Oct 25, 2020
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Wes Bryant is a U.S. Air Force Master Sergeant (retired) who served eight combat deployments in the post 9/11 era as a Special Operations Forces Tactical Air Control Party (TAC-P) and Joint Tactical Air Controller (JTAC).
He co-authored the book “Hunting the Caliphate: America’s War on ISIS and the Dawn of the Strike Cell,” a first-person account of the war on ISIS written alongside the former commanding general of Iraq, Major General (retired) Dana Pittard.
Embedded with Special Forces teams under a Navy SEAL task force, Wes was the tactical lead for a contingent of special operations JTACs to first set foot in Iraq to stop ISIS. He’s been a lifelong writer, amateur philosopher, and avid student of the martial arts. Today, he pursues writing and editing, and teaches Chinese Kung Fu and Tai Chi in his community in North Carolina, where he lives with his wife and their two daughters.
(Twitter | Instagram | Facebook | LinkedIn: @WesJBryant).
Notes
2:05 Difference between TAC-P and JTACs.
13:50 Moving between PJ, JTAC, and TACP work finding what was
right.
14:25 Pararescue Indoctrination Course.
15:55 Combat Divers Qualification Course.
20:00 Learning about TACPs when at Medina Annex.
22:40 Fought to get back to the CDQC to pass.
28:15 First foray into combat calling in an airstrike in
combat.
32:13 First fight in Iraq with 1st CAV in 2004 after Fallujah
calling in F-15s with 500 and 2Klbs bombs.
39:40 Being the odd man out from the Air Force dropped into new
Army units.
45:20 Description of one of the most formative experiences as a
controller in his first control in Afghanistan while getting shot
at with 173rd.
58:13 The "most chaos on the battlefield" was early in the fight
against ISIS in Iraq in 2014.
1:03:33 Part of the reason for writing the book was to show how
deliberate each engagement was.
1:08:38 A tour to Korea in 2007 and finding a way to handle his
PTSD. Went kicking and screaming to Camp Casey and was one of the
best moves of his career.
1:19:42 Wes describes an experience at a shopping mall in Bahrain
that changed his perspective on "the enemy."
1:31:20 Carrying the dog tags of his friend John Brown, a PJ who
died in the shootdown of Extortion 17 in August 2011.
1:32:50 Appreciation for Army Special Forces (ODA) teams.
1:33:55 Favorite aircraft: A-10s for fixed wing and Apaches
(AH-64s) for helos.
1:34:40 Would you do it all again? "Absolutely...would have done it
all again."