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Welcome to The Pilot Project Podcast, your premier source for stories and insights from pilots in the RCAF and mission aviation - brought to you by Skies Magazine! Whether you're an aspiring aviator, navigating flight training, or simply fascinated by the world of military and mission aviation, this podcast is your guide. We sit down with pilots and aviation professionals to hear their thrilling experiences, lessons learned, and expert advice on resilience, training, and the skills needed to succeed in this exciting field. Strap in - we’re ready for departure!
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Bryan:Alright. We're ready for departure here at the Pilot Project Podcast, the best source for stories and advice from RCAF and Mission Aviation Pilots brought to you by Sky's Magazine. I'm your host, Brian Morrison. And with me today for part three of our discussion on the evolution of special operations aviation in Canada is the director air and space for Canadian Special Operations Forces Command or CANSOFCOM, colonel Todd O'Malley. Todd, welcome back to the show.
Bryan:It is a pleasure to have you here again, and I'm looking forward to this.
Todd:Yeah. My my pleasure, Brian. Thank you.
Bryan:Listeners can check out part one to hear about Todd's early days in flight training and getting selected tac hell at four two seven. In part two, we go through his early days flying operationally on the Twin Huey in the Sinai Desert and Honduras, as well as introducing NVGs or night vision goggles to the tactical helicopter community. Today is going to be a really cool look at the history of four two seven and how it evolved from a traditional tac hill unit to the Special Forces unit it is today. So in 1992, you were posted to four fifty Squadron in Ottawa. Yep.
Bryan:But almost immediately, you're pulled back into preparing crews for what would become a very infamous mission for Canada, Somalia, because of your NvG expertise. Can you quickly summarize for us what the mission in Somalia involved for Canada?
Todd:Yeah. I think the best way for me to say it is, I I think on one side, you could see that the media really was concerned with hunger over in Somalia.
Bryan:Mhmm.
Todd:I think the region needed peace, but we were really there in a peace making role as opposed to a peace keeping role. And I feel like that was an area that had not been walked through in the same vein as a lot of our other missions had been, which were they were peacekeeping and you were there to just this one was more peacemaking.
Bryan:Okay.
Todd:And I found that was very different because I don't think we were ready for that. And I look back at the incident, I look back at the time there. And yes, we were trying to stabilize the region. But I would say we had troops on the ground to enforce to a point peace to try to make sure we could stay, you know, stabilize the region.
Bryan:Mhmm.
Todd:Which felt very different, than other missions I've been on other deployments.
Bryan:Yeah. So a bit of a different kind of same objective, but different process.
Todd:Yeah. A 100%. And but I felt that piece about a peacemaking was a a nuance. Like, we were we were trying to force peace into the region a bit. I I feel Mhmm.
Todd:Which if they're not ready for it yet, that's gonna be a harder, you know, that's a harder pill to swallow.
Bryan:Well, we've seen that time and time again, right?
Todd:100%.
Bryan:Yep. You can look at most of the conflicts and deployments of the last twenty plus thirty years.
Todd:Yeah.
Bryan:As attempts to achieve peace in unstable regions and I pretty tough to think of a successful example, to be honest.
Todd:Yeah. You're you're right. And I I know if you look if you look at the same year we were there, I mean really Black Hawk Down occurred just months later when we when we had left theater, it happened in the same year. So Oh, wow. Right?
Todd:So it just kinda shows you what the region was almost like Mhmm. When we were there, and I don't know we fully understood how close we were to, you know, to a light off of emotions over there.
Bryan:Yeah. When when you guys saw that happen to the American forces a few months later. Yeah. Were you guys like, wow, that could have been us?
Todd:Yeah. I mean, I think we were doing a different role than they were, but we could have been caught. Like, I still remember when we took off at Mogadishu, the very first flight, had to do a test flight, and you're flying over the city not really knowing if they want you there or not, and you're kind of testing, you know, when we shipped the helicopters over, we had to put them back together again, so go for a test flight. And I kind of think, wow, like, like, where are we? I know the city, but do they even want us here?
Todd:And then what are what are we gonna be in for for the remaining part of this mission?
Bryan:Yeah. That must have been kind of unsettling to not really know if the populace wants you there.
Todd:Yeah. It it I think it is unsettling, and it was, because you know that that region has been has had its challenges for decades, and you're sort of now willing the Western piece on it. Mhmm. And I'm like, be very curious how this goes over.
Bryan:Yeah. So we said that you were brought back to help prepare crews for this deployment, and you've mentioned flying out of Mogadishu because you deployed there yourself as the detachment deputy flight commander. You've described the conditions there, like landing in talcum powder, and you mentioned a term earlier, which is a dust ball, I believe you said. Right?
Todd:Yep. Dust ball or brownout.
Bryan:Yeah. Can you explain what that is and why it's dangerous?
Todd:A dust bowl or brownout, the best way maybe to think about it is if you look at it at snow. If you've got a light powder and most people have probably seen this even on TV where you have a very light powder of snow and people go on heli skiing, you'll see helicopters trying to land in a specific area and you got that huge white gust ball or snowball that envelops the helicopter. If you almost times that by two, three, four, that's kind of what level this brown out, this dust ball would be in that talcum powder desert sand of of Somalia. Wow. Yeah.
Todd:Like it you didn't get it in Mog. In Mogadishu, you were kind of at a runway. Yeah. Right? So you're like, you're not really sure yet.
Todd:And we had really nobody, we were the first Road of Zero, so nobody was out in the field when we showed up. So I remember myself and the DCO I believe, I want to say Bill Vogan, we were the first to fly out to Bella Twain out to the desert, where we were gonna be living for, I guess the next six months at the time. And we go to land and I'm like, holy jumping, as you come in to land, you're landing literally in a empty brown desert field. And as you come into the, like just before you touch down, this ball of dirt, like it just from the back end of the bird, comes forward and you are like, you're covered, you cannot see anything. So if you haven't just touched down before it gets to the cockpit, you're probably safest to start an overshoot and take off before you touch down to get out of it.
Todd:Yeah. Because you're going to lose ground reference very quickly, like very, very quickly if if you stay in it. And then that's just wait. It's extremely dangerous. You just lose ground reference and, you know, bad things happen when you can't see the ground.
Bryan:Yeah. So you were probably some of the first people encountering that in Canadian aviation, and that's interesting because, obviously, some lessons were learned because when I was in four hundred squadron, dust balls were something Obviously, they were running into that as well in Afghanistan with the talcum powder sand there as well.
Todd:They were.
Bryan:So they were regularly that was one of their training evolutions.
Todd:Yeah. And I think, you know, when I was in Somalia, one of the things we were trying to figure out initially early on was how to land at night, because your references aren't the same, your depth perception wasn't the same on goggles when you're coming into land, and the Americans had loaned us these steel grates that we would land on, so as long as you could get over it with a little bit of forward speed on, just enough where you could keep the dust ball behind the cockpit, because it kind of comes from the back towards the front, so you had to have just enough speed and just enough power on to keep it at bay right behind you, and then you come over this grate and you touch down and land. And then as you stop, this thing just comes across you and probably thirty seconds to a minute, you can't see anything, but you know you're on the ground. Wow. Yeah, it was.
Todd:I remember being sent up at night to go figure out the CEO said, go find out how we land at night properly. Like we have to find a different way because if you don't do that little approach exact, you could hear guys overshooting and coming out the top of the dust ball and it was not gonna be safe for us to be doing that at night. So we came up with a way to come in about 50 feet in the hover, so almost you're above the dust ball if that makes sense. And I would pick up the corner of one of those grates out of a for a hover reference. And I would just literally move down and the flight engineer was looking straight down on the grate and I never looked out front because you know you're gonna be in a a big ball of brown.
Todd:And I would just walk myself right down to that reference point until I touched. And when I touched, I would roll the both engines to idle, and then I'd look up and you are literally in the middle of this dust ball, but you had references at night that way. It was the best way to land at night.
Bryan:Wow. There was actually a helicopter crash during four two seven's deployment to Somalia involving a brownout. What did the investigation reveal to be a series of events, and how did that affect the crews emotionally after that?
Todd:Yeah. I I was, I wanna say I was deployed up on a Northern on a mission, and what we had heard and what we found out is a helicopter was looking to take off, and one of the biggest pieces again because of the brownout, is when you got into that hover to take off, you kind of had to have enough torque that you could just keep moving up. So you were going to be out of that brownout scenario and then start flying.
Bryan:And
Todd:what what I believe occurred on this one is they were in the hover, probably not a lot of not a lot of power left to climb out the top, and they looked and they turned inside that ball, lost their references and then basically crashed on the ground. And that was one of those things we really were afraid of was losing your references in that brownout. So that's what unfortunately, nobody was injured if I'm not mistaken in that, but it affected obviously the crew and it affected us because we knew how dangerous takeoff and landing piece of our operation was, it wasn't actually going out and doing the mission. There's a lot of people that on the way home from a two hour mission, the whole aircraft, the whole helicopter was focused on landing safely. Yeah.
Todd:Like, because that everybody everybody was on edge for takeoffs and landings.
Bryan:Which, like, for an experienced pilot, normally, you just almost like, obviously, that is the the one of the times when things can go wrong. Like, it's called a critical phase of flight, but, you know, it's something you almost take for granted.
Todd:Yeah. And I remember that was probably one of the biggest things we had to get, you know, get used to over there was the takeoff and making sure you you had enough power to get out of that brown that brownout. And then coming back in, you had to figure out how to be really precise on that landing.
Bryan:Mhmm. Now during that deployment, you also were supporting US Special Forces. Was that your first real exposure to the special operations world?
Todd:It was, and it it happened by accident. It happened twice in Somalia. So the very first time it happened, we had just arrived out in the in the desert. We're waiting for our trucks and our tents to show up. And I hear these two motorcycles coming through the desert, and all of a sudden, these two guys show up and they're two special ops Americans out of the out of the blue, like just and I'm like, What?
Todd:What brings you guys here? And they said, you know, we got our own sort of agenda going on here. So they, you know, they depart, they do their thing. And I would say probably a month or two later, I'm asked we were the only ones in theater with a forward looking infrared ball, floor ball that really could with a video camera, basically a video tape could capture at night images that we could go and find different levels of heat depending on what it was. So we were the only ones with this capability in theater, so I get tasked with a crew to go work with the US military, and they want to go look for a certain group of individuals that are out near a town.
Todd:Now I'm like, okay. So they had two Cobra helicopters as our escort, armed Cobras.
Bryan:Oh wow.
Todd:And then they had Blackhawks, I believe, with the team on board further behind us. Our job was to go see if we can find them. One of the coders would protect us and move us off-site. One would illuminate the area with infrared sort of flares, and then the troops would would land and and, do whatever their mission was.
Bryan:Okay.
Todd:So sure enough, off we go. We do this mission, and we find who they're looking for. Cobra takes us away. One Cobra stays, illuminates the whole area. And at that time, you know, everybody's on goggles, it's probably two in the morning, and, we come back, we land, everybody's good, and just as I shut down, this American colonel walks over to the helicopter and he says, I'll take that tape please, so we hand them the tape and off they go.
Todd:And that was it, it was as like you were part of them, mission's over, you're gone. And you know, like an hour later, we're done and you're back to carrying on with your own mission. But it was very that was my first real interaction with, what folks were doing, in the special operations world.
Bryan:Cool.
Todd:Yeah.
Bryan:Just a warning to our listeners, the story we're about to explain is graphic, but it is a critical piece of Canadian history to acknowledge and understand. The next thing that we're going to discuss needs a little bit of context because people who are my age and older will definitely know what we're talking about, but some of our younger listeners may not have heard of this incident. The incident we are going to discuss is called the Somalia affair. It happened in 1993, and it was a massive scandal for the Canadian military. In December 1992, Canada deployed its elite airborne regiment to Belitwain, Somalia as part of a United Nations backed humanitarian and famine relief mission.
Bryan:This would be the same mission that Todd was deployed on. On 03/16/1993, Chidani Arone was captured by Canadian soldiers after allegedly sneaking into the compound to steal supplies. Over the course of three hours, he was held in a weapons bunker where he was bound, blindfolded, and brutally beaten to death with fists, boots, a riot baton, and a metal pipe. He was 16 years old when he was killed. One member of the airborne regiment, Private Elvin Kyle Brown was found guilty of manslaughter and torture and received a five year prison sentence.
Bryan:Another suspect, Master Corporal Clayton Matchie attempted suicide while in military custody, which left him with severe brain damage and rendered him permanently unfit to stand trial. Several other soldiers faced military court martials with varying results. Institutionally, this incident caused massive shame and resulted in the disbandment of the entire Canadian airborne regiment and a massive restructuring of how Canada approached special operations. Because of those events, Somalia became a very defining and painful chapter for the Canadian military institutionally, and it resulted in a ton of changes, including the disbandment of the airborne regiment. What was it like to reintegrate back into normal life after those events had happened?
Todd:Yeah. You're right. It was it was a defining, moment for for a number of reasons. Absolutely. It was much harder to come home from that deployment because when it got cut short for obvious reasons, Canada, it had a stain on it in the eyes of the world.
Todd:You're not a hero coming home. You deploy, but nobody was there to almost embrace that.
Bryan:And
Todd:I was kind of torn because what we did over there, and what we were trying to do as a mission was worthy of why we went. It was just a very unfortunate circumstance and I fully understand the country's decision. But he was making it almost harder to integrate when we got home because it kind of were on, It was like a mission not completed.
Bryan:And
Todd:and then they wanted to almost for a while, we were down the road of there's no metal, there's no recognition that you went. And now didn't sit well with me, I'll be honest, I I I had a tougher time with that until they just recognize that despite everything, we did go. We we did what you asked and. And then we did at one point get recognized that there was a medal for Somalia, but it was a hard chapter, I'll say, to be honest. It it sat for a long time with me on what do I do with this?
Todd:Is this kind of like I don't know. Is this is this a pivot point in my career almost? I I was having a tough time finding peace with it.
Bryan:How did you work through that?
Todd:I think it was time. I'll be honest. I I probably vented a fair bit. I I think when they started to recognize that we did go to Somalia and we did for the vast majority of us, we did exactly what was asked of us. And I feel like just the living conditions over there, like being in a mod tent with seven of your best buddies with water pouring through your tent and bugs flying around and the conditions of eating, you know, MREs or what do we call them?
Todd:IMPs. IMPs, yeah. Bagged food. It kind of leveled the playing field from Honduras for me like, hey, we're back to level again as a military. And it was a challenging place to fly and nothing was easy there.
Bryan:Mhmm.
Todd:So I was I I just had to maybe accept some of the things I had learned over there and accept it again that we had survived. And I I kinda realized maybe the military I realized where the military sat in the government's decisions. Like, we are an instrument for a a government. Yeah. And and that was probably maybe the first time I really understood that you have to protect that instrument to protect them, the government, to be able to do the things they need to do.
Todd:Mhmm. And we didn't. As a collective group, we didn't. So they had to react in a way that maybe we didn't want them to have to, but ultimately, I mean, fully understood it, it was more you had to almost figure out where what lessons you were gonna take from it and then move on. Yeah.
Todd:Right? And it but I I did chew on it for quite a while.
Bryan:It almost sounds like a really challenging situation where it was like, you know, how do we own what happened but not try to paint everybody with this broad brush? Like, how do we not shrug it off Right. But also not not let an isolated event define the entire military?
Todd:Yeah, I feel like that, you know, a lot of times, you know, you watch maybe some decisions being made and it's we gloss over everybody as opposed to really concentrating on an event, handle it properly, but the rest of the folks, they did an incredible job in exactly what they were asked to do in very difficult circumstances. So I was proud to have gone and yet I felt almost I shouldn't be. And it was that that's that piece I was I was I was struggling with.
Bryan:For sure.
Todd:Yep.
Bryan:Yeah. Like, to go on any deployment, especially one that involves austere conditions or personal risk, is something typically that you're you're proud of. And then to have this almost feel like it was shameful or something that you shouldn't talk about must have been really tough.
Todd:Yeah. It it was very tough. And because you you sort of couldn't talk about it a lot because people were still really it it was really a fresh wound. Mhmm. It was still very much in the open.
Todd:And then I would almost say then the black hawk down scenario occurred later in the year, and it almost is a like, it's a movie I've watched once, and I can't watch it again. It almost brings back almost a visceral feeling of emotion of living and doing everything over there.
Bryan:Mhmm.
Todd:And how I felt when I was there, which is, you know, it it was you were right on the edge, you know? Yeah. It it just was.
Bryan:We're gonna start sort of getting into what led you to JTF two. After Somalia, you began augmenting support to the RCMP. What did that work involve?
Todd:Yeah. So I was at four fifty, we had a flight that was really predominantly supporting the RCMP, the Special Emergency Response Team, CERT. And really what it involved is you were there airborne taxi, being able to insert or extract in surgical, I would say urban environment. They were really responsible for hostage rescue and counterterrorism. And there had been leading up to it in the eighties, seventies.
Todd:There had been hijackings. There have been all kinds of events that had occurred where this team developed over time, and so it needed sort of an air branch to move it around, if required. And that's where that's where saw flight stood up, four fifty, and they supported them and they were part of the squadron. So even though I was part of that tac hell flight in the squadron because of my my time and goggle time, I started to fly with them once in a while, knowing as soon as I did, that's where I wanted to be. Yeah.
Todd:Like as soon as I started doing some of their profiles and their mission flying. I was like, Okay, I have now found home. Yeah. And that was a big moment.
Bryan:Yep. That was pivotal.
Todd:It was pivotal. Yeah, it was.
Bryan:After that, you were able to continue to dip your toes into that sort of environment when you became the first air liaison officer assigned to JTF two. How did that come about?
Todd:Yeah. So I have to thank a good buddy of mine, Pete Harrison, because Pete was looking to he was offered that position and but he was also looking to get out, and he made the decision at that time to get out. And then they said, hey, would you like to be the first ALO at JTF2? And I jumped on that in about five seconds, because I could also stay flying with them. But, you know, I showed up at Wirehill as the first air liaison officer, which when you kind of go anywhere as the first, you're gonna shape whatever it becomes, nobody really knows what you're supposed to do for them, but they know they need it.
Todd:So I would argue, like even I would say week one, when I showed up there, they showed me an office, they said, this is your office, and there's literally nothing in it. Like there's a phone on the floor, There's no desks, no chairs. It's just this is your office. And they said, hey, find some stuff and make it your office. So I'm like, Okay, so I find a desk.
Todd:You know, I get a guy to help move it in chairs. Okay, got, you know, got some of it. And then this printer shows up. Now, you know, this is what, 9094, I guess I went in there. This massive printer shows up and it's this color printer that has these wax color sticks that you melt on paper like it's I don't know how much it costs.
Todd:I'm going to say probably $15 at the time. It was a ridiculous sized printer, but folks had bought it because of this position standing up. Some creative minds figured out how to get me this printer. But what I really needed was a black and white printer and a car because I couldn't go anywhere, you can't be an air liaison guy if you can't go drive to the airport or do whatever's required. So the research and development guys out at Dwyer, they saw my printer and they're like, oh my God, like we need that printer.
Todd:I said, here's what I need. I need a black and white printer and a car. They're like done. So they throw me the keys to the little Corsica that had a police engine in it. And
Bryan:Oh, that's fun.
Todd:Obviously courtesy of the RCMP at the time and a black and white printer. And I gave them this massive printer and everybody was happy and my ALO office was set up.
Bryan:We've, mentioned Dwyer Hill a couple times. That's a big name in the Canadian military. Can you just quickly explain what that is?
Todd:Dwyer Hill Training Center is, it's near Ottawa. It is where the RCMP had their CERT team. It is where, JTF two is. And it's, you know, it is the it's kind of the beginning of the Special Operations Organization for Canada, really, when you when you look at it. And that's where that name, you know, I I was on a flight here recently and and I sit down and a guy across from me says, hey.
Todd:Were you at the farm? And I'm like, yes, I was. And sure enough, he was talking about Dwyer Hill because Dwyer Hill was a farm. Uh-huh. So anybody from the original days, because they I mean, they you know, when we went there, they still had the horse.
Todd:They have the stalls, they had the horse paddock across the street. So we referred to it as the farm. So when he said that, I knew exactly what he was talking about, but it also aged us exactly when we had met each other there, you know, because it's it's not probably referred to it as much in that name.
Bryan:When you were stepping into this role, did you have any kind of feeling that you were stepping into what would become an important part of Canadian soft history?
Todd:Yeah. I I did, but I didn't know that it was gonna be soft history. And I say that because when we took over that role from the RCMP, it was a very specific domestic counterterrorism hostage rescue role. And I would say like the evolution of how CanSoftcom has grown from those early days is really through the vision and the visionary thoughts of some of the founders of CanSoft within Canada. Because in those days, there was a lot of people that didn't want us to be successful.
Todd:Because the RCMP at the core folks, they didn't want this to they didn't wanna lose this. This was an outstanding opportunity and and job. Mhmm. But it was a I think it was a financial decision that ultimately D and D was gonna take over this responsibility. So, you know, one day we would fly mixed crew sometimes with RCMP and JTF two as we were doing the transition.
Todd:But I would say in in some of the higher level political and even in the military, they didn't want it to be successful. I think the army wanted to initially own it. I feel like some people thought it maybe should have been carved out of maybe the army initially as opposed to a selected corps and really a very specific handful of folks initially to stand it up. But we, I think we fought as a team trying to do our very best so nobody had the opportunity or the ability to point and go see, they should not exist. It should be somebody else.
Todd:And it was really like that, I would say for quite a while at the beginning. We were trying to do our darndest to learn the role, be extremely good at it and convince folks at different levels of how important this was to succeed, not knowing what it was gonna grow to, not having any idea what it was gonna grow to, but we were not gonna let that fail.
Bryan:Yeah, because this is the very earliest days of JTF two, right? Like it was created for this purpose.
Todd:A 100%. Yeah. Yeah, like literally in its infancy, less than a year old I think when I joined it, taking that role over. So you were still working with the RCMP at times in there to teach different parts of it. It was very fragile in its early days.
Bryan:I mean, it's amazing to think that what is now an extremely well respected world class special operations force started out as basically a SWAT team.
Todd:Yeah. And I feel like that was a vision of certain folks because they saw that if you stay in that that area only, that niche, you're not going to be able to survive. And I do think because of the background of some of the folks, in the initial, early days, they saw we've got to start to expand our capability. We have to be more than just a domestic crisis response team, albeit extremely good, and they were, they now are world class in the the entire CanSoftcom is world class in what they do. Mhmm.
Todd:Regardless of which unit you talk about, they're highly regarded and and, highly respected. And, you know, that that that was not an easy road for a lot of people.
Bryan:Yeah. And those early days, the mission was, as you've mentioned, kind of loosely defined. What did that feel like at the time and what was the culture like in those beginning times of JTF two? I would imagine there was probably a pretty intentional approach to culture, especially because this was shortly after the disbandment of the airborne unit to not become a second airborne unit.
Todd:That is a very true point. One, you know, it attracted personalities similar to what you would find in the airborne, which were go getters, wanna be first, wanna be the best in the world. So you really had this struggle to make sure, we weren't labeled as such. So you had to kind of find the expertise of people, the drive that people had, but but start to put a shape of professionalism around the just non military. You're you're really a an asset for the government to use as a last resort in a place in one of your cities that people are having their worst day, and you may be the last instrument that that country can call on.
Todd:That's, we almost held on to that I think for quite a while at the beginning is, hey, we are going to be the very best at this. No matter how big, small we are, we are going to be extremely good at this and I think to a person at that unit, that's how we we thought at the in the early days.
Bryan:Now at this time, you were going through a very painful personal chapter in your life. What was that like and how did you get through it with so much going on professionally and personally at the same time?
Todd:Yeah, at that exact same time you're right. It was a pretty significant personal challenge going on But I remember, you know, being, you're one of the only Air Force guys at that unit, and you're the only guy in the role, which was to look after their air needs. So if they were moving anywhere around the country, you were in charge of working with the Air Force to try to get them what lift they needed, make sure the other airports were good to go. You were also flying with, saw flight at the time, which eventually, it became B flight. But I had to compartmentalize and I had to talk to some folks at Dwyer and you realize you weren't the only one working through challenges in your life and you almost had to go, hey, I will deal with this in the evening, like in my own headspace, or right now I have an absolute job to do because they're counting and relying on me either to fly them safely or get them from A to B because they have a job to go do and regardless of what's happening in your life.
Todd:And I really think that that was a important learning point for me is you had to be able to compartmentalize no matter how bad it was, it's gonna sit in a box and it is not gonna impact how I do my job. Full stop. It was not and I didn't allow it out. It didn't get to come out of that box during during work hours, I'll call it. Yeah.
Todd:It it was that was a hard limit. And you know, whether you're gonna be successful on the other side of it or not, from a personal point of view, you had to kinda, it was like church and state, you had to divide it, you had a job to do, you had people relying on you, it was a no fail mission and I was not gonna fail. And the other side, I had to find who I was and fix like my path moving forward there and I did, and that led me to my family now. Mhmm. And, know, so but you but you really had to concentrate on not letting anything impact what your job was.
Bryan:Yeah. Because this is not an office job. Right? This is Right. This is a very kinetic life and death industry.
Bryan:Yes. And so you can't be distracted. It sounds a little ruthless almost, but you have to put that aside or you just can't do it.
Todd:Yeah. That's kind of how I saw it too and I you know, even if as, you know, as I was working through the personal side, it got the same amount of focus and energy that it needed when the time was right for it to get that focus and energy. But the other side was literally a life and death kinetic, you know, time where you had to show up, and not be the, you know, the with the Swiss cheese modeled, you know, not be the the piece that let everybody down. Yeah. Just wasn't gonna happen.
Todd:And my brain, it was that was a hard limit.
Bryan:So you've talked about how when you first flew with the RCMP that you right away, like, a light bulb went on. You've talked about flying with the boys. For listeners who may not understand what special operations aviation looked like in the mid nineteen nineties, what kind of missions and support were you actually providing?
Todd:Yeah. We were I I would argue we predominantly, we were doing tactical insert extract in, in urban environments and that could be fast rope where you've got a heavier rope out each side of the helicopter and the troops are sliding down the fast rope onto whatever platform they needed to get onto. It could have been a building, it could have been near a plane or a car or a van that was stopped. You do dynamic rappel where everybody goes out at the same time, probably three, four aside, and they all have their individual ropes. And we did it very differently back in those days.
Todd:We still do where traditional conventional rappel. Helicopter kind of comes into the hover and then everybody kind of goes out to get our folks on the ground as soon as possible, we would have them go out before we had stopped over where we wanted to be, and we were relying on their judgment. As I came into the stop and the hover, they were already touching the ground. Wow. Yep.
Todd:So you worked, like you worked very, very closely with them to perfect these insert extract, low hover inserts. You know, you might do a one skid, kind of goes back to my learning in Portage, trying to learn off levels. You might put one skid on top, you know, of a building and the other parts of the helicopter are over, you know, they're not over a building at all, and they're getting in or out on one side. Well, day or night.
Bryan:That's crazy.
Todd:Yeah, and you might be doing this in a city, that's what you were perfecting is domestic support, including sniper support, We had different ways of supporting with snipers on board, And ultimately, you were the last, you know, you were the final call from the government if there was a situation for a hostage rescue.
Bryan:You've kind of used words like developing, perfecting. How much of these capabilities at the time was just basically being invented and and refined as you went along? Like, it sounds like it was basically a collaborative process.
Todd:It was. It was probably a crawl, walk, run a bit even when saw flight was flying with the RCMP. And then as we started to take over, as JTF-two started to take over, they started to shape how they wanted certain inserts and extracts to happen, and you had to think about it and maybe a lot of the time that's different in what we were doing compared to the conventional forces, is we had to be able to do it on the first time. So if there was a specific building that we had to go and insert the troops in a in a city, you had one chance to to fly tactically into that location and safely insert them and leave without, you know, without waking up the the bad folks that are in the building, let's say, and coming around again because you missed it or you were half a kilometer away because you read the wrong building. So you had to be no fail, you had to be perfect on that insert when you've never been over that building before, or never been over that target before.
Todd:I feel like that was, you know, each time you had to maybe develop a different tactic to do it as well as you could, maybe come in a different path, maybe two helicopters approach from one direction, two from another, you all four show up over a building like a coordinated dance, like a choreography, you know, with with Sniper Birds supporting, like and so you were. You were kinda developing tactics as you went along with some of the core insert extract capabilities existing.
Bryan:Yeah. And those are still core skills in four q seven today.
Todd:Yep. 100%.
Bryan:Is it kinda cool to see, like, some of the stuff that you developed? I'm sure it's been refined and, you know, tactics are always being updated and refined. But is it neat to see some of the stuff that you were developing or you were involved in in the early days of JTF two and what would eventually become what four two seven is today still out there?
Todd:Yeah. It it is. And I feel like I'm extremely proud of where the squadron is. I'll be honest. Like, they are they are leaps and bounds past where we were.
Todd:We were playing in a very specific role in a very specific box of domestic support, but they are literally, and they think literally globally in what they bring now. Like you can put them anywhere in the world and they're gonna be extremely good at doing it. And again, it goes back to, they're gonna go do it to a building they've never seen before in a country they've maybe never been before, and they get one chance to do it right. And I and the training they put themselves through, I, you know. I'm really you know, I'm proud to be part of their history, but I'm extremely proud of who they are and what they actually do now compared to where we were back in the day.
Todd:We were pretty raw back in the day, you know, in the big scope. They're polished now. It's good to see.
Bryan:A phrase that comes up often when talking to you about the culture within these units within JTF two and within eventually soft aviation is refusing to lose. As we look at wrapping up this part of our chat, what kind of mindset does that look like and and what kind of mindset do you think is required to have that refuse to lose mentality and and to be successful in soft?
Todd:I think it can actually migrate to every part of your life, to be honest. When somebody says like, you you go out for a run and you're like, I didn't have another step in me, really, did you? Like if somebody pointed a gun at you and said, gotta run another mile, you don't think you could? So we looked at it as there's always something you could still do in order to make this mission successful. It's never over like like no fail to me was a very deep line.
Todd:And there was always more energy. You could still do something more depending on whatever sleep you got, whatever, know, weather threw at you, whether the birds broke, you were not going to lose. You were going to be successful in doing your role, which was either going to get them or dropping them off no matter what the world throws at you. And I feel that that same attitude was in the men and women of the unit and the units now and in the headquarters. And I still think you get that when you go to work.
Todd:Like when somebody brings something up, I don't ever hear somebody go, no, no, impossible. Because it's not impossible. You just maybe haven't thought of the way to do it yet. But to me, like there's always a path to being like, it might not be the yes that you started on, but it's it's gonna get you as close to that yes as you can, where the troops will make up the delta to get the mission done. Yeah.
Todd:That's how I see it in my head.
Bryan:Yeah. Basically, it's a mindset of, like, we will find a way. We will find a way to do this. That's the kind of person you need to be.
Todd:And I know that's the motto of, you know, Kansoff, Kam, is we will find a way. And but it's a very true statement.
Bryan:Is that actually their motto? Yep. Oh my gosh, that I did not know that.
Todd:Yeah, it is. You know, you'll see it, it's funny, was just in a meeting and I looked over at the chief sitting beside me and he has a book and it's it's in there and, know, it's on our walls and but it it it's kind of how hands off has lived and grown up. Regardless of the challenge that was put in front of folks, you're absolutely gonna find a way to do that mission, and it's probably not gonna look like it did an hour ago, but you're going to find a way. Mhmm. 100%.
Bryan:Okay, Todd. That's where we're going to end today's chat. It was so cool to hear about kind of the birth of JTF two, the beginning of soft aviation in Canada, like, just a really fascinating view into that, as well as the mission in Somalia, which I feel like is is very rarely discussed in Canada. So thank you so much for sharing that. Thank you for being here today, and I am really looking forward to connecting with you for our, final episode to talk about your time at Moose Jaw as well as the evolution of soft aviation in Canada.
Todd:Well, thanks, Brian. I appreciate you, having me on the show today.
Bryan:Alright. Okay. That wraps up part three of our chat with colonel Todd O'Malley. Tune in next week as we sit down to talk about Todd's time at Moose Jaw both as an instructor and as the commandant when I was there as a student. And then we will dive in to hear about how soft aviation in Canada grew from the point we've discussed working with the RCMP to becoming a full fledged Special Forces Aviation Squadron.
Bryan:Do you have any questions or comments about anything you've heard in this show? Would you or someone you know make a great guest, or do you have a great idea for a show? You can reach out to us at The Pilot Project Podcast@Gmail.com or on all social media at at podpilotproject. And be sure to check out that social media for lots of great videos of our RCAF and Mission Aviation aircraft. As always, we'd like to thank you for tuning in and ask for your help with the big three.
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Bryan:Engineer, shut down all four. Shutting down all four engines.