Ryan Bodenheimer

Yep.

Yep.

You know, it came up for me after one of the experiences that I have that I'll share with you guys here in a second.

But it wasn't this like huge event.

It was literally me being like, hey, I just I saw that out there on this sortie.

Did you see anything?

And the other pilots like, no, you know, and they kind of give you that.

No, you know, and that's that's the stigma in itself, because, I mean, fighter squadrons, it's high pressure, high stakes jobs where you got to be dialed in.

They can't the people around you don't want to think that you're seeing things while you're flying.

Right.

And that's understandable because, you know, in the Thunderbirds, you're flying three feet away from someone.

So if they didn't see it, that's kind of I think where the stigma comes from.

That's why I think it's great with Commander Fravor.

You know, he had a WIZO with him, had other members of the formation.

So I think that's where you can really have some discussions and conversations.

But when you're flying single cockpit fighter jets and someone else might not have seen it, you know, like if I was in the F-15E and I had the chance to talk with my wizos about it, which I do in one of the experiences, that was a lot less stigmatized and it was more of just like, whoa, what was that?

But in a fighter squadron, man, it's a high-paced life.

So you can talk about it for a few minutes, but then you got to get ready for the next training mission or the next deployment.

So it's not something that a lot of pilots spend a lot of time on.

And I'll be straight up and honest with everybody.