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Mike Drop

Inside Top Gun: The ELITE Training That Pushes Pilots Past Limits | Ep. 267 | Pt. 1

Mike Drop

Mike Ritland

Society & Culture, Personal Journals, Documentary, Politics, News

4.96.3K Ratings

🗓️ 25 November 2025

⏱️ 87 minutes

🧾️ Download transcript

Summary

Join host Mike Ritland for an unforgettable conversation with Dave Berke – the only Marine in history to fly the F-16, F-18, F-22, and F-35, a legendary TOPGUN instructor, former Forward Air Controller attached to Jocko Willink’s Task Unit Bruiser in Ramadi 2006, and co-author of the Extreme Ownership series. From the cockpit of the world’s most advanced fighters to the blood-soaked streets of Ramadi alongside SEALs, Dave pulls zero punches on what real high-performance leadership looks like when lives are on the line. In this nearly 4-hour deep dive, Dave reveals the brutal debrief culture at TOPGUN that turned good pilots into lethal ones, why the peacetime military he first joined in 2001 was nowhere near ready for war, how 9/11 instantly transformed training forever, and the life-changing moment he left the world’s premier fighter-weapons school to volunteer for ground combat in the deadliest city in Iraq. He also shares his unfiltered take on AI ending the era of the single-seat fighter pilot within our lifetime and the raw lessons that still keep him up at night from Ramadi. Whether you’re obsessed with fighter aviation, extreme ownership, or what it really takes to lead when failure isn’t an option, this is one of the most powerful veteran-to-veteran conversations you’ll ever hear. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Transcript

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0:00.0

When you get to Top Gun, you think you know how to fly a river.

0:04.0

And you get there, and right away what you realize is you are nowhere near maximizing the ability of this machine.

0:11.0

I went to Top Gun in a peacetime military. You know, Desert Storm was in 91. We hadn't done anything in 10 years.

0:18.0

I come back as an instructor in a wartime military. We want them to be prepared

0:24.3

for war. You got to make the training hard work. Longer, more difficult, more demanding, higher bar.

0:30.3

Day prep, a data prep, data fly. That's various. Sometimes you're flying five days in a row.

0:35.7

You come back and you debrief for five or six hours.

0:38.3

You know, you're there at five in the morning and you're leaving at five.

0:42.3

And then it's right back into the next day.

0:44.3

That amount of debrief, I mean, there's part of me that kind of internally asked, like, how is there that much to talk about?

0:49.3

Yeah, it's a good question. It's the right question to ask.

1:05.0

I have four dogs and they've eaten all types of different food.

1:10.0

We recently found Team Dog like, I believe this spring, so we've been on it for a year.

1:12.6

Seeger was on it first and Tiller was on it and then we put the Goldens on it.

1:17.6

And I mean, all the dogs eat less food, the dogs' coats are way better.

1:22.6

Everything about Team Dog is, I mean, I'm very impressed.

1:26.6

My dog trainer Justin Allen, he uses it on all like

1:30.1

60 dogs that are there for training um he's tried every single food in the game too and they just

1:41.7

stay super healthy on this this team dog ladies and gentlemen, as always, it's both an honor and a pleasure to welcome my next guest to the podcast.

1:50.0

He's a Marine Corps officer.

1:51.0

He was the pilot of F-16s, 18s, 22s, and 35s.

1:55.0

He was a top gun instructor, which, you know, we're going to have to get to the bottom of that.

...

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