Click Here to Watch this Episode
John C. Morley: (00:08)
Hi everyone. I'm John C. Morley, The host of the JMOR Tech Talk show and inspirations for your life.
John C. Morley: (00:59)
Well, hi everyone and welcome once again to another great edition of the JMOR Tech Talk show today. I can't believe it. We have just about, got one more week left in February and we're in March. Pretty soon, I guess we're going to be seeing those many flowers. Well, hopefully, today we have an amazing show for you tonight. In case you didn't know, we have Colonel (retired) Wayne Phelps who will be on a little later in the program, who will be interviewed about his latest book, "On Killing Remotely, the psychology of killing with drones." This is a two-part series because he is got so much information that we couldn't possibly fit this into an entire show. So definitely stay tuned for that. In the news, speaking about the military and the air force, something interesting that I recently uncovered is that the Navy has a new train car that they're going to have for basically all the firepower and tech that they're ever going to need for nuclear security.
John C. Morley: (02:21)
So as you may or may not know, train robberies are not quite that common anymore. However, there are still some pretty precious things that travel on rail and that's why they are putting together this special armored car it's a collaboration between the Navy and the United States department of energy. And it's going to be pretty interesting what's being built and also it'll get hooked up to the ability to hold hundreds of tons of the spent nuclear fuel. The Navy train will carry the spent fuel rods from shipyards and propulsion facilities on the east and west coast to the Naval reactor facility in Idaho Falls, Idaho for inspection and temporary storage before the final disposal into the appropriate dry caskets, which will then go underground. So there's a lot of work that went into this and the planning.
John C. Morley: (03:33)
And so, when we think about things that are happening in our world, a lot of times people say to me, "Well, we don't have to worry about that because that's something the military does or sometimes the air force does or the Marines do." But you know, the thing is they have to worry about things just like we do every day. I mean, they're people and they do things and there's still a consequence to whether you do something or you don't do something and I am just really glad to hear that they're stepping it and building something that is going to keep the transport safe and make sure it doesn't get into the hand of any potential bad actors. So, kudos to them and the Navy and of course the many people that are working on this, including the US department of energy. I know they're working hard to get this done and it's going to be pretty interesting.
John C. Morley: (04:31)
When this thing finally does get unveiled, it looks like we're going to probably see the first signs of this right around 2024. So not too long from now that we're going to see the first, I guess rendition of that. Well, ladies and gentlemen, I know that you're always grateful for the wonderful content that we bring you here on the JMOR Tech Talk show tonight. I am pleased to have Lieutenant Colonel (retired) Wayne Phelps on our show. This man is amazing. The things that he has done, he is a former Lieutenant Colonel in the Marine corps with 23 years of teaching coaching, and mentoring teams ranging in sizes from 30 to 300 to exceed operational expectations in complex environments. He is passionate about UAS, drones, counter UAS, and leadership and the thing that is remarkable about this gentleman is that he was right on the lines and working with people that were using drones to kill people.
John C. Morley: (05:58)
And he realized that things were happening but the story wasn't being told and he decided to write a book, "On Killing Remotely, the psychology of killing with drones," by Lieutenant Colonel Wayne Phelps. Ladies and gentlemen, please help me welcome to the JMOR Tech Talk Show, Colonel (retired) Wayne Phelps. So we can talk to him about some interesting endeavors that he learned and about the book. You guys all know that I read all my guest's books from cover to cover. Ladies and gentlemen, without any further ado, please help me give a warm welcome to Lieutenant retired Colonel Wayne Phelps to the JMOR Tech Talk Show. Welcome to the show Lieutenant Colonel,
Lt. Col. (ret) Wayne Phelps: (06:58)
Hey John, thanks for having me.
John C. Morley: (07:00)
First of all, for those of you that don't know and haven't been following our social media for the last two weeks, we've been putting out lots of questions and we're doing a very special show because there is so much great information that Lieutenant Colonel has to share with us that we couldn't put it all into one show. We're like little less than an hour with our breaks, like just around 40, 50 minutes. So we put them into two shows and we've been putting these questions out to you every single day. I know that's why you're here tonight because you want the answers. He authored an amazing book "On Killing Remotely, the psychology of killing with drones," by Lieutenant Colonel Wayne Phelps retired. So this book is amazing and I have to tell you if you're looking to understand how warfare gets done, this is a great way to get a very firm understanding. But first I have to ask you, Lieutenant Colonel, what unit or portion did you retire from?
Lt. Col. (ret) Wayne Phelps: (08:01)
So I retired as a Marine, my last unit, I was the commanding officer of Marine unmanned aerial vehicle squadron three or VMU three stationed in Con bay. Hawaii is really tough. Oh, wow, tough duty station.
John C. Morley: (08:20)
Now, the military, the Navy, they all like to use acronyms and not just Alpha, Bravo, Delta, and I was learning because I'm also a licensed Ham in General and we say alpha Bravo Delta but in the military, they say dog and some other things, they don't say the same letters, which I guess they do that just to be unique and kind of special. One thing I notice is the military. They like to be secretive but they like to have a lot of acronyms like RPA, UCAV, and HPT. What do those mean actually?
Lt. Col. (ret) Wayne Phelps: (08:51)
Yeah, there's an acronym for everything. So RPA is remotely piloted aircraft, which is traditionally how the air force refers to drones. The Marine Corps, we refer to them as unmanned aerial systems or UAS. They've been called UCAS, UCAV unmanned combat aerial vehicles unmanned aerial vehicles, UAVs all kinds of things but traditionally these days we refer to them as RPAs
John C. Morley: (09:24)
And there was another one I remember, there is a lot in the book but there's another one, you use HPT and it's not a computer part, High-Performance Teams, I believe or something like that. There was another one. So there are just a lot of acronyms. You can have an acronym. I think there's an acronym for an acronym. Do they have a book to tell you what the acronyms are because they're supposed to help you remember but I think you need a full-time job just to be able to know what acronym list to look at?
Lt. Col. (ret) Wayne Phelps: (09:51)
Yeah. It's usually referred to as a GOAT, the glossary of acronyms and text.
John C. Morley: (09:56)
Oh. Okay.
Lt. Col. (ret) Wayne Phelps: (09:57)
In terms, I believe cost acronyms and terms. Yeah, there should be ABOA though, A book of acronyms because there are so many.
John C. Morley: (10:07)
So one thing I want to tell you is, it's an amazing book. Lieutenant Colonel sent this to me a long time ago and one of the things I do with all my guests is I read the books cover to cover. It's an amazing book but I had to put it down a few times because there's just so much intent information and it's emotional and you can't write a book like this without it being emotional. It gets right on the front lines and even on the sidelines but I felt like I was right there. I thought I was the person killing the person. I said wait, may I better put it down because I don't know if I want to do this. So it definitely, gets you very engaged and that's very powerful for a tech.
John C. Morley: (10:46)
So it was very well written and kudos to you on that. One thing that took me by surprise because when I got the book and we decided to interview you several months ago, I remember saying, "Oh, this would be great because I'm going for my drone license." I said, "We're going to learn about drones and how they kill this injury." But it's a lot more than just talking about drones. That's just like one little piece of the book, maybe a third or something. What was interesting to me, in the beginning, is you start with a stone, a rock, and a stick. So let's talk a little about the evolution of weapons and I think a lot of people here will be very interested in that because it didn't just go to a gun. It didn't go to a fighter pilot. We started with a rock and a stone. Am I correct about that?
Lt. Col. (ret) Wayne Phelps: (11:32)
Yeah, what I wanted to do was, show that the evolution of killing throughout humans and history has evolved to create further and further distance between the attacker and the victim. So I wanted to say let's go back to their early conflict and say two humans fighting each other with their bare fists and then one person said, "Hey, I can kill this other person by throwing a rock or fixing a rock to a stick and throw it from a distance." And then I trace that evolution of distance through humanity and human history and I talk about how gun powder changes everything. Now you can kill from a further distance and that introduces things like rockets.
Lt. Col. (ret) Wayne Phelps: (12:27)
And then you have GPS-guided munitions, which make it more effective to eventually get to a point where you have satellite communications, which allows you to control weapons from the other side of the world. And finally, you get to a point where all of these technologies converge in one platform called the remotely piloted aircraft. Most people would know the system I'm talking about as the predator. In the predator you have communications from satellites, you have precision-guided munitions like health fire missiles and then you have robotics and autonomy and everything else that allows this platform to fly for a long period. So you can control this thing from the opposite side of the planet, fly it for a long period, and then at the moment of your choosing when it's technically advantageous to you to pull the trigger on this missile and guide it into a specific target. Oftentimes we're talking about targeting humans or individuals that we've followed for a very long time.
John C. Morley: (13:42)
You've got an acronym for that too, if I remember in the book hopefully if I remember all these acronyms, I hope I remember them all. I think it's a High-Value Individual HVI or something.
Lt. Col. (ret) Wayne Phelps: (13:54)
HVI, High-Value Individual. Yeah.
John C. Morley: (13:55)
There are a lot of terms.
Lt. Col. (ret) Wayne Phelps: (13:56)
Yeah and that's the common term for it in the military a high-value individual. That's somebody that you're looking for, like a leader of a terrorist organization, something like that.
John C. Morley: (14:12)
So the book starts by, again we're not going to go through every page but we're just going to give you a little bit of a dichotomy of different parts of the book. So I hope you'll go out and get the book again it's an amazing book. So we talk about this whole evolution of weapons, which was interesting and then you start getting into the machine a little bit about the people and then you start to get to the mission and then you get to the methods but right after that you talk about something very interesting and you say there are three things necessary to be able to kill somebody in the military or the government or anything, which kind of caught me off by surprise that was the way that is. To explain a little bit of that to us if you could.
Lt. Col. (ret) Wayne Phelps: (15:01)
Yeah, so the three things are the legal standing, the ethical standing, and the moral standing, right? So first starts with the legal standing, within the international humanitarian law and the rules of engagement can we legally engage this target, this person, this piece of equipment? Is it considered a legitimate military target? So once you've established that legally you can strike this target then you have to get it into the ethical and moral rubric of this and the first thing is can we strike the target ethically? Can we strike it? Then if we can, morally how should we strike the target? Like what weapon system should we use? Is it proportional? Is it going to cause suffering, things like that?
John C. Morley: (16:01)
That was another interesting thing that I learned in your book is that it seems like when you guys are given an order to take the person out or kill them or what have you. There's also a concern that was interesting and enlightening to me to know that the military and the Marines care a little bit that they don't want to take me out. If I'm next to you and they're going for you, they don't necessarily want to just hit any time because they don't want to kill an innocent bystander, as long as let's say, there were things I guess, accountable and you have people around and I guess there's a point where they come and they say, "Well, we can afford to lose that person" because of what I guess they make certain decisions right when they do that.
Lt. Col. (ret) Wayne Phelps: (16:48)
Yeah, so what you're referring to everyone's familiar with the term collateral damage or civilian casualties and there is we're governed by international humanitarian law to avoid or mitigate civilian casualties anytime we can. There are instances where people have to weigh the risk versus the gain of striking a target based on how many civilian casualties might occur and usually, this goes up levels of the chain of command, depending on how high or how many people you anticipate will die in a strike. It can go all the way up to the commander in chief, the president himself that has to make that decision. Oftentimes under President Obama, he was the one that was authorizing some of those strikes saying, "Yes, the gain, the military gain is worth the risk of this many people dying."
John C. Morley: (17:53)
There's a lot that goes into this. I mean, I've always known that the military and the Navy and the air force, they're under tremendous stress and there's a lot that they have to do. There's a reason that they go through this training because if they're not at the mental aptitude to do what they need to do, their body's not going to perform. So I think that's why the training is so vigorous. It's not like, "Hey, you need to fire, you need to do this." It's mental conditioning of the brain to make sure that, that person is, I guess defined quote unquote as a soldier and if you're not a soldier then you're just going to have decisions. I think in the forces, they don't want somebody to be making their own decisions. They want everything through a very tactical, it's like you're saying there's a team pretty much, and that handles everything. You state something very interesting in one of your chapters, how do we kill an RPA? Give our audience a little bit of an understanding. What were you trying to convey when you said, "How do we kill with an RPA?"
Lt. Col. (ret) Wayne Phelps: (19:00)
I wanted people to understand we hear the term drone strike quite frequently in the media it's all over every time there is a strike. People talk about it but I don't think your average citizen understands what that means. When we conduct a drone strike is other than the fact that a drone fired a missile or dropped a bomb on a specific target. I don't think they understand that there are humans that are operating the drone, that is maintaining it, that are flying it that are watching the video feed that's coming in, and analyzing every aspect of it. So, it's a human endeavor that uses the term drone. It's kind of a misnomer that it is an autonomous object that's killing people but what I wanted to show was that there is absolutely 100% a human aspect to this, that there are still humans that are deciding to kill.
John C. Morley: (20:15)
And I think that's an interesting tone and the book kind of switches. First, you talk about weaponry and how it evolved and how I guess the process of killing quote-unquote has changed to a more technological way to have fewer casualties something else that I thought was interesting is that you mentioned the first time somebody kills someone that has some emotional scar on them, which a lot of us don't, that's not something we think about every day but this is something that they have to do as part of their job. And what can you say about that Lieutenant Colonel?
Lt. Col. (ret) Wayne Phelps: (20:56)
Yeah, so I had three main objectives for this book. I wanted to understand how we kill with remotely piloted aircraft or drones. I wanted to understand how we responded to that and lastly, I wanted to understand why we respond in that way. So when you're talking about how a person responds to killing with a drone the first time, I found that through interviews and surveys that I did, that was the most intense responses that people had the very first time as one would expect, when you're doing something that significant in your life that you've never done before that's that serious you don't necessarily know how your body's going to respond to it. You think you're mentally prepared for it. Your training prepares you for it, for all of the mechanical things that you perform to do that.
Lt. Col. (ret) Wayne Phelps: (21:55)
But emotionally and cognitively, it's very difficult to be prepared for conducting your first strike and killing another human. So what I found through interviews was that people had the most intense responses after their first strike, some people would throw up, some people would have sweats they would be shaking, and they'd have a lot of physiological responses to it. Which I thought was very interesting because the physiological responses that they had were tunnel vision, oral exclusion, heartbeat racing over 170 beats per minute, memory distortion, all of these things have been studied in lethal force encounters for people that have face to face, whether it's military or law enforcement officers, right? They experience these same things like minutes seem to take hours or hours to go by and in just a few seconds, they have trouble remembering details. They can see fine details of objects but can't remember other things, right? So it seems almost illogical that RPA crews would experience these same physiological responses from 7000 miles away but they do.
John C. Morley: (23:26)
The thing I find interesting about that is that I guess there's a term, I know there was a term mentioned in your book. There are a lot of terms. One was when the person is a day pilot, where they come and do their job and then they go home at night. We don't think about that but there are a lot of people that I guess do this job and then they go home. They either have a family or maybe they're alone but when they go home, they have to compartmentalize their life and they're not supposed to talk about what they did on the job. Maybe they share some general details but they can't get specific and they do get specific, who knows but my thing is they've just had dinner with their family or maybe been home and watched some TV, watched some football, or had some dinner and now they go to bed and they got to get up and they got to do it all over again.
Lt. Col. (ret) Wayne Phelps: (24:25)
Yeah John, what you're referring to is a byproduct of something the air force has chosen to do called remote split operations or RSO and the way that's conducted is you have a crew that is deployed close to the fight. They take care of maintenance, fueling, arming the drone, getting it ready, launching it, taking it off, flying it to a specific location, and then over a satellite communication link they hand it off to the crew. That's flying it for the tactical portion of the mission and most of those crews are stateside. A lot of them are outside of Las Vegas Creek air force base then that crew will fly this mission for eight to ten hours at a time. Perhaps they have something that goes kinetic or they strike a target during that mission and then they'll get in their car at the end of the day and they'll drive home and be with their family, pick up milk on the way home or attend their daughter's dance recital. It's crazy.
John C. Morley: (25:34)
And they got to just live a regular life. Like every one of us does and then they have a second life. Only their second life is, it's secret but some of it you know about and other parts you don't. It's kind of one of those jobs that say if I tell you I'm going to have to take you out. So yeah, of course, they're joking but the thing that gets me interesting is if somebody does this, and let's say, I don't know anybody besides yourself that is maybe shot, probably shot somebody down. What happens if somebody takes out a high-value individual or target, do they get to go home once they've done that, I know they get points and they get increased in their bonus when they hit because some I was learning in your book fail on purpose because they're not ready to make the kill. Can you elaborate on a couple of those?
Lt. Col. (ret) Wayne Phelps: (26:28)
Yeah, I wouldn't say there's a point system, right? There isn't something like that where it's points or bonuses for the more people you kill. That's just part of your job if you're flying drones but there are people in certain instances that are aircrew that has resisted the demand for an airstrike or they have missed on purpose. I've interviewed people that said they didn't necessarily agree with the quest for the strike but they didn't want to flat outright say, "I'm not going to support you." Instead, they would miss the target or they would say something like, "We're out of fuel and we can't support you." So, the pilot in command, the person that's responsible for the mission, and the pilot of the vehicle have the overall authority to say yes or no if they're going to support something. So if something doesn't meet one of those three things that I mentioned earlier the legal, ethical, or moral standards then that pilot in command can refuse to strike that target.
John C. Morley: (27:46)
A couple of questions that come to the point how many people are on a typical RPA team because it's a team really how many people are on that team besides the, let's say the main pilot.
Lt. Col. (ret) Wayne Phelps: (27:56)
Yeah, it depends on the service that we're talking about between the air force, Marine Corps, army but typically what you'll have is a pilot that is taken care of flying the aircraft and a sensor operator who maneuvers the camera and then guides missiles and things onto the target and then some sort of intelligence analysts for support and that intelligence can be embedded with the crew or they could be removed at another location. In the air force, you also have an entire intelligence enterprise that is there to assist you. So they're looking at the video feeds and they're helping with the identification of targets they're all of those kinds of things that you would think intelligence analysts would do.
John C. Morley: (28:50)
Make sure that you're actually on the target that you're not 260 degrees off the target and we're fired. Now, who fires the missile or the donation which crew member is responsible for that?
Lt. Col. (ret) Wayne Phelps: (29:06)
So it's a combination, it's split between both the pilot and the sensor operator. The pilot fires the missile and the sensor operator guides it onto the target. So if you've seen any videos where you see a missile coming in, you'll usually see crosshairs, right and that crosshair is where the point of impact is supposed to be. So what happens is you'll have a laser that's firing onto that target and the seeker head on the missile is guiding towards that laser spot. So that spot is controlled by the sensor operator. So wherever they put that spot is where the missile's going to go.
John C. Morley: (29:52)
So you could fire as the pilot and technically it might not be all in their emotional head because it's a sensor operator that gets it to be delivered. Am I correct on that or not? Because the sensor operator could still, I could fire but then the sensor operator because if they're not ready for a hit, they could let it hit a building or something. Am I correct or not?
Lt. Col. (ret) Wayne Phelps: (30:14)
Yeah, I wouldn't think that the sensor operator would do that. I think the only time that the sensor operator is going to move the crosshairs away from the target is when the situation on the ground changes after the missile has been launched. So think about a missile from so many kilometers away that has a certain time of flight to get to the target. If something changes at the target during that time like saying a child walks towards the target that you're trying to strike then the missile's already in flight. You still don't want to strike the target. So you might shift the crosshairs to a location where you're not going to kill those individuals.
John C. Morley: (31:02)
Now, when we say, and you mentioned the book about the person could miss the target, what are we referring to? What type of a tactical mission is it the RPA or is it more of a different type of weapon when we say that they may intentionally miss the target? What are we referring to? What type of detonation do I guess?
Lt. Col. (ret) Wayne Phelps: (31:22)
Yeah, in that situation I was referring to an RPA firing a missile where they would intentionally move the crosshair of the target. So that it looked like they were not a good professional cohesive crew as opposed to just.
John C. Morley: (31:42)
But pilot when he presses that button, he's out of the game. I mean, he's out after that right. Once he presses that button it's all the sensor operator's job from there. Am I correct?
Lt. Col. (ret) Wayne Phelps: (31:54)
Well, yes and no, they're both working as a crew. So the sensor operator at that point is focused on where the missiles going. The pilot is still focused on flying the airplane to keep the sensor stable so we can guide it onto the target and the pilot is also assisting with making sure nobody else is moving into the target area. So there's no unnecessary or unwanted collateral damage.
John C. Morley: (32:26)
Speaking about collateral damage who is most affected Lieutenant Colonel, when we talk about RPAs and killing who's the one that gets the most brunt of the impact of this, that feels it.
Lt. Col. (ret) Wayne Phelps: (32:40)
Do you mean on the crew?
John C. Morley: (32:43)
Yeah, on the crew.
Lt. Col. (ret) Wayne Phelps: (32:47)
Through the study, I did it was there wasn't one distinctive category of person that had the brunt of the traumatic experiences and I asked questions of prying nature, like how many people they had killed, how many strikes had been involved in, their age, their crew position, their education all of those things. In the end, it came down to very similar things. Three incidents were most likely to cause a negative response to killing or a traumatic experience and that was watching a target for a long period before striking it. So oftentimes we'll conduct a pattern of life missions where you can follow this target for hours, days, weeks, months, all years, sometimes before we're striking this target.
Lt. Col. (ret) Wayne Phelps: (33:55)
And the same crew might have the same mission over and over. So they're developing this one-sided intimacy with the target and then they wait for the time where it's tactically advantageous for them to strike the target where it's free from collateral damage and then they can strike but they've been watching this person for a long time and then they're recognizing the humanity of that individual. So there are certain instances where that has caused some negative responses which could lead to post-traumatic stress disorder that's the first one. There are a couple of others if you allow me to talk about those John. The second one is anytime we observe friendly forces on the ground wounded or killed in action and we failed to prevent that from happening, right. In the RPA community, we kind of view ourselves as the guardian angel. We're overhead; we can see a wide area. We can affect things by listening to things. We can affect operations by striking a target precisely and anytime that we're supporting friendlies on the ground and we can't prevent them from being wounded or killed we feel guilty, right. There is some survivor's guilt going on there.
Lt. Col. (ret) Wayne Phelps: (35:32)
So that's the second item and the third item escaping my mind right now. I'm sorry. I have to come back to that one.
John C. Morley: (35:46)
No problem.
Lt. Col. (ret) Wayne Phelps: (35:47)
I'll think of it here in a second
John C. Morley: (35:50)
While you're thinking about that you posed another interesting question. Well, there are a lot of ING questions but another thing that interested me was, I've been doing this POL pattern of life survey for quite a few weeks or months and I'm like waiting to fire and I've been waiting and waiting and all of a sudden, I don't know, it's my vacation day or I have a special leave day that I need to take care of something and then I come back to work that following week because they say it's going to take weeks for us. We're going to be surveilling this person for months might even be a year and all of a sudden that person comes back and they come back angry because they're starting to look for the target and they can't find the target and they're like well, what happened? Oh, Joe, shot him yesterday and there's that kind of resentment, isn't there? Can you talk a little bit about that because that was something that opened an eye for me?
Lt. Col. (ret) Wayne Phelps: (36:59)
Yeah, absolutely and I just recalled the third incident, and anytime there are civilian casualties during a strike and we could all understand how that would affect somebody negatively, right? I mean, we don't want to harm innocent civilians anytime we're conducting military operations and when that happens it's fairly devastating for the crew. So what you're referring to John that I talked about in the book, somebody can be working on a target, say a high-value individual, and watching this target for a very long period and they take the day off, they come back and somebody has struck their target when they're gone. Oddly enough, several people told me that they were pissed off that this happened and not because they felt like it was their right to kill that person think it's because of the amount of time and emotion that they had invested in this mission that they felt like they wanted to see it through to completion.
Lt. Col. (ret) Wayne Phelps: (38:20)
And I think that's a natural human response to anything that we put a lot of work and energy and effort into, right. We want to see it through to completion and if somebody shoots it in at the last minute and does the 1%, which may be the hardest part but then takes all the credit for it. All of your efforts up to that point, I don't want to say they seem in vain but they seem incomplete, right? So people would tell me that was a real issue for them.
John C. Morley: (38:51)
There's a lot of very, how can I say, sensitive topics and very emotional things that a Navy, a military man or service lady have to go through or air force and we think of it as being very stressful but asking somebody to kill someone, you have to remember it being done for our country. We're almost at a time for this show but don't worry. Lieutenant Colonel Phelps is going to come back again but he's got so much information to share with us and we have a short show so we're going to have him come back. He'll be back here again next week at the same time in the middle of our segment and we're going to be going over more about, are we at war? We're going to talk about dehumanizing. What do the Marines and the military do for that and how do we continue to do our job? And another entry point will hit and many others.
John C. Morley: (39:48)
We're going to talk about how the Marines compare a video game to using the RPA and it's a lot different than what you and I would think if we were big gamers. So you're not going to want to miss that Lieutenant Colonel Wayne Phelps. I have to tell you it has been a pleasure, not easy to read this book but it has been a pleasure to appreciate what you went through and what a lot of other people do every single day and it makes me very grateful that we have other people out there that are here because they're here to protect our country and I have to believe that. That's why they're doing it and that's the juice I guess that allows them to fire when they get emotional and then they're showing well, look what he did or he killed these 10 people. I think that's what drives it home and says hey, we're going to kill this person, right. It's when they've seen what they've done bad. Am I correct on that?
Lt. Col. (ret) Wayne Phelps: (40:41)
John. Yeah, you are.
John C. Morley: (40:43)
Ladies and gentlemen, so again thank you very much Lieutenant Colonel and we'll be back next week at 5:30 PM, Eastern right here on the JMOR tech talk show but if you missed any of this, of course, you can catch the replay. There are a lot of nuggets here. So, thank you very much Lieutenant Colonel and we will see you back next week.
Lt. Col. (ret) Wayne Phelps: (41:04)
Thanks for having me, John. Appreciate it.
John C. Morley: (41:06)
And it's been my pleasure. Wow, that was an interesting interview and this is only just scraping the surface. I mean next week we're going to have him back again to talk about some other things that we didn't have time for tonight. I mean just hearing from him about the way weapons evolve from something as simple as a rock and a stone up to automated UAS and drones and also the thought, the effort, and the teams that get put together. There's so much that is at stake and also there are so many things they have to think about. So I am grateful to Lieutenant retired Colonel Wayne Phelps for taking time to be with us tonight and I also am very grateful for having him back next week, right here on the JMORE tech talk show that is going to be on February 25th.
John C. Morley: (42:14)
You are not going to want to miss that one as well. Alright ladies and gentlemen, so digging a little bit more into what's going on. Let's talk about what the Marines are up to. So there is a concern about what's been going on with COVID and according to the CDC, 3,960 fatal unintentional drownings have occurred including boat-related drownings and this happened in 2020. Now they've been trying to locate missing people and give families closure so they can move on with their lives but what you to didn't know is that it takes lots of money and the diving team's hours, days, weeks, and months to prepare and to do everything they need to for this mission in these bodies of water that are all around.
John C. Morley: (43:26)
Now there is a brand new piece of equipment that is being rolled out. It's called the SONAR equipment critical to search and recovery. So they have something that employs side-scan SONAR technology and it allows a search and recovery team to scan the local waterways and gather a detailed image of the bottom, regardless of the water clarity. I think this is pretty amazing and this is kudos out there to the technology that we have because there's just so much out there that we have just only started to scratch the surface. So knowing that rescue teams can go out there and find people quicker, I think that's pretty amazing and I'd like to take a quote from Lieutenant Thomas Grady. He said, quote, "The side scan has been a great tool. It has allowed us to do our searches and only put our divers in the water. If we see something we want to be checked out."
John C. Morley: (45:03)
I feel that this is amazing knowing that a piece of technology can help save workers' time, give them the ability to have more safety, and allow them to do more rescue missions. A few of these many teams using the fishers side-scan SONARs are Columbia County Sheriff's department in New York, the union fire company in Pennsylvania, Webster rescue squad in Massachusetts, Livingston parish office of Homeland security in Louisiana, Midland County Sheriff's department in Michigan, Wheeling police department in West Virginia, Chattanooga county emergency services in New York, Miami Dade police recovery unit in Florida and the US Navy's EOD technology division. Wow, I am not only impressed but inspired. We have companies working together with our military, air force, and Marines Navy that we have all that together to form a cohesive unit to give us the best possibility and probability to rescue people in the quickest, most efficient, and cost-effective ways possible. This is something that was not around a long time ago, so kudos to this recent discovery.
John C. Morley: (46:45)
Well, something else that's starting to surface in the news with Marine technology is the iXblue SAS for Ifremer's new 6000m-rated AUVs. So this is a synthetic aperture SONAR and the Sams-150 offers a seabed mapping solution sooner to develop sea autonomous vehicles. The interferometric SAS SONAR allows for simultaneous real-time imaging and high-resolution bathymetric mapping of the seabed. That is pretty amazing. So we saw where we were with this small Fisher technology. Now we're starting to put this on bigger boats and vessels to help us deploy this technology. I like to make a quote, "The UlyX AUV is capable of diving down to 6000m and navigating on mapping profiles or in a quasi-stationary flight near the bottom," said Jan Opderbecke, the project manager for the development of the UlyX system at Ifremer. I like to make another quote. "It is equipped with a suite of state-of-the-art sensors to produce a set of data on the explored area: high-resolution imagery-bathymetry data with the Sams-150, multi-beam bathymetry, and optical images aided by a laser profiler for photogrammetry and this is amazing that we have this type of technology."
John C. Morley: (48:24)
I think it just shows that when we use the technology and the research from R&D and we start to apply it to life concepts it really can make a difference in our lives and everyone else. As I've said before ladies and gentlemen, the only reason we're here is for two main reasons to become better versions of ourselves and to help everyone else become better versions of themselves. Well, ladies and gentlemen, I am so grateful to Mr. Lieutenant retired, Colonel Wayne Phelps for also sending me this book said this to me a while ago and it took me a while to read it. It was a very emotional book. It gets into the facts about what people behind the scenes are doing with drones. Ladies and gentlemen, if you have not already scanned that QR code at the top, what are you waiting for? Scan it.
John C. Morley: (49:22)
You'll get my link tree and lots of great information about all the other types of content that I produce and there's a lot more than just the JMOR tech talk show. I want to thank you for allowing us to reach 1000 downloads. It is, unfortunately, time to say goodbye but remember next week on February 25th, I'll be here again and we'll be talking more with Lieutenant retired, Colonel Wayne Phelps about, On Killing Remotely the Psychology of Killing with Drones. You are not going to want to miss that. Have yourself a wonderful evening, and a great weekend. Hey, why don't you go to Amazon or your local bookstore and pick up this book, then maybe you'll be a little ahead of us and you can get even more engaged. I encourage you to comment between the shows. So if any other questions pop up, I'm happy to share those with Lieutenant retired, Colonel Wayne Phelps, in my next interview, have yourself a wonderful rest of your night and weekend.