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A new Guard Special Tactics Squadron at MacDill Air Force Base could become one of the most desirable assignments in Air Force Special Warfare. Aaron, Trent and Peaches break down why Tampa is such a strong location, why experienced operators could immediately compete for those billets, and why a Guard STS gives Airmen another option besides staying active duty or walking away from the community completely. The guys argue that the demand could be enormous, especially among experienced CCT, SR and Special Tactics personnel looking for civilian careers, family stability and a way to stay connected to the team.
The bigger conversation is talent retention. The Special Tactics Guard footprint is extremely small compared with the number of experienced operators who eventually leave active duty, and Trent argues that Tampa should be the first of several additional Guard STSs. The crew discusses the potential short-term hit to active-duty manning, but also the possibility of retaining people who might otherwise leave the Air Force entirely. They explore future locations in the Carolinas, Arizona, Nevada, Texas and the Southwest, along with the idea of Guard squadrons developing specialties in areas like drones, diving, global access and other mission sets.
The episode also gets into MacDill’s potential role in hurricane and humanitarian response, Guard authorities, NASA support opportunities and the advantages of keeping experienced operators connected to both military and civilian innovation. The guys react to Rep. Anna Paulina Luna’s announcement about the unit and her emphasis on disaster-response capability, then close with the usual Ones Ready discussion about internet behavior, politicians, and why people say things online they would never say face-to-face.
LINKS
onesready.com
operatortrainingsummit.com
CHAPTERS
00:00 - Ones Ready
00:48 - The Entire Crew Actually Wears Ones Ready Merch
01:12 - Operator Training Summit Las Vegas Is Filling Up
02:28 - New Guard Special Tactics Squadron at MacDill AFB
03:15 - Why Tampa Could Become the Most Popular Guard STS
05:19 - The Team Room After Active Duty
06:15 - Why Air Force Special Warfare Needs More Guard STSs
07:35 - Would a Tampa STS Hurt Active-Duty Manning?
08:33 - CCT and PJ Manning Challenges
09:18 - Retaining Experienced Special Tactics Operators
10:27 - Guard Service and Civilian Career Opportunities
11:20 - Where Should the Next Guard STSs Go?
12:40 - Carolinas, Arizona, Nevada and Texas
13:05 - Specialized Guard STS Mission Sets
14:20 - MacDill Facilities and Florida Response Missions
15:47 - The Politics Behind the New Tampa STS
16:51 - Anna Paulina Luna Explains the Guard STS
18:10 - Why Humanitarian Response Is Strong Messaging
19:38 - Why People Act Differently on the Internet
20:54 - Ones Ready Wrap-Up
PINNED COMMENT
If the Air Force builds more Guard Special Tactics Squadrons, where should they go next?
A — Carolinas
B — Arizona
C — Texas
D — Nevada
E — Somewhere else
And bigger question: would more Guard STSs help retain experienced CCT/SR/ST talent — or hurt active-duty manning too much?
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The F-22 is no longer just flying with other fighter jets. Aaron, Trent, and Peaches break down the emerging world of collaborative combat aircraft, autonomous drone wingmen, and Anduril’s YFQ-44A Fury concept — where a fighter pilot can act as the quarterback and assign high-level tasks to unmanned aircraft operating alongside the formation. The guys also talk about the possibility of ground forces eventually gaining access to those aircraft and what happens when the person on the ground effectively has their own airborne combat network overhead. 

The bigger conversation is about why companies like Anduril seem able to move so quickly. Instead of waiting years for the perfect government program, the model they describe is simple: find the warfighter’s problem, build a minimum viable product, let the military break it, fix what failed, and repeat until it works. Trent and Aaron compare that mentality to SpaceX and Tesla — organizations willing to crash prototypes, absorb failure, and keep iterating rather than treating every mistake like the end of a program. 

Naturally, the episode eventually gets completely off the rails. The guys talk about rocket-powered Teslas, autonomous Cybercabs, Knight Rider becoming real life, Aaron’s caffeine problem, Weapons School recovery data showing what Friday-night drinking does to performance, and the eternal military question of where high performance ends and team-room culture begins. Peaches also walks through the refreshed Ones Ready and Operator Training Summit sites before the crew tees up the MBRS-only follow-on discussion. 

LINKS
onesready.com
operatortrainingsummit.com

CHAPTERS
00:00 - Ones Ready
01:10 - Aaron and Trent Start Without Peaches
02:20 - Aaron’s 91st Squadron Leadership Talk
04:36 - Peaches Finally Shows Up
05:08 - The Rise Against Ticket Disaster
07:19 - War Room Recall and the Election Episode
09:05 - Are Ones Ready Actually Vet Bros?
10:24 - Anduril, F-22s and Autonomous Combat Aircraft
12:20 - F-22 Controlled Robot Wingmen
13:08 - Ground Forces Controlling Combat Drones
13:51 - Why Anduril Moves Faster Than Traditional Defense
14:53 - Build It, Break It, Fix It
15:59 - New Ones Ready Website and OTS Updates
19:23 - Operator Training Summit Level 2 Is Coming
19:50 - Autonomous Aircraft That Take Off and Land Themselves
20:51 - Elon Musk and the Rocket-Powered Tesla
23:14 - Why Elon’s Failure Model Works
24:17 - Why Government Innovation Moves Differently
25:13 - The $500,000 Flying Tesla Problem
26:41 - Tesla Is Basically Knight Rider Now
27:59 - The Flying Tesla Needs Autonomous Wingmen
28:44 - Cybercabs and OTS Dallas
30:01 - Aaron’s 800mg Caffeine Habit
30:25 - Weapons School Recovery Data and Alcohol
33:51 - Military Culture vs Human Performance
34:47 - The MBRS Episode Gets Teased
35:33 - Ones Ready Wrap-Up
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This MBRS episode starts where most people get uncomfortable and keeps going. Peaches and Trent open with a simple truth from Taylor Starch: nobody runs enough, your hips are probably trash, and injury fear is mostly self-inflicted. From there, the conversation spirals—into broken leadership inside special warfare training, why loosening standards hurts recruiting instead of helping it, and how accountability actually attracts the right people. The back half dives hard into culture: nuclear power fear-mongering, why modern society is terrible at raising functional young men, the illusion of safety, bullying, discipline, violence, and the consequences of parents outsourcing responsibility. Add conspiracy detours, EU dysfunction, Army crime cases, and a brutal assessment of American cultural decay—and you get a classic members-only rant that doesn’t pretend to be polite.
⏱️ Timestamps:
 00:00 Members intro and running truth bomb
 01:00 Nobody runs enough—Taylor Starch wisdom
 03:00 Hips, gait issues, and injury prevention
 05:00 Zulu course chaos and leadership gaps
 08:00 Pipeline frustration and entitlement mindset
 12:00 Standards, accountability, and recruiting reality
 15:00 Tightening discipline vs “unprofessional” complaints
 18:00 Validation, war myths, and why people want testing
 21:00 Younger generations: fitter, smarter, different
 24:00 AI models, GPUs, and future warfare brains
 27:00 Nuclear power fear vs reality
 31:00 TSA, illusion of safety, and wasted money
 35:00 Violence, bullying, and social correction
 40:00 Army murder case and cultural breakdown
 47:00 Parenting failures and lost male mentorship
 55:00 Teaching basic life skills and confidence
 01:00:00 Final rant, nuclear saves the world, wrap-up
🎯 Call-to-Actions:
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A 36-year-old father was driving home on his lunch break when he heard gunfire near Silver Rail Elementary School in Bend, Oregon — the school his two daughters attended. According to the account Trent and Peaches discuss, he saw the teenage gunman entering the building, followed him inside, and stopped the attacker before police arrived. But afterward, his family said he wasn’t looking for recognition. He was struggling with the fact that he hadn’t gotten there sooner.

That becomes the real conversation in this Outside The Wire episode. Trent and Peaches talk about survivor guilt, trauma involving children, combat experience, PTSD, and the difference between someone trained and conditioned for violence versus a civilian who suddenly finds himself walking into something no normal person expects to see. They also revisit the problem with the “hero tour”: society wants to celebrate people who perform extraordinary acts, but recognition can also mean forcing someone to repeatedly relive the worst day of their life. :chatgpt-content-reference{index="1"}

The hardest question is also the simplest. Most people would hear gunfire, call 911, and wait for police. This father had every survival instinct telling him to stay outside — and still went in. Trent and Peaches break down what it takes to override that voice, why examples like this matter, and why being called a hero does not mean the psychological consequences simply disappear when the cameras leave.

LINKS
onesready.com
operatortrainingsummit.com

CHAPTERS
00:00 - Ones Ready Outside The Wire
00:34 - Silver Rail Elementary School Shooting in Bend, Oregon
01:35 - Father Runs Into School and Stops the Gunman
02:59 - Survivor Guilt After Heroic Action
03:25 - Uvalde and Why Children Change Trauma
04:50 - What Happens After Becoming a Hero?
05:47 - Combat Training, PTSD and Unprepared Trauma
07:25 - The Problem With the Hero Tour
07:55 - “If Not Me, Who?”
09:16 - Online Scrutiny After Public Heroism
10:27 - Why His Actions Mattered
11:23 - Overriding the Survival Instinct
12:34 - Combat Trauma and Compartmentalization
13:40 - Outside The Wire Wrap-Up
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This episode starts with something none of us wanted to talk about.

A member of the Air Force community was killed during a rappelling demonstration at a UTSA event in San Antonio.

At the time Trent and Peaches recorded, next-of-kin notifications were still being completed and the member had not yet been publicly identified.

First and foremost:

Much love to his family, teammates, and everyone at the 6th Combat Training Squadron.

Trent and Peaches walk through the publicly available footage from the perspective of two guys who have spent a lot of time around this type of training.

And the first clarification matters:

This was a RAPPEL.

Not a fast rope.

Those are different techniques with different equipment, different safety considerations, and different levels of risk.

The available video raises obvious questions about descent speed, rope friction, routing, hardware, hand position, and whether the system was functioning correctly.

But neither Trent nor Peaches claims to know exactly what failed.

Equipment?
Routing?
Connection?
Human error?
Something else entirely?

That is what the investigation is for.

What they do know is that a roughly 170-foot free rappel gives you very little room for error.

Buddy checks matter.

Rigging matters.

Equipment checks matter.

And just because you have done something a hundred times does not mean evolution 101 deserves any less attention than evolution one.

The conversation then moves into TACP, CCT, JTACs and the old ROMAD concept.

Peaches explains how young Airmen who were not yet JTAC qualified could still become extremely useful members of the team by learning radios, aircraft integration, procedures and enough of the job to become an extra capability if somebody went down.

Trent talks about his first Afghanistan deployment in 2006, where the TACP and Combat Controller on his team took the time to teach him enough of their job that he could help if things went sideways.

Back then, that mattered.

Teams were taking casualties.

ODAs were getting combined.

People were getting wounded and medevaced.

And the mission still had to continue.

Later, Peaches tells a completely different story about running into a senior enlisted leader years after realizing they had apparently crossed paths downrange.

That turns into one of the strongest leadership conversations in the episode.

A senior leader arrives on a tightly controlled itinerary.

Airmen are standing in a hangar who were not part of the scheduled stop.

His staff expects him to keep moving.

Instead, he sees them, changes direction, walks over and speaks to every one of them.

Schedule be damned.

Peaches follows that with another story about a Chief Master Sergeant of the Air Force visiting wounded service members while somebody reminds him that a general is waiting.

His answer was essentially:

The general can wait.

Because sometimes leadership is as simple as remembering which people actually matter.

The episode closes by returning to the rappelling footage and one final point:

Rappelling is dangerous.

Take everything seriously.

LINKS

OnesReady.com

OperatorTrainingSummit.com

CHAPTERS

00:00 - Ones Ready
01:09 - Why This Episode Starts Differently
01:32 - Fatal Rappelling Incident at UTSA
02:04 - What Happened?
03:12 - Rappel vs. Fast Rope
04:02 - Why Fast Roping Is Different
05:25 - We Don’t Know the Cause Yet
06:06 - 6 CTS Det 2 and Next-of-Kin Notification
07:43 - A Celebration Turns Tragic
08:30 - Breaking Down the Available Video
09:39 - Equipment Failure or Routing Problem?
10:24 - Why Buddy Checks Matter
12:24 - Identity Still Not Released
13:17 - TACP Training and JTAC Qualification
13:48 - ROMADs and the “Mini Jag”
14:52 - Learning Another Teammate’s Job
15:33 - Afghanistan When Everybody Was Taking Losses
17:32 - OnesReady.com and Training Programs
20:19 - Peaches Runs Into an Old Teammate
21:31 - “Wait... We Were in Afghanistan Together”
23:27 - When Rank Disappears
24:25 - The Chairman Sees the Airmen
26:29 - He Breaks the Schedule to Meet Them
28:47 - “The General Can Wait”
30:55 - Another Angle of the Rappel Incident
32:22 - Why the Media Keeps Calling It Fast Rope
33:07 - Watching Military TV After Retirement
35:29 - What Pressure Reveals
37:55 - Watching People Quit Before It Starts
39:08 - Take Rappelling Seriously
39:11 - Wrap-Up
Support the show
Join this channel to get access to perks: HERE

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Find an Air Force Recruiter: AirForce.com

Collabs:
Ones Ready - OnesReady.com
18A Fitness - Promo Code:  ONESREADY
ATACLete - Follow the URL (no promo code):  ATACLete
Danger Close Apparel - Promo Code:  ONESREADY
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