Combat Story (Ep 5): Wes Bryant Air Force Special Warfare | SOF TACP-JTAC | Author
About This Episode
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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.
Author
Chapters
- 0:00Intro.
- 2:05Difference between TAC-P and JTACs.
- 13:50Moving between PJ, JTAC, and TACP work finding what was right.
- 14:25Pararescue Indoctrination Course.
- 15:55Combat Divers Qualification Course.
- 20:00Learning about TACPs when at Medina Annex.
- 22:40Fought to get back to the CDQC to pass.
- 28:15First foray into combat calling in an airstrike in combat.
- 32:13First fight in Iraq with 1st CAV in 2004 after Fallujah calling in F-15s with 500 and 2Klbs bombs.
- 39:40Being the odd man out from the Air Force dropped into new Army units.
- 45:20Description of one of the most formative experiences as a controller in his first control in Afghanistan while getting shot at with 173rd.
- 58:13The "most chaos on the battlefield" was early in the fight against ISIS in Iraq in 2014.
- 1:03:33Part of the reason for writing the book was to show how deliberate each engagement was.
- 1:08:38A 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.
- 1:19:42Wes describes an experience at a shopping mall in Bahrain that changed his perspective on "the enemy."
- 1:31:20Carrying the dog tags of his friend John Brown, a PJ who died in the shootdown of Extortion 17 in August 2011.
- 1:32:50Appreciation for Army Special Forces (ODA) teams.
- 1:33:55Favorite aircraft: A-10s for fixed wing and Apaches (AH-64s) for helos.
- 1:34:40Would you do it all again? "Absolutely...would have done it all again."
