everybody is here. Or do you want a minute? All right, so I'm going to call this portion of meeting to order. This meeting. We're resuming the meeting. I moved to come out of recess and resumed the meeting from last night. Second. All in favor? All right. So yeah, we reached out to say if the candidates had any further thing that they wanted to offer, they could. And so I know at least two of the candidates are here and I think Lelitha had sent a statement. So if you want to make a statement further, you may. We're not going to take any further public comment though at this point. So either one of you like to go first? Or not at all. Either way, it's up to you. Sure. Thank you. Thank you for enduring such a long and difficult process last night with grace and determination. I appreciate everything you do. I think I have three points to make. It's been suggested that appointing my opponent here would be the democratic way to address this decision. I'm sorry. And speak a little more in the mic. I don't know if they can hear you back there. Okay. It's been suggested that appointing my opponent would be the democratic way to address this decision. While there is some facial appeal to that way of thinking with respect, I believe it is incorrect. First, the way we adhere to democratic values is by observing and following democratic institutions. In this case, the charter is clear. The decision is vested in the judgment of the council. If the framers of the charter had intended to make it an automatic appointment to the second place candidate in a previous election, they could have done so, but they did not. To argue against the deciding role of the council in this process is to argue against our democratic values. Second, while it is hard to tell what the voters mean by their choices, the clearest thing we can conclude is that what just a month ago two candidates articulated their positions and asked the voters for their support. And the voters did not support the candidate who came in second. I do not think we can infer that they supported him based on his showing in the election. Third, this is a different decision at a different office. The previous office was a two year term for an office that was vacated by a departing councilor. This is the remainder of a one year term. There should be no surprise that political and strategic considerations influence the choices of people seeking political office. It is absolutely true that I made the judgment that I didn't want to split the vote with another potential candidate, someone who chose not to run, that I agreed with on the issues. Nevertheless, that choice came with some potential risks, including the risk that I might not be appointed by the council, and the fact that, if chosen, I would be required to run for reelection after just one year. Throughout this process, I have been determined not to say anything negative about either of my opponents. I have spoken with Alex Geller and we both agree that this should never have become as hostile and personalized as what we saw last night. Still, the choice for you is who, based on qualifications, record, temperament, and what other considerations you deem relevant, is the best choice to serve on the city council. I suggest that based on my long history of service to the city, my knowledge of the issues, and my vision for the future that I am that person. Thank you. First, I'd like to thank all of you for really taking an enormous amount of time to carefully weigh this decision. It's been hard on myself and Jack and Alita, but I'm sure it's been just as hard, if not harder on you. So with that, there were some troubling discussions that or statements that were made last night and today on Front Porch Forum. And I just want to make it clear that Jack has done a great job supporting housing in this city, in this community. And I do not agree with a statement to the contrary. It's people like him. It's civil servants like me, civil servants like you that make this community great. And there's plenty of examples of Jack's work in particular and his contributions. And I want to make that noted. I do not agree with any of those statements. I also want to take the opportunity to make crystal clear that I am not conservative. I am not Republican. And part of actually one of the biggest reasons that I chose to run for this office in Montpelier is that it is nonpartisan historically. And that is an extremely appealing thing because it has the potential to avoid so much divisiveness. And that's appealing. That makes people want to participate in our democracy. Makes me want to participate in our democracy. And so that's a big reason that I stepped up. Yeah, I don't know what else to say to that, but I will just say I like to plan. I like to know what's coming down the down the pipeline. And I like to do it and prepare for whatever that decision is in a fiscally responsible way. I'm not anti government services. I'm not anti investment. I'm not any of those things. I like I like to have a good solid rationale for making any investment in our community. Other than that, I'll just say that your elected representatives and this argument that the election that was one month ago roughly isn't relevant. I just can't see that elected representatives are representing their constituents. Constituents spoke in the recent election 309 of them liked what I had to say, liked my platform, believe in me. Some of them are still here today. This can't be denied. It just can't. And really, as an elected representative, you are representing constituents. That's what this is all about. And that's what I want to do. And I hope you listen to the district to residents and their sentiment because you can make any argument that that those 309 votes didn't count. But it is a data point. And it is a reflection of people's thoughts and values and desires. We leave that couldn't attend, but we asked if anybody had a statement they could send it in if they couldn't appear. So she emailed this to us. I'm reading her statement. This is good afternoon. Thank you for the opportunity to address the council last night and again today. I appreciate the time you have taken to carefully deliberate this important matter. I am unfortunately unable to attend today's council session as I will be at work and cannot abandon my post. So this written statement will have to suffice. I was deeply disturbed at last night's council session, primarily by the personal attacks made by Alex Skeller supporters against Jack McCullough. I don't remember his name or Norrie's exact quote, but Alex's friend and so called character witness from Worcester last night, maligned Jack's 25 years of service to this community by suggesting he had accomplished nothing. And at the end, another supporter implied there was some kind of conspiracy between the council and Jack to get him on to the council. If this is the caliber of Alex's supporters, what does this say about Alex himself, especially since he did nothing to distance himself from those attacks? I have said my primary points about who I am and why I believe I would be a good addition to the council in my letter of application, but let me reiterate and expand upon them just a bit here. There are a lot of ideas I would like to bring to the council, affordable housing assistance with daycare summer camp, establishing a long term financially viable solution for our failing infrastructure, roads, sewers, water pipes, etc. All of which will require a delicate, delicate balancing act between keeping taxes from rising and paying for what we need. I would bring to the table the viewpoint of the economically challenged in addition to the viewpoint of an immigrant, a person of color and a single mother. If these viewpoints and goals seem good to you, I am the best candidate. I hope that will prove to be the case. I'm sorry to see the selection process unnecessarily politicized. Good luck in your deliberation sincerely while we've mile wagging up. Thank you. So I think we're ready for a motion to go into back into So moved. Second. All in favor? Aye. All right. So we're going to be in there and we'll be back hopefully today. But yeah, so we have a motion. I move that we come out of executive session. Second. All in favor please say aye. Aye. All right. So we have a statement to read first. And then we'll have a vote. So here we go. As members of our community, we have been saddened to see the recent vitriol personal attacks and absurd insinuations coming from a number of members of our community on various sides over the past several months. We put sides in quotation marks because it seems absurd to even use that language of division to describe our community is customary for the council to sit passively and not respond to individuals who attack us or others personally. Either in a council session or in a public forum. However, we are breaking that custom to call out this behavior. We candidates or into adopted as one of arms, the principle that is us or makes a comment that could offend us.  Instead, we will assume that like all of us, they're a reasonable person who is doing the best they can. This doesn't mean that we don't continue to disagree on issues. It is our responsibility to try to bring all perspectives to the table, listen to each other, and then each council member must form their own opinion based on that dialogue. We must remember that reasonable people can disagree. We are all members of this community and long after the contentious issue of the day is forgotten, we will continue to be members of this community. You are neighbors and we hope to live together in this community for a long time. We cannot require that our community adopt this mantra of assuming best intentions, but we are asking it of you. Please, before you speak, post or write, stop and take a breath. Before you make a hurtful zinger about the person across from you, remember that they are your neighbor. Disagree with their ideas, but don't question their motives, integrity or sanity. We acknowledge that we do not always live up to the ideals that we have laid out here. We all will still sometimes make thoughtful, hurtful comments, I'm sorry, thoughtless, hurtful comments, but we are doing the best we can. We know that you are too. As many have surmised, this particular decision was not an easy one. We had three very qualified candidates to choose from. None of them would have been a bad choice, and each would have brought their own perspective to aid in our future decision making. However, even though there was disagreement about who to select, there was no vitriol in our closed door session. Instead of listening to respond, we listened to understand. That led to several members changing their minds in multiple directions throughout the deliberation. None of us felt unheard or disrespected during the process. We chose to recess and reconvene so that no member felt rushed in our politics. Nor from the point the second place. Who is the council member? Your asset was the council missing. This is more of why the discuss sets, which made choosing among them extremely difficult. So before we vote on this, I just want to let people know that we have two council members who got to go catch a bus. And so they're going to leave. So we're going to vote and then we're going to adjourn. I will stick around though and be happy to answer any further questions. Okay. Any further discussion? All in favor, please say aye. Aye. Opposed? All right. Movement to adjourn. Second. All in favor? Aye. Thank you. Thank you all very much.


So, now we will see in the second part of the lecture today, the fundamentals for implementation of closed-loop control, this will need for this practical kind of a part in the assignment and we will talk about more, it is very very important topic for practical implementation with your microcontroller. So, please go through this lecture meticulously to understand like lot of this fundamental conceptual details, this is more of a philosophical level and though that you will be able to kind of use these ideas and things that are talked about for actual making sure your motor runs in the closed-loop the way we decided to happen. So, let us get into all details here. So, this fundamental principle here for any automatic control system which we are talking with respect to the example of motor for our case, there are these following three tasks that happen continuously. One is reading of the sensors, so it is not potentiometer, it is encoder in our case. So, please update that this is encoder in our case not a potentiometer. So, we read a sensor which is encoder in our case, then compute control law which is maybe PEPD kind of a control and that we have seen in the feedback concept of feedback and or maybe you might have seen some of these control algorithms in your automatic control kind of a courses previously and then we need to give this control input to the actuator. So, how do you give this? We give this via PWM interface specifically we keep on changing the duty cycle depending upon what is the computed control input in every step of the sampling. So, this is running continuously every periodic kind of a time. So, say so that is called like sampling time and how do you set up the sampling time which will see that sampling time is set up by using interrupt timer module. So, typically all microcontrollers will have this interrupt timer programmable interrupt timer module which will allow you to set up this interrupt service routine. So, which will run every sampling time that you have set in that routine. Now let me explain you this concept what is this interrupt and timer together would work. So, concept of interrupts I am presuming you know just to recap I will give you that you are reading a book and your mom calls and your phone is ringing what you hear the phone and I hope you want to take up that call and what you do is like no you put a bookmark in the book and go pick up the phone of course I am assuming that you want to take up the call and then you reply to the call you finish the call up and then again come back to the same bookmark and like open the book and start reading it exactly the same kind of a concept is there for the interrupts. So, microcontroller is kind of doing some task and on some pin this some signal comes like you know some pulse comes and that pulse this is like a interrupt pin specifically designed for that purpose. So, on the interrupt pin when this pulse comes microcontroller will halt the current task for a moment and it will serve some other task which is defined for that particular pin. So, that that task will be called as interrupt service routine. So, that task will be executed and then again microcontroller will go back to its original point what your main program and start executing from where it has halted previously. Now, these pulses that are coming on this pin if every time this pulse comes like no the microcontroller has to execute some task which is called interrupt service routine and whatever these three operations I have mentioned here this all three operations they will be typically written in the interrupt service routine. So, they will be executed every sampling time now for them to get executed every sampling time this pulse needs to come on the pin at every sampling instances. So, typically these pulses are generated on some kind of a timer module will do that. So, counter timer module will have a job to develop this kind of a pulse every whatever sampling time instance and this pulse which is internally connected you do not need to do any connections nothing in your microcontroller like you know this modern microcontrollers you do not need to do nothing it is software only the software that you need to kind of write because these pins are already internally connected. So, that this pulse will get generated in the timer module and it will go on the interrupt pin and these pulses now are programmed to come regularly in some kind of you know the way you have a square waveform which is periodic these pulses are coming now in a periodic kind of a way and when these pulses are coming every pulse comes you do these three tasks or every pulse comes you execute your interrupt service routine will get executed and you keep on doing this task and how do you kind of program for this part of setting up sampling time or program or interrupt timer module to program to give you some kind of a facility to have something written in the interrupt service routine and getting executed every sampling time. So, you can do that first so that you can set up your sampling time properly and then now you can slowly start putting things in the interrupt service routine of this module. So, for example, if you have written PWM program you need to kind of see what are the proper parts of the PWM program which can go in the main program and what are the parts which should come in the interrupt service routine you can bifurcate for example, you just want PWM duty to be changed here. So, all other commands in the PWM routine should not like you know the other registers should not change. So, all other functionalities should not change. So, only the functionality which is giving you the handle over PWM duty cycle that can come in the interrupt service routine. Like that in you think what will be coming from the encoder interface into your first reading sensor kind of a part. Like that you need to start thinking and programming and you don't need to do any for loop this is very important don't set up any for loop for doing this once you are putting these things in the interrupt service routine you are rest assured that they will run every sampling instance. They will run continuously over and over again you don't need to put any for loop whatsoever for this purpose. We will discuss little more detail why we keep this as a interrupt based sampling time programming as we discuss sampling and other issues in more detail. So, we want every fixed known sampling time for the operation to happen every periodically and this job will be done. Now, so to put all these things together here we are using the encoder position you know feedback coming from the encoder. So, this is the first part here creating sensors in encoder in this case and then like we will use some kind of a proportional or proportional derivative control law. So, this expression typically will be of this kind of a form. So, you will have some kind of a desired position and you have actual position and these things will be this desired position as you see later like we will see what kind of a form we should have for the desired position. So, that we will keep on observing like you know once we have implemented we keep on observing our control is how our control is performing those kind of things we will see. Then how do we apply this to control law to the motor? So, see this control expression may give some negative value depending upon what are the values of this. So, how we when if the value is coming negative how do you see pdm duty is only positive value 0 to 100 then we need to kind of do something to control motor. So, we need to kind of give something to kind of reverse the direction of the motor if the direction here the computation is negative that is what we need to do. So, you know how to do the direction reversal. So, those are the things that we need to implement. So, that is what we are discussing what if this value is negative we need to use the in A in B pins of the driver to get reversed to change the direction of the function. Then again this question is what should be set as a desired position for this job to happen properly. So, because if we if we just put some kind of a constant value in desired position you think what will happen and then we want to observe this happening properly then we need to kind of set these values in the appropriate way. So, these are all the questions that you ponder over and think yourself and see what what solutions come to your mind for this and then you proceed to the next part. So, this pondering over for you is important here. So, now we will see this is a control feedback. So, now if what will happen if we keep the desired position constant then you imagine like know their program is start running in the interrupt service routine you will read the direction or you read the actual position and your desired position is constant and then like the actual position will start getting control to the desired position value in some way and then once it reaches desired position it will stop it will do nothing or it reaches close to the desired position it will stop there only. You start moving it you will find some resistance to move from that position if you externally start moving the motor, but otherwise it will do nothing after that. So, this is not a great way of like you know continuously observing how your control is performed you want to kind of have some kind of a handle over seeing that this control what I am implementing is continuously doing something. So, for that purpose we set up the desired position you have like if it reaches the final position then like after some time first steady state is reached you change it back to 0. So, you make it 0 again and again you kind of like let it come to 0 and again you take it to the desired. So, you can do that continuously. So, otherwise like if you want to observe the control log working multiple times same kind of a control log multiple times you will not be able to do that. So, you can do that by using the desired position. So, now how do you generate this kind of a desired position? Think about some algorithm to generate this. So, given that you have this now to be written in the interrupt service mode routine which is kind of a loop which will run continuously every sampling time. So, think about that suppose is if you want like you know the square waveform to have some certain kind of a time duration that this desired value will be held constant for this time duration and then it is brought to 0 for same time duration next and keep on doing that. So, what kind of algorithm comes to your mind? You need to kind of think about and you need to get used to now writing things in interrupt service routine which is executing every sampling instance. So, if the sampling time is t and this time for your square waveform is say t 1 then you need to kind of see how many number of sampling instance have to pass by before I change this value and like that when you do kind of these are some of the hints I am giving to for you to write this or develop this algorithm for the for the program and this kind of a square waveform you can generate for the desired position. So, this is so this desired position. So, this is not a tracking do not confuse that this is this is becoming tracking node this because we are suddenly changing this position we are not kind of like you know taking this smooth kind of a trajectory here it is a it is a multiple times you are observing the regulation here. Now, another question what should be amplitude of the square wave? So, this now that you can compute based on the encoder counts that you are like you are getting output from the encoder. So, say if you are getting whatever 1000 roughly 1000 counts for one revolution then you can plan I want to move one revolution or two revolution or 90 degree 80 degree like that based on that you can plan this number of counts and you can attach some kind of a small cardboard or plastic wheel to the motor maybe you can make it out of the visiting carts there are a kind of a stiff stuff there to attach and then you can put a put a pointer there or to kind of like know the position. So, like that you can do then what should be frequency? Frequency should be large enough so that you observe the controls. So, your control is happening like that it is controlling and then like no it is becoming steady state there there should be some duration left beyond that and then like no it should go like no change. So, this typically frequency of the square wave should be very very low so that you know you are able to observe your control nicely. So, we can observe the system response visually what should be what will be typical response of the motor if you can sketch on this desired response what is the actual response going to be you can get something of this sort. So, you can look for a way you will get some response of this kind when you view this square wave form and then we want to kind of get this data out of the microcontroller and maybe we should be able to put it in the MATLAB to observe this response this response you can observe by graphing functionality to see in the real time coming on the graph. So, of course we need to initialize some value to be 0 and then proceed. So, you may it may so happen that you know you will find that your response observed is exactly same as the desired position you may not observe any undulations here especially if you are observing for just a speed of the motor no open loop even some kind of a you know it is enough x desired it is like a PWM which is given some duty cycle not really PWM, but a speed sorry this is like a speed that is desired PWM desired will give you like no position continuously going in one direction till the time this PWM is getting to 0. But what I mean is here if you have a constant voltage given to the motor and we are observing this x dot desired then that response is going to be like that till go like a first order kind of a function, but if your inertia is too low then the sampling time that you have chosen might be too large for capturing the initial kind of a you know that typical for first order kind of a response capturing may not happen. So, you may find that okay oh my like you know the waveform for the speed now is coming as a straight. So, then like no you need to decrease the time sampling time to make sure that okay you are able to observe that transient that is going there. These are kind of small tricks that you need to learn as you build your you know practical understanding of the system. Okay, so this typical program you can use this following you know what you say hints to develop on your own. So, you need to initiate configure and enable interfaces all the interfaces that you are needing for the for this pro loop system operation to be working PWM interrupt then encoder QI module and any other variables you want to define you can define them to begin with. Okay, this all will this all can happen either in the main main program or in the in like I said some of the definitions can happen before main program. Okay, when you use the commands like include include something like that. Okay, then interrupt service routine is very important. Okay, we need to do these three operations that I was talking about. So, so in this you need to make sure like no no initiation or configuration kind of a functionalities. Okay, from Tiva should come into this interrupt service routine configuration or enabling kind of interfaces that should not come in the interrupt service routine. It should have just like no for example, from QEI interface, it should just read reading the value of encoder whatever function is there or reading the speed of encoder whatever function is there that can come up here because that is a thing that is be continuously changing all other things are going to be you know for constant for this particular program. Okay, so only the changing parts should come which are changing every interrupt cycle that should come now then you have to compute control by using the feedback law we have seen some law of proportion law or something like that and implement now implementation aspects will involve a couple of things here. Okay, then you need to be sensitive to say for first you know make sure that the variable definitions are appropriate. Okay, have you signed and unsigned integers or floats or whatever like these definitions are made in a way that is conducive say for example if you define for the control input the unsigned integer then like your negative part of the program control will not work at all. Okay, so those kind of things we should not be you should be careful about then control input should not exceed some maximum value in any case. Okay, so put the value with some kind of a limiting saturation function and then third part is like if computer control computer is negative then how do you kind of handle that what does mean it means that okay I need to reverse the direction of the motor with some same like so you will make it positive before applying to PWM duty. So PWM duty is like mod part of the control input command and the sign part like the positive or negative will be used to change the direction things. Okay, this is a very important kind of a baseline for like control implementation to happen. Okay, these two points are coming you can maybe kind of put some kind of a small function to make sure that this will happen before control is implemented. Okay, then you need to update any variables. Okay, so previous position needs to be updated for derivative computation and things like that or desired trajectory need to be updated now. Okay, so that that that functions will come here or they can come at the start. Okay, somewhere they should come in terms of this. Okay, so how do you compute derivative control action? Okay, do you know this difference difference formula, you can use that and do that. Okay, so it's very straightforward kind of a thing. Only thing with the question is how do you get this previous, how do you know what is previous X position? Okay, position X. I know current position but how do I know previous position? Since we don't in the interrupt service routine when we are working with, then we need to store the previous values. Okay, so we store the current values which will be available as say X previous for the for the next sampling instance to come. Okay, so that's how we store the previous value every, you know, in every sampling instance. Okay, so we update these values to kind of make sure our previous values are available. As I said here, you know, update any variables. Okay, so the variables need to be getting updated. So X previous will need to get updated to current X current to make sure that okay, it is now the current value will become previous value for the next sampling instance. That is a kind of a thinking philosophy that one should use. So if you want one or two or three previous values, you can do that by the same way. Okay, and so this is some additional tasks you can think about. Say if you want to generate sinusoidal waveform as a desired waveform instead of the square waveform that I have, like we have seen here, how do you kind of do it and implement in the interrupt service routine? Okay, so this is algorithm one can think about. Okay, so this is just a extra task that you can think about. Okay, so I think this is good enough kind of a primer for you to kind of get started and like implement practically any kind of control on your microcontroller. And then we'll have an interesting kind of things to talk about with the practical resource that you get of such implementation. So we will be able to talk about in the assignments as we progress. Okay, so maybe we'll stop here for now and then we'll have some more part to the lecture coming up. Okay.


All right, so I'm going to ask you if you can't take your seat because we're going to start again We run a tight ship here on trying to keep on schedule So as we begin I want to thank general Wilson for joining us a little bit of background on him He is a command pilot with more than 4500 flying hours and 680 combat hours supporting operations Iraqi freedom and during freedom and combine Joint Task Force Horn of Africa Prior to his current assignment as vice chief of staff of the Air Force He was deputy commander of us strategic command. So he brings a very diverse set of experiences To the table and so I want to use that as a way of Opening up with the first question where I'd like to ask you to take the long view What will be the same and what will be different in air warfare? Ten years out. So it's 2028. What is the same? What is different? Yeah, Peter. Maybe I even switch a question a little bit and say it's gonna be bigger than air warfare So I think you know the general nature and of war in many many ways won't change but I think fundamentally the nature of war will change and in Exponential ways and let me articulate just a second. So I think the you've heard us talk about Trans-regional multi-domain multi-component both urban and connected and speed is what's gonna be different I talk about today being a transformative time for our nation that we're going through a period of Disruption politically economically socially and technologically and that's happening globally Any one of those areas are tough, but when you combine all four of those together I think it makes for exponential disruption Leading that on the bottom is this technological piece that we've seen this pace of change It's just going nearly vertical. All right, and just you look today. What's happening? 5g wireless you connected devices We think there's you know in the neighborhood of 30 billion connected devices that changes lots of things So what I used to say is or say is an industrial age we won Industrial age speed won yesterday's war Digital age speed went tomorrow's war and that's what actually the Air Force is really pretty good about speed We say speed wins and whether it's speed of delivery of relief supplies after a hurricane or or whether we're protecting the homeland Owning the high ground of air and space Projecting combat power forward speed and training speed and preparation speed and developing capabilities Speed wins. So what I see changing is is those? multi-domain multi-component urban and connected Transregional fights that are going to happen and it won't just be an airpiece will be connected to all those So one of the aspects that speed drives is a push to a topic that we've already hit on in a couple of panels today We're definitely going to hit on others is machine learning artificial intelligence the idea that the machine can Take in more information and or make a decision quicker than the human can and we've seen that in everything from stock markets to it's being explored in warfare and I want to pull that thread a little bit further and connect it to work that we've had going on here at New America and Our Digi China sorry Digi China and Eastern Arsenal projects the look at the fact that Artificial intelligence is a key new area for the economy a key new area for war But the United States has competitors in it and in particular Chinas have been doing a huge amount of work. So What do you see as the applications for AI within the Air Force and then secondly? What are you doing to make sure that you keep pace or don't fall behind or stay ahead? However, you want to frame it What do you do with the fact that we have a competitor in a way that we haven't seen in the last generation? technologically when it comes to AI yeah We're we'd say there certainly are the competitors out there We talk frequently with Eric Smith and the defense innovation board as they come and tell us the things that they're doing and look at What we're doing they're helping us One example is project Maven so to set the record straight what we're doing with project Maven is we're trying to take Things that are routine Processing of pictures and how can I do that better and Eric would tell me you you may have an Intel analyst and after Some period of time of training he can he or she can get it right 75% of the time He said I have average computers that can look through a thousand pictures a minute with 99% accuracy So how could I how could I leverage this human machine teaming and let computers do what computers are good at and let humans Do what humans are good at and then to figure out the insights and the why and the analysis Versus repetitive tasks that I have people joining on today about but it is and make no debate on this this or Where artificial intelligence is heading so I've been traveling around listening to some folks going to some of our great Academia universities was out at Carnegie Mellon recently and seeing some of the work that they're doing Seeing what our industry partners are doing But I think it's going to take all of us working together across academia across industry across the departments Across all the national labs and that FF already sees and bringing that together in this competition with AI because That's in fact what are what China's doing. So if you look at what the companies like Alibaba or Baydow or Tencent are doing they're investing a lot of money and they're using a whole of nation approach for it So we're gonna have to compete to win and that again That's why I think we can come together across the different areas bring those together to stay in the lead in artificial intelligence machine learning In your career, did you ever have to deal with an adversary that had better technology? I? haven't Now I tell you that I've we've got adversaries today that can take you know Technology that we wouldn't normally think about as being Cutting edge and do and do things with it and adapt it in ways that we we didn't expect And I'll use an example from a couple years ago when I was visiting my counterpart in Canada And I'd had an assignment there. We're catching up about kids And he said his son was going to college in King's College And he was getting a degree in mechanical engineering, but he goes he's not really interested in that. He's really interested in FPV That's it. What is that? I don't know what you're talking about. He said well, it's first-person view I said, okay, I still don't know what you're talking about He goes oh, it's where kids it's a rage on college campuses where kids are putting on augmented reality headsets And they're racing their their UAVs. Well, they're in this dorm room. They're racing their UAVs in the auditorium Well, I started googling it and it blew my mind of what's going on. Well that today is Transition to the Middle East, right? And so now that's what people like ISIS do today. They don't have to buy a MQ1 or an MQ9. They can buy a DJI Fennifor made in China Which has got a 4k resolution camera and they can use it to command and control They can use it to do things that we didn't think Didn't think like that. It's a thousand dollar piece of equipment Right, so that's where this is another what I call the quadruple convergence, right? So we've got this technology that can make capability with global access and often can be put in hands and malicious intent And so that's where we have to think differently about this challenge going forward I want to connect to things you brought up So we we talked about AI and then you mentioned the difference between MQ1 MQ9 and An important moment happened in kind of future of war history this last year So we saw the retirement of the MQ1 the you know, we poured one out for the predator drone And moved to MQ9 What is the future of? What the Air Force? Lovingly calls RPAs what the rest of us called drones. What does it look like when it comes to autonomy and To maybe make it a little bit more pointed General Mcconville from the army side earlier today told us that a human will always be in the loop What does in the loop look like for the Air Force in the future when it comes to RPA UAS drone? Whatever we want to call it. Where is the human role? What are they doing flesh out what it means to be in the loop? Yeah, so we're exploring with our research lab what that looks like and autonomous Operations and does that mean one individuals now? Controlling three or four or five or some number of autonomous vehicles rather than just one or a couple people controlling just one So how do we take this again human machine teaming? How can we do things? To where I Can take advantage of autonomous systems that can help sense and report back and again. I'm going through my little Mindset of what the future looks like and I think it looks a little bit like this There's certainly a data aspect piece of this And I think you know we all would agree maybe that data is a new oil of the 21st century But with that data, I got to be able to have the right algorithms to connect the data Under and understand the data to a network I think the clouds are part of this and I think compute on the edge is a part of this And how do I do enhance capabilities on the edge so that I don't have to have big pipes everywhere? But I think that this as we look at that network That connects cloud to edge connects the data in the algorithms. That's where we're now looking at how we do that How do we rapidly experiment and prototype with capabilities using that using those? attributes moving forward so I want you to Do a little bit of imaginary for us so you laid out a vision for the future Air Force Cloud computing on the edge and the light What is an adversary doing response to that? So, you know, we develop a long-range strike they develop Surface-to-air missiles, you know, there's always the back-and-forth What do you expect the counters to be to the future Air Force that you're building? Yeah, so we need to have an agile Network to be able to you know, we're putting a lot of emphasis you've heard general gophine talk about a multi-demand operations And how do I build a next-generation? OODA loop the OODA loop 2.0. It is able to sense globally understand The situation and then provide effects across multiple domains At a time and scale in place that our adversaries can't keep up with So with that I need to build a network that connects the from geosynchronous orbit all the way to subsurface All of our different platforms So here's a here's a vision that I think about You we see people driving Tesla's every Tesla's network to every other Tesla So if Tesla is driven on the road in front of you and hits a pothole You know that that potholes there and it's the Tesla's in the auto mode It will avoid that pothole if it's in the self-driving mode It will actually adjust the suspension on the car to take an account that pothole Well, if I can do that for a Tesla, then could I do that for and say maybe a tank an MRAP a home v a ground vehicle? If I can do it there, can I do that same thing in the air? Can I connect all the air vehicles so that they're passing information? Relevant information about throughout adversary and build an operating learning system. Can I do that same thing in space? And then can I connect space to air to ground to surface to subsurface? So having a resilient network that's sharing information Is is what we're going to try and drive to because I think the an adversary is going to try and deny us Information or there's something maybe we talked about at dinner last night when we started doubting the Truthfulness the trust of the information and it puts the fog and friction in there weaponizing that information to make sure So you know what truth is will be important in the future So you brought up space. What is? the space environment Space domain. What do battles look like? What does the Air Force look like in? 2028 when it comes to space. What is it doing? Who's in charge? How is it training for it? Yeah, great points is that we're having lots of space discussions Across the nation what I think is really healthy about is we're all in alignment from the White House to Congress to OSD joint staff allies partners industry about we have the Our Space Force today is the envy of the world Right the United States Air Force is responsible for 90% of that We also know our adversaries have also seen that and seen that space is essential for any joint warfight Whether it be indications of warning whether it be misalert whether it be communication whether it be GPS down the list of capabilities that it provides our nation So we need to be able to defend space So space is a contested domain and we need to a understand that and then look at how would how would I? Provide the capabilities in the past. We it wasn't right So I don't want to work go to space But I also need to have the ability to defend my assets in space So we're gonna build a force that does just that we're looking at everything from the bottom end How do I train space operators and general J Raymond out of space command is working really hard on basing building this space a Mission force that that understands the environment and is able to think war fighting To do the build-up of our operators and the the other part is how do we acquire space capabilities faster? Lots of effort in that endeavor from the deputy secretary defense Keen interests and how do I again build capabilities faster? How do I partner with industry? How do I push down milestone decision authorities? How do I use things like other transactional authorities? How do I do things like we've done in the rapid capabilities office for space again? To bring on space capabilities much faster. So that's what we're doing. We're building a defendable architecture Certainly industry Commercial or allies and partners are part of this But the other key part of this is how essential space is to all of us in the joint war fight So I'm good. I'm gonna tug at this a little bit more.  Yeah, Peter. I tell you it's it's it's maybe both and we're looking through that right here Wait for both good Maybe here's here. Here's here. Here's the maybe part out Right, it's it's it's are you designing something to last for 20 years? Are you designing something the last for five years and there's a big price point difference and how you do that So if we're in 2028, we've got to make that decision now. So which do we do? We're starting to meet. Well, we're working through understanding that and getting buying and consensus across our All our different departments on what that exactly looks like and I think there'll be a mixture of both I think we'll again look at what commercials look doing today and the different companies that are We're gonna do a internet thousand consolation Internet as we need to be part of that look at what folks like Planet Lab are doing. They're doing things differently with small sats Right, I think we'll be part of that. I also think Capabilities to do some of the things that we need to do aren't gonna be like that They're gonna be bigger more costly and we need to be able to protect and defend those What is it's a combination of probably of both? What does space warfare look like in? 2028 is it as now where I'm using assets in space to communicate or Look down, so it's part of the battle space, but there's no conflict there or in 2028 is there actual Conflict there and what does it look like? Is it you know, is it I'll let you fill in the blanks So, you know, you've probably heard Jill John height and I think he's got a great answer to this He goes there's no such thing as space war There's war right and an adversary is gonna try and deny us the capabilities that we're gonna rely on to To be able to win and the joint team the joint force needs to have Spaces a big part of that equation today on what we do globally and to be able to do the things that I talked about earlier on A global scale. I need to be able to have the ability to sense Observe act and decide on a time and scale faster than our adversaries and that today that requires space And everything from like like I said from GPS for a precision navigation or timing to a communication to our sensing It's gonna require space. So what does it look like? We have to be able to protect it to defend it and we have to be able to turn in space so that There's no real easy answer on this was it looked like I think that any adversary is gonna look at how Reliant we are on our capabilities and try and affect that. That's why we're working hard to defend space It's one of the big efforts moving forward So let's go nuclear. It's 2028 What does the B 21? I don't want to ask what it looks like. What is the B 21? Program look like at that point 10 years out from now 10 years out from now. We've we'll have taken delivery of our first Models there we'll be producing them and hopefully to A nice clip The two years after the initial operating capability of the airplane We will have nuclear certified it and so we'll have a capability to have a dual capable platform in our B 21 I just went out with the secretary deputy secretary defense in the north of team We did it, you know one day deep dive on the B 21 and we're in the preliminary design phase It's coming along very well. We think we've got a good team both government and industry On this program. It's really important to all of us so we're spending time really deep diving in Secretary Shanahan wanted to go out and get an immersion in that and that's what we did We're needing the balance that don't I just you know because I always get asked a question about the transparency on the B 21 And I want to make sure that we're as transparent as we can possibly be with those cleared members of Congress and their staff who we Have shown all the details on the B 21. We're balancing that with making sure our adversaries Don't learn things in advance of what we're trying to For operational security to not let them know and so that's where the balance becomes on the B 21 Okay, so the general has been very kind to agree to do something a little bit different Which is we're now going to have a Twitter lightning round and Basically this weekend. I let social media know that I would be interviewing him and ask for questions from them so We've got a series of questions and he's agreed to give answers in Lesson 280 words. No, no not words characters It's Twitter not Facebook that we've learned, you know only a couple of old people will read okay, so first question is from At Dan suckman, which is what is the future of CAS? What is the future of CAS close air support close air support? I think it's It's an important mission set for our Air Force We're going to continue to be invested in making sure we can protect our Ground forces that we thought was kind of a moral obligation for us to be able to do that We also have to be able to do it both Contested all the way through Uncontested all the way through contested and so we're developing capabilities that do just that I'll use this So it's important to us sorry 20 280 characters are way too long You say CAS is important and it's got to work contested and uncontested. Yes. Hashtag Air Force Hashtag Air Force. I got it now. Okay. I'm on track now. Got it short answers 280 characters important. Okay, so the takeaway on that is contested and uncontested. Okay, so next one is from at Roli polio lists What kind of changes if any are needed to Air Force spending and acquisitions? Both in process and priorities We need to change How we do requirements? How we do acquisition contracting budgeting and testing Speed wins. I got to compress the timeline hashtag speed wins. All right At KW Collins Should there be a separate space force? Why or why not? More to follow. We think we have a good the world's greatest space force today. We're gonna make it even better Okay Similar one from at Fleischer underscore P. What kind of new space assets should the US develop to counter China and Russia? What kind of new space assets? We need to have defendable space assets and a resilient architecture that can Continue to make sure we dominate in space in 2028 Okay, this was my personal favorite of all of them at KJ Degs Will the Air Force ever replace ellipticals and vending machines with enough squat racks to actually get a leg day in or is the Air Force all doomed to chicken legs at the base gym. I Think he's talking about my legs. He's seen me at the gym.  Okay, it's clearly an Air Force officer. All right. Okay at J. Byerley 81 As other nations sorry as other countries invest in AI and drone development to increase the speed at which decisions are made How will the US Air Force keep pace? Yeah, we're gonna not only keep pace but dominate in how we do that It's gonna take a whole of government approach to this industry academia national labs in our department working together Hashtag speed wins Okay, we've got some tough questions here at Joe Plins. Sorry, Plinsler Why did US Air Force leadership severely limit press engagement? What responsibilities do service chiefs have to communicate with taxpayers? Yeah, we we want to be Transparent as we possibly can with the American public. We did not limit communication What we wanted to do is make sure all of our folks understand operational security and making sure we're not getting giving adversaries advantages that they don't need to have Okay at frantic goat the US Air Force and the A&G have evaluated a 29 and or the AT-6C nearly half a dozen times in the past decade How can the US Air Force need more data before deciding how to proceed on its latest light attack program? Yeah So we're doing an exercise this summer with both airplanes. We want to understand The maintenance required a number of people required to support logistics infrastructure to be able to do that And then we think we'll be able to make a decision in the fall It's take a program that would normally take years to buy and from idea to to buy in the airplane under three years Hashtag speed wins. All right F Fletch Williams. How is contracting to private companies balanced with maintaining appropriate national security? checks and limitations to information access Yeah We need to look hard at how we do Getting the right access for the right people at the right time But also this operational security piece behind that we've had lots of challenges with lots of clear defense contractors that Information is has gotten out. That's got to change. We got to figure out how we do that differently Okay, so let's take it from cyberspace back to human or meat space and we're gonna take questions from here So please raise your hand wait for the mic to come and identify yourself Right there no no no right Hi general Wilson, this is Oriana Pollock from military comm. Thanks for doing this I wanted to see if you had any comments regarding the hike in Aviation accidents the report that's out there for military times this morning You know talking about the future talking about readiness But what about the right now that the spike has been seen that there has been some, you know Grave indifference on on what's been going on out there and in aviation. I mean could you comment regarding? What the Air Force's portion of that is and how you plan to build up that readiness so, you know fatal accidents do not occur Well, let me set the record straight any accident and any class a accident Is one too many and we spent a lot of time making sure that we have the safest program that we possibly can For those who don't know we can we talk class a's we talk as a dollar figure or loss of life So our safest year ever was 2014 2017 was our second safest year So our class a mishaps have been trending down What's been trending up and was reported was our class C mishaps and those are lower category Mishaps lower dollar figure, but still a concern to all of us And so we've got our safety professionals digging into it seeing if there's any noticeable trends that we have And in our classy mishap rates But but did your broader question of readiness were intensely focused on improving readiness We brought together a team Of about 50 people we sequester them in the Pentagon for six weeks and we looked at readiness to the lens of What can we do to drive the readiness of the Air Force faster? And move the timeline left. I used to say how long to take to make an eight-year master sergeant And that's about how long it's gonna take us to improve our readiness. We think we can do it faster We're gonna look at how do we target? specific squadrons with the right both people with the right experience mix with the right Flying hours and infrastructure to be able to support pacing squatters that to move the readiness need a left But we've had a very big team looking at it. We've briefed it up to the leadership I think they are all really can see the efforts that we're making and it's been a Like the trajectory that we're on to improve our readiness. Okay, so we got the middle Let's go to the left here in the front right here Thank you, Patrick Tucker with the fence one the pushback from the Google developer community about the project Maven partnership has certainly caught Google off guard I wonder if you could tell us What's the most important lesson learned for the Air Force from that now very public pushback and has it affected? The way at the Air Force is working project Maven and has it affected any potential future partnerships with Google or similar firms Yeah, I guess the lesson learners make sure we're all understand the right side picture This is we're using it's a department effort with OSD Which the Air Force is a part of to be able to look at how do we automate things that the repetitive task That humans spend a lot of time doing that the machine learning can do differently So today we're looking at how do I look through full-motion video and be able to determine is that a car? Is that a person is that a house? That's what the project Maven effort isn't doing To be able then to turn around and say make sure that people understand what it's not right. It is not weaponizing it's not Using machines in a targeting function. We're fully compliant with all the US regulations policies and laws And that we've had industry partnered with us moving forward And we continue we're gonna need industry all of us are in industry to help us Moving forward as we again compete deter when on this new national defense strategy and our industry partners have been very helpful in this which so bottom line learned is communication and being able to People to understand the message of what exactly we're trying to do moving forward It's someone on the right here Yeah, right there I'm Mike King Graham a defense fellow with Congressman Rob Bishop So we talked a lot about in 2028 about systems will bring online to face our adversaries But what about talent management making sure we're recruiting the right people retaining the right people in a very competitive job market who have very Markable skills to be able to fight our awards in 2028 Yeah, that's a really important question We're all in this hunt for talent every one of us And so we have to find ways to reduce the barriers from people The you know, you see them like I do I get to go out and meet these folks are young people that are just Simply amazing right so I got to find a way to make it easy for them to come into service And then to be able to to trans have this transport ability through the different services or agencies Who want to be part of it? I was telling a story backstage When I'll call the four great captains here's an example so At our squadron officer school the command on asked for a shark take Shark tank like events with ideas and he said the best idea will get to the chief of staff for the Air Force Unfortunately, the chief has gone that day and I got to listen to their idea. First of all, their idea was unbelievable It's today. I'm gonna go visit here at the end of the week They're up in Boston doing a tech accelerator to help us on a really challenging problem set Called them the four great captains here's an example of one of the captains And they were all of this caliber. He got his degree from Rensselaer polytech He then went to the Air Force nuclear weapons center. They recognized his talent They sent him to MIT to get his PhD while he was at MIT getting his PhD He got his MBA from Harvard on the side and while he did that he set up a venture capital company That was named as one of the top 100 venture capital companies in America These four captains were spending 50 hours a week in their spare time on this problem because they were really Passionate about doing this and fixing a problem, right? I got to unleash that talent that exists all over and what I've seen is is these these young people at all these Universities they've got their great energy and passion. They want to make a difference So I got to find a way to make it easy for them to come in and serve And then based on there's the life conditions and what's going on They may need to take a break and go do something else But then I got to make it really easy for them to come back in and this this is a really important question For the whole government, right? How do we do this? So we reduce the barriers for entry and then how do we make it easy so people who want to serve can serve So in these examples where there's a shark tank or there's something really interesting that comes out of one of the war fighting labs of the like The story that then it's often told is really cool idea and then it died somewhere along the Valley of Death What changes need to happen? There's obviously policy changes that you can undertake, but there's also legal changes. There's a need for legislation What are the types of legislation or legal changes that you see are needed to? Make more of these innovative ideas Survive the Valley of Death and become programs of record So here's an example so as we do the typical Requirements process now and I sit on the J Rock with General Selva who chairs it we go through a process I'm gonna come to call it the capability base assessment to initial capabilities document to analysis alternatives to a CDD before I get a milestone decision on a program right that time period can take Years right in many cases five to eight years to go through that piece All right way too long All right, so I've got to be able to to take to do a Experiment to a rapid prototype to say is that good enough? And can I make a milestone decision here to move forward? And so I'd say it's almost going back to what we used to do in the late 50s and the 60s with the sensory series fighters All right, how can I how can I put out capability different capability that's modified every three to five years with a? Pipeline and an industrial base behind that we haven't been doing that Right, so we I think we have to get back to that on the requirements piece We will we have to change it we also have to change how we do the acquisition piece And we got lots of people focused on that we haven't hit the contracting piece All right, I can't take two years to get something on contract I can't take four or five years to test something right? It will be obsolete before it's fielded because at the end of that I put it in the hands of somebody who can do something Well, then I got to train the operators, right? So I've got to get on this pace and scale of capability development and go from what we've currently been doing for the last You know 20 plus years and shrink that down to a timeline. That's one quarter That what we've been doing in the past. Let's give someone in the back a chance to this question Yeah, right there in the white. Yeah Hi general listen, Rachel Karris was inside the Air Force So the Air Force recently said that it's looking at keeping the U2 until 2100 And you're also, you know working on ways to keep start to be clear 2100 like a century from now correct Make sure I'm keeping the B 52. No the U2 U2. Yeah dragon lady But you're also looking at ways to keep the RQ for on par with that So I'm curious now that you're looking at Slepping Global Hawk. Are you trying to keep them on the same timeline? You know, what is your plan for Global Hawk as that whole sort of high altitude enterprise moves forward? Yeah, so I don't know if anybody's ever come online saying we're keeping the U2 till 2100 I certainly haven't what we what we do think is we need this high altitude capacity both from the RQ for and the U2 today. So can I It's a capacity issue. So I need both of them to do the type of things To be able to provide the information they provide on a global scale. So we're trying to get the sensors right between Each different platform. We've got lots of service life left on the U2 And we we certainly have got plenty of service life left on the RQ for But I think it's a capacity issue of which we need both Okay, let's get a couple more questions right here And in between I really want to know the conflict scenarios and the year 2100, you know Will the U2 be operating against the Arturi Empire and the like Hi, so my question is how do you deal with the ethics of autonomous weapons? Well, it's all of us. I think something we need to be thinking through like that I I'm if the Army vice chief said it I'll probably be the guy that repeats it that we think there's a human in the loop on All things we're not gonna have autonomous weapons. We say just go do what you but I think we need to Think through that question that you just asked about how much autonomy Where do we provide the autonomy? but make no mistake that the the the world In the world that we're moving in in the world that the This transformation is happening in technology Artificial intelligence and machine learning will be a key part of lots of things that we do It's impacting every part of our life And certainly impacting us here in the military So how do we how do we do again when machines are really good at? How do I team with humans with humans are really good at how do I keep a person in the loop and Define what is in the loop? And to provide the again to me It's the insights and the understanding in the in the why and For the what that machines can help provide us with but it's an important question I think we all need to be thinking through can I want to pin you down a little bit more on this in the in the human in the loop say in air-to-air combat is the human is the human decision-making to Shoot or not The way it is with RPA operations right now where the plane may be able to operate in some way shape or form on its Own, but it's going to be the human deciding to pull the trigger or not Or is it the way we do for example air defense? Where there is the potential for the machine to operate identifying the like and the human can veto it But it will operate without them which is which is it because the human is in the loop in both But they're I think we'll have to learn both ways and we'll have to experiment both ways and what that means And it you know just as you use as an air defense Capability where there's there's things that we have to have you know that are they there's a set of rules of engagement Are they squawking the appropriate squawk or they are on the right altitude or are they in the right quarter? Are they doing this if not somebody's there to veto it, right? So there'll be a series of rules of engagement that we'll have to be able to follow and understand on both sides of that equation Can given the emphasis you earlier had on speed? Can a human stay within that oota loop 2.0 or will it definitionally be in human? Yeah, we don't know why we're gonna we're gonna all understand as we start to do more Experimenting prototyping and understanding that exact question. We've got time for One last question, and I'm gonna abuse it by asking one more But hopefully be a useful one for all of you What scenario keeps you up at night? I Sleep like a baby So I would say we're taking the general Mattis approach. Okay, when you wake up in the morning and go I'm keeping the general Mattis approach. I want our adversaries to stay but not thinking about what we're doing, right? That's what I want to have happened. There's a couple areas that I think that I need to sharpen the focus maybe on Maybe two or three One is we talk about moral obligations of our Air Force that I got to be able to provide right Organization training equipment and leadership for any of our young Airmen that we send forward right today that our job is to equip them to be able to do their mission and that they're well Led on that mission so that to be able to do that Across the range of capabilities that our Air Force has is a moral imperative for us. The second piece is To this question over here is about talent management. We've got some incredible people today And so you've heard our secretary of the Air Force and our chief talk about how do we empower them? How do we move the barriers and obstacles for their success so that they you know, we have this whole simple little Model that I go through in my mind. We start with really good people We then make sure they got the right education training experience They're confident and proud of what they do They're personally and professionally fulfilled and when we do that we get mission success And if I remove any one of those pieces than that then people Invariably will not continue to serve so I got to do all those pieces so that we've got the right talent Moving our Air Force forward and I contend, you know, we've got a big study going away that I didn't talk about that talks It's an S&T review but What we want is our Air Force to be the thought leaders for future conflict so that we can deter Compete deter and win in any future fight and so developing those thought leaders For a nation who are going to help us in these future fights is really important And that's we've got a lot of efforts and focus on how do we do that and how do we do that better? so I want to thank you for a couple of things the first is for in a time of Where there's controversy over engagement between? civilian military media military you've sat down and taken Roughly 40 questions from us and 40 tough questions on everything from future of war to Air Force gyms So we deeply appreciate that but we also appreciate the way that you've injected a Lot of key issues for us to chew on both in the conference ahead But also the year ahead in this program, so please do join me in a round of applause


We are out here at Topaz Mountain and that's a secret location we're gonna show you guys today and this is what the roads like and this is what the roads like to get into it. Hello and welcome back to the Rugged Rockhound. If you're new welcome I hope you subscribe. Today we are out at Topaz Mountain. Most of you are familiar with the main bowl area. That's it over there. Let me get there you go. Now you can sit. So that's the main bowl area over here. This is the backside of it. Most people will enter from the other side. We're north of it today at kind of a secret location that I found years ago and we are gonna go ahead and show that to you guys. So like always I will post the GPS coordinates right up here for you guys so you know how to get here or know where it is. I need to show you guys maybe how to get here using them but anyway so this is the spot. What we're gonna do is we're gonna search this area. So over here traditionally I found a lot of good topaz crystals. You can also find some pseudobrokeite up on the ridge there. I think any further than about here I haven't really seen anything and I don't find much here. It's mostly a zone but it's relatively untouched because we discovered it years ago and I usually find pretty good stuff up here so we're hoping to have a good day up here and I'm joined with Tim and Utah Rocks. The other YouTuber that I've been out with a few times. So I brought him along with me we're gonna look for some topaz. He drugged us along. Drugged you guys along huh? I also without our knowing. I'm also gonna kind of show you some of the tools we're using. So pry bars are really helpful at Topaz Mountain because you're gonna break a lot of hard rock. So hammers, chisels, wedges, the handpick I don't use as much but yeah tools like this we definitely use. Also it's nice to have like little bamboo sticks and stuff to dig into pockets to get the topaz crystals out when you find a pocket. And yeah oh and little containers like this and maybe some tissue paper to wrap your nice stuff in. Those are some of the tools we use. Yeah so let's get up there and find some topaz. Yeah this place has not been hit very hard. So here we are. So we're just parked down there you can probably see the vehicle. So we've walked what 300 feet. There's the main topaz mountain and this is our special spot that we found. So this zone has event structure right here that we've been working. And this is what I was working on last we're sitting. I want to try and move that rock because I think the vent structure is digging under it. As you can see you have little pockets that are the air bubbles but then you have these much larger ones like his bag sitting in that are just a series of chambers that dive into the rock. These are called vent structures. This is what you're looking for because that's where you're gonna find most of your topaz. Because you can find topaz in pockets all over. But here you just find topaz after topaz after topaz following event. Anything on that Tim? Okay.  Oh good. I found a big one sticking to the rock. I did bring spray bottles if you need them. Here Tim I'll toss you a spray bottle. Oh it's a nice one. Alright we're gonna have to get down there and take a look. Let me get the macro lens on so we can see this. Okay Tim let's take a close-up of that beautiful little cluster he's found on the rock there. Nice nice little cluster. It's still kind of dirty. Yeah. Might have to take it home and clean it off a little further. Maybe we'll try and break the rock down a little bit. Yeah. Just get some of this stuff off. But yeah look at that. Tim just found a pocket in the back so we're hoping there's some crystals in it. Yep there's some right there. Got a little bit right on the edge. That little crystal. Okay. Oh I can see stuff down there. Yep. So we have a pocket. We got a pocket. We got a pocket. Tim is extracting a crystal. Load it off a little bit. Nice little triple. Oh there's a crystal right there. Yep. It's a little one. There's a crystal. Nice little thing. Fresh from the mountain. Oh nice. So the Turox has got his first nice crystal. Woo. Excellent. Just trying to go over to him. Tim just pulled this one out. His pocket. Very nice. Look at that pocket. Look at all that good looking stuff. We got topaz crystals on the edges. Yep. Here's another little thing.  Yeah tiny tiny. Oh hold on I got the best one in my hand. Okay are you ready for this one? Okay. That one looks like it was a little exposed to the sun but overall pretty nice still. Trying to get you in there so you can see it. I got a nice cluster on the side there. Some nice crystals. Just this is a really nice pocket. It's lined with crystals. Okay Tim what did you find? Just pulled it out right there. Yeah right in there. So clean it off a little bit. Nice good sized one. Unfortunately a lot of sand in it but overall still pretty nice. Look at what Tim just pulled out. Look at this thing. Look at those topaz's in it. Wow can you imagine when we get it cleaned off? Topaz is all through where the white is. Nice. It's in and out of the white. So cool. Just a quick update of where we're at. Here's what we've found thus far. Just stuff all over and then here's the pocket as it is. We've got crystal clusters still all over the edges of it. So you can see we've managed to get a lot of stuff off the edge now. Still quite a bit to get. But let's take a look at it. What do you think of our haul so far? Look at those things. Lots of matrix specimens that are really nice. Like this one right here. Look at that. Just tons of stuff. Just so nice. Tim's just going at it over in this pocket. I came down this way and I found this little pocket and I've been digging a while and I got a few things out but then I finally got a really good one. Look at that. Look at that piece.  That'll be nice. So after a bit of digging, that's what happened to that hole. This was the hole I dug. That's what I ended up getting out of mine. And then Tim got all of this. So we're going to start boxing everything up, putting it in containers. We've got a ton to go through. So we got everything packed up. We got it in the bucket. So we got a nice amount of stuff in the bucket. A spray bottle of water. A crowbar to the head. Okay. So yeah, we are cleaning up here. It's starting to get pretty warm. We'll be heading out in a bit and I'll get home and get all those cleaned off. So the next video you'll see is going to see all these specimens cleaned off. I just wanted to quickly show you everything we came back with. So we got a ton of things. You're not going to be able to see it very well. Because it's in the shade and I don't have the macro lens on. But yeah, this is full of topaz and I've just got water in these because I'm cleaning them all off. But yeah, that's what we got quite a lot. Now I'm going to go ahead and mount this and then we'll take a closer look with the macro lens. But we're just going to look at the really good ones because there's just too much to go through otherwise. Let's get started. So this is a little hard to show. Try this. It's a little double terminated crystal. We ended up getting quite a few double terminated crystals. Got this one right here. Very nice. Got this one, which also ended up being another double terminated crystal. And then we got this one right here. Also very nice. There's this nice little one. There's this nice little one. Click clear the top of that is. Very nice. This is that first nice one that Tim found. Another nice little one. A larger one, but not quite as nice. This is one of those what you call sandy crystals where as it was growing it incorporated a lot of little grains of sand into it that were on the edge of the pocket.  There's a really nice one. It's actually double terminated. You can see the edge of it going there. There's a really nice one again. Nice little cluster. Nice two crystals coming off of each other. I guess you could call it a twin. There's that nice large twin that I found in my pocket next to Tim's big pocket. That was the best thing I found in mine. Really nice. Good quality.  You got that nice purple. I'm not even sure if it's fluorite or fluorapatite. It's hard to tell because it's so tiny.  This is the large crystal cluster that came out of Tim's pocket. That crystal right there is beautiful. Just a nice cluster. Now we're moving on to the specimens that are on matrix. So we've got a nice crystal in there. It's on matrix. Got this nice crystal right here on matrix as well. Got a little crystal right here on the edge of this one. This one was one of my favorite. All that purple. And then look at that double terminated crystal beautifully perched there in another one. Just a beautiful specimen. Now we're getting into the larger specimens. They're still kind of wet. So you've got that nice cluster right there. And this beautiful, just overall specimen. You've got little topazes all over the place.  That's right here on the top. But yeah, neat stuff. In this area you get a lot of hematite blades. Those little black things in case you're wondering are blades of hematite. Here's the final one. It was the big one. And I really liked this one too. So you've got that purple all over. And then just a whole series of crystal topaz right through here.  But I wonder, it might be calcite or something else. But I think it's calcidone. Look how you've got these crystals nestled in here. Like that one. And there's one there. And I wonder how many more are just hiding underneath. It's just such a cool, cool piece. So yeah, kind of the biggest high quality specimen of the dig. Very nice. Let's end it on that beautiful crystal right there. And that was our dig at Topaz Mountain. Weren't those beautiful? It was a wonderful day. I got out of the park finding the continuation of the event structure. And Utah Rocks found some great stuff too. You'll have to go check out his channel to see what he found. And it was a fantastic day. And now you guys know where it is. So you're welcome to go check it out yourself. Now, at the time I'm filming this, I'm on the verge of hitting a thousand subscribers. And by the time you guys see this, I will probably have already hit the thousand subscribers. So yay, thank you guys so much. And that means I'm going to be doing a video next week for the 1,000 subscriber special. So what I'm going to do is do a giveaway. I'm going to give away some of these specimens and awesome things I've collected as gifts to you guys as a thank you for your help in getting me to where I am right now to hit the thousand subscribers. So yeah, a huge thank you to you guys. And I hope you enjoy. I'll do that next week. And then we'll get those meld out after we determine who the winners are. Anyway, have that to look forward to next week. So stay tuned. And remember there is treasure everywhere.


I was in Atlanta and it was me and me breathing, parking, and, uh, Scarface, and Pimp C. Man, that's why I'm a Pimp C fan.  Man, I'm a Pimp C fan. Boy, you don't even know. I just like the way, you're all happy to pimp, man. That was just a cool dude. It was cool, wasn't it, man? And it's just respect. We on Boss Talk 101. So now let's fast forward to when he comes from prison or from and comes to death row by way of some say shoes, some say Jim Iovine. They all have stories. But when he comes, how is this pocket? What are you guys expecting? You was already gone. You had left. Yeah. So you didn't see him. No time around. Sure. That's all around. Sure. But we hung out in Atlanta with, with Bree. Oh, yeah. Him and Bree was real close. So he was always in Atlanta and it was me and me breathing parking in the Scarface. Scarface? Pimp C. Man, that's why that's why this is why the mean give I'm a Pimp C fan.  Man, I'm a Pimp C fan. Boy, you don't even know. I just like the way you're all happy to pimp, man. That was just a cool dude. It was cool, wasn't it, man? And it's just respect, you know? Solid dude, man. You know, and we was just kicking it. Y'all were just kicking it. I like his straightforwardness. I like the way how he doesn't hold his tongue. Oh, no. He ain't play no hole at all. Yeah, yeah. All the niggas was like that. Really? Now, I was the only one. See, there's most of them bars, they think, when you get that all in you. You was quiet. Who? You. No. I'm saying, but I'm saying when you get that all in you, you get to talking that noise. That's what all they was doing. So I fit right in. Okay. But when I wasn't all done, I was quiet. Okay.


I'm coming to you live from Detroit PBS studios. Let me show you this way. I'm here on set. Check it out This is this is this is where I'm doing the taping today this Thursday I'll send out a Let it everybody showing that telling everybody about more details. So make sure you're subscribed to the free newsletter at nutrition facts.org and I'm so excited about this special Here, let me do another. I'll do another Audience has yet arrived yet, but I'm psyched Of course, I don't think they actually read my book. There's like a big tray of donuts here. That's about the early Although some have like bright blue icing. So I don't know. Maybe they're blueberry or something Anyway, but hopefully by my next taping. I'll be back and there'll be like a tray of veggies or something hopefully anyway Wish me luck


He's a weasel. You always sit like that. It's a good morning folks. We're here in medicine hat, Alberta We're just waking up early. It's uh, I've got about 5 a.m. And we're about to hit the road We got to be in Okatoks just south of Calgary in three hours to unload Well, it's first come first serve but the sooner I get unloaded the sooner I go and get reloaded and Edmonton the sooner I'm on my way home So I'm glad you're here hit that subscribe button We make videos pretty much every day you can follow us as we travel Canada and the United States see all the scenery with me and Also get a lot of my useless opinions along the way Love to have you as part of the club. You could find me on Facebook Twitter and parlay Links are all down below in the description if you want to follow me there and I will uh, I Was gonna say something else yet. I'm too tired I'm gonna wake myself up here go grab a coffee and get on our way We just got empty and typed in our next destination, which is our shipper in Edmonton I'll show you where I am here. Okay, so there's North America, right? Canada, Merca, and we are right there. You see it. So that's my route Okay, sorry about the reflection So we're going from Calgary Calgary there up to Edmonton and then we're going Follow this little thing in the middle here. We're going from there Whoa way back down here To Winnipeg right there and we'll be at home another trip across the exciting prairies This delivery didn't go as fast as I wanted it to This is one of those deliveries Excuse me. I am not driving. I am sitting here talking to the good people and off duty Sneaky. She's being sneaky. What was I saying? Yeah, this is one of those deliveries. They don't have a dock They ordered 20 pieces on skids and they don't have a dock But we made it work We made it work We tied a bunch of ropes together and they had a bobcat front end loader with the forks so we pulled it all to the back Lifted it off and unloaded it that way just took a lot longer than it would have otherwise But it is what it is. Sometimes there's no dock and you just got to make it work So we're in Okatoc's Alberta south of Calgary. We got to go through Calgary north towards Edmonton We're not getting there any faster sitting here. So Let's get going You guys want to drive I'd like to have a nap Let's do it diesel. Let's do it Gonna have to stop for a coffee. I think on the way. What do you think? I'm gonna turn left here. Oh, this is gonna be a tight corner that grass there. Oh, the Truman show is in town again Literally the whole time I was talking to you there was practically no traffic now that I want to get on the road here We are See, this is why I vlog this stuff to prove to you that I'm on the Truman show That's what I should have called this vlog the Truman show This is the Josh show. It's even worse Do you want this road for five kilometers first the scales open Calgary the scales always open just so you know It's worth more of a mention when it's not open Because that's more surprising And I am empty but once again How do they know that I? Always go over the scale anyway. There isn't any Signs here that say empty trucks There isn't any signs that say empty trucks keep left a lot of scales do that But how do they know I'm empty? What are they gonna come chase after me to make sure I'll just go over the scale whatever they need to read my my decals and my My numbers and plates and everything anyway make sure all my lights are working Sometimes they'll put the red light on so that you stop just so they can check your brake lights I always wondered why they did that in Ontario. They do that sometimes, you know You'll be rolling through a green light green light all of a sudden red light and you'll look hit the brakes You what's that and the green light will pop back on the let you go. I Asked someone about that once one of the officers and he says oh, well, they just do that to check your brake lights Clever they're getting smart guys Better watch out. At least they got a brand new Alberta and Canada flag there Tattered faded ones. So they're sitting in this building here. Just off to the right. They're looking at us They're reading our plates. They're entering our information. I go past them They read and enter all the information on the side of my truck They're also looking at my weight making sure I'm not overweight They can show I'm wearing my seat belt makes for all my lights are working this guy on the left was supposed to Wait until I was out of the way so that they could read his but they don't always do that There you go, you should know that I'm empty now It's a u-haul truck now. I don't think you needed to come in here, but okay Maybe he does what do I know? So this is Queen Elizabeth the second highway I've said it before Manitoba we also have a Queen Elizabeth the second way in Winnipeg It seems whatever the Queen comes to visit our country We rename whatever road her motorcade drives down after her So when she comes here, she's always driving on Queen Elizabeth Road. They never do that for me Though I have requested after me yet We do have a street name in Steinback named after our family name though There is a Geeseburg Street. It wasn't specifically named after me though. I'd like to say it was Apparently you got to have a crown to get roads named after you up here in Canada Or you got to be a very good hockey player There's Wayne Gretzky Drive here in Edmonton way up to Edmonton Suddenly traffic came to a dead stop So far it looks like nobody plowed into the people in front of them. So that's good. It came pretty close Now with me with the people behind me something happened up here some kind of kerfluffle I don't know why traffic like were people not paying attention Why did we came to a dead stop very quickly? You know one lane was still open. Oh people behind me got This guy's just pulling out here now the last one he let through to block off the highway so that tow truck could turn around fascinating that was interesting Edmonton is the capital of Alberta. It's sort of close to central Alberta not quite in the center, but somewhat up there It's one of the northern most or is it the northern big or the biggest northern city We have or the city furthest north It's a big city and it's further north than most big cities We got to pick up our load here. They're waiting for us already and this person decides to go slow in the center lane Nobody beside me paid by the hour. I would like to do the speed limit if I can in some countries You know, it's illegal to pass on the right like that There's no nothing like that here. You can pass on the right if you want to it's just People should move to the right if they're driving slower than the rest of traffic Common sense to common people, but not everybody can be common Some people like to be unique And get in everybody's way Like I was telling you a couple of weeks ago so many of these drivers, especially when you go into the big cities The people in the big cities here a Lot of them the only reason they got their license and got their vehicle is to get from point A to point B They know nothing about how to drive on quite the drive But they know how to turn the steering wheel left to go left They know which pedal means go and which one means stop some of them know where the little blinky Switch is to not all of them do Half of them don't know What the high beams are all they got their license and our vehicle for is just to get from point A to point B And that's scary. There's so much more to I I always call driving in art I mean, it's so many things have got to flow together and work just right so that you get To where you're going smoothly without inconveniencing everybody else on the road without putting anyone else Else the safety at Jeopardy. You're getting there safely Smartly and efficiently. I was kind of up in the air. I probably could have gone through that one, but I Made my decision Here we are If I would have gone through you know, you would have judged me So there's downtown Edmonton all the way at the end of this road ahead of us. There's some big skyscrapers in Edmonton Is that really really tall one is that one new because I don't remember that one Look at this guys load here. I guess how heavy you think this load is 100,000 pounds Somewhere in there. That's that's heavy That's heavy So we just got reloaded took a total of 10 minutes and I got some notes on my paperwork here it says This load must be tarped Okay done So I guess this load could have either gone on flatbed or in a dry van You know a lot of the loads I I hauled on flatbed when I was on flatbed I thought to myself, huh, you know, they could just easily put this stuff in a dry van And I wouldn't have to spend three hours tying it down chaining it down Tarping it stopping every three hours or every Whatever down the road to check on it and tighten the straps. They just throw it in dry van I mean this thing's not in very good shape. Look at that. I didn't do that I did not do that just so you know some rusty old tire rims but Nonetheless this took Literally ten minutes. I pulled out of the dock closed the doors. This load must be tarped done So there's a lot of freight that they put onto these flatbeds But they could easily put into a box like this, and I'm glad they did that this time They should do that more often paperwork into the envelope where it belongs Look at ten minutes Ten minutes Locked and loaded Will stop dinging at me. I know I want to go home, too Diesel you want to go home? You want to go home? I'm gonna be home for a week man Unscheduled vacation coming up So I booked this next weekend off for fertility appointments and whatnot And then this truck has to be safe deed now Tomorrow is the last day of the month when I'm filming this so I know you get this a little bit later It takes me a little while to put it all together But this truck has to be safe deed and it'll be out of service on the first So I have to get back to the yard tomorrow, which I shouldn't have a problem of no problem doing that, but So this truck's out of service. They can't get it into the shop till probably Thursday So I'm without a truck till Thursday When I get to the yard, I'm gonna be out of hours on my Logbook and I need a reset. I'm getting back Tuesday. So that means I'm out of service on Wednesday So I'm out of service on Wednesday this trucks out of service on Thursday, and I need to be home on Friday till the following Tuesday Probably leave on Tuesday. Yeah so It is what it is. It's not gonna happen like this all the time But we're gonna take advantage of this time because I have so much I need to get done at home I'm gonna take you along for all of it. I just want to warn you that after tomorrow There's gonna be a lot of home time vlogs, and I hope you come and hang out with me as well There's this I like showing you stuff that I do behind the scenes and you know Not my life isn't all about trucking I have a lot of other things that I'm trying to do and I've learned a lot from you guys in the comment sections when I'm trying to Do a project and then you guys give me your advice and I read through it I'm like, oh, yeah, that would have been a much better way of doing that and then next time I know a better way and you guys have helped me out a lot that way, but A lot of home time stuff coming up. I'll try to do a video every day. There's sometimes when I'm at home Like probably won't happen this time at home, but sometimes I'm gonna be honest with you. I Am just a lazy coach potato Sometimes when I go home I just want to sit and do nothing for the whole day and I can't make a vlog out of that Those days don't happen very often because usually I have tons to do especially when it's summer and it's warm out Tons to do outside those days usually happen in winter time when I can't go outside anyways because it's minus bazillion And I will freeze my face off and other parts very quickly. I don't know where I was going with this talk. I Know where we're going diesel We're going home man Should be home tomorrow Round 6 p.m. I'm pretty sure that it is seating season. I don't know why there'd be a combine going down the road Not quite harvest season yet, but I guess he's getting ready always best to be prepared unless they're harvesting winter wheat. Is that ready to harvest already? I don't think so because I don't see any golden wheat anywhere. It's all green still nothing's ready Guess the farmers are getting bored. They're waiting for harvest Well, we got 14 minutes left on our day and we're pulling in here to Rattison's Saskatchewan, so we're gonna end our day. We have another nine hours of driving to go tomorrow So it'll be another full day tomorrow yet But we have driven over 12 hours today It's been a long day Look at all our bugs that we've gathered Look at all of our friends that gave their life just to tag along with us That's how much they wanted to come with I told them no there's no room You couldn't you can't come with but they said no I'm coming with you me Splat right on the windshield. So now I'm taking them with me That's a weird way of looking at it, isn't it? I don't want us to go in this entrance. They want us to go in this entrance back here So we've driven 1,123 kilometers today for medicine hat to Okatalks to Edmonton to Rattison Saskatchewan Continue on this road for 30 kilometers I'm excited. I'm sneezing all over the place here Turn right a man turn right in 90 meters All right, where should we park? I Want to park off on the side somewhere by myself. I'm not gonna block this access here. I think I think I want to park along the edge Oh that camper guy is already taking my idea. Okay. I don't want to block him in either Oh and the tanker over there took my idea over there Well, everybody's taking my parking ideas from me. I should start patenting these ideas Oh boy, I better not lose my truck in one of these potholes watch out. Hang on everybody It's a bumpy ride. See I was gonna park right where that tanker is over there. How dare he