You are listening to the War on the Rocks podcast on Strategy, Defense, and Foreign Affairs.

My name's Ryan Evans. I'm the founder of War on the Rocks. In this episode, I sat down with

Vice Admiral Peter Garvin, who leads to the National Defense

University, a truly special institution.

I hope you enjoy the conversation as much as I did.

Why did you join the Navy?

So I was a high school athlete, not really knowing where I was going to go to school, not really

that focused on what was next.

My cross-the-street diagonally neighbor, who was a blue and gold

officer for the United States Naval Academy, saw something in me that honestly I didn't see in myself

and asked me where I was going to go to college, and I wasn't really sure. I was looking at

schools that perhaps I could play for, and I really hadn't put a whole lot of thought into it

beyond that. And so he kind of helped me and focused me and said, what do you think about this? And I said, well, there's a bunch of things there that sound really interesting, you know, always interested in flying in aerospace. And they're like, well, you can do that. So went to the Naval Academy, lucky enough to get in there, initially struggled a bit, if I'm being candid, but got through it, got

through flight school, and had not intended to stay in the Navy this long. But turns out I really

love the people, and I really love the mission, and can't imagine having done anything else.

What aircraft did you end up in? So I ended up in P3 Orion's, and again, that tells you a little bit

of how old I am, because they're long gone. We now fly the P8 Poseidon. They have multiple missions, but the focus, the primary mission of both aircraft is anti-submarine warfare. It is the United States Navy's. In fact, it's the United States Department of Defense's only long-range anti-submarine warfare aircraft and capability. And the P3 was great.

The P8's even greater.

Did you ever get to fly the P8?

I did.

I did.

All the automation, to be frank, was rather interesting.

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