Join our weekly Combat Check-In Newsletter (www.combatstory.com/newsletter) to get a short email from Ryan for people who love and support our veterans, service members, and their families. It has info on a significant event in military and/or intel history, a funny military joke, an update on a current event I'm following, something I'm doing that week in my life, a book I'm reading, a look at an upcoming interview, a reflection on a past episode and more!
Wes Bryant is a U.S. Air Force Master Sergeant (retired) who served eight combat deployments in the post 9/11 era as a Special Operations Forces Tactical Air Control Party (TAC-P) and Joint Tactical Air Controller (JTAC).
He co-authored the book “Hunting the Caliphate: America’s War on ISIS and the Dawn of the Strike Cell,” a first-person account of the war on ISIS written alongside the former commanding general of Iraq, Major General (retired) Dana Pittard. Embedded with Special Forces teams under a Navy SEAL task force, Wes was the tactical lead for a contingent of special operations JTACs to first set foot in Iraq to stop ISIS.
He’s been a lifelong writer, amateur philosopher, and avid student of the martial arts. Today, he pursues writing and editing, and teaches Chinese Kung Fu and Tai Chi.
0:00 Intro.
2:05 Difference between TAC-P and JTACs.
13:50 Moving between PJ, JTAC, and TACP work finding what was right.
14:25 Pararescue Indoctrination Course.
15:55 Combat Divers Qualification Course.
20:00 Learning about TACPs when at Medina Annex.
22:40 Fought to get back to the CDQC to pass.
28:15 First foray into combat calling in an airstrike in combat.
32:13 First fight in Iraq with 1st CAV in 2004 after Fallujah calling in F-15s with 500 and 2Klbs bombs.
39:40 Being the odd man out from the Air Force dropped into new Army units.
45:20 Description of one of the most formative experiences as a controller in his first control in Afghanistan while getting shot at with 173rd.
58:13 The "most chaos on the battlefield" was early in the fight against ISIS in Iraq in 2014.
1:03:33 Part of the reason for writing the book was to show how deliberate each engagement was.
1:08:38 A tour to Korea in 2007 and finding a way to handle his PTSD. Went kicking and screaming to Camp Casey and was one of the best moves of his career.
1:19:42 Wes describes an experience at a shopping mall in Bahrain that changed his perspective on "the enemy."
1:31:20 Carrying the dog tags of his friend John Brown, a PJ who died in the shootdown of Extortion 17 in August 2011.
1:32:50 Appreciation for Army Special Forces (ODA) teams.
1:33:55 Favorite aircraft: A-10s for fixed wing and Apaches (AH-64s) for helos.
1:34:40 Would you do it all again? "Absolutely...would have done it all again."