Late For Changeover 30 Apr 2025-VEED
I brought the wrong color t-shirt to change into after PT, which is excuse number 120 for being late for changeover, your weekly Spanish news and variety show. I’m your host Marty Smith and I’m joined by our own ex-chief, oh no, not ex-chief, always a chief, Michelle Zayas and our very own little mule Juanito Lopez. Oh he’s making some insight, that’s me.
I like that. We’re here to bring you the latest headlines and updates pertinent to all guardians and to the other lower branches as well, so take your seats, get informed and have a laugh as we present Late for Changeover. Take your seats, take your seats.
Good to see you guys, we got a new crew all made up, returning to us is Chief Michelle Zayas. Thanks for coming on a short notice. I wasn’t sure what you were doing in that retired life of yours, but when I called you and you’re like, I didn’t know how quickly I responded to the text.
I know, that was great. Aaron Juan is here, free from classes, at least for the night. How long you got to go in barber school? Got till December.
December, wow man. And then after that I got, they had to do all the paperwork to let the state know that I’m done with my hours. Once they had that then I could start setting up my practical first and then my written exam and then I’ll be certified.
So after that it might take a month or two for me to even get certified. What’s the final test you got to go through? Like what’s the final eval? Is it like shave an eyebrow? Okay, check. It’s a mannequin.
Yes. And you’re going to like, when it comes to shaving to specific ways and strokes that you have to do around the face, the neck. Oh, okay.
You’re going to part. All straight razor, right? All straight razor stuff. Okay.
All right. And then so that’s a difference between a stylist and a barber. It’s going to be barber to use the razor.
The other thing is you’re going to have to part the hair and show that you could do a perm, that you could do a touch of color, that you could do a virgin hair coloring, like just all kinds of stuff. Wow. I didn’t know there was that much into it.
To be your color, you know, guinea pig, just give me a call. Oh, there you go. Hey, you know what? If you want to go to the school offer and well, well, if you just do one solid color, we got you.
Yeah. I remember in the old days of a fees, right? You could go and even though it was, you know, I was just a high and tight, but still, you know, they’d shave your neck with the straight razor. They put the ladder on there, they shave it up and they, they burn it up with the aftershave or whatever, but then they give you the massage.
Oh, those were the days, man. And you were so tired during the day. You just like, everyone would fall asleep.
But they’d also massage your head as well. So we do get trained on that, the different strokes and yes. And same thing, like you do facials, the shaves, the cleansing of the, uh, the thing, you know, that makes a difference, uh, between like a $10 tip to a $50 tip.
Oh yeah. And they come back and they come back. Yeah.
Wow. Are you preparing for your clientele to be mostly men or are you, you’re obviously you’re, you’re trained on everything, right? You’re trained on everything. You’re a long hair.
So I purposely like on Wednesdays, I try not to put people to come in cause I have long hair mannequins and I’m learning how to do layered haircuts to do. I’ll use the mannequins to do Bali, uh, like Bali eyes, like, um, highlights and stuff like that. So just cause I know there’s a market for it.
Yeah. And you know, it’s just like, uh, I just want to know all that stuff. And the clientele that I do come in there, you know, fades and short hair.
So yeah. So I’ve been practicing on the mannequins. Uh, my daughter’s now let me do a layered haircut, a wolf cut on her.
So that’s coming up soon. So she was, she wants to see a couple more mannequins and then we’ll, we’ll, we’ll, we’ll go from there before she lets me fully, she will let me like cut her tip, all the tips of her hair and stuff like that. I mean that stuff, but yeah.
So, all right, hold on. I’m going to plug this cord. Hopefully I don’t lose you guys.
Hold on. All right. You’re you’re muted.
Yep. You went to mute. There you go.
Well, now we can’t hear you though. Like it shows you unmuted, but we can’t hear you. Nope.
You did something. Okay. There we go.
Yeah. Flipped a thing. I wish I had a producer.
I wish you could be big enough to be a producer. Hey, we’re only we’re 97 subscribers on YouTube. We’re only three away from a hundred subscribers.
So, so anybody listening subscribe to us just so I can hit the hundred marker. And Marty will make sure if you are the 100th subscriber, he will get you on the show. I’ll send you a mug.
But you gotta tell me how to leave comments because I watched the show last week or when it’s been recorded appropriately. Last week was vacation week, but how do you leave comments? Do you have an account on YouTube? Yeah, you do. And it won’t let you to leave a comment.
I might be able to, but nobody else ever does. So I didn’t know if there was. Oh, I know there’s, there’s one guy who always likes this AC who is, he goes by AC Slater.
I’m not sure who that is. But yeah, do it. Who knows? I figured since I didn’t see any that they weren’t, you couldn’t because it’s been.
No, it’s because nobody comments. But maybe we can bring them up with a few stories today to make them comment. So Jake is in Australia for his job.
Eric is in Spain for his wife and a pleasure. And poor Ana is, how does she put it? Let me see how she put it. She couldn’t be here tonight because she said, I’m getting my poop shoot camera tomorrow.
Oh, she’s doing colonoscopy. Signed but necessary. I suppose.
Yeah. I didn’t know that was a thing for women. Oh, Marty.
Oh my God. I have one at my 50 and I have one at my 60 and I have to do it. I have to do it every five years.
I did one. I did one a couple of years ago, or maybe it was last year. And my wife was off visiting her daughter.
Right. And they’re like, do you have somebody to drive you home? And I was like, no. And I’m like, well, you got two options.
You can either, cause they do the starlight, whatever that, that, whatever that anesthesia, if we had to give you that, you got to stay here at the VA hospital overnight. Yeah. I was like, or you can go without it.
I was like, let’s go without it. And I was like, I was okay up until this one part, she goes, this part’s really going to hurt because we got to go the right turn or whatever. Yeah.
And I was like, Oh my God, this is the worst decision in my life. You you’re they didn’t even give you a value to relax. Nothing.
Cause I had to drive home. And so they were like, okay, you get nothing. And I was like, not even the glass of wine, no wine and dining.
No, they didn’t even hold my hand. No, they didn’t encourage me. So the second time I got one done, the first time I was a Chinese finger pat, they went through my mouth and my rectum.
So they found some polyps and then, so that, that, yeah. So after that, you have to go every five years. The second time it’s at the VA, but they, they had contracted out to the, uh, see you hospital come in.
Cause they, they, so I wake up like right towards the end, like not the end, like maybe had like two minutes left. Wake up. I see the camera.
I’m looking at it. I was like, Oh, do you need to go back to sleep? I was like, you know what? Some people pay for this. So I’m okay.
I want to look up on the screen and see what I’m saying. Yeah. Yeah.
So you took it like a man, unintentionally, right? Unintentionally. The hubby did is at 60 and he’ll be 70 this year. Saved his life.
Yeah. Right. I mean, the first, the first one they did, they found a, they found a polyp and had to go back in and you know, major hemicolectomy where they took out a third of his colon.
Oh man. And if he hadn’t, that would have been, that would have ran all the way through. Right.
So he had not, if they had not spotted it or thought were, cause it was on the bottom and the second, they call it. Oh, wow. Wow.
During the procedure. So they went in and took out, they cut it here and they cut it here and then reattached it. Oh my God.
Jesus. Thank God. All right.
And then if you have a history, and bring a driver, bring a driver. Don’t do what Artie did. And that’s freezing 121 while you’re late for changeover right there.
Oh, that could have been. Well, I didn’t get anesthesia during my colonoscopy. I wasn’t quite as mobile afterwards.
So that’s true. All right. Let’s get to the news.
Shall we? All right. I found this story on space.com, which I thought was pretty fascinating. So NASA’s Dragonfly nuclear powered helicopter.
All right. I guess it cleared a, it cleared a key testing point ahead of its 2028 launch towards the Saturn moon Titan. Nice.
So that was kind of cool. NASA’s pioneering Dragonfly mission has cleared a key hurdle keeping on track for a 2028 launch to Saturn’s huge moon Titan Dragonfly, a car-sized nuclear powered rotocraft designed to investigate Titan’s potential to host life past its critical design review. NASA announced last Thursday.
You guys want to see it? You want to see this thing? It’s really cool looking. So that’s an artist’s rendering. All right.
One, two, three, like eight propellers all the way around it. Yeah. Yeah.
And I I’ll show you a video later, but it’s like three years old. I was kind of surprised at that. So but anyway, that’s what Dragonfly looks like.
I don’t know how it’s nuclear powered. I really was trying to find out how is this thing nuclear powered? Telling it, obviously. Yeah.
It didn’t really say, um, guess how much this sucker is. You mean cost? Yeah. No, no fair.
If you read it, don’t guess things. No, no, no, no. I’m guessing.
Well, you got to get it up there. The nuclear power stuff like that. Um, I would say 10 mil.
10 mil. Come on. For the whole mission, let’s say for the whole mission.
Yeah. Right. I’m going to I’m going to say a couple of billion.
Yeah. OK, Juan, you want a half a billion? It’s the three point three five billion dollar Dragonfly mission was first selected by NASA in 2019 and is being designed to build on the direction of the Johns Hopkins Applied Physics Lab in Maryland. The mission is set to launch no earlier than July 2028 on a SpaceX Falcon Heavy.
Out of Kennedy Space Center, Florida, spacecraft will then embark on an almost seven year long voyage through deep space to the Saturn system with the goal of spending more than three years studying areas across Titan’s frigid and diverse surface. It will reach Titan in 2034 and for the next two and a half years. So 2034.
And this is today’s dollars that it’s three point three five billion. Right. And I mean, what’s that? SpaceX is still a company.
So, you know, they might be vandalizing the Falcon nine. Who knows? You know, let’s see. It will reach Titan in 2034.
And for the next two and a half years, nuclear powered drone is expected to perform one hop every Titan day. A Titan day is 16 days for us. So hunting for prebiotic chemical processes at various preselected locations on the frigid moon, which is known to contain organic materials equipped with camera sensors and samplers, Dragonfly will assess Titan’s habitability.
Looking out for the items that I mentioned earlier, as the only satellite in our solar system known to be blanketed by a dense atmosphere and host liquid seas on its surface, Titan has long interested planetary scientists who think the moon resembles a primordial methane rich earth and could offer clues to the genesis of life. So I’m going to show you a video. Now, remember, this is like three years old, but it’s a pretty good, you get a pretty good idea of what it looks like and how it works.
So they’re flying again in the desert somewhere. It’s pretty cool though. See, that doesn’t look like a size of a car though, does it? Oh, that’s, that’s a good size.
Yeah, it looks a little smaller, but again, this was years ago. So it may, may have, I couldn’t find a, it could have been the prototype. That could have been.
Yeah, right. Right. It could have been cool.
Nuclear power. Nuclear powered. It doesn’t have to rely on the sun like a building.
Well, that one, and even that video said it was set to launch in 2027. Now they’re saying 2028. But the nuclear power is cool because it doesn’t have to care whether or not it’s in sunlight.
Right. It’s not relying on the solar stuff, which has been the bugaboo. The dudes that landed on the moon just recently and it tipped over where one of the solar panels no longer got any sun.
So it got no energy. Right. That was the second one they tipped over.
That was the second one they tipped over. But I do have a question. It didn’t talk about, will it fly autonomously? Meaning we know what to do.
And right now it takes about 20 to 30 minutes for a message from us to Mars to reach any of our rovers. Yeah. And this is farther out.
Hours. I asked the hubby, he’s the expert. How long would it take for a message to get from command center or control center here to Titan? He’s hours, eight to 10 hours there and then back.
Well, I can only imagine it’s got to be like a pre-programmed hop sequence, right? Um, and it makes a lot of sense. Uh, the thing that hit me and that’s a good question, Michelle, but the thing that hit me is like, why are we all the rovers we see are like treads or wheels, right? It makes brilliant sense. If Titan has the atmosphere, you know, obviously to do that, you couldn’t do it on a moon.
I get that. But so it would make sense. It’s like, Hey, uh, fly and land at this next point enough to know where they’re and where there’s not.
So they just have to make sure it knows to stay above a certain elevation. So the side of a sand dune or something really smart. All right, Juan, you’re on the dragon fly on the dragon fly stacks and stuff.
According to Wikipedia and they got all their stuff from NASA. Um, the command is going to take from seven, the messaging, the radio waves will take 70 to 90 minutes. One way.
Wow. Whoa, really? The hubby was wrong. I got to tell him Juan’s looking at Wikipedia too.
So well, well, and the resource is NASA. So minutes there, or is that round trip? It’s gotta be one, one way. One minute.
So yeah. So it is a few hours if you’re going back and forth, right? 90 minutes. It’s an hour and a half, right? When you do minutes, you think of it shorter, but no, it’s an hour and a half one way.
By the time it comes back, you’re talking about three hours. Right. Exactly.
I think it’s smart. Yeah. You know, it’s, uh, but it does have a lot of moving pieces to it.
Right. I mean, if one blade doesn’t work, you know, maybe it still has enough. Maybe it just limps to the next one.
It had eight of them, like double stack. Right. Right.
Right. I don’t know. And also like, you know, the payload, like when, once the rocket goes out there and launches the payload out there, you know, like that payload still has to navigate through all that.
Like, I don’t know how. I can see them landing it the same way they did the rovers on Mars. Giant balloons come to the surface, then exposes its exterior shell and now power it up.
But it has, but that’s a, that’s a, that’s another interesting thing, right? Because, uh, the normal rovers can like drive away from the landing stuff. This thing has to be all clear to power up and fly. Yeah.
Yeah. Like, is it going to have gyros to make sure like the payload, like the, the, the payload, like where it’s inside for it to actually land properly? Yeah. If it doesn’t, can it right itself? Can it, you know, uh, yeah, that’s three and a half billion dollars worth of risk.
It’s gotta be done though. Yeah. Yeah.
How are we ever going to find out if we can do this? My husband and I are big fans of Star Trek. We’ve recently picked up Star Trek or excuse me. Yes.
Um, Enterprise with Scott Bakula here. The Oh, not in order of succession, but yeah. Yeah.
Yeah. After, uh, what’s his name there? Next gen, right. It was after next gen.
This is 200 years before Kirk. Oh, okay. And it’s 200 years before Kirk a hundred years after the first guy found, uh, propulsion to get into orbit, whatever.
I can’t remember, but we are loving it because it’s almost our generation dealing with the exploration that we’re have to do. Oh, I see. Yeah.
Yeah. Yeah. Oh, so they’re doing all the studies and stuff.
2137 is the year. So it’s only just over a hundred years from now. Did they have warp engines at that time? They did warp 5. 5.0 was the fastest they could go.
And they’re meeting new, you know, they knew Vulcans cause they have a Vulcan on the crew, but it’s really cool to see how they reference stuff on earth or, you know, the moon and Mars and then all the other planets. It’s pretty cool. But you think there’s been a show more influential on future design stuff than Star Trek? Star Trek gave us the flip phone, right.
They did give us that quite a bit communicators. Yeah. They give us actually quite a bit of stuff, but, uh, we haven’t done much when it comes to flying and what space or Star Trek has offered us, right.
You know, our triples, we haven’t really thought the other night on the show, I watched the doctor who is a different alien race and human picks up a triple out of he’s, he’s in the medical lab and he picks up a triple and tells one of the crew members what it is. And of course me and the hubby recognize it from trouble with her. He walks over and feeds it to one of his other animals in the lab.
It was the triple with somebody’s live bait. He puts it in there and you hear the crunch and you’re like, Oh, wait a minute. That was a triple, but it was hilarious.
Yeah. Well, if you feed them after midnight, then they become gremlins. Exactly.
Like the gremlins. Exactly. Yeah.
Right. It’s look at that name. How old are we? All right.
Uh, okay. Let’s move on. Let’s move.
So this one I’m interested in your opinions. Okay. This, this next story is from task and purpose, and it’s another fitness story from the army.
So the new army fitness test goes sex neutral for combat jobs. Right. So this is interesting.
Um, the army announced two major changes to its fitness standards last week, Monday, uh, soldiers in 21 combat jobs will have to pass a gender neutral test while the standing power throw, uh, will be thrown out for all soldiers because they’ve determined that that causes a lot of injury. So they’re standing there and they gotta, they gotta work this weight. Yeah.
Yeah. I mean, we get enough injury playing soccer. Part of your fit test is to throw this weight backwards by like, Oh, my back.
What are you going to do on the battlefield that you’re, you, you’ve served in what armor? I was artillery. Yeah. We weren’t throwing stuff over our shoulder.
You had something that could project it towards, you know, right, right, right. Uh, I know it was kind of interesting. Um, but the move rebrands, the army combat fitness test as back to the army fitness test and will become the services test of record starting June 1st, the test, which is semi-annual for active duty and annual for national guard and reserve will carry over five events.
The three repetition, uh, max deadlift hand release pushups. Now that I still haven’t really done those, but you gotta go down and then take your hands off the ground and then push back up. Oh, it’s not clapping in between.
So you can’t get that rock that some of these guys do. You gotta go down, take your hands off and then put them back. Um, the sprint drag carry, uh, a plank and a two mile run.
So it’s kind of nice that they got rid of the sit-ups, the, you know, that old way of sit-ups that was no good from the back. What’s the point? Um, I think just the plank, uh, what on your elbows, I think. Yeah.
Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.
And you got to keep your body straight and you’re just holding your, your body like you’re facing yourself straight. Yeah. For a period of time.
I don’t know what the time is, but so, so the thing about like, you know, we always talk about how there’s injuries, right. And I’m thinking about if you’re doing that with the pushups, right. And your wrist, right.
You know, you’re just like, catching. I was like, I mean, what’s the added benefit of doing that? Like, like we’re in the assessment. I think what it is is because you have, I, this might guess, but you have too many people who don’t go down far enough.
Right. Or you have people who like do that rocking motion to kind of, and I think this eliminates all that. Right.
Right. Yeah. I don’t know what the reps have required.
I should have looked that up, but, um, it just seems like so, so hard to do for like a high number of reps, but I don’t know. I don’t know. Um, but starting January 1st, next year, men and women will have to meet the same requirements that they’re assigned to any of 21 combat focused military occupation specialties through the final require though the final required scores were not released on Monday.
So they haven’t determined what passing is and all that kind of stuff yet, but it’s going to be close. They said the new quote, sex neutral fitness requirements will apply to soldiers and officers in the infantry, special forces, artillery, armor, cab mortar men, and combat engineers, uh, for those 21. And they also added special forces.
I think for those 21 MOS is they will be, they will all be graded on the male scale. So the sex neutral command command sergeant major Joanne Newman said, go ahead. You just said sex neutral, but it will be based on the male scale.
True. And they should have, they should have just said, it’s going to be based on one scale, but they are, I think they are going to use the males, the male standards. So, but that’s not sex neutral.
Uh, it’s a standard for both sexes now, but they’re going to go with what was set for men, not for what was set for females. True. Which I think will change the minimums.
So, um, it goes into it a little bit here. Uh, the passing score for most people will be a 300 with a minimum of 60 in every event. Uh, for those in, uh, the 21 MOS is the passing score will be three 50 with a minimum of 60 in every event, uh, for soldiers and non-combat MOS is there’s no change right now.
They haven’t, they’re just going to let that go the way it is. Right. Um, using the current scorecard, I think they’re going to alter that, but they haven’t, they haven’t decided that yet.
Changes are not as dramatically different depending on the event for example, soldiers across all age groups have to get a minimum of 10 pushups to pass that event for the plank. Each age group has the same time requirement for both men and women to pass the deadlift event was 60 points. Women, 17 to 21 years old previously had the deadlift 120 pounds, but under the new standard, they would have to lift 140 pounds.
So a 20 pound increase to, to reach the minimum, uh, for the sprint drag carry event, women in that age group would have to complete the event and under two minutes, 28 seconds instead of three minutes, 15 seconds. So they lose 45 seconds on that. Okay.
Okay. Yeah. Command Sergeant major Joanne Nowman said, I think that it will give every soldier, particularly in those 21 MOS is where everyone is going to have the same standard.
It will give them the confidence in themselves and in each other that they’re meeting the requirements that they have the fitness necessary to be in those physically demanding fields. Okay. I tend to agree with that.
Um, she went on to say, just like I wouldn’t put someone with a low test score on their ASVAB into a cyber job, because there’s a certain level of intelligence that we assume is necessary to do that job. There’s a certain level of fitness that’s necessary to do certain jobs like in the combat arms. It’s about being a fit force that’s ready to fight.
Yep. Yep. So I agree with that.
Think about lifeguards. This is not, not even take the military, but lifeguards for a pull, they, I believe they have to meet the same standards, whether they’re a female or male, you have to lift that, that amount of weight to save a person’s life. I think, I think firemen do that too.
I think they got to carry the hose. They got to carry the body. They got to do all that stuff.
So, um, it’s about freaking time. Really? Yeah. That’s interesting.
Yeah. Good. When I was active duty 40 something years ago, you don’t have to do that part.
Yeah. When you were active duty, the standards were different for men and women and based on your age, did they say in this article that they’re getting rid of the age? Age will still apply. It’s just no different.
A 25 year old sergeant major doesn’t have to run as quickly as 22 year old. True. Private first class.
Okay. Right. Right.
But I, especially in the combat, I’m glad they made that distinction. Yeah. Yeah.
I think that’s good too. This has been army wide. I probably would have had a problem with it, but in the combat role of which I’ve seen and read many stories, there are a lot of bad-ass females out there that can kick the ass of many army animals in this arena.
And if you can do it, you do it. Yeah. If you can’t, then they’ll find another job for you.
But, and that applies to men as well. Well, there are, there are a lot of guys that, you know, they can’t pass the standards. I think this is important and it may be, if there may only be a 25 to 30 percentage of women that can complete this physical fitness standard, then they’re all the, we’re all the better for that 30% of women that can do it.
I think it will also be a relief for the guys because then they don’t have to act like, oh yeah, we’re all doing it equal. Oh, she getting an award for maxing her PT test. And I’m like, we weren’t doing it equally.
Then again, it’s the same standard. So if I know I’m deploying with my teammates, regardless of gender, then hey, I know that, hey, we all had to go through the same training and then like, hey, you know, I know that she can pick up my heavy ass and just take me where I need to go in case I fall out. And not even that, but look at how it would change the feel of the whole unit.
The whole unit. To know that we’re all, you know, we’re all there. They’ve all met that standard.
Yeah. I really want to see is the 45 year old Lieutenant Colonel. Yeah, well.
He’s the same as his 22 year old troops. Yeah, that’s true. That’s, that’s a tough one.
They’re the ones making the decisions to put their people in the battle. But I think it’s fine finally, and we can, we can put it to rest with HECSF. You want to make it even standards across the board for men and women, especially in combat roles.
I’m all for it. And when you pass, they pass. Right.
Right. But, but then there’s no question on it. Right.
Right. Because for, for all of our military career, we’ve been there and, you know, they always say how the armies, you know, the, or the military’s leading the culture. Right.
Look, we were first to integrate. We’re the first look at it. We, we, we have women in combat.
Now we have women doing all this stuff, but everyone knows it’s like, yeah, but your standards are different. Exactly. You know, so could not.
And I got to tell this story. Alan’s late aunt, who was a nurse and army, army nurse and, and then air force during World War II, Korea timeframe served in Burma, China. Wow.
And do you know what they were rated on? Not only how they wore the uniform, but how well they applied their lipstick. I have the book. Really? They gauged women in the military in the forties and fifties on was well.
And it’s because of things like that, like the things like in history, that the term token, a lot of people always think, oh, it’s by token. But no, the word token actually came from treating women as that token. Oh, they’re here with us.
They’re right alongside us. So like, like that’s, that’s actually where the term comes from. It was like, it was like things like that, like treating them delicately or treating them more like, Hey, you have to be very feminine, feminine.
And that’s, yeah. But on the same hand, I remember in the nineties when that big push was to integrate women into the Citadel, I think it was the Citadel was a first a cat. Well, not the first one, the first non West Point, not the first military school to do it.
And they were traditional. I think it was a Citadel, Citadel or VMI. I can’t remember, but they finally like the women wonder court case.
And it was like three of them that went and they all dropped out like before the first year. And so it was just like, were you just trying to pioneer it with no real intent to graduate from the Citadel? I think they were like the first ones too. So I think even breaking that culture, right.
Like, you know, they probably had their, they’re like, oh, wow. Like, you know, maybe there’s probably other factors and was it the right way of doing it? And could the school step in? Yeah. But then again, even the school had to embrace that culture.
So they probably like, yeah, you know what? The men are probably gonna show them out anyway. So let’s entertain it. Welcome ladies.
Well, they had to, right. It was legally. They had to, right.
They want, they had won that challenge. But the problem is, is that it’s Citadel, you know, it’s not like Harvard law school, you know, because the Citadel gets assessed with ROTC. They don’t get assessed with West Point and all that.
So it’s a Citadel. I don’t know what you’re getting out of going to the Citadel other than a look at me thing. That’s what I had an issue with.
G.I. Jane, that’s a perfect example because in the movie with Demi Moore, it was a Senator that was trying to push that. Yeah. Good point.
Yeah. Yeah. He sponsored her until it became, you know, not comfortable for her to do so, but they didn’t change the standards for that movie.
She went with what the men did. Now, most, most academies, Annapolis and the Air Force Academy and West Point, you have to pass the same physical fitness standards, I believe. You might be right.
Yeah, you might be right. At least if it’s not, it’ll be interesting to see when that changes, if they’re already changing combat. Because if you don’t really know what role you’re going to go into in the Army, if you’re going to be combat or not.
These standards that we’re talking about right now are based on combat roles. But I think it’s, I think it’s fabulous. And if they can do it, more power to them, kick ass.
Sure. Yeah. Where in the Air Force do you think, I mean, because the Army is structured, you know, they have combat arms, combat support, and then combat service support, right? And combat arms is obviously infantry, armor, artillery, that kind of stuff.
Combat support is, you know, your medics, your maintainers, that kind of thing. Combat service support is quartermaster, hospital, beans and bullets stuff. So, Air Force is not really rated that way.
It’s combat comm. But it would be interesting to see if like they did that for security forces. Right.
Right, for example. They should, yeah. Marty, you remember in the 310th, we had many, many of our personnel, security force personnel there in lieu of the personnel to Iraq, as well as in Afghanistan.
And the females that went too, and they had to meet the same exact standards. Sure. As the men did, you know, so yeah, you got to be able to do the job.
You got to be able to lift your fireman’s carry, you know, you got to reload your weapon under duress. You got to be able to do all the same things that the men have been doing for eons. Yeah, that’s true.
Uh, all right. Hey, cool, man. Let’s see.
Let’s see what we get in comments on that circuit. But all right. It would be interesting to see a pilot.
Speaking of pilots. Okay. We always, we all look to pilots, you know, is there a more glamorous job in the military than a pilot? I would think probably not.
Or maybe you could get some arguments, but pilot is generally, oh, you’re a pilot. You’re a badass, right? I mean, we’ve seen the Blue Angels stand in line. We’ve seen the Thunderbirds stand in line.
Those guys are just, they’re carbon copies of each other, man. Rail thin. Yeah.
If you’re in the space force, the space operator is a pilot. To stop that. How many sorties did you do on that satellite today? All the time.
Oh my God. So we, you know, we’re always in all of that stuff, but there is a behind the scenes portion of the pilots. There’s many behind the scenes portions, but this story covers not the most glamorous part, but a real fact of the pilots, right? So from task and purpose, uh, air force pilots are going to get a new way to pee at 30,000 feet.
Now this sounds funny and it is funny, but when you go through some of the things that they’re, that this results in, right, that you don’t think about, um, it’s, it’s a pretty serious issue, you know, even for a pilot. So for decades, many military pilots who heard nature’s call, particularly those who fly fighters and especially women in those planes faced an unpleasant reality, use the decades old, what they call piddle packs or other devices designed for mid-flight peeing, or they could hold it the whole way or risk dangerous dehydration by drinking so little water that you never need to go. Did you ever think of that stuff? I was like, Whoa, that’s what they do.
Okay. Uh, there’s a new device dubbed the advanced light relief universal system or EROS, which was developed through an air force innovation incubator program. But let’s go back and see what, what they have to suffer through.
So for as long as there have been planes in the sky, pilots and single seat aircraft like fighter jets or others with ejection seats have had to unbuckle their harnesses, shimmy up from their seats to find a position that allowed for relief. So like, like we maybe, maybe not all of us, but some of us have done on long road trips, right? You got to do the same thing, right? Uh, in rare occasions, the urge to go has led to fatal accidents, including one, a 10 pilot who failed to restrap himself properly into his parachute after using a device to pee only to be a force to eject later in that flight. And it killed him.
Oh God. I know. I didn’t even think of that stuff.
But while mishaps are rare, drinking too much water is a daily struggle, particularly for women pilots who fly fighters, who have long found even traditional pedal packs to be woefully inadequate. Many say they regularly fly while dehydrated hurting reflexes and leaving them susceptible to G induced loss of consciousness just to avoid peeing on a flight. Can you imagine that you’re going into a flight with a headache because you haven’t drank all day? That’s crazy.
The first thing they tell you when you travel commercial airlines is hydrate, hydrate, hydrate. Right, right. And you’re changing an atmosphere.
And we’re not even pulling any G’s. Well, we could, but we’d crash. Inadvertently, yeah.
Then your water doesn’t matter after that. Doesn’t matter. A 2023 survey of Navy flyers found that nearly 93% of female pilots and air crews stationed in California, Japan, and Spain said they would tactically dehydrate to avoid having to pee in the cockpit, sometimes not drinking water on flights as long as eight hours.
Researchers have found that dehydrated pilots can have lower G tolerance by up to 50%, leading to G induced loss of consciousness, a reduction of physical and cognitive abilities, headaches, and altered vision. All right. So what are these pedal packs? They’ve been used for decades by men and women have to make them work.
The devices are little more than a bag filled with gel that can hold about 500 milliliters of urine. For men, using the bag is more straightforward, said Dr. Nisha Pope, a retired Air Force colonel and urologist. But women, she said, have to get undressed and even stand up to use it.
I don’t know how they do that. They got to, I guess, pull the flight suits. You’d think that they would at least give them a little, what do we used to call those pajamas that had the back door thing? Like the little Abner kind of thing? Like the flap in the back? Right, right, right.
The flap in the front, but anyway, go ahead. The new ARIS device began as a proposal for the 2020 Sky High Relief Challenge sponsored by AFWERX. The challenge called for a urine collection system that could be used by women pilots and for flight missions lasting up to 16 hours.
Don’t the B-52 guys, weren’t they flying from bark stale over to the Middle East and back? They’ve got other guys. No, no, no, I know. But the length of the mission.
True, but they had a bathroom. Yeah, that’s true, that’s true. And you put it on an old pilot and let another guy take over, you know? Okay, this device comes with five different cups for women and two sizes for men that are attached to a pump and collection bag that can hold up to 1,800 milliliters or four to seven urinations, according to Colt Seaman, founder of Aerion, the company behind the device.
The device also comes with dual knit fabric underwear to make it more comfortable. I didn’t find a picture of it, but they said the device has worked so far in Air Force testing. Kayla McCabe, a female fitment coordinator at Air Combat Command’s air crew performance branch, said they found that it, quote, did not hinder movements while pilots were doing critical flight maneuvers, such as close air support, like airstrikes and defensive counterattacks.
So they’re working on it. I never really knew. And the article went on.
There was another colonel they quoted who’s she said, I’ve been bringing this up for 30 years. And I was like, yeah, I guess so. Yeah, yeah.
You got fighter pilots dehydrating themselves. Or, or the mechanism that they gave them was not effective. Yeah.
But again, did you end up soaking wet or, you know, whatever. The first flight, suborbital flight for, you know, did the mercury or was it mercury? Yeah. And in the right stuff, he says, I need permission to urinate.
I’ve been sitting on the pad waiting to go for the last four hours. And he filled himself with coffee that morning and he peed. Right.
And it filled up, but it didn’t break it. Yeah. But, and I will say this quick, my daughter works for a company that has fleets of vehicles.
Okay. And her vehicle had to go into the repair shop. So she was given a loaner that had been used by someone else.
When she went to grab this vehicle and got out onto the road to do her job, she found bottles of urine in the back of the vehicle because the drivers can’t find a place to go. Right. And they’re men, obviously.
Yeah. Well, women don’t have that ability to just keep the bottle and throw it out the window or leave it in my truck. Right.
So this is great news. Finally, along the lines of the astronaut suits, finally being able to fit women appropriately as well. Right.
It’s fine. Why are we talking about finally designing a way for a woman? I know, it does seem way overdue, right? Way overdue. You know, one thing that stood out in that story is just the, you know, like if you’re in a system or you’re working in a certain environment, the habits you get are the things that you do to kind of get around things, right? I mean, yeah, you know, even if you’re deployed, you know, you don’t want to necessarily walk out of your billet to the, you know, to the latrine or whatever.
So everybody stocks up on Gatorade bottles because everybody knows those are the best for a guy. Those are the best pee bottles you can get. Right.
Oh, yeah. I mean, it’s, yeah. Wide mouth, stable base.
It’s fantastic. Right. But the fact that these pilots are like, well, I don’t want to, but I better not drink for a couple hours before this five-hour flight.
Capabilities later in the flight, my ability to handle G-forces reduced by almost 50%. Right. And only now they’re figuring that out.
God, I can’t, I can’t. It’s amazing that we can get technology to put a nuclear-powered car-sized rotorcraft on Titan, but I can’t get you to pee inside of a cockpit. That’s crazy, right? No, it is crazy.
It is crazy. All right. A couple weeks ago, we talked about Guinness World Records and we did a story on Ronan the rat in Cambodia.
Oh, yeah. That rat set a world record for detecting landmines. Yeah.
Well, Guinness World Records is back. They have a new record, right? Uh, this story’s from Task and Purpose. And an army captain sets the Guinness World Record for a bomb suit run.
Wow. Did you ever think about putting on a bomb suit and running? So am I thinking of the same suit that was in O-Dark Zero or Zero Dark? Yeah, it’s the EOD suit, right? It’s the EOD suit. So U.S. Army Captain Travis Chuning Kulik.
It’s a hyphenated last name. Chuning and Kulik. He’s the commander of the 752nd Ordnance Company, Explosive Ordnance Disposal.
He just set a Guinness World Record for the fastest mile in a bomb disposal suit. Oh, shit. Yeah.
Let me show you the picture before I tell you. Sorry. Oh, say that again? I bet you he needed something to pee in when he was done.
I don’t know. You could probably pee in that suit. And, you know, it’s full of Kevlar.
Nobody’s going to question that. So this is Army Captain Travis, uh, how do you say his last name again? Chuning Kulik, running in that full EOD suit. His time was, for one mile, seven minutes and four seconds.
Whoa. A full bomb suit weighs approximately 50 pounds. And he ran a mile in that thing in seven minutes and four seconds.
He did it on April 25th at Fort Cavazos in Texas. The official ruling from the Guinness World Record takes roughly six months to be confirmed, but multiple witnesses on hand reported his time, which was a third of a minute faster than the standing record. Oh.
The, let’s see, uh, Chuning Kulik’s time is 20 seconds faster than the previous record holder. A British Army officer, Mark Gibbs, ran a seven minute, 24 second mile in a bomb suit in December, 2017 for a charity event. That record has stood for more than seven years.
How many people are trying to do that? Exactly. Hey, I want to be a bomb disposal guy so I can break the record. It’s like, hey Juan, what do you think? You want to try for the record today? Oh, maybe, I don’t know.
Yeah, not today. Not today. In 2021, Army Captain Caitlin Hernandez set the world record for the fastest mile to bomb suit for women with a time of 10 minutes and 23 seconds.
So good on her, Warren. And for a woman, obviously she was smaller, but it’s still the same 50 pounds of suit. 50 pounds, yep.
Yeah. So that’s pretty amazing. He didn’t have the helmet covered down though, unless he took it off.
Jeez, you’re a tough Guinness World Record judge there. I would have loved to have seen what, you know, but anyway, he still carried the weight. Maybe you would have let him finish and like, hey, that’s a hell of a run, but you didn’t have the visor down so none of it counts.
Well, we’ll come back tomorrow if you want to try again. Rules are rules. So good on you, Cap.
Good job. He must have lost five pounds in sweat alone. Oh my God.
Now, granted, it was only a mile. It’s still a mile. A mile is a mile.
But it’s not like, you know, the baton march or something like that. But seven minutes, that’s still faster than I could without it. It’s kind of like me and Bucky, we’re in the renaissance and we wear, we are characters at the renaissance festival and we wear full regalia.
Yeah. Oh, I saw you that one time a few years ago. You did, you did, yep.
And mine weighs about, total with everything on, the belt with all the accoutrement is about 12 to 15 pounds of velvet. It’s got to wear you out at the end of the day, right? Well, that’s why I now wear suspenders to hold the skirt up at the bottom. Oh yeah, yeah, yeah.
Shoulders is killing my kidneys. But I keep wanting in what I wear to the renaissance. And it was a third of the weight that this guy was carrying.
Yeah. Good point. Yeah, that’s a good point.
I mean, uh, you know, he’s a young guy, he’s a captain, so he’s in his twenties, but he’s going to hate that when he’s in his fifties. Knees are going to be shot. His hips will hurt.
And the VA is going to have to take care of him for the rest of his life. Maybe he’s running for his rating. He’s like, look at this, this is guaranteed 50%.
So good job, Captain. Good job. All right.
Now is the time when Mr. History would step forward, but maybe we got some competition for our U.S. military history. Take it away, Michelle. You bet.
I would never have known this. One of them I did know because it’s been making the news recently. A lot of talk about it in history.
So on April 30th, 1789, George Washington took office for president of the United States. Oh, April 30th. In April.
Interesting. He was unanimously elected by the electoral college. And John Adams was elected his vice president.
He took the oath of office in New York City on the balcony of the federal hall. He was reelected in 1792, but declined to run for a third term after that. So on this day in 1789, our first president of the United States took the oath of office.
April 30th. Wow, that’s a good one. That sounds like a Mr. History type of event.
So very good. Yeah, very good. Like I said, I have this great book that my kids got me on this day in history.
And I leave it upstairs as a coffee table book. So anybody that stops by can look up their birthday. So anyway, the next one was 60 years ago today.
Okay. Think. A few years ago? 50 years ago.
Oh, 50 years ago today. So 50 years. 75.
Oh, it was the beginning of that airlift operation, right? Out of Saigon? It was the fall of Saigon. Okay. And the Viet Cong occupied strategic positions in the city, including the presidential palace.
Nearly all American civilian and military personnel were evacuated from the city, as were thousands of South Vietnamese who had cooperated with the South Vietnamese government. South Vietnamese General Duong Van Nguyen surrendered and the government capitulated soon after. So as of 50 years ago today, the fall of Saigon.
The famous photographs you’ve seen, the helicopter falling off the carrier and people grabbing onto the aircraft as it was trying to leave the airport. Which looks strangely like the exit out of Afghanistan. Yeah.
Anyway, what do I know? The exit out of Afghanistan was people clinging onto the landing gear of the C-17. I know that’s insane. Yeah.
Now, I’ll give you a little latitude on that one because you probably didn’t know. I think Eric actually did that one last year sometime around that. So Eric, if you’re listening, we know you did that one before.
Oh, the Saigon one? Okay. But I bet you he didn’t do this one. Okay.
It’s not a military thing, but Ellen Degeneres is Out of the Closet. Oh, God. 1997.
Really? That’s that long ago. He had this TV show and she came out of the closet. Yeah, yeah.
All right. This is a really cool book. If you can ever find it, it’s got a lot of great… But my… Ellen Degeneres is in that one? My… I’m sorry.
Yes, exactly. My granddaughter noticed, my 11-year-old granddaughter just a week ago noticed that the Titanic of all the three days of its last voyage, hitting the bird and sinking is not in this book. Oh.
And I said, Caroline, you’re wrong. And she said, look it up. And I did.
It’s not in this book. Yeah. So it’s a suspect, huh? Suspect, yes.
It has its own history books, but still that my 11-year-old granddaughter went looking for it and couldn’t find it. Wow. That was pretty industrious there.
Like, Grandma, there’s only $20 in this birthday card. There’s supposed to be $50 in this birthday card. There’ll be more.
There’ll be more. Why did you short me on this change? Yeah. Give our writer a traveler’s check.
Let her try to figure that one out. Yeah, right. Thank you for letting me fill in for Eric, but… All right.
I’m going to face the wrath, because I allowed a non-military history in there, and I’ve chewed them out before. I consider myself military history. You slipped that in.
You were crafty there, Chief. You were crafty. Yeah, I married to one, and I’ve got a library that I can show you.
Anything you want to know, you just ask, and I’ll look it up. All right. That sounds like a great way to end up, unless you guys got any final words.
Any final words? No? Oh, Chief, you’re great. You’re great on there. Thanks for offering the women’s perspective.
I’m sure Ana’s listening, but she’s all starlighted up, so she might not remember any of this. But on behalf of all of us here, I’d like to thank you for listening today. Please like, share, subscribe.
Let us know how we did in the comments, and make sure next week that you are not ready for Chaser World. Oh. Chief Juan, thanks for the week.
Thanks for being here. And to everyone listening and watching, thanks for watching and listening, and we’ll see you next week. Take care.
Bye-bye.