Into the Danger Zone: TOPGUN Instructor Breaks Down the U.S. Strike on Iran

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On February 28th, the U.S. and Israel mobilized a massive air strike on Iran. Deploying hundreds of planes from around the region for a highly targeted daylight ambush. Those aircraft have created the environment by which Iran is really going to have a very difficult time, preventing us from operating in their airspace, wherever and however we want.

In this episode, we speak to a top gun instructor about what it's like participating in a mission on this scale and how the U.S. military prepares their world-class pilots for combat. I'm Georgia Howe with Daily Wire Executive Editor John Bickley. And this is a weekend episode of Morning Wire. No, it's not your imagination.

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to find an instantly book a doctor you love today. That's zoc.com/wire. Thanks, sock doc for sponsoring this message. Joining us now is retired marine core pilot and top gun instructor David Burke. David, thanks for coming on.

Yeah, it's good to be here. Thank you. And just to start off, I'm embarrassed to admit this, but I didn't realize that there were fighter pilots in the Marines.

“How did you go from being in the Marines to a top gun instructor?”

Yeah, it's a good question. And it's something that actually is common that there's a misunderstanding that there are fighter pilots in the Marine Corps. Naval aviation in general consists of both Navy and Marine Corps pilots, and we work really closely together.

So all of foundational initial training that Marines go through is Navy training. So you might have a class that's 80% Navy 20% Marines, and we go through all the same training. And back when I was doing this in the mid to late 90s, when I was getting my start, we were flying a lot of the same airplanes,

much like we do now. And so I ended up getting selected for the Marine Corps to fly the F-18 Hornet, and it turns out that the Marine Corps had well over a dozen F-18 squadrons, and a handful of them would deploy on Navy aircraft carriers. And I was in a squadron in the Marine Corps.

I was attached to a Navy carrier. So I spent four years as a Marine flying off Navy ships, aircraft carriers, in Iraq and Afghanistan. I went to Top Gun as a student as a Marine, and there's a relatively small percentage of Marines that get to go.

And then I was invited back to being instructor on a staff of 25 instructor pilots. They have three Marine pilots at the Navy's weapon school, which we call Top Gun. So I was very, very lucky as a Marine to have a career that I flew fighters for the Marine Corps, but very closely connected and integrated with the Navy. And that took me to Navy carriers.

That took me to Navy Top Gun, and it took me to being instructor at Top Gun as a Marine.

which is the mission that was just kicked off over the weekend.

“What do you know about this mission and what kind of insights can you give us about what went down on Saturday?”

Yeah, I mean, this Georgia is a mission of huge magnitude. The number of stories, the coordination with both us, our naval and air forces is real as air forces as well. There is a lot going on. I'm fortunate to join my experience. I flew combat missions off aircraft carriers, launching from the deck of a US carrier.

Very similar to how we started this operation in a lot of coordination with a lot of land-based assets. This is an extensive complex and comprehensive, very air-centric attack to start off this campaign. How does this attack compare to some things that you saw? And how does it fit into the broader context of American military history? This is a big mission.

I don't want to make a sound like this is very small. But things that we've done in somewhat recent history, 2003 in Iraq, 2001 in Afghanistan. We are accustomed and well-trained to do exactly what you saw, which is hundreds of aircraft flying nonstop, 24-hour operations, long missions. We had some flights that were 18, 19 hours originating in the United States.

Those were B2s from Whiteman flying all the way to Iran and back. And so, while this is pretty significant, this is something we are familiar with. Something we've been training to for a long time and something that the US military is actually really good at.

“Now, when you say 18 hours, is that one guy in a small plane flying for 18 hours?”

In this aircraft that we're talking about the B2, they're going to be a pilot and a copilot up in the aircraft. And oftentimes they'll swap that out, so you'll have more than one person in that case. But you have a relatively small crew in a relatively small aircraft flying for literally over 24 hours. Five or six air refueles to get there. Sometimes five or six air refueles to get home.

That is a mind-blowing experience that no one that country in the world can create that capability other than us in that aircraft. Now, we're still learning about what happened last week.

But one pretty amazing story is the pilots that were shot down in Kuwait that somehow survived.

What do we know about that incident? Yeah, obviously, I think the most dramatic and the most challenging one we've seen so far is the friendly fire incident where we lost three F-15s. And there's video of those aircraft plumbing to the ground. And anytime you lose an aircraft and combat, that is a dramatic, it is a significant event.

“First, I think it's amazing and we're very thankful and I thank God that all six air crew walked away from that and they're okay.”

But when you have an incident, a friendly fire incident, I think that is sometimes unfortunately the best revelation of just how complex and how demanding air combat can be. And how very, very small errors can lead to huge catastrophic events when you're talking about aircraft and losing three or 15s was really an unfortunate thing. Again, I'm really glad they're all okay, but that was a really, really tough thing to see because I know how often those blue and blue incidents.

The potential for that is very high. We avoid them, but not always.

How did those pilots survive that? I mean, just based on their training, what do they do in that situation? Yeah, and you walk us through what that's actually like. Yeah, and I say this, you know, kind of a double and short, on one sense, it's really good. We have unbelievably good training to prepare air crew for the advent of having to leave an aircraft, have a new ejected aircraft and that training is excellent. The other side of that is obviously something we don't ever want to have to do.

But my estimate would be is when the incident happened and all three of those aircraft were hit and the aircraft were no longer fliable, they're training kicked in. They did exactly what they were supposed to do. The video is dramatic, not just them parachuting out of the aircraft, but them being interacting with on the ground with the local, quitting populace. And those are crew exactly the way they're trained, did exactly what we've all prepared for, like I said, it's a double inch short, but they executed flawlessly once that thing happened.

So how much time do they have from the time they realize they've been struck to making that decision. I presume to shoot themselves out of their seats. I mean, is that seconds? Yeah, Georgia, that's a great question. And it is seconds. Obviously, I can't replicate in my mind exactly what that's like, but to be in a friendly aircraft, over essentially in that case, friendly territory, post mission, the likelihood in their mind that their risk was probably very low. So I would assume that that thing cascaded out of control in a matter of seconds to the point that they're hit, the aircraft is no longer fliable, they're very low to the ground.

And so that's seconds before they're pulling the ejection handle and making the decision to get out of those airplanes. That must have happened very, very quickly. Now, sorry, just to get really granular about this, if the pilot pulls the ejection thing, does that eject to everyone out of the cabin together?

Yeah, absolutely. When you have a two-seat aircraft, like the F-15E, a pilot in a whistle, it's very, very likely the mode that they have set as either of the pilot or the backseat or either the pilot or the whistle when they eject both aircrew exit at the same time.

“So, what are we up against when it comes to Iran's flight capabilities?”

Yeah, listen, I don't ever want to say that we are in a no-risk environment. War comes with risks. Aviation can be inherently risky. That said, the Iranians are going to have a really hard time putting up a robust air defense system.

And that doesn't mean that our aircraft are flying with impunity. There's always risk.

Man, portable air defense systems, relatively small mobile things to shoot, those to always exist. But for the most part, we have done a really good job wiping out at the very beginning. Iran's radar systems to fight and locate us and our Iran's weapon system to shoot at us. So, those aircraft have created the environment by which Iran is really going to have a very difficult time preventing us from operating in their airspace, wherever and however we want. We call that air-dominous air supremacy. We control the skies. And again, the risk isn't zero. It never will be. But we have a really good handle on the situation right now.

Now, something that military buffs, including my producers, we're buzzing about this past week, was the F-14 Tomcat Jets that Iran has, which could now be destroyed.

First of all, why do they have those? And why are so many people concerned about their destruction? What's the story with the F-14 Tomcat Jets?

Yeah, the biggest thing I think you're looking at with the F-14 being flown by Iran. I hate to say it. It's probably nostalgia. Because the F-14 represented one of the most iconic aircraft America's ever built. It was showcased in the movie Top Gun. It's a legendary Navy fighter jet. We actually sold F-14s to Iran in the 70s and they used them. They've been able to preserve literally for the last 40 plus years, a handful of flying F-14s. It's very unlikely. And at this point, they were almost impossible for them to be functional. But I think what you're talking about and why the question is being asked is,

"It's going to be tough for any American fighter pilot to drop a bomb on a F-14 if they do find one, a silhouette on the ground. And we've done that with other American-made aircrafts. They have F-5s, F-4 fandoms. They have a lot of older generation American fighters that they owned and bought from us in the 70s. That we are single-handedly destroying and that's going to pull on the heartstrings of naval aviators who hold those planes in high regard." And now is this a primarily a strike that's being fought by air?

It's a good question. And yeah, for the most part of that is, I think what it's demonstrating is a couple things. One is the broad range of capability that aircraft can bring. We can do a lot more than just shoot down enemy aircraft. And Iran really is not in a position to defend themselves using aircraft to fight against us. So we have aircraft that can bring weapons to bear, that cover the full range of, we can take down headquarters buildings. We can take down early warning radar systems. We can take down ballistic missile sites. We can attack targets on the ground.

What aircraft are able to do and the breadth of the US Air Force, the Marine Corps, and the Navy range of aircraft can do almost anything. And so you're seeing a very, very heavy air centric to include our partner in Israel doing the exact same thing. They're shaping the battlefield. All the relevant targets out there for the most part can be hit by aircraft.

“And that's how we're operating. It's a really good way to operate.”

Now last question, I have a very small amount of insight into this just through some of my family lore. My maternal grandfather was a fighter pilot in World War II. He was actually shot down twice into the Pacific. And he didn't speak about it for many, many years because it was really traumatic. But one thing I did glean from talking to family members discussing it is that he said this is basically a job that you can only get young men to do, because you'd have to be absolutely crazy to do some of these maneuvers in the air.

And a lot of young men actually died in training learning to do this. So how do you teach pilots to overcome what must be an insane amount of fear to be able to maintain presence of mind and complete emission when you're say spinning in the air or under heavy fire? How do you even teach that skill? Is this something that you can teach or is it something that some individuals just have?

“Yeah, well first I have to honor the legacy of your grandfather fighting in the Pacific and that's a remarkable thing something you should be proud of.”

And I would never want to correlate my experience in combat and certainly the training that we go through just how being the same as what they endured in the Pacific and World War II.

That was an unbelievable experience. But I will tell you his comments are right. There's a uniqueness to aviation and the uniqueness to the chaos that goes along in fighter aviation in combat.

It also speaks to the ability that we have learned definitely on the shoulders of men like your grandfather how to teach and train this.

“And listen, I don't want to be arrogant. I don't want to make it sound like nobody can do this.”

This is something many people can do, but not everyone can do this. The training program is hard. It is very dynamic.

There's a lot going on, not just as a flying and fighting, but also with the technology to managing systems in real time.

“And so what he described, there's a lot of similarities now. And we have a blend of of these absolutely incredible people willing to to risk their lives.”

But also incredibly well trained. The Navy and the Marine Corps and the Air Force have spent decades learning how to train pilots to do exactly what they're doing.

And part of the reason why this has been so successful is how well trained we are. We have the best equipment, the best training in the world.

“And it's built on the legacy of men like your grandfather. So we're very lucky to have that in our history.”

All right, well David, thank you so much for making time for us today. This is a pretty remarkable thing that you and your guys do out there. I'm absolutely honored to be here. Thank you so much for having me on that was Chief Development Officer at echelon front retired marine fighter pilot and top gun instructor David Burke. And this has been a weekend edition of Morningwire. But what I wanted to do is not to get a lot of students. The master fighter has learned how to train the internet. So master is really great.

But you can't do that at all. But you can't do that at all. But you can't do that at all. And if you work there, you can do it. That's right.