Ep 496: Why This A-10 Crew Chief Ditched Active Duty and Won at Life - Derrick Blake

Ones Ready

Aaron Love, Trent Seegmiller, and Jared "Peaches" Pietras

Education, Special Reconnaissance, Special Operations, Air Force, Pj, Combat Control, Tactical Air Control Party, Self-improvement, Fitness, Selection, Health & Fitness, Pararescue, Special Warfare, Tacp, Government, Assessment And Selection, Cct

4.9 • 1.2K Ratings

🗓️ 8 August 2025

⏱️ 51 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

Send us Fan Mail Think active duty is the only path? Derrick Blake would like a word—preferably during his 3-day weekend. From almost joining the Marines to wrenching on A-10s and recruiting for the 193rd Special Operations Wing, Derrick walks us through how the Air National Guard let him stay home, stack checks, and still deploy to undisclosed sandbox locations. Oh, and did we mention you start getting paid before basic? Yeah. This one’s going to ruffle some feathers—and we love it. We talk ...

Transcript

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0:00.0	One's ready?
0:01.0	All right!
0:02.0	Go!
0:03.0	So you guys are going into Special Warfare Assessment Selection.
0:09.0	It's an attributes-based selection model. What does that mean?
0:13.0	Guys, are we running right now to get better than we're practicing running?
0:16.0	Practicing.
0:17.0	Right? I can't.
0:19.0	Freaking.
0:20.0	So there's a holistic picture that we're looking for.
0:23.6	The instructors are giving you input and we're expecting an output.
0:27.6	And everything is for a reason.
0:29.6	If you guys haven't heard my spiel yet, everything that we do,
0:32.6	every single exercise has a connection to the job that you're trying to do. We don't want people at in-doc Special Warfare Assessment Selection,
0:43.3	whatever they're going to call the new course when it inevitably changes somewhere down the road.
0:47.3	I don't care what they call it.
0:49.3	What I need is you to show me the raw materials for the things that I want to build you into.
0:56.0	Just like everything else, it's a crawl, walk, run.
0:59.0	I can run a key, sir, just like this.
1:02.0	All the way to the ATC you never quit.
1:05.0	All the way to ACC, you never quit.
1:08.0	People don't realize this, but like, if you shoot us an Instagram comment or a comment on YouTube,, you're like, hey, I want to come on the podcast, we're going to tell you yes.
	...

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