Episode Transcript
[00:00:00] Col Tim Monroe: The amazing part about the partnership with the city is how well we work together.
[00:00:07] Intro: Welcome to Hangar X Studios, where former. Fighter pilot and host John Ramstead takes us on a journey across aerospace as it enters an historic period of innovation and transformation.
Our guests include aviation experts, pilots, financiers, military leaders, and innovators of all types.
Buckle up for another episode of Hangar X.
Hey.
[00:00:36] John Ramstead: Welcome to HangarX Studios, and we're live at the Hive in Grand Forks, North Dakota, and we are honored today to have one of the finest leaders I've personally ever met in my life, Colonel Tim Monroe. Tim, welcome to the podcast.
[00:00:49] Col Tim Monroe: John, thanks for the invitation. Certainly great to be back in the Hive. And I can't tell you how much I appreciate our friendship, your mentorship, because we've been able to work together in professional capacities over the year. And I'm really grateful for the opportunity to talk about what's going on in the Air Force and what we're doing at Grand Forks Air Force Base.
[00:01:08] John Ramstead: Yeah, and grand sky, and also the city. And now you're the commanding officer of the 319th Reconnaissance Wing, which is one of the most critical and strategic major commands in the Air Force for intelligence, surveillance, and reconnaissance, not just domestically, but globally. Could you share a little bit about just the mission of the 319th? Because there's how many? A dozen, 16 different commands that roll up underneath the different groups and up into the wing. Right. So it's a very global and complex command.
[00:01:44] Col Tim Monroe: Yeah, it certainly is. So just in terms of organizational structure, underneath Headquarters Air Force, we have different major commands. The one that we directly report to is Air Combat Command through Air combat command, the 16th Air Force. And then we are an Air Force wing. So the 319th Reconnaissance Wing, we've got a number of squadrons which are our lowest tactical echelon units. And I'm certainly very proud to talk about what we are doing around the globe. We call ourselves the Griffins, and the wing emblem has these big wings. And those wings are very symbolic of the fact that our mission literally wraps around the globe. We operate a couple of different weapon systems. The first is the RQ4 Global Hawk. It's a high altitude surveillance platform that's.
[00:02:39] John Ramstead: The size of us. It has wings the size of a 737. Correct.
[00:02:42] Col Tim Monroe: It's exactly.
[00:02:43] John Ramstead: It's not a small drone.
[00:02:44] Col Tim Monroe: Definitely not. And for people that are seeing it for the very first time, that's sort of the shock factor of it. I mean, its body certainly isn't the size of a 737. But its wingspan, it is a massive airplane. And it's big like that because it flies at very, very high altitudes. And so the wing is optimized to function in that really, really thin air.
[00:03:09] John Ramstead: So you can be high and have a long loiter time too. I'm guessing that that time on station is important.
[00:03:14] Col Tim Monroe: Time on station, very important for the type of mission that we do. As a matter of fact, our wing last year, calendar year 2024, broke a world record for the longest unrefueled military flight. And we flew an RQ4 Global Hawk for 34.8 hours continuously.
[00:03:37] John Ramstead: No kidding.
[00:03:37] Col Tim Monroe: It's an incredible piece of technology.
And, you know, to your point, it has global reach. Yeah, we have different operating locations around the world. And it's worth your audience understanding that just very briefly, our first operating location is at Anderson Air Force Base on the island of Guam, way down in the beautiful South Pacific. From Guam, that allows us to fly one of these airplanes into very sensitive places of national strategic interest. In the Pacific.
[00:04:08] John Ramstead: Yeah, that's all across Asia and the Middle east. You can reach from there.
[00:04:12] Col Tim Monroe: We'll typically fly our Asia sorties from Guam. And then on the other side of the world, at Naval Air Station Sigonella on the island of Sicily, we've got another squadron that will launch our airplanes. And from there we can conduct our mission in the European theater, over the African continent, and in the Middle east for U.S. central Command. Yeah, so that's the first of our weapons systems. The Second is the E11 battlefield Airborne communication Node.
It's a one of a kind platform.
[00:04:45] John Ramstead: One of my friends from flight school actually went to fly the E11. And once he went into that program, we never, never knew what he did other than he's still a pilot.
[00:04:54] Col Tim Monroe: Yeah, that's right. Well, it's an incredible airplane made by Bombardier Aircraft Corporation. The sobering story of the history of the E11 bacon, as we call it, is that it generated after the story of Lone Survivor. So if anybody's seen the movie Lone Survivor and how that Navy SEAL team had to struggle through suboptimal communication that led to a very tragic outcome for the U.S. air Force. We recognized that there was a gap. We called it a joint urgent operational need, and the bacon was a result of that. So it's a beautiful corporate executive body aircraft, but the back end where you would normally have all the really high end appointments, that's all stripped out. And it's radio racks and other communication equipment that allows that weapon system to be a communication bridge over the Battle space. And then very quickly, the last tactical weapon system that we operate is the High Frequency Global Communication System, or HFGCS for short.
The great news story is that what's old is new again. So HF radios that you and I grew up learning to fly and use in our tactical weapon systems, that capability has not gone away. And it has really unique resiliency components that are bringing HF back into the forefront of military capabilities.
[00:06:30] John Ramstead: What's the advantage of that? Like, what's the reason that it's. It became back to the forefront?
[00:06:35] Col Tim Monroe: It has the ability to do a couple of critical things. One, it can penetrate weather. Those high frequency radio waves can penetrate thunderstorms, volcanic ash. They also have an ability to penetrate the water. So you can communicate to surface and subsurface vessels down to a certain point. And at the rate at which the frequency communicates, you can see send messages from antennas that literally can wrap itself around the world. And so there is a worldwide network of HF antennas that we pay to maintain. And there are two communication nodes for HF GCs. One at Grand Forks Air Force Base and the other one on the east coast at Andrews Air Force Base. And the most important capability that we offer is we can serve as a communication backup for the President of the United States during times of crisis. Those missions run all the time from our wing and other places around the globe. And we're very, very proud of the airmen that do those missions.
[00:07:42] John Ramstead: I'm sure the uptime on that is.
[00:07:43] Col Tim Monroe: Probably 100%, 100% unblinking, and we're held accountable to it as well.
[00:07:49] John Ramstead: I'm sure you are. And then what about predators, the Reapers, Is that still part of the wing and the capabilities?
[00:07:58] Col Tim Monroe: Not necessarily part of our wing. So in the Air Force portfolio, we have now retired the Predator. The Predator, which was the MQ1, you retired it a number of years ago. The focus for different parts of the Air Force organizational structure is the MQ9 reaper.
And so we're conducting missions all over the world. The Pacific, the Middle east, the European theater. Those are done by a different wing in different organizations. However, on Grand Forks Air Force Base, in addition to our wing, we've got lots of mission partners that I know we're going to get to in our discussion. One of those is Customs and Border Protection. They fly the MQ9.
[00:08:39] John Ramstead: I met some of the guys in our hotel lobby, and they were here. It was Coast Guard lieutenant commander like, hey, what are you up here doing? He goes, oh, MQ9 recurrency training. So he does. So he was up here to do some currency training. Working for the border and Border Customs and Border Patrol.
[00:08:54] Col Tim Monroe: Yeah. Extremely important mission for national defense. We're really proud of the work that they do both on the northern border of the United States and they're very active on the southern border, which is a priority for the nation right now. But they also fly some small unmanned systems and they've got a manned Cessna platform. So that's a unique component. And then we've got a mission partner on an enhanced use lease called Grand Sky. Yeah, and at grand sky, they've got a couple of industry partners, Northrop Grumman and General Atomics, being the two biggest in General atomics, flies the MQ9A Reaper and they're transitioning into an international training program, which is really their bread and butter here. Flying the MQ9B Sky Guardian, which is generation two of the Reaper.
[00:09:43] John Ramstead: What's the capabilities of that versus the people that are using it? I don't know if you can't talk about. If I asked you. Something's classified. I get that. But in that capability, what does that enhancement do?
[00:09:55] Col Tim Monroe: Yeah, I'm not a complete expert on it because we're not purchasing that platform for the United States Air Force. It's primarily a capability that's going to be sold to international partners, and they've got a long lineup of international customers that are ready to purchase the. The Sky Guardian. Different countries call it different things. The United Kingdom calls it the Protector. But here's a couple of significant changes. One, airspace integration.
You would think this many years after the advent of unmanned systems, that national airspace rules would keep pace with all of the change in technology.
It is really tough both to get the Federal Aviation Administration onboard and integrating over the US national airspace. But that's an equally challenging issue for a lot of our international partners, is airspace integration. So the MQ9B brings a lot of tools on board that are safety in nature to help effectively integrate. It has a much, much better weather penetration capability. That's certainly important if you're flying in Europe in the Pacific Theater and then it's got some different carriage capabilities that allow a weapon system to be procured and then kept in an inventory for a really long time and just retooled to the unique needs of the customers that are operating them.
[00:11:18] John Ramstead: Yeah, and the mission set. And you know, we've had Tom Sawyer from Grand sky on talk a little bit about what grand sky does. And I'd love from your perspective from the Air Force Air Force perspective, they allowed a company to come in and do a long term lease on the Air Force base to create a place where, like you said, now in McDonnell Douglas and General Atomics. And McDonnell Douglas is refitting the RQ4s. Correct. The global Hawks to be a new version. Grumman or Northrop Grumman is doing that.
[00:11:50] Col Tim Monroe: They're there too.
[00:11:51] John Ramstead: So from, from the Air Force perspective, what do you see? The role of grand sky is to let a kind of a civilian company and civilian contractors have a base of operations on Air Force Base. Is that a, is that kind of a fair assessment of what it is?
[00:12:04] Col Tim Monroe: Yeah. So I think this is a bigger story of where the Department of Defense is in utility and utilization of these very big, very complicated federal military installations and how over time you evolve with the changing nature of the strategic environment and how you can use a military installation as a power projection platform, an opportunity to partner and to discover new capabilities. Grand sky is a bright spot for Grand Forks, North Dakota, the aviation world, and more specifically the unmanned systems world.
[00:12:47] John Ramstead: What makes it a bright spot?
[00:12:48] Col Tim Monroe: Well, we're really proud that they're celebrating their 10th anniversary on the installation. And what's unique about them is that they are the only focused unmanned systems industrial park anywhere in the country.
And what that brings to a place like Grand Forks is synergies and relationships.
[00:13:10] John Ramstead: And that sure ties into your mission.
[00:13:12] Col Tim Monroe: At the 319th, 100%. Now it's very much a partnership. So there are different roles and responsibilities. But grand sky over time has started to evolve into a place where we have a lot of heavy hitting industry partners and companies and other organizations that have more of a defense focused theme, unmanned systems theme. And all of those things come together in a place where the business environment, the policy environment, the relationships that we have with partners like the Federal Aviation Administration. There's a small unmanned systems test site that is paid for by the state of North Dakota called Northern Plains UAS test site that's co located here. And when you get all of those things working together in a symbiotic prevention out there, and Vantis is a, is a, a sub and a partner with Northern Plains, you can really start to accelerate solutions, solve difficult, difficult problems across the spectrum from research and development and engineering and academia all the way up to the high end defense capabilities that Northrop Grumman and General Atomic, how close.
[00:14:28] John Ramstead: Is the communication, coordination, collaboration between Air Force assets and commands and the tenants over at Grand Sky?
[00:14:39] Col Tim Monroe: So for day to day operations there's. I wouldn't say that There is a lot of direct communication because everybody's kind of got their thing that they're working on. You mentioned Northrop Grumman. They're converting retired Air Force RQ4 Global Hawks into an entirely new weapon system called Rangehawks to go out and eventually do hypersonic weapons testing. Weapons testing and data offense and defense. Absolutely. That is a national security imperative. General Atomics is, we've already covered, is doing their international training with their MQ9 variants. Northern Plains is doing some work, a lot of work, on a variety of different test initiatives and Vantis is supporting all of those with safe airspace integration. So there are like, interests. And while there's not necessarily direct involvement in day to day operations, the one place that we all have a core intersecting point is safe integration over the base and over the local community.
Our radar approach control facility is deeply involved in everything that happens in Grand Forks. The University of North Dakota is the largest undergraduate pilot training program anywhere in the nation.
[00:15:58] John Ramstead: Correct.
[00:15:59] Col Tim Monroe: That's a huge bill for us to make sure that all of those students get the training that they need. They get the reps and sets, but they do it safely. And then when you take it, also.
[00:16:08] John Ramstead: Probably, Chris, a great opportunity for air traffic controllers to be trained 100%. This is, this is the place to come because you're gonna be busy.
[00:16:15] Col Tim Monroe: You're definitely gonna be also dealing with.
[00:16:16] John Ramstead: A bunch of knucklehead pilots. You gotta really pay attention to.
[00:16:19] Col Tim Monroe: Well, there's a learning curve on both sides for sure, but certainly that's an important piece of what we do then integrating that with unmanned systems. And when you get all of those things in the airspace at the same time, it presents a really complicated problem. And so that's where we come into play as the primary provider for safety, confliction of aircraft.
That's a high priority for me as an installation commander and the services that we offer. And that's definitely a place that we operate very closely with one another.
[00:16:52] John Ramstead: Yeah, and thank you for that. And you know, when we were first talking, when you moved up here from the 25th attack group up to the wing, and you really understood, I think, the interplay between Grand Forks Air Force Base and the city of Grand Forks and just the importance to this, not only to the Air Force, but to you personally, could you talk a little bit about that interplay and what you've kind of what you've done in that area the last couple years?
[00:17:19] Col Tim Monroe: Absolutely. So, you know, it's important that we start with the history of the installation because after World War II, the world and its relationships had fundamentally changed. And there were a lot of eager local residents, farmers, national supporters, if you will, that got together and actually developed a conglomerate of farming stakeholders that donated land and offered it to the federal government and said, we will provide this property to you. We would like a military installation to be in North Dakota that was in the 1950s.
[00:18:00] John Ramstead: So they're basically sacrificing revenue producing land because they wanted the Air Force here.
[00:18:05] Col Tim Monroe: Absolutely. And for the audience, if they're not familiar with North Dakota, there is a lot of farmland here.
[00:18:13] John Ramstead: Yeah.
[00:18:14] Col Tim Monroe: And it is the number one money maker in this state. That's a critical, critical part of the economy of North Dakota. And so to have the hundreds and hundreds of acres that we do and then to put a big piece of concrete out there and call it a Runway, and then a taxiway and then a tarmac, and then all of the buildings. Eventually, the missions came, and they have grown over time and contracted over time from nuclear missile missions, nuclear B52 strategic bomber missions, KC135 tanker missions, and now the Global Hawk mission. And so the base has really evolved over time with what the world required, what the nation required. And this is where it gets into your question on the relationship with Grand Forks, North Dakota. Because the amazing part about the partnership with the city is how well we work together.
[00:19:11] John Ramstead: Yeah.
[00:19:12] Col Tim Monroe: We rely on one another for everything from medical care and quality of life initiatives to advocacy. And this is where the community here is exceptional. They're organized, they're vocal, they're engaged, and they do incredible things to help the growth of all of the businesses and all of the quality of life things that are in this city. Certainly the University of North Dakota is an important piece of that. But then this identity of the aviation world, the unmanned systems ecosystem and the base is one of many components to that. But it's great to come here. And more to your point, on things that I set out as goals when I got here was to strengthen partnerships. It's actually one of the pillars of our wing strategy, is build partnerships.
[00:20:04] John Ramstead: Some of the key partnerships, as you see it.
[00:20:06] Col Tim Monroe: Well, we just had the mayor on.
[00:20:09] John Ramstead: Brandon, and I know that he could not be, I think, happier with the level of partnership and the quality of relationship.
[00:20:17] Col Tim Monroe: Yes, sir. And, you know, the mayor's office is really where a lot of these things begin. Because he and I have such a great relationship. We've been able to tackle some difficult problems and have hard conversations to help map out opportunities of shared interest for the community and for the installation.
We have really important relationships with Air and Space Force and Air Combat Command civic leaders. Those are the people I spend the most of my time working with to educate, inform.
[00:20:46] John Ramstead: You say civic leaders that are actually here in Grand Forks?
[00:20:49] Col Tim Monroe: That's correct. And so these people, so those retired.
[00:20:51] John Ramstead: Or they're business leaders that were in the military or kind of stakeholders in some way generally.
[00:20:56] Col Tim Monroe: Most of our civic leaders don't have an association with the military.
[00:21:00] John Ramstead: Okay.
[00:21:00] Col Tim Monroe: There's, there's formal programs where we solicit interested parties, vet those people and then ultimately get them into a program where they become appointed civic leaders.
We do that at the major command level. So that's a four star command. Air Combat Command has a group of civic leaders, and then the Chief of Staff of the Air Force also has a group of civic leaders. The ones here are American amazing partners. They're great leaders, but I work very closely with them because there are things where they can get out and advocate for us, or maybe my job runs into limitations, but we can share information with one another, talk about great Americans that are serving their nation in uniform, discover shared opportunities and hopefully take those shared opportunities and turn them into shared solutions.
[00:21:51] John Ramstead: Yeah, that's wonderful. And just curious, I can see how Grand Forks, in this entire ecosystem and how this has really become an epicenter of kind of, you know, unmanned aerial systems outside of the military, from small drones to large. How has the Air force and the DoD been benefiting, I think from, I think, you know, the people in the ecosystem that's here back that way.
[00:22:15] Col Tim Monroe: It's a great question. I'll give you a couple of examples of how I see this playing out in real time.
[00:22:21] John Ramstead: Yeah.
[00:22:22] Col Tim Monroe: One of the greatest threats that we have to military installations is small unmanned systems.
We are late to need and somebody.
[00:22:32] John Ramstead: Shows up and launches a drone swarm because they want to do some damage that would be hard to defend against right now.
[00:22:38] Col Tim Monroe: And folks can go out there and see things that are open source where we have been caught off guard.
[00:22:43] John Ramstead: Well, you just saw what happened in Kyiv and Ukraine from a drone swarm attack and it was devastating.
[00:22:48] Col Tim Monroe: And that, and this is a critical thing that I remind folks.
It is not an over there problem.
[00:22:57] John Ramstead: It's a here problem right here and right now.
[00:23:00] Col Tim Monroe: Right here and right now. And we've got a lot of ground to make up in many different ways. Certainly there's a piece of this that is, from my point of view, defensive and installation point defense. Making sure that your hard perimeter is protected. But then your soft perimeter, which is the air domain, it could be the electromagnetic spectrum. But you want to have freedom of maneuver and all of those things. That's a strategic priority.
But it's also highlighted for us domestically where we have seams between organizations that affect policy, law enforcement, your military component. And what we need to do is find ways that we can break down those stovepipes, develop cross cutting solutions. And that's where a place like Grand Forks is really effective. Because where the military may bring a capability to bear. Then you've got an organization like Northern Plains UAS test site that have different permissions, different capabilities, different partnerships and we can get into a room and start talking about society things. And then you can bring in an organization like Vantis that's working on safe integration and air domain awareness solutions. And they bring a different perspective. Industry brings a perspective, academia brings a perspective.
[00:24:22] John Ramstead: So what I'm hearing is you're really talking about to solve this problem which is here and now. Let's go find the stakeholders both on the civilian and the military side. Let's get in room. Let's talk about what we can bring to solve this problem. Because it's to everybody's benefit.
[00:24:36] Col Tim Monroe: Absolutely. And I think that's one of many benefits. And it's an example of why the relationships here are important. Because they feed things in other places.
[00:24:46] John Ramstead: Because you're starting solving other problems or sourcing or airing out maybe other either issues or opportunities.
[00:24:52] Col Tim Monroe: Well, one would hope. And maybe you don't come up with a solution, but to your point, maybe you discover that there's another step that we need to take. And here's my example of that. A few weeks ago, the state of Grand Forks was very generous to invite myself and my counterparts, two wing commanders from Minot Air Force Base, to go to Bismarck and to provide remarks to a combined legislation legislative session. And when you can engage your elected leaders and help to educate and inform them on a lot of the very difficult problems that you're trying to work.
That's what spurs new Congress.
[00:25:37] John Ramstead: Who initiated that? One of your civic leaders?
[00:25:39] Col Tim Monroe: One of our civic leaders who is also one of our local elected officials engaged a number of the leaders in Bismarck to include the governor. And it turned into a formal invitation and it turned into what we got as feedback as a highly informative and necessary session for a lot of very smart, capable elected leaders to hear and have some perspective from people who are part of the military, wherever the military is.
[00:26:08] John Ramstead: You're a big part of that local and state economy. And the more we can know each other and have these conversations, the better. Because there's legislative priorities in a state that could probably either hinder or help your mission locally, I'm guessing.
[00:26:22] Col Tim Monroe: Absolutely. And that's where this. This point ultimately culminates is if you get some of these things right, maybe it changes perspective, maybe it turns into policy, maybe it turns into law.
[00:26:33] John Ramstead: Yeah.
[00:26:33] Col Tim Monroe: Those things can be benchmarked as best practices that then go to the 49 other states and other territories to go, hey, they're working on some things. Here's a shared example of how this has brought. Benefited the military, national security, and then it starts to propagate through the nation.
[00:26:52] John Ramstead: Yeah. And you just keep getting gooder, which is a very high standard.
[00:26:56] Col Tim Monroe: It is a high standard.
[00:26:58] John Ramstead: Well, you know, as we wrap up, Colonel, and I'm so appreciative of you driving over from the base, taking the time. What are, you know, our audience are, you know, people in aviation.
You know, veterans, investors, people that just really are passionate about this whole space from UAS all the way up through Powered lift and just aviation in general. But, I mean, you started out as an F15 pilot, and now you've worked your way up to major command. And I'm just hoping and praying that I see you with a star on your shoulder here in the next couple years, because the Air Force needs leaders like you. So. But what would be just some final thoughts to leave with everybody as they've been listening into the conversation?
[00:27:36] Col Tim Monroe: Well, I again, appreciate the opportunity to share the story and brag on all of the thousands of airmen and great Americans that are dependents and family members that execute our mission every day. I guess I would leave you with a couple of points. One, the nation is in really good hands with our nation's military. We have exceptional sons and daughters who continue to answer the call to put service above oneself, to value and aspire to greatness, and to do all of that in service to our great nation. That. That, to me, is one of the most honorable parts of the job that I have, and it's one of the best parts of the experience that I've had in Grand Forks, North Dakota, is to be able to lead those great Americans and to say thank you. This is important. This community is really good about saying thank you for your service, but the other thing that they are exceptional at is they change that up and they say, thank you for my freedom.
What a powerful thing. And when you've got a community that stands behind you, it emboldens you.
It helps you deal with fatigue. It helps you deal with difficult days. It helps you deal with the global challenges that we have to take tackle with our weapons systems and all of the enabling capabilities that we bring to global military operations, and I think that's the first piece, is that this place is a good home for the families that we have. They're great Americans doing the jobs that we've asked them to do in the military. And what a great community to be a part of that says, thanks for my freedom.
That's a really great thing. Here's the last thing that I'll leave you with.
The partnerships here are second to none. And I challenge somebody to come up with a better example of how well things work together in a place like Grand Forks, North Dakota, between your community, your academia partners, industry partners, other national security stakeholders, there is amazing stuff happening here. And it is a change in the narrative of the past 60 plus years that that base has been a part of the community and the changing nature of the missions. I don't know what that next mission is going to look like, but it's going to be a great addition and it's going to be here for a really long time.
[00:30:09] John Ramstead: Yeah. Outstanding. Well, thank you for your time, sir.
[00:30:11] Col Tim Monroe: Yes, sir.
[00:30:12] John Ramstead: And for your service and for our freedom, for everybody listening and just keep knocking them alive out there. And I can't wait to see what happens next in your career, too. And all those incredible officers that I know you've been developing and mentoring that are leading all those combatant commands underneath the wing. So it'll be great to see how all that evolves over time.
[00:30:34] Col Tim Monroe: Thank you very much.
[00:30:35] John Ramstead: All right.
