Sergeant Major Mullinax
Appearances
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202 - What REALLY Happens At The Pentagon? Our TOP Secret Mission | Unsubscribe Podcast Ep 202
How long have you been in? So I'll hit 27 years, June 24th, yeah. It's gone by fast.
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202 - What REALLY Happens At The Pentagon? Our TOP Secret Mission | Unsubscribe Podcast Ep 202
Yeah, so I started off in 1st Ranger Battalion. I've been to all of them, so they sort of kept kicking me down, you know, hey, we'll send them to the next battalion. I guess I wasn't good enough at the, you know, the time I was at. But, no, the truth is I had an opportunity to serve all the Ranger Battalions, but I started at 1st Ranger Battalion.
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202 - What REALLY Happens At The Pentagon? Our TOP Secret Mission | Unsubscribe Podcast Ep 202
I met my wife, been married 18 years, got two daughters, 14. Congratulations. Thank you. Her dad was a retired fire chief, Navy veteran back in the day. He was a fire chief when he retired there. So probably move back there one day, be close to her. My wife's family, I'm pretty close to them as well. So first Raider Battalion is sort of where it all started. It's where I became a man.
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202 - What REALLY Happens At The Pentagon? Our TOP Secret Mission | Unsubscribe Podcast Ep 202
became a father, became a husband. So all the things that happened good and bad in my life kind of started at that that organization, but I had opportunity to be a rep instructor, second range of battalion as a platoon sergeant, third range of battalion as a first sergeant. When were you in second bat? I was in second bat from 2007 to 2010. Oh, okay.
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202 - What REALLY Happens At The Pentagon? Our TOP Secret Mission | Unsubscribe Podcast Ep 202
And we stood up, I was there when we stood up deco.
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202 - What REALLY Happens At The Pentagon? Our TOP Secret Mission | Unsubscribe Podcast Ep 202
1.
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202 - What REALLY Happens At The Pentagon? Our TOP Secret Mission | Unsubscribe Podcast Ep 202
uh rip back then was pretty much a um a three-week smoke session give them like get like when they smoke you say smoke session that could be sound like oh you do a hundred push-ups and that's it no that go on i mean you wake up and uh and you're basically they're they're they were looking for a reason to to smoke us all day long and really the purpose was
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202 - What REALLY Happens At The Pentagon? Our TOP Secret Mission | Unsubscribe Podcast Ep 202
Good or bad, it was to figure out who really wanted to be there so that so the in the course in the I have to say that like the you know, especially when it transitioned to RAS, the Ranger Assessment Selection Program. It's professionalized, right? So it's still really, really hard. In fact, it's harder than it was then.
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202 - What REALLY Happens At The Pentagon? Our TOP Secret Mission | Unsubscribe Podcast Ep 202
But they've professionalized in a way that they made it very difficult, but without all the dumb stuff. So they're still going through a very, very hard program. They're still being assessed. figuring out who really wants it and who doesn't. So all those things are still happening, but they're doing it in a way that is much better than it was sort of on the fly back in the day.
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202 - What REALLY Happens At The Pentagon? Our TOP Secret Mission | Unsubscribe Podcast Ep 202
Well, I think it's – you know, I haven't been in the Ranger Regiment since 2014 or 15, so the programs continue to evolve. But, you know, I think that they're looking much harder at their – their suitability for the organization. So there's psych evals involved. There's all sorts of things.
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202 - What REALLY Happens At The Pentagon? Our TOP Secret Mission | Unsubscribe Podcast Ep 202
So they're weeding out an echelon of folks that may not have, you know, 20 years ago, may have not passed this modern rip. So you're getting a...
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202 - What REALLY Happens At The Pentagon? Our TOP Secret Mission | Unsubscribe Podcast Ep 202
getting a young ranger that is more reliable stronger character consistent across the formation more reliable just as physically fit if not more because it's very competitive as the organization's grown it's become kind of a place to be in and more so than it ever has been and so you're getting a physically fit really smart young soldiers that are serving in that organization
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202 - What REALLY Happens At The Pentagon? Our TOP Secret Mission | Unsubscribe Podcast Ep 202
And, oh, by the way, it's longer now. I think it's closer to eight weeks, if not eight weeks. And they're doing a lot of really tough training. That second month, I mean, it's exclusively focused on, like, real exceptional training that we just didn't – we didn't learn that back in the – even as a young soldier in a ranger platoon, you weren't learning the skills that they're learning in –
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202 - What REALLY Happens At The Pentagon? Our TOP Secret Mission | Unsubscribe Podcast Ep 202
Now, okay. It's nine day.
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202 - What REALLY Happens At The Pentagon? Our TOP Secret Mission | Unsubscribe Podcast Ep 202
And if you haven't heard this before, If you talk to anybody that's ever gone through the program, they'll remind you of hit the wood line. So this is when you go out to the field and 100 times a day, they tell you hit the wood line. It's like a 500 meter field that you go out, bring a tree branch back, come back to the formation. You do that over and over and over again.
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202 - What REALLY Happens At The Pentagon? Our TOP Secret Mission | Unsubscribe Podcast Ep 202
So there's a lot of stuff that just I think they might still do that. I hope they do. But there's a lot of stuff that just really didn't make sense. And it wasn't necessarily preparing them for the. other than to figure out who really wanted to be there and who didn't, but they weren't really getting trained. So I think that's the biggest thing.
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202 - What REALLY Happens At The Pentagon? Our TOP Secret Mission | Unsubscribe Podcast Ep 202
I went through in December of 1998.
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202 - What REALLY Happens At The Pentagon? Our TOP Secret Mission | Unsubscribe Podcast Ep 202
No, I had no idea. In fact, I just didn't know what the Ranger Regiment was. My dad served in the Army as a young soldier and then worked for the government many years out there. So it's kind of like being a military brat, but I didn't know a lot about Army. I knew I wanted to serve. My grandfather was a cook. I can't wait to see these parks.
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202 - What REALLY Happens At The Pentagon? Our TOP Secret Mission | Unsubscribe Podcast Ep 202
I actually did three years of Navy Junior ROTC in high school. So I thought I was going in the Navy. I was like ready to go be a Navy SEAL. And then my dad was helping out this young guy who had just gotten out of the Army. And turns out he came from the Ranger Regiment. And he's like, and he found out, hey, I've been talking to a recruiter. I'm getting ready to graduate high school next year.
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202 - What REALLY Happens At The Pentagon? Our TOP Secret Mission | Unsubscribe Podcast Ep 202
And he's like, hey, this is what you need to do. Go ask for a RIP contract. whatever you can tell them that you want to be a forward observer or a medic and a couple other. And then he said, whatever you do, do not let them sign you up to be an 11 Bravo. And I'm like, okay, got it. So I'll go down. I do everything he tells me to do. I come back. He's like, how'd it go?
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202 - What REALLY Happens At The Pentagon? Our TOP Secret Mission | Unsubscribe Podcast Ep 202
great, I'm all signed up, ready to go. I'm gonna start basic training next year. He's like, what's your MOS? 11 Bravo. So here I am, 27 years later. The one. Seems to have worked out for you. Yeah, it was good.
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202 - What REALLY Happens At The Pentagon? Our TOP Secret Mission | Unsubscribe Podcast Ep 202
Well, it turns out it doesn't matter what your job is because it's all going to be really tough. To be honest, I don't know how many forward observers you know from the SOF community or the Ranger Regiment, but I wasn't smart enough to do what those guys do. They're wicked smart.
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202 - What REALLY Happens At The Pentagon? Our TOP Secret Mission | Unsubscribe Podcast Ep 202
wicked smart guys and and i think i was better suited to be a an infantryman so it worked out 11 bang bang just having fun you do the math give me the machine gun that's right exactly what was like one of the worst like worst training things where you're like this where it just sucked like your worst day this is you this is different than what you're expecting but when i say i screwed up we're sitting in parachute harness and
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202 - What REALLY Happens At The Pentagon? Our TOP Secret Mission | Unsubscribe Podcast Ep 202
I was introduced to Copenhagen. My buddy, my battle buddy from basic training was a dipper. By the way, we were allowed to dip back then. We were allowed to dip, but you're not allowed to do it in the harness, right? I don't know that I knew that. Anyways, that wasn't the problem. The problem was he was spitting in his canteen. And so we were sharing his canteen as a spitter.
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202 - What REALLY Happens At The Pentagon? Our TOP Secret Mission | Unsubscribe Podcast Ep 202
And the instructor saw us doing that. And he was furious. And now I think about it, yeah, that's pretty freaking disgusting, right? Because those are canteens we get issued. We've got to give them back. Someone just did this in their canteen. Terrible, terrible, terrible decision, right? But we were held accountable. So instead of getting that weekend off, we collected up.
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202 - What REALLY Happens At The Pentagon? Our TOP Secret Mission | Unsubscribe Podcast Ep 202
Um, all the, the entire class is canteen. So it's two, one, two, two, uh, one courts and, and, uh, one of the two courts. So I think it's like three canteens per guy, a hundred folks in the class or whatever it is have like these giant black trash bags of canteens. And we were, and we washed every that we spent the entire weekend washing those canteens.
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202 - What REALLY Happens At The Pentagon? Our TOP Secret Mission | Unsubscribe Podcast Ep 202
Well, I was, I was worried that we were going to get dropped. I was going to get kicked out of the course because they could have easily said you're gone. And then they gave us a second chance. And that's why I think that's the closest I came to like. being out of the course. And I was thinking, I mean, it resonates to this day with me that, yeah.
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202 - What REALLY Happens At The Pentagon? Our TOP Secret Mission | Unsubscribe Podcast Ep 202
You got to stay in because it is something where they do. Yeah, what a terrible story to have to come back and sit here with you today. And I actually, I didn't serve in the Ranger Regiment. I got kicked out because I was spitting in a canteen.
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202 - What REALLY Happens At The Pentagon? Our TOP Secret Mission | Unsubscribe Podcast Ep 202
So I left as a First Sergeant. Damn, that is a testament to you. Yeah, I'm super proud of the time that I served there. You know, and staying as a CSM would have been awesome. I went to the academy, went to the 173rd to be a battalion CSM right out of the academy, competed to come back as a CSM. But, you know, the thing is, is like the competition is so steep.
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202 - What REALLY Happens At The Pentagon? Our TOP Secret Mission | Unsubscribe Podcast Ep 202
And there just were better guys for those positions. And so I went on to serve in the Army. And I tell you, I'm grateful for that because I left there. And what I realized leaving the Ranger Regiment, if you're going to continue to serve for a while after leaving there, I had a lot to learn about the Army.
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202 - What REALLY Happens At The Pentagon? Our TOP Secret Mission | Unsubscribe Podcast Ep 202
And so leaving there when I did was key to, you know, I wouldn't be where I am today if I hadn't left when I did. And the Army needs us to, you know, go out and share what we've learned in that organization and share with the rest of the institution. It's important that we do that.
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202 - What REALLY Happens At The Pentagon? Our TOP Secret Mission | Unsubscribe Podcast Ep 202
Yeah, you're talking about Jerich Denman.
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202 - What REALLY Happens At The Pentagon? Our TOP Secret Mission | Unsubscribe Podcast Ep 202
Yeah, he was a, yeah, we were Ranger buddies. We served, I first met him, got to know him well at Sacred Ranger Battalion, phenomenal guy, warrior guy. All in on being a warrior. And then he finished up and retired out of 1st Ranger Battalion as a 1st Sergeant.
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202 - What REALLY Happens At The Pentagon? Our TOP Secret Mission | Unsubscribe Podcast Ep 202
Jesus Christ. You've got to remember the Ranger Regiment model was about three and a half. 105, 120-day model deployment. So, you know, across Afghanistan, Iraq, do about 13 of those. I mean, that's nothing compared to a lot of guys. I mean, they've done way more than that. They're still doing them. They're still there.
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202 - What REALLY Happens At The Pentagon? Our TOP Secret Mission | Unsubscribe Podcast Ep 202
I've got Granger buddies that are there today that I grew up with that are battalion CSM, RSM, that are still at it, getting after it. What's the most deployments you know from a friend? I'm not sure. It's probably well over 20, yeah.
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202 - What REALLY Happens At The Pentagon? Our TOP Secret Mission | Unsubscribe Podcast Ep 202
Godspeed, brother. Thanks a lot. Well, hey, I've got Sermator Garza here lined up. Phenomenal guy. Mentor of mine as well is Vern Daly. So let's get him in here and get to work. We appreciate you talking to me. Yeah, absolutely. Great meeting you guys. Thank you so much. Appreciate it. Take care. Thank you so much.
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202 - What REALLY Happens At The Pentagon? Our TOP Secret Mission | Unsubscribe Podcast Ep 202
Oh, yeah.