Original subtitles

Starboard side. Suspicious vessel.

-Steady as she goes. -Steady as she goes, aye. 2-0-5.

Who's tailing who?

The Chinese AGI is tailing us.

Change course, 0-5-0.

Anytime you hear that there's an adversary in the same waters as you,

you have to immediately think,

worst-case scenario, "How am I gonna defend the ship?"

"How am I gonna defend American assets?"

It's just something to be mindful of.

"Why are they out here? Why are they so close to us?"

We are within picture-taking range.

Recon's en route.

So they just, uh, they just changed course.

Now they're following us on a parallel course.

Our adversaries are masters of electronic intelligence,

and they're always collecting on our transmissions and our waveforms,

trying to understand better what you're doing.

When they try to get collection on us, we're doing the same thing.

A bit of back and forth.

Secure the use of Bluetooth and cell phones throughout the ship.

You always play a game of cat and mouse.

They watch us, and we watch them.

There's always that underlying tension.

Is everybody ready to go to full general quarters

if they needed to?

Are you ready to fight?

These interactions could go bad.

So it's one of these things that could literally change

the course and direction of history,

not to mention the fact that this would be two nuclear-armed powers going toe-to-toe.

So think about that, chew on that for a minute.

Oh, are you turning?

They've turned around. Keep going.

Anything can change at the drop of a hat.

And we're not actively in a war right now.

But the world is in such a strange, antagonistic, volatile place

that it may well be a preamble to war.

Could we lose a war with China?

Well, absolutely.

And, you know, it might be we lose the war

because we're not willing to lose as many soldiers

as they're willing to lose.

American society is extremely conscious of American lives,

and I think the American public would be absolutely shocked

at the price tag of a full-scale war.

9/11, 3,000 people died,

and we barely were able to process that psychologically.

"What? That happened to us? Here?"

I don't know what we would do

in a war where 3,000 soldiers could die in a single day.

You know, 20,000 in a week.

I don't even think the military knows.

I don't think anyone knows how America would react to that.

Dude...

Freakin'...

Did I send you those videos of Ukraine stuff?

No.

Dude...

Shit's crazy.

-Holy... -Oh shit!

-Dude... -Bro, he just got blown to smithereens.

-Bro. -That's kind of scary too.

Can you imagine when that shit happens to one of us?

That's wild.

They're throwing grenades?

Yeah, throwing some 'nades.

Imagine that being us over there, dude. I'd laugh so hard.

I would laugh too, bro, but damn.

That shit's so fucked up, bro.

I need something that gets my blood pumping, you know?

The idea of two individuals just doing everything they can to best the other.

Oh shit.

Did it again.

I love the competitiveness of it.

I don't like the idea that there's someone better than me out there.

It just fucking irks me, and I don't know why.

It's just how I am.

You got another mag?

I didn't have the best growing up experience, I guess.

But I don't know if it was something then or what,

but I just wanted to be better than the things I was around, I guess.

I bounced around a lot.

My dad actually was in prison for, like, majority of my childhood,

and my mom struggled with her own things.

Open that big one up.

In high school, I got in a big argument with my stepdad,

and it got physical, and I got kicked out of the house.

And that's when Rolan's family took me in.

He had some personal stuff going on,

and he moved in with me.

Now he's part of the family,

and parents consider him one of their sons and everything.

Being with Rolan,

I saw what a real family was supposed to look like.

Alicia and Copen, they really took me in as their own.

-Look at that. That just worked out. -It sure did.

That was the only father figure I had in my life.

And he was a Marine.

Just be brave and keep your courage calculated.

-Yes, sir. -Yes, sir.

Courage without calculation will get you hurt.

-Yes, sir. -Yes, sir.

Pryce is part of our family.

They went through the whole process together.

I did everything to make sure they was prepared for it,

because when I went, I didn't know what I was getting into.

I had no idea.

Going to combat, there'll be consequences, whether it be mentally or physically,

and it's the mental stuff that I,

me as a parent,

worries about most.

Losing your buddies is probably the biggest, toughest thing to deal with.

And so just, like we're talking with Rolan and Pryce,

is make sure they're not really prepared, but understand that's a likelihood.

Have you lost buddies? Have you lost people?

Yes.

Yes.

Um...

And it's... Whether it be suicide or whatever...

But yeah, it's tough.

Copen had a lot of night terrors.

And that scared me to death.

And he felt horrible, but...

They always say they do really good at training these Marines,

but they do not train them very well to go back to civilian life.

Family is not just blood, you know.

It's someone who's always there for you, no matter what.

Even the fact of them possibly having to go to war,

it does, it scares me, you know, as a mom.

I can't imagine those moms that have received a phone call or have...

had people show up at their doorstep,

you know, and I can't...

My heart just breaks for those moms.

I love you.

Love you too.

All right, Team Green Bay, we have the gun shoot on the flight deck.

Stand clear of the flight deck

while conducting live-fire gunnery exercises.

Hey! Hurry the fuck up.

All training in the Marine Corps, you see a "crawl, walk, run" mentality.

We have to get a gauge on who are these Marines,

and who should we put into what role.

You definitely want to target your high performers.

Compare all these guys against each other

to see who's ready for the next step of getting promoted

and then filling those senior roles.

We got this.

Better win.

You're ready to win, you know what I mean?

You're gonna reload on the move as you move up to the barricade.

Once you're on the barricade, you reload with a mag of eight.

Four shots on each target

from whatever position you want.

You listen to a word he just said?

-Yes, I did. -All right.

I kind of got lost halfway through, though.

So, you're standing, right?

It's two, two, drop to the knee, two, two.

-All right. -Reload, run to the barricade.

And then it's four and four.

Is it me? Is it me?

-The next shooter. -Yeah!

-Once these are refaced, pick 'em up. -Are you ready?

-Yes, sir. -Begin.

Me and Rolan compete in every little thing we do.

Pryce is super driven about being the best.

He wants to be better than everyone.

Once he moved in with me, he got super competitive.

I want to be the best machine gunner I can be, you know?

I want to lead the best damn gun section I can.

I want to have that responsibility.

And so that's why I cannot fail.

All right!

Shit, there's not very many holes in this one.

One, two, three?

Fuck.

-Three hits? -On this one.

One, two, three, four.

-Seven? Seven hits total? -Damn!

That's below average.

Fuck!

Dude, I fucking suck.

Rolan, you're up.

I feel like I did all right.

-14... -How many hits, Smith?

-Fourteen. -14. Way better than Seymour.

You might need to give him a lesson on how to shoot.

It wasn't too bad.

Rolan's great. Rolan's rolling, you know?

He's fucking doing Rolan things.

There's a very low tolerance for failure. There's actually no tolerance for failure,

which is why so much effort is put into training forces.

Really what makes the Marine Corps special

is these infantry battalions matched up with flying squadrons.

And the relationship between the two units.

The 31st MEU has always been, at its core,

about putting a reinforced infantry battalion,

a flying squadron,

and logistics support on Navy ships under one headquarters

and sending it out into harm's way.

And, I mean, the jet's just doing so much on so many different levels.

It's advanced data links, intelligence gathering,

a full-on fighter.

It's a pretty impressive piece of kit.

It is all about supporting the Marine on the ground

so that they're as protected as possible,

they have the support that they need.

There's a high level of trust that goes into that,

and you put each other's lives in your hands

so we can make it home to what's the most important part,

and make it home to our families.

I'm Captain Kevin McGinty, call sign "FUZE,"

and I'm an F-35 Bravo fighter pilot,

deployed on the USS America.

I'm the newest pilot to the squadron

that's in this ready room on the boat right now,

trying to prove myself, prove that I can hack it with the rest of them.

-Coming into the break was good. -Yeah, it worked out well.

Shwacked that timing.

-I didn't think it was gonna work out. -I had my doubts.

Thank you.

I originally went in thinking I wanted to be a Navy fighter pilot,

but while I was there,

some of the biggest role models I had were Marines.

And then I got orders out to Iwakuni, Japan,

and I've been a Green Knight ever since.

It wasn't until, probably, getting my call sign

that I really felt welcomed into the fold.

Pretty sure this is...

You typically earn a call sign by some sort of antics you do,

a play on your name,

or if you resemble a certain individual.

So tell me what FUZE means. Give me a quick reason for that.

Yeah. FUZE is a, uh, acronym.

Some say I resemble Zac Efron.

That's the second half of the acronym.

Uh, the first half of that is classified.

FUZE, so "Fat, Ugly Zac Efron."

That's his call sign.

Panther 5-3, how do you hear?

Sumo 5-2's got you loud and clear.

Roger. I'm at 18-5, inbound for you.

5-2, clear to join, echelon left.

Doing some aerial refueling,

it can be a very dangerous task.

There's been accidents around the tankers,

so the slightest mistake...

can... yeah, can have consequences.

...after a desperate search for five Marines

missing after a midair refueling accident

off the coast of Japan.

Their refueling tanker was attempting to refuel

an F-18 fighter jet when the two airplanes collided.

It's the riskiest part of the mission.

Roger that, sir. You ready to kick them out?

Trial left.

Coming out on the right.

-Coming out right. -Roger, Air-Two.

Coming out on the left.

Panther 5-2, go right astern.

Panther 5-2's on the move.

5-3, you're cleared, contact left.

We'll see if he hits it.

Swing and a miss right.

Making a play on the left.

Miss on the left.

These guys are kind of struggling today.

Six-Six-One-One, this is Japan 3-9-4.

-You're now approaching Japanese airspace. -Making a play on the left.

An aircraft flying over northwest...

Damn it, I can't hear anything.

Six-Six-One-One.

Oh my fucking God!

Turn off calls.

Banking a play right.

Contact right.

Sweet.

-Contact left. -Roger.

Sweet.

Go fuel on the left?

Roger, he's stable on the left.

-We're doing four. -Four this round, roger.

Panther 5-3, satisfies.

Panther 5-3, clear disconnect. Go echelon right.

Panther 5-3, clear disconnect, echelon right.

And hey, thanks so much for the help.

We learned a ton, right? About these constructive kills,

and it's not a technical problem,

it's a human problem, right?

A lot of the reasons why these things didn't go is because nobody owns it.

There's not unity of command.

It's like a bureaucratic black hole,

so I'm just going to pretend I'm in charge of everything

and get on the same page, and they'll do it.

I build it, they'll come. That's the way it has to be.

Somebody's gotta be in control of this thing.

The thing that's frustrating, guys,

is that this is not a fucking surprise to anybody.

-Yes, sir. -Hey, sir.

-Didn't realize you were here. -Hey.

Chris, you know I've been fucking watching this shit, dude. You know?

Anyway, I didn't mean to fucking squash the conversation,

but I had to fucking say something.

-Um, how's it going out there, Chris? -Really good.

We learned a ton,

whether it was command and control, air defense, aviation comms,

a lot of learning.

We're just figuring out how to do that, and the rotational nature...

Son of a gun.

It's always when I get going.

Yeah, that was my boss, Lieutenant General Roger Turner,

and the purpose of that call was to explain the certification process

and provide a bit of context.

All right.

Where'd you lose me?

With CERTEX, they bring in duty experts.

These are Marines that understand the function of whatever we're doing

for the evaluation,

and they understand, also, how to give feedback to make us better.

And I'm watching carefully the OAI that you're looking at.

A healthy chain of command requires a healthy climate

where people have that sense of psychological safety and trust

and they can say, "This isn't right. We need to fix that."

It's a predictable fucking train wreck.

They put you on the scale,

test you, measure you, and then they pass judgment on you,

so everybody loves that, right?

Sir.

We're ready.

All right.

Stand by!

Attention on deck!

Thank you. Carry on. Take your seats.

Green Bay, radio check.

Good afternoon, gentlemen. This is the VBSS confirmation brief.

The 31st MEU's VBSS mission, it is the next training event to conduct.

The acronym actually stands for "Visit, Board, Search, and Seizure"

of target vessels that you want to know more about,

but have to physically occupy and potentially take control of it.

All right. We will locate and track our own objective, Echo.

Initial query is conducted by Green Bay.

Green Bay will take station 300-500 yards off vessel's port quarter.

Gentlemen, with clear deck, Panther 5-1 and 5-2 will launch,

descending as low as 500 feet

to fly over the bow of the ship,

and then climb back to our 6,000-foot-and-above block.

This phase begins with Alpha Element conducting a fast-rope insert

out of our MH-60 onto the flight deck.

And then we will begin our movement towards the bridge.

We'll be going out with 41 packs as a raid force,

as a sniper platform, and COMMSTRAT.

We made a sniper engagement plan with help from my team on the Green Bay

to be ready to brief in front of the MEU commander.

How are you feeling about standing in front of him?

Depends if you get nervous with shiny collars.

This is actually Bobcat 8-1. Next slide.

Gentlemen, I will be briefing the sniper-engagement plan for our team

that is on the Green Bay.

That will be Ronin 3, led by Sergeant Owens.

Their purpose is to allow the Green Bay to assume position

and to protect the raid force during actions on.

Their weapons, they will have the .50 Cal. SASR and the Mark 22.

-Thank you, gentlemen. -Thanks, Miller.

The VBSS team, supported by the Ace,

will rapidly seize control of the CCOI

in order to set conditions for CPR-11's prize crew.

In reserve, we have CSAR, TRAP, CASEVAC, MASCAS, etc.

Copy. Thank you.

We are addicted to acronyms.

Sometimes people think it gives you more authority when you talk like that.

And then usually I'll ask if you know what the acronym means. It's a good rule.

If you don't know what the acronym actually stands for,

you probably shouldn't use it.

I can't remember what all the VBSS stands for.

So many acronyms that I know what stuff is,

but when people say, "What does it stand for?" I don't know.

It's something like "vehicle-borne search and seizure"

or "boarding search and seizure."

It's something like that.

I'm gonna look so stupid.

-Visit, board, search, and seizure? -Yes.

"Visit"?

We're just here to visit. That's all.

We ain't, you know... We don't want to impose.

We're just going to visit for a bit.

We'll board it, search it, whether you want us to or not.

Then we'll seize it,

which usually implies just a nice little visit.

Counts, you want some of this?

Put it on the cantaloupe. Do it.

-Okay. -Now!

Do it now.

It's not gonna be any good.

Here we are on the mess deck.

This is the one for the peasants and whatnot,

like the lower-ranking steerage that hardly counts as a life form.

Here's some of the lower life forms now. Look at them.

-Yeah. -Hell yeah.

So over here,

the first-class Petty Officer Association mess.

It's in this little slanty door,

and it's just something special.

It's just a smaller area to eat in.

Did you catch the TV in the corner? You'll want to see it. It's a big one.

The next echelon up in culinary care,

the Chief's mess.

So, this door with the real pagan-looking symbols there,

it's for, like, people who outrank me by, like, one rank.

It is goofy, like, the arbitrary separations

of who can eat where or whatever.

All right, so coming in here is the wardroom.

Again, I'm not really technically allowed in here,

but you can look in,

uh, and that's where all the officers eat.

But they'll have, like, enlisted dudes walking around

with, like, a white cloth napkin draped over their arm.

Like, I don't know, "More Coca-Cola, sir?"

So this is just for officers,

so if any enlisted dude were to come up here

and try and sit down and rub shoulders with the shiny,

you'd be demoted and then thrown overboard

to think about what you did.

And then they may turn the ship around and pick you back up,

or they may not.

Sir.

Hear that? We came from the wardroom, and that Chief called me "Sir."

He assumed I'm an officer.

One, I look old, and two, we came from the wardroom.

Because I'm enlisted, I'll never be able to sit down there

with that demographic of people in the military.

You'd have to get a college degree.

I hate computers.

And I'm too old.

I'm too old with too many dependents to try and start over with something else.

Hey, what's up?

Yeah, officer, probably not the best route for me.

They don't want me in charge of too many people because

I don't color in the lines too well.

Party boy Jeff!

Coming for fat bitches only.

Hey, flash your crop top, Jeff.

You reading a Louis L'Amour book?

-Yeah, I got a whole bunch. -Really?

Yeah, want some?

Dadgum, not only is it probably about the Wild West's fastest gun,

but it's also America's fastest-selling Western writer.

This one's the first time there was a paperback.

Is that right?

I'm a big dreamer.

I love writing, and I love poetry, and I love books.

"The Last Snow."

Global warming is a thing, ain't it?

I tell you, Jon Messman was ahead of his time.

Right?

Roos... Yeah, he's a trip.

A young buck who's gotten into this whole Western motif,

and that's cool. That's cool.

But guys will pick on him from time to time,

like we pick on everybody.

Roos, does this give you flashbacks?

Yeah. He's locked in.

He's locked in, dude.

The cowboy...

What's up?

He's getting as much of this as he would if he didn't have headphones in.

I'm very old-school.

Like, if I had the option,

I'd go back to, like, the mid-1800s if I really could.

Like, straight up.

I fantasize about living in those times,

running off from the law,

falling in love.

You know, you read these stories of, like, how men were back then,

and I was like, "Man, those guys were true men."

Guys who had to figure things out, they had to protect their family.

Take my fucking...

I got a big family back home.

It's hard being away,

but I feel like being here,

I'm protecting them

to my fullest capability.

Can't wait till Logan's home so we can go to the farm ponds.

Yeah, well, he'll be getting home,

uh, beginning of fall-ish.

So we'll be able to crappie fish.

Then he's gonna have to drink the beer on the side.

Yeah, he's gonna have to drink his Pabst Blue Ribbon

that we've been saving for him.

We were all missing Logan.

Not just myself, but everybody.

The neighbors, friends, family.

And, uh... I have a friend that works at a printing place

here in town in Morris, and, uh, she helped me print this out.

He actually goes everywhere with us.

He goes to birthday parties, graduations.

He was a rough-and-tumble kid.

I don't wanna say he was a loose cannon.

He might tell you that he was a loose cannon, you know.

But nothing in his younger years ever told me he wanted to shoot people...

...and be lethal.

I really don't know where that exactly came from or where it happened

in his timeline of being a youngster.

I know he watched all the war movies,

and picturing himself going out there on the front lines,

giving your all, maybe giving your life,

and he would always be, like, looking up the different battles and stuff like that.

I think I introduced him to his first 20-gauge shotgun

when he was six.

Like the wind, he just took off with it.

You know, he shot his first deer.

He shot squirrels, rabbits, pheasant.

Uh, he found a love for it.

I want to join the Marines.

Kill bad people.

Tell me what you know about the Marines.

Um...

Guns, fighting, shooting, killing, training, getting jacked.

You're probably going to die in it.

You know, him choosing to be a Marine scout sniper,

I was so proud.

I watched my little boy

become a man.

I know he understood the dangers of it,

and that... you're trained to kill people.

And that's...

I just... I supported it.

-It was good. -I've been reading cowboy short stories.

Can you get a picture of us? Like...

There is that, I like to call it that Billy the Kid side of me,

where I'm like, "Fuck, I just want to go out guns blazing

and do the job I've been trained to do."

Like, stacking bodies with the boys, that's like the whole... the whole...

you know, in the chest, in the heart,

how I'm feeling about it.

Green Bay, this is your TAO.

Green Bay has received warnings of fast inbound attack craft

in the vicinity of the Green Bay op area.

Set DATF alert 60.

-Set DATF alert... -Sixty? Damn, we jumped right to 60.

-To the armory. -You guys ready?

-Yeah. -Let's do it.

There are various little exercises that we get to participate in,

including DATF.

DATF is Defense of the Amphibious Task Force,

and that is taking our naval assets,

the ship's weapon systems,

our guns,

and combining it with all of the Marine Corps assets.

If there's some hostile naval force coming that we can detect,

we need to be ready to defend the ship.

Somebody decides they want to pop shots at the USS Green Bay,

gotta deal with us first, you know?

So DATF, usually, is just playing against the clock.

How long will it take us to get the weapons,

notify the personnel,

get ammunition,

and then get everything situated and in place

in order to defend the ship?

You can't want to kill people and go to war

and then be bad at it.

You got to train for that so we can get it right.

You talk about fighting and winning, and that really means killing.

And that's a hard thing to talk about.

But you have to accept the reality of this business.

We spend a lot of time and effort on generating lethality

and preparing and practicing.

You have to be kind of bloody-minded about these things.

The point of this whole thing is to kill our enemies and destroy their things.

And you got to think the adversaries are doing the same thing.

They are practicing right now to kill you.

Hey, team Green Bay, it's Captain.

Just want to touch base with everybody.

As we head south and stretch our sea legs a little,

we're expecting to get some heavier seas.

We are expecting today to encounter seas that are upwards of about 8 to 9 feet.

So it's time to make sure things are stowed properly

and we are ready for that.

For those that are prone to seasickness, that's what Scopolamine is for.

Let's put those patches on and be ready to go.

Captain out.

All right, what's going on with our new friend up here?

Navi, how long until we intercept track and change course?

-Seven minutes, ma'am. -Okay.

Right, so they're coming this way,

but in seven minutes, we're gonna go back that way.

Right.

The last couple of days have been really long days.

Early mornings, late nights,

and every day, it's just, "All right, we got to keep going."

It sounds dark, but there is no end to the tunnel.

Which is why I just keep running at the next milestone.

Well, the next milestone for me, I guess, would be, um...

would be command at sea.

My goal is to become a captain of a ship.

Let's move to the next time.

XO, executive officer, runs all the admin schedules,

timeline for the ship, so every time I come up here,

it's a line out her door for people wanting to talk to her.

So it can be a struggle getting her ear,

but you just gotta wait it out.

We're tracking the other one.

It's an easy fix, and I think it's just comms.

-Yeah. -The easiest thing ever.

When I came into this office, the first thing I did was put up pictures

of the baby and my husband.

But I read a lot of leadership and management books,

and they talk about how, when you're a woman,

they tell you not to put pictures of your family up,

because it makes you seem uncommitted to the job.

For men, they actually recommend

that men have pictures of their family in their offices,

'cause it makes them seem trustworthy.

Good morning, how are you?

-Working pretty hard. -Good.

I think it's very important for the women on board

to exceed the standard

so that we can prove our place on board.

Request take station about your vessel.

Take station about our vessel, over.

Take station about our vessel, over.

There's a certain amount of exercises that we have to do

to get certified as a MEU,

so we practice ad nauseam,

because the goal here is to always try to improve in your craft.

The fighter pilots are actually the jet guys.

What I am is a attack helicopter pilot.

The one specifically that I fly is a utility helicopter,

is a jack of all trades.

We try to be a master at all of them.

-What makes you badass? -What makes us badass?

I fly quite possibly the most historic aircraft

in the United States Marine Corps.

My squadron has been around since Vietnam.

They have fought multiple places from the Middle East...

to supporting natural disaster events.

We have the most professional, hard-charging instructor pilots,

and it's a culture that starts from your very first brief.

Mike, do you have your model?

You have ten minutes.

We are making little helicopter models

for the walk-through we're about to do.

-Oh, you did it 3D. -Yeah.

That's pretty good.

Yours sucks, dude.

DAD just got hit.

Yeah, people call me DAD. It's kind of weird.

I'm not a dad. I've never been a dad. Never been married.

So it's pretty funny whenever everyone asks me, like,

how that came about.

What's it stand for?

-Yeah... -That's, uh...

Uh, it's a deep, dark time in my life.

All right, so, uh...

I was a younger co-pilot on a long, fun night out.

My friends sent me home in a cab.

Everything that comes after the cab is where my call sign comes from.

Sorry, Mom, but unfortunately it stands for "drunk and disorderly."

Yeah.

Cool. Let's head over there.

No one should like your call sign,

but once you get it, you own up to your mistakes

and push on with it.

Leadership comes in a bunch of different forms,

and one form that I learned is that you're going to mess up,

but two, that it's okay to come back from it.

You know, that it's okay to work hard and to prove that's not the stereotype

that, uh, that will follow you.

All right, so the walk-through is exactly the same as the flight is going to be.

The more realistic you can make your sticks and make the walk-through,

the more accurate it'll be for real life.

-Start time. -Drop the power.

Over. Back. Come on.

Turn. Turn. He's at your nine.

Keep pulling. Keep pulling. Get the lead. Get the lead.

There's a sense of pride that comes

whenever you send off an aircraft for a big mission

or an aircraft that hasn't flown for a while.

And being able to be one of the pilots that gets to do that, it's an honor.

Now he starts to increase altitude

and decrease while he's able to turn.

If he puts both of you on one side,

that is, like, the most unideal scenario

because then he's going to probably be on the outside shooting through you.

The last thing 14-year-old me would have thought would have been,

"You're gonna join the Marine Corps, fly attack helicopters, and shoot things,

and work with some of the coolest people that you've ever worked with."

And I think if 14-year-old me can see me now,

he'd be pretty stoked on that.

Good morning, Team Green Bay.

On today's plan of the day,

we have VBSS mission at flight quarters window

starting at 1200.

Go, Pack, go.

Fellas, start getting your stuff together.

They're expecting us on the bridge, time now.

Okay.

Hey, we'll go killing stuff.

Pack, a quick couple of notes.

We're going to go rendezvous with a ship to do a VBSS,

visit, board, search, and seizure event.

The VBSS we're going to be conducting is a practice raid with the Marines

to go board another vessel.

It is dangerous in a lot of ways

because we get in pretty close to the other ship.

It's a really good training exercise

for both the blue and the green side to work together.

Number one, kick ass.

Number two, take names. Number three, have fun.

Number four, be safe. Number five, repeat.

Flight exercises can be high stress.

It really is the culmination of everything that we've worked up to until this point.

-Sir. -How are you?

We've got three jets that are seven or eight out right now.

All right.

Flight quarters. Man your flight quarter stations.

Flight deck to catwalk. Flight quarters.

Flying the F-35 Bravo.

Gonna go thump the ship.

That means we're going to do a low-altitude, higher-speed flyby

of the vessel that we're going after today.

If there's hostile targets, or they come in contact with enemy forces,

we're able to remain overhead to provide close air support.

Good afternoon, Captain Rees, "DAD."

I am going to be Bobcat 8-3.

Bobcat 8-3, flight. Check in, comm 1 secure.

Rotor break in three, two, one.

Bobcat 8-3, en route. Holding area, awaiting X-check.

Panther 5-3, copy.

100 meters for flyby.

-Here it comes. -Fast-mover coming in.

Oh shit.

Holy shit.

That was so cool, bro.

X-check confirmed. Proceed to target vessel.

Copy, we're at 300 feet.

I'm speeding up to 100 knots.

I've got a dot dash two.

Hey, here comes Big Twink.

Dude, they're close as shit.

Yeah, they are.

-A raid. -Raid force.

-Dope as fuck. They're moving. -Fuck yeah.

Yo, that pilot is cookin'!

Raid force in position, over.

The maritime raid force will be the ones that are going on the ship,

kicking down doors,

but my teams will be supporting with precision fire.

We have one of my teams, Ronin 1, on aerial sniper on the Huey.

And then we have Ronin 3

on the LPD,

providing security for the raid force.

Most importantly,

when the raid force gets onto the ship, that's when they're most vulnerable.

Fuck yeah.

Look alive. Get ready for call-outs.

Make sure you're checking all that shit. Make sure no one's pointing guns at them.

I've got two in 1.1.

Armed?

No.

I see him. Stay on.

For the purpose of the training,

there will be a mixture of enemy and civilian role-players over there.

They'll be given fake weapons. We have to deduce who is who.

You gotta be careful now.

Can't be shooting the people on the ship you're trying to take.

Who's enemy and who's friendly? Can you tell?

We can't tell currently.

There's no weapons to be seen right now.

This feels crazy as fuck.

Below deck stern, I've got a guy with a gun!

He's laying down.

-He's laying on his back. -He's laying on his back?

He walked out with a gun and laid down on his back.

Yeah.

Two more just popped out. One-one.

Yeah.

-Two rifles. -Two rifles.

Three rifles.

You saw that guy walk behind that pillar?

-Two rifles. -Yeah.

-You staying on him? -Yeah, I'm on him.

I've got the guy who came over.

Yeah, he's just hiding behind that pillar.

And he's got two M4s, one in each hand.

Looks like he's waiting to ambush.

Ask if I can engage that guy. He looks like he has hostile intent.

Those armed people on the lower deck took two rifles and four personnel

and pushed into pilot house.

Like enemy?

We assume combatants just based on the rifles.

Yeah.

Okay, confirmed, target is neutralized.

Okay. Go back to your sector.

-I've got two... -The 25 Mike, Mike is out.

25-millimeter cannon.

-Gotta do something about it. -Right.

25 Mike, Mike's up now.

It's oriented at the helos right now. Can we request permission to engage?

Bobcat 8-3, be advised,

25 Mike, Mike immediately below you.

Suggest increased altitude to clear line of fire for snipers.

Copy all.

Um... okay.

Okay, we're good.

Yeah, I got it.

Go, Roos.

-Yeah, I got it. -All right.

Bobcat 8-3, 25 is neutralized.

Copy, Bobcat, copies all.

Raid forces at the bridge.

Copy all. Dachshund, dachshund.

They've got the key spaces.

-All of them? Whoa. -Yeah.

Roger.

-Is that the aerial leaving? -Looks like they are.

You know, I think we've done well up to this point.

But championship teams rarely win two championships in a row,

and that's because they stop doing the things

that got them to the championship.

And if you do something again and again and nothing happens,

it's easy to get lulled into a sense of complacency

and not treat these events with the proper degree of respect.

It went pretty smooth.

Communication between the team was pretty good.

Getting behind a long gun and pointing it at another ship, that's always fun.

I wish we had a chance to actually shoot somebody.

I'm gonna get pissed off and throw this fucking gun off.

With me attached to it.

-That was fucking fast. -Very fast.

Would've been nice if we could've taken a couple more shots,

but it didn't make sense in the scenario, so we didn't do it.

Whenever you spend months on a boat

and all you've done is work out and eat and read,

you're craving for something that seems worthwhile to do.

One day, we're all gonna die.

I don't want to die in some car accident or a disease or cancer or some slow death.

It's like I want to embrace death to the fullest. You know what I mean?

Like, I feel like there's nothing more honorable

than going out at a battle

where you have more of a purpose, you know?

I just want to feel like I've done my part,

I've done my job,

and I want to feel validated as a Marine.

Really, we're all kind of in that same boat that...

...a big part of you wants it.

A big part of you wants that conflict. You want to know you have what it takes.

That the other dude on the other side of the battlefield,

he's trying to do the same thing you're trying to do to him.

And, like, the prize and the consequence

is the greatest out of any contest.

It's not a scoreboard, it's not bragging rights,

it's who gets to live and who dies.

And I think testing yourself in that way

is something that a lot of men hunger for.

Ah. My mind keeps going to, uh...

Collin Teem.

He was in Charlie Company with me.

Goofy dude.

Uh, he could make anybody laugh.

He had, like, this big tuft of, like, curly hair.

He was a machine gunner,

and he wanted to do machine-gunnery things.

So he got out.

Well, an opportunity came up for him to be able to go help out in Ukraine.

And I know a big part of him took it

because, like, "I dedicated this many years out of my young life,"

his early twenties,

"to learn how to do this."

"But this is my last opportunity to experience what I signed up for."

Um, found himself in machine gun position and being overrun by Russians.

Yeah, but then that kid...

He could have run off at any time.

He could have displaced. He knew how to do that.

But he essentially made a promise

that he was gonna hold that piece of ground.

Machine guns are like the cornerstone of a defense.

And he didn't give it up.

When people sign up for the military,

they're thinking,

"I will prove myself to myself that I'm worthy,

that I'm courageous,

"that I'm brave, that I'm strong."

But in order to do that,

you have to kind of want to wind up in combat.

It's a kind of rite of passage.

So I've heard there are support groups for people who haven't seen combat.

You know, it's a sort of strange mirror image

of the support groups for people who have seen combat who are traumatized.

And it's interesting that there's an equivalent trauma,

which is one of shame.

"I'm ashamed that I didn't do more."

"I'm ashamed when someone tells me I'm a hero and buys me a drink."

And...

I mean, shame is one of the most devastating human feelings,

and really crippling.

How will you find purpose, if not in combat?