just kind of like, oh, man, that's like. That's a bad look right now. My experience with him in North Carolina, I personally did not have experience with them, but. But my team did. And this is when I got, like, just really disappointed in him. I had heard that he was there because I was at a place in Marion, and this civilian firefighter guy was like, hey, do you know this Tim Kennedy guy? He just flew here. I was like, oh, yeah, I heard the name. I was like, he's here. And he was like, yeah, he's here. I was like, oh, that's awesome. Like, I was just like, good. Like, he's bringing awareness. He's bringing help. They're like, yeah, he flew in here in this, like, super nice black, like, helicopter. I was like, oh, cool. Good stuff. Probably a couple days later, I find out from guys on my team who personally knew him, and he reached out to them. He wanted to link up with our team to get addresses for, like, stranded victims that we had, like, a list of people where we go. So our team was just like. Our guys on our team were just like, hey, like, you have a helicopter. That's literally what we need. We need, like, let's link up. Let's go do these missions together. And he was just like, no, just give me the list. And they're like, okay. Like, can we, like, put a guy with you? Like, we really need to use your helicopter. You have room for this? And he was just like, no. And then the next day, he was there at the same place again where they were. No one was giving him any missions for, I don't know, whatever reason, but he didn't have any missions to go do. And then he came back to our team and was basically trying to be like, hey, buddy. Like, and then our guys were just like, nah, man. Like, not happening.

[Brent Tucker]

You've already shown your true colors.

[John Howard]

And then I don't know how long he was even there for. But I can tell you this. I was there before him and I was there well after he was there and he was gone pretty quick after that. He's just go there and get a photo op.

[Brent Tucker]

Yeah, this is the biggest problem. Again, if he would just be honest. Yeah, it would be. And if he was just there to bring awareness, like, that's, that's enough. Honestly, like, that actually in itself is a good cause, but he, that's not a good enough story. Like, yeah, if you, if he'd have gone to Afghanistan just to bring awareness of how chaotic it was and all the, the, you know, the, the red line, you know, the, the, the, the, the bureaucratic take that everyone has to go through to, like, that should have been it. That should have been the story. But because you didn't save people, like, just say, hey, this is a shit show and everyone needs to know about it. Just because you didn't save anyone in North Carolina, it's just say, I'm out here for awareness. I want to show you guys how bad it is.

[John Howard]

Yeah, bring awareness.

[Brent Tucker]

But the common denominator was always this. The truth is not good enough for Tim. And so if the truth isn't there, he'll tell the story the way he wanted it to be. And that's what he's in trouble for. And that's why FN dropped him. USCCA's dropped them, Staccato's dropped them. Woobies dropped them. It just like the, the. It's finally starting to, you know, to, to catch. And at the end of the day, I still think maybe I'm naive. I still think if he just came clean and said, hey, like, I can still do good things. I've. I've messed up before, but I'm going to correct all this and I'm, and I'm, I'm gonna go back to doing good things. I think he could salvage it, but he won't do it.

[John Howard]

And it sucks because, like, I don't, I really don't understand why he's this way. It's like, dude, you're a UFC fighter, You're a Green Beret.

[Tyler]

Like, you did it.

[John Howard]

You already did everything. Massive social media, massive companies. You don't even need to make up, like, cooler sounding stories. Everyone already thinks you're cool. Like every civilian thinks you're just like a God.

[Brent Tucker]

Yeah.

[John Howard]

You know, well, and like, I even liked him. I was like, man, I like this guy. I like what he's putting out there. But then when I heard from My own team. That. Because we didn't. He just wanted to take the addresses for himself, to go do missions, to get his photo and video. But look who I just rescued.

[Brent Tucker]

Yeah.

[John Howard]

He didn't want to do anything like coexisting with our team or the legwork.

[Brent Tucker]

Required to do it. He just wanted to take your legwork.

[John Howard]

Yes.

[Brent Tucker]

Leave you on the ground and have the Singleton Tim Kennedy show one thing. Go rescue people.

[John Howard]

You know, one thing I thought was kind of interesting about that, I should say, when he was asking for the addresses, he specifically wanted Florida people. Not like anybody. He just wanted Florida, like, known Florida people.

[Brent Tucker]

He's a smart guy. I've always admitted that, and I believe that. And so if something tells me if he's asking for that, he. He has. He has a play. Like, there's something. Whether it be a play into Desantis.

[Tyler]

I think into politics now.

[Brent Tucker]

Yeah. I think it's super convenient that, you know, when all this came out and, you know, he's no longer really welcome in the tactical world, that he's now running around the political circle. So he's. I guess he's just trying to change his game and stay relevant.

[John Howard]

And I'll say it wasn't just him out there. Like, I. I saw this a lot with a lot of people out there, because, like, when my video was going viral, I was getting tens of thousands of messages a day, and I would have these, like, kind of other people like him, like, especially always, like, wannabe alpha males.

[Brent Tucker]

Yeah.

[John Howard]

They finally got on tier. They got on some testosterone. Finally got testosterone in their bodies in their 30s. They were never that guy in their 20s or teens. And now they're trying to be an alpha, right?

[Brent Tucker]

Yep. They're reinventing themselves.

[John Howard]

They're messaging me like, hey, man, like, love what you're doing. Can I come help you? I can be there tomorrow. Do you guys spot for me in the helicopter? And I'd be like, hey, man, I don't have room for you in the helicopter. But, like, this place needs people. You can go here and help these people.

[Brent Tucker]

Right?

[John Howard]

And they would just be like, okay, thanks.

[Brent Tucker]

No, I'm just here for the sexy one.

[John Howard]

They wouldn't even respond. Yeah, but there were so many people like that. There were just like, hey, like, can I link up with you? Like, we can do some content, some awareness. I'm like, hey, man, like, I'm actually still working. Like, I'm in the middle of this. Like, I made that video, but, like, I'm in the middle of rescuing these people. I Don't got time.

[Tyler]

I want to make content.

[Brent Tucker]

Yeah.

[John Howard]

And they literally, they would ask like, hey, we make content. We do great awareness. I'm like, dude, I'm literally turning and burning from sun up to sundown. I, I can't do this.

[Brent Tucker]

Yeah. Let me tell you how to get on the helicopter. Go to selection, put your money where your mouth is and do the job and then you have a spot on the helicopter. Yeah, but they don't want that. They don't, they don't want to put in the hard work. No, they just want to, they just want to spot on the helicopter when it's convenient.

[John Howard]

I'd have people, they ask like, hey, can meet, can I? Where are you going to be at in the day? We can link up. I'll just do awareness. I'm like, I don't know, but these are usually the airfields I'm at where I refuel and where I grab supplies. I'm like, I might be at one of those spots. They'd be like, but you don't know if you're gonna be there for sure. I'm like, I don't know, it's mission dependent where I'm located. And they would just be like, cuz.

[Brent Tucker]

A mission's more important.

[John Howard]

Okay, well, never mind. Thanks.

[Brent Tucker]

Right.

[John Howard]

I'm just like disgusting.

[Brent Tucker]

Yeah. Are you really asking me to, to postpone a mission to make sure I'm in, you know, I'm, I'm at an airfield a certain time, so, so I.

[John Howard]

Was able to filter pretty quickly where I, I would respond to the people that'd be like, like, I'm bringing hot meals here tomorrow. Tell me where to drop the meals off or things like that, or hey, I'm bringing this. I mean, dude, I probably had 30 people message me. They're like, hey, I'm flying my helicopter down, tell me where to go, like what airfield to land at.

[Brent Tucker]

Yeah.

[John Howard]

And I would respond to those people. But there was just so many like these people to come, like, break the news for their audience on, on Instagram to where I was just like, I started catching on to it, but it was just, it was really disgusting. And that's what I, I guess I, I would end this with. The Tim Kennedy thing is just like, I was just disappointed in him because like, he could have done so good for us out there in North Carolina and brought like a, you know, money, awareness, more helicopters.

[Brent Tucker]

He's got resources. Yeah.

[John Howard]

He could have done so many good things. But it was just like, if it's not the Tim Kennedy show, It's nobody show kind of thing.

[Brent Tucker]

No.

[John Howard]

And it was just like it. As a fellow operator, it was, it was just disappointing.

[Brent Tucker]

Well, I'm glad you brought that up because in the day it's not, it's not bashing vets. No, it's the, it's the truth. Like people need to know, you know, who, who they can trust and who they can't trust. I mean, that's, I don't know why they're going to be. I mean, we'll get, we get a lot of support, but some people are mad at us for, for telling the truth. Like, shouldn't you be mad at the other guy for acting this way and not, not at the people who are actually telling the truth?

[Tyler]

The ones that are well spoken. At least say what you said. Where they say, hey, he's bringing awareness, he's doing big picture stuff and that. But that's what got him by for so long.

[John Howard]

Well, that's another thing. So like a lot of my friends that are maybe sponsored by the same companies that he's involved in.

[Tyler]

Oh yeah, we've been there.

[John Howard]

They, they can't talk about it. They want to. Especially like the Green Berets dudes, but they're like, if I do that, then.

[Tyler]

Financial ties, Financial ties, Financial ties.

[John Howard]

I was kind of shocked at how many guys I started realizing are financially tied into all these other companies that he is hands into. So there's a lot of guys that have like big influence on social media that want to say things, but they're like, if I do that, I lose part of my revenue.

[Brent Tucker]

Yeah, yeah. And this is what I hate. And watch it start, watch it, watch it start to domino effect. They could have done it before, it was cool. But now that all these companies are starting to distance themselves, you know, from Tim, now they're going to come out and say something about it.

[Tyler]

They didn't have the balls to do.

[Brent Tucker]

It, but they didn't have. Yeah, Staccato. Staccato is actually the first. And there's some companies I can't name that I know are doing it. But Staccato is the first one to not just quietly pull away from, to actually make a statement, say this is why we're pulling away. And then the domino effect happened. And now I'm afraid, don't get me wrong, it's never too late to do the right thing. It's not, I'm not saying don't do the right thing now, please do it. But you, whoever you are, you know, you should have done it sooner.

[John Howard]

And the irony is, is you guys have been charged for doing it for the money.

[Brent Tucker]

Right. I can't not. I'm riled up again now. I need that funny story.

[John Howard]

Yeah. Trying to think of a funny story, man. I can tell you guys, I wasn't prepared. It wasn't. I wasn't even in my wheelhouse for a funny story.

[Brent Tucker]

That's right. We got all day. We'll sit here, too.

[John Howard]

Yeah. We'll edit out all the downtime of trying to think of a funny one. I want to give you guys something good.

[Brent Tucker]

Somebody pooped their pants.

[John Howard]

I can think of traffic control story and some crazy flight story.

[Brent Tucker]

Aircraft real estate people. I'm sure they're idiots.

[John Howard]

Oh, you know they left poop somewhere. Yeah.

[Brent Tucker]

Or rented it for their sex tapes.

[John Howard]

Okay, so property management world. You see a lot of crazy stuff that renters do and, and leave behind and stuff. But every. So this one particular is actually in one of my. My own condos. This lady was there as a chaperone for, like, her girls. I think it was like church or something. She was basically the only adult for like five or six, like, teenage girls or whatever. And she messages us on Airbnb and she goes, I left my dildo there in the bedside drawer. I think she even had a name for it too. I can't remember. But my wife gets a message, right? And the lady's asking for us to ship it back.

[Tyler]

Oh, my God.

[John Howard]

Get the.

[Brent Tucker]

Is it like a limited edition or just. Or just call the loss and buy another one?

[John Howard]

Like, not, not throw it away. She's like, oh, like, can you mail it back to me?

[Tyler]

And you're joking.

[John Howard]

So my wife, like, sends a screenshot of it and she sends it to me. And like the other girls that work in our company, she was like, what should we do about this? And then they're like, ask her to describe it and tell her that we found multiple ones in, in. In the, in the property because there were always like little, little girls and stuff. Oh, yeah. So they, they started messing with. They're like, well, we found like multiple ones. Can you like, describe yours? And stuff like that? And she literally, like went in full blown description. And we actually did mail it back to her because I forgot what all she was saying. I don't know if she said it was like her favorite one or something.

[Tyler]

Like that, but like, hey, you know what? A good review is a good review.

[John Howard]

I. I would say it was.

[Brent Tucker]

That's right.

[John Howard]

Now that's customer service. We found a Lot of those in. In the management. But I've never actually had someone, like, request for us to. Yeah.

[Tyler]

God. You cut your losses.

[Brent Tucker]

Yeah.

[John Howard]

Yeah.

[Brent Tucker]

You're saying, like, the management side of it's. That was far from the first one you found left behind?

[John Howard]

I think it was one of the girls actually went and grabbed it with, like, I don't know, a towel or something. Was just like, oh. And then just like, brought it to the mail office.

[Tyler]

But males like, any batteries in here? Like, nope.

[John Howard]

I love it. We had a lot of crazy stories like that. I mean, that's a riveting story. So many wild stuff.

[Brent Tucker]

Is that the part? Any other weird things left behind you can think of? Because, I mean, I had one person.

[John Howard]

Leave behind a handgun. They asked me to mail it to him. I said, I don't think I can do that.

[Brent Tucker]

How do you leave behind your handgun? God.

[John Howard]

One chambered, ready to go.

[Brent Tucker]

Like, yeah, that's pretty crazy.

[John Howard]

Said that. I'm trying to think if I had. I had a. Actually had a real prostitute rent one of our properties and was using it. What, for the weekend?

[Brent Tucker]

Yeah.

[John Howard]

I didn't see that. Yeah, we. Yeah, I remember, man. My wife tore her apart.

[Brent Tucker]

But how do you know? You have source. Like, how do you find that out?

[John Howard]

Well, well, we walked in. We walked into the property, and there was a trash can beside the bed. And we just look in it, and I mean, it's just full of condoms. Like, just full of condoms. And then there was. Take your trash out. The mirror in the bathroom was placed in front of the bed. And then you could basically see her face of makeup going across the bed. Like, she was plowed across that bed. She plowed across the bed with all the condoms in there. And. And how gross it was. My wife just Googles her name. And she had been arrested, like, I think two or three different times, mainly in Mobile, Alabama. Oh, yeah.

[Tyler]

For some reason that just immediately made it worse.

[John Howard]

Yeah. And she was literally, like, having her little prostitution ring in the property on a waterfront condo.

[Brent Tucker]

I'm gonna have to charge extra for the deep clean.

[John Howard]

Oh, we did.

[Brent Tucker]

No, we did, but we did.

[John Howard]

Yeah.

[Brent Tucker]

Gonna be a new sheet.

[John Howard]

Yeah. Yeah. So you run to a lot of, like, some wild stuff like that here and there.

[Tyler]

Do you have to now put in things in the. In the agreements like this will not be rented for X, Y and Z?

[John Howard]

It actually. It actually is. And they. It is in the agreement. I mean, my wife would have a lot of fun with all this stuff. We actually had another one. They wanted to Shoot. They wanted to shoot a porno.

[Tyler]

That's what I was gonna ask you because there's this record breaking woman that slept with like 1200 dudes at one time.

[John Howard]

Gross.

[Tyler]

And it made the news because she's so proud of it. And the Airbnb person was like, what? It was their Airbnb. It was in Europe. But he was like, you use my Airbnb for this?

[John Howard]

Like, well, these people, they, they messaged us and they're like, hey, we want to use your house for. Is that okay? And I mean, the wife were like, I'm pretty sure people already do that, you know, like, it's kind of weird that they're asking for permission, but they said they would pay us more. My wife was like, why much, much will you pay? I think they said something like, I want to say like $10,000. My wife was like, well, if you wire it right now, we'll let you do it. They, they never did it, but I think it may have been like a scam or something. But it was just kind of weird.

[Tyler]

Not weird. Yeah, yeah.

[John Howard]

I mean we'd have ones where they, they, they legit asked like, like your, like your Internet speeds. Like we're have like a land party there. Like, we're like these gamers and stuff. They're like, we're gonna do this. Like, we need to be able like support like 10 computers. And we're just like, yeah, I.

[Tyler]

The basic package.

[John Howard]

I'm like, the wi fi works. I don't know, like, I don't know if it's going to be able to support the gaming.