FPP213 - Top Gun, Tomcats, and AI Wingmen: "Yank" Cummings on Tomorrow’s War
Fighter Pilot Podcast
Tucker "Cinco" Hamilton, Retired U.S. Air Force Fighter Test Pilot
4.9 • 2.1K Ratings
🗓️ 4 May 2026
⏱️ 80 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
JJ “Yank” Cummings returns to the Fighter Pilot Podcast for a wide-ranging conversation on F-14 Tomcats, carrier aviation, Top Gun: Maverick, and the rapidly approaching age of autonomous air combat. From war stories over Afghanistan to his work with Shield AI, Yank brings a rare blend of cockpit credibility, command experience, and forward-looking insight. This one is about more than airplanes; it’s about trust, technology, leadership, tomorrow’s war, and, somehow… robot cats.
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Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | The views expressed in this episode are those of the participants and do not reflect the official policy or position of the United States government. |
| 0:12.3 | Welcome back to the Fighter Pilot Podcast. I'm your host, Tucker Hamilton, call sign Cinco. And today |
| 0:21.6 | we have a truly remarkable guest returning to the show, retired Navy Captain J.J. Cummings, |
| 0:26.6 | call sign Yank. You may remember Yank from his October 23 episode with Flounder, where he took us deep |
| 0:32.8 | inside the world of carrier aviation and the revolutionary Gerald R. Ford. If you haven't listened to that one, |
| 0:38.6 | please go check it out. Today, though, we're taking the conversation in a fascinating new direction. |
| 0:43.8 | Yank has spent the last year at Shield AI, one of the most exciting autonomy companies in the defense space, |
| 0:48.7 | and he's here to share his front row perspective on where autonomous aviation is headed, |
| 0:53.2 | the technology, the challenges, |
| 0:54.9 | the ethical questions, and what it all means for the future of warfare. But before we get there, |
| 0:59.2 | Yank takes us back to October 17, 2001, flying F-14Bs off the USS Theodore Roosevelt for |
| 1:06.1 | the first strikes in Afghanistan, a mission that would fundamentally change the way he led and the way he saw |
| 1:11.9 | his purpose. This is a conversation about technology and leadership and sacrifice, what it means |
| 1:16.7 | to serve something greater than yourself. And for our paid Patreon subscribers, you get a bonus |
| 1:21.4 | discussion about Top Gun 2 from the man who helped write the screenplay. Get ready. Fights on. |
| 1:38.3 | Yank, welcome back to the Fighter Pilot podcast. It is fantastic to have you here. It's great to be able to talk about what's been going on in your life. You were on an earlier episode. It was a |
| 1:43.1 | fantastic episode about the J. R. Ford. Flounder was the one that interviewed you an earlier episode. It was a fantastic episode about the Jarre |
| 1:44.7 | R. Ford. Flounder was the one that interviewed you at the time. That was back in October |
| 1:48.8 | 2023. I highly encourage our listeners now. If you have not checked that episode out, |
| 1:53.2 | please go take a listen. It is really enthralling, fascinating, especially for an Air Force guy |
| 1:59.1 | like me to learn about like the intricacies of the |
| 2:01.9 | carrier and even the differences between the different classes and how the Ford was kind of |
... |
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