00;00;00;06 - 00;00;02;20 Alex Technically speaking. 00;00;02;22 - 00;00;05;18 Chelsie Welcome to our technically UN technical Technology top. 00;00;05;20 - 00;00;08;15 Alex And now we could land in production and. 00;00;08;18 - 00;00;15;07 Joe An award winning podcast with your hosts, Chelsea Holloway and Alex Jackson. 00;00;15;09 - 00;00;17;26 Chelsie Alex, how are you doing? How was your weekend? 00;00;17;28 - 00;00;32;06 Alex Hey, Chelsea, I'm doing pretty good. My weekend was a lot of fun. I went out to Lake Moultrie and watched some folks doing adaptive water skiing, so that was a lot of fun being out with friends, hanging out in the sun. It was super hot, but how was your weekend? 00;00;32;09 - 00;00;33;27 Chelsie Adaptive water skiing. What is. 00;00;33;27 - 00;00;55;26 Alex That? That's where people who have disabilities can go to sit in water skis. They're basically on chairs and they sit on skis and can get pulled behind the boat. Or, we did some jet skiing out there as well. So awesome. It's a great way to still have fun and even, enjoy the sun while living with the disability. 00;00;55;26 - 00;00;58;19 Alex And yeah, and participating in a lot of activities. 00;00;58;20 - 00;01;18;17 Chelsie That's really cool. That's an awesome experience. I avoided the sun a little bit over the weekend. I had a friend visiting and she came up to DC and we took our kids and walked around, some museums, and we checked out the American History Museum in DC, and it's kind of cool. They have some good kid play areas, which is always a bonus for a three year old. 00;01;18;20 - 00;01;36;09 Chelsie And they had a really cool, like train and cars and yeah, they've got a lot of really good like vehicles in that museum, which I wasn't expecting. And it's free. So you just walk in. So it was extraordinary. Yeah, yeah, it was a good time. So we had we had some good weekends. We did some cool stuff. 00;01;36;11 - 00;01;42;11 Alex Yeah. It's always fun to take a break from work a little bit and enjoy, enjoy life and have a good time. 00;01;42;15 - 00;02;03;02 Chelsie Oh yeah. So it's been a while since we've been here on the podcast, and we're very sorry to our listeners who might have missed us, of course. Right. We had an awesome episode for you, but at the last minute it was, considered too classified and sensitive to share because, you know, we're working on some very cool stuff here at Network Atlantic, and the mission always comes first. 00;02;03;02 - 00;02;19;17 Chelsie So that episode is poof. It is gone. But don't worry. To make up for being M.I.A. We have a very cool episode coming up where we are going to talk about free Space optical communications aka how we send messages on laser beams. 00;02;19;23 - 00;02;42;27 Alex Coming up, we speak with Doctor John Wells and now Atlantic Science and Technology supervisor, who explains why this method of communication has been developed and how it is used with the fleet. Then a military moment with Master Chief Robert Mendoza, who shared his experiences of serving in the Navy. So you know what time it is. Let's get comfy, turn up that volume and let's get started. 00;02;43;05 - 00;02;57;22 Chelsie All right. We're going to jump right into it John. And the first question is just explain to us some of these issues that the military has run into with using radio frequency communication, basically the catalyst of what is going on now. 00;02;57;24 - 00;03;18;03 John Well, I don't know specifics of the background of this story, but I'm going to tell a story that I've heard from from someone when I first got into this area. And so, you know, during the Afghanistan war, there were groups of troops who would communicate back and forth. And, they were trying to find these bunkers in the mountains, where Taliban were hiding out. 00;03;18;06 - 00;03;38;12 John And somehow every time when they would get there, there would be no one there. And it's because the Taliban had figured out that for very cheap, they could buy a little device, and they couldn't hear what was going on with the radio. They couldn't hear what people were saying. They couldn't tell where people were, but they could tell that they were close enough. 00;03;38;12 - 00;03;57;17 John And so basically what they would do is they would say, okay, we don't know anything about what they're saying, but if this little light or this alarm goes off, we know that there are U.S. troops close by. And so they would say, Holy crap, that alarm's going off. Everybody pack your stuff and get out. And so then when the U.S. troops would show up, they'd be like, well, how did they have they even know where we were. 00;03;57;19 - 00;04;18;03 John And so the limit comes from the fact that RF communications get broadcast everywhere. And so, if you think of like a radio station, you can grab that radio station freely and easily driving down the road. And so the the question was asked, how do we have a comms system that is, you know, much harder to detect and much harder to intercept. 00;04;18;04 - 00;04;21;01 Chelsie And that led to what type of comms system. 00;04;21;03 - 00;04;29;24 John So the free space optical comms is kind of where we went with that. That is using a laser as a communication protocol. 00;04;29;27 - 00;04;33;17 Alex Can you describe what the term free space optical communications means? 00;04;33;23 - 00;04;52;24 John Yeah. So if you just say optics communications, right. We've actually been doing that for a long time. So if you think of fiber optics. So almost everybody now has fiber optics for their internet. We use a light, that goes through a fiber optic cable, which is essentially just a glass fiber. And so we, we, we send light through that fiber. 00;04;52;24 - 00;05;18;11 John And that's how we deliver internet to people or data to people, to their homes and things like that. The words free space essentially say, can we do that same thing but without the wire, right? So can we just send the light through the atmosphere? And the way you would do that would be to use a laser beam, because a laser beam is, you know, coherent, structured light that gets sent in, you know, a straight line basically through to another point. 00;05;18;17 - 00;05;52;03 Chelsie So you're free space article communication. Just summarizing it is basically you transmitting a laser through the atmosphere with messages on it. Yes. And that might say just I'm not meaning like that simple or anything. I'm just saying like that is what kind of what we're going to be talking about throughout the rest of this episode is why you guys have done that, which you've mentioned is basically you needed to figure out a different way to communicate that is less detectable and more secure for the warfighter and how in the world you're doing that. 00;05;52;05 - 00;06;04;22 Chelsie And, I think at one point during one of our previous conversations offline, you had mentioned quantum technology. How is that used in this free space optical communication. 00;06;04;25 - 00;06;27;06 John Well, so initially, free space optical communications was a very basic laser system modulating a laser in some way that we could detect with some kind of detector. Right. And there are tons of ways to do that. But, you know, with advancements in, in quantum physics, we start to find new ways to use quantum technologies to enhance the optical comms. 00;06;27;06 - 00;06;46;21 John So there are a lot of different, quantum protocols that we can use. There are ways that we can create photons in a quantum environment. So like the terms quantum entangled photon pairs. Okay. And and yeah. And I'm not a quantum physicist. So the quantum stuff gets really complicated really quick. 00;06;46;23 - 00;06;56;19 Chelsie Is that talking about basically figuring out how to spread the laser. So it's not just one direct path or is that a different there's not not connected to the quantum technology. 00;06;56;19 - 00;07;21;05 John No that's not connected to quantum. So the the quantum side is the quantum side is basically on security. Okay. You know, the thing about a laser is it's it's less probable to detect and intercept. But if you can align yourself to a laser, if you know certain things about the laser system that they're using, you could then just say, well, I'm the person you're talking to now, and I can hear and see everything you're doing. 00;07;21;07 - 00;07;42;04 John Where quantum comes in is cybersecurity. Gotcha. And ways to generate light that it's impossible to know, like what we're doing with it because, you know, you have to be there at the source. And unless you're the the other photon that was that was created with the one that you're intercepting, there's there's no way you could ever figure it out. 00;07;42;04 - 00;07;46;05 Chelsie So what are some use cases of this technology that the engineers are working. 00;07;46;05 - 00;08;08;29 John On basically within the military? You know, if you name it, that's what we're trying to do with it. So you talk about short of shore, ground to ground, ship to ship, ground to air, ground to space, air to air, all of the above. And there's, there's typically some someone interested in, you know, funding, research into that area. 00;08;09;02 - 00;08;11;21 Alex Can you explain how this is useful to the warfighter? 00;08;11;21 - 00;08;36;23 John Yeah. So, in like in the story that I mentioned earlier, I think it's really demoralizing to be so easily kind of beaten, defeated with just a cheap Amazon device. And so, you know, if you're if you're a war fighter and you really don't want to be found, RF signatures can make you easily found. Whereas an optics comm system, it's you're a single pinpoint of light in a vast space. 00;08;36;23 - 00;08;45;25 John And so someone really has to know what they're looking for to even find it. So that makes it much more easy to hide from adversaries. And you can turn it on and off. 00;08;45;25 - 00;08;50;21 Chelsie So what are the best use cases for this right now that you're working on that you can tell us. 00;08;50;23 - 00;09;21;25 John So I mean, just I mean, you can look at industry, right? So I don't have to get specific to the military, but you can look at industry. Ground to space is a huge thing for this. Lasers are inherently extremely high bandwidth, meaning that you can deliver a lot of information with one laser beam. And so ground space is really helpful because, you know, as you if you try to shoot on the ground, from ground to ground, the atmosphere is really thick and soupy and it can mess with your laser, but about 15 to 20,000ft up, that effect kind of stops. 00;09;21;28 - 00;09;41;12 John And so once you go through the lower portion of the atmosphere, then you just go up to space. So there there are a number of, you know, ground to space and space to ground, you know, laser like optics, comm systems, that are, that are going on right now. So that I think that would be the most prevalent and, the, the highest capability currently. 00;09;41;18 - 00;09;50;15 Alex Would that be similar to like a satellite where you're trying to get a television signal to go from one location to another? Is that similar? Yeah. Analogy. 00;09;50;15 - 00;10;11;13 John Yeah, exactly. You know, if you think about it, a laser is just light. So everything that you transmit is transmitting at the speed of light where RF is not that right? RF is is slightly different based on frequencies and things like that. So when you transmit at the speed of light, you can send that through, you know, vast distances of space with, you know, very little lag. 00;10;11;14 - 00;10;22;18 Alex So as long as there's not any interruption in between that distance, you can get those signals going back and forth. Yeah. So how do we collaborate with industry to improve on our free space optical communications. 00;10;22;18 - 00;10;43;11 John Well so the big thing in the government is, you know, when we when we have a problem, the best thing to do is to identify if there is a commercial solution that can solve our problem. So we always approach issues with is there a commercial solution that can solve it? If so, we contract that. Is there a commercial solution that can't really solve it? 00;10;43;11 - 00;11;03;29 John But with some help it can. So do we partner with industry? Still have them do it, you know, and then to meet our specific goal. And then the third branch of that is you know obviously there is no commercial solution. So we'll do it ourself. And the variety of applications for free space optics comms is such that we hit all three of those. 00;11;04;01 - 00;11;21;03 Chelsie Oh great. And the benefit to that is that we save taxpayer dollars if we're able to collaborate with industry, because we can just build off of something that was created and then obviously will always modify anything that's from industry to be secure for the military, right? 00;11;21;05 - 00;11;41;08 John Yeah. So I mean, you know, if you if you start thinking of creating an optics comm system from scratch, there's a huge investment in that, especially if you're creating the the technology is that you're going to use IEEE, the the comms protocols, the transmitters, the receivers, all of the optics, the lasers. You know, it gets very expensive and very time consuming. 00;11;41;10 - 00;11;49;11 John So, I mean, and even in the things that we that we build in-house, you know, we're still using commercial off the shelf equipment sometimes for some portions of systems. Yeah. 00;11;49;15 - 00;12;00;02 Chelsie And then modifying it all to make these amazing capabilities that those engineers have created. So we love that. And so what advantage do we have though compared to industry. 00;12;00;04 - 00;12;21;18 John Well, when we do something in-house we have the advantage of speaking directly to the customer. Right. So we're talking directly to the warfighter and we're saying what do you need. And that's a great conversation to have. Because what what we find a lot of times is that commercial entities will make these things that are extremely amazing technology that do these wonderful things. 00;12;21;21 - 00;12;36;02 John But then when they when they show it to you, you're like, this is awesome in every way. And then it takes one warfighter to say, well, it can't do X. And so it's kind of worthless to me. So the advantage we have in the government is that when we start down the path of creating these systems, we have those conversations very early on. 00;12;36;02 - 00;12;55;23 John You know, we try those those those commercial partners who are making these really great systems. We try to catch them early so that it's easier for them to implement those ideas. But, you know, we're not always successful. So I think I think it relies on that very close relationship that I think Atlantic has two key stakeholders where where, you know, we have those conversations. 00;12;55;25 - 00;12;56;02 John Yes. 00;12;56;08 - 00;12;56;28 Chelsie Yep. 00;12;57;00 - 00;13;04;08 Alex Can you tell us a little bit about your team and the type of work that they're doing and why it's important to them to support the mission? 00;13;04;08 - 00;13;22;13 John Yeah. So my team is seven people, most of which are PhDs in either aerospace, mechanical engineering or physics in some way. I've got, one bachelor's level mechanical engineer from Clemson who ironically does a lot of software for us. And I've got. 00;13;22;13 - 00;13;23;26 Chelsie A impressive team. 00;13;23;29 - 00;13;50;05 John Here. I've got a, an optical engineer from Clemson who is doing a lot of the, like the optical engineering side of things. So, you know, developing optics protocols and things like that. We typically stay so busy that way that we just we're constantly chasing our tails. But overall, you know, we're doing the things for optics, comms, traditional optics, comms systems, quantum enhanced optics, comm systems. 00;13;50;07 - 00;14;03;12 John And then we do a lot of basic research into how to make them more efficient, how to characterize the atmospheres that we are transmitting through, how do we make them more resilient to atmospheric effects, etc.. 00;14;03;17 - 00;14;12;01 Chelsie Is your team enjoying this work? Is are they feeling connected to the mission? How is that feeling that you get when you're working together on these different projects? 00;14;12;05 - 00;14;30;20 John Yeah. So I you know, the team fortunately is very close knit team. So we get along. We joke a lot in the lab. So we have a good time at work, you know. Yeah, we do stay extremely busy. We kind of, you know, ride the, the sharp edge. We're borderline burnt out, you know, and getting things done. 00;14;30;22 - 00;14;50;16 John When you get to the point where you say, wow, you know, we we finished this project. It was successful. You know, we're successfully transitioning something to the warfighter. You know, that's that's extremely satisfying. And fortunately, I think, you know, most of us at Nye work, especially everybody in my in my team, we're very on board with the mission. 00;14;50;18 - 00;14;52;23 John And so I think that helps a lot. 00;14;52;25 - 00;14;58;23 Chelsie That's great. And so what is the long term goal for this free space optical communications that you guys are working on? 00;14;58;23 - 00;15;23;00 John Well, the long term goal is to advance the technology such that it becomes a much more easy technology for groups to adapt, because it's high bandwidth and low probability of detection, interception. You know, we see it as being helpful to the fleet, i.e. ships that don't maybe don't want to radiate, you know, their position, aircraft for the same reason, etc., etc.. 00;15;23;00 - 00;15;44;03 John And so the goal here is free space, optics, comms, even though it's been around for, you know, ten years now, even the most advanced systems are still what I would call in their infancy because of how difficult it is to put in place or how expensive it is. And so our goal is really to put that kind of technology and capability in the hands of as many people as we can, as capable as we can. 00;15;44;03 - 00;15;45;12 John And for as cheap as we can. 00;15;45;19 - 00;15;48;23 Chelsie Are you trying to get it on every single Navy ship in our fleet? 00;15;48;23 - 00;15;58;07 John Yeah, definitely. I, you know. Yeah. The, the ability to not have to rely on RF comms all the time is a huge benefit. 00;15;58;08 - 00;16;14;21 Chelsie Yeah, it definitely help our, our warfighters in so many ways. And I kind of touched on this a little bit earlier about like spreading the laser. Can you kind of tell us what I was talking about by that, what I'm getting from that, because we had talked before and that was just the capability. I thought it was very cool. 00;16;14;21 - 00;16;26;03 Chelsie You had mentioned your team was working on, like, how do you spread a laser and so many other things, like a laser beam to give it a wider range. We can cut we can cut this out. 00;16;26;07 - 00;16;27;14 John Oh, no. You're fine. 00;16;27;16 - 00;16;28;01 Chelsie Sorry. 00;16;28;06 - 00;17;02;11 John So typically a laser beam as you as you spread it out over a distance, you lose a lot of power. And so spreading a laser beam out, you really degrade the amount of range and data rate that you can get from that. But the trade off there is that if you can disperse that signal in a wide enough field of view and far enough range that multiple people can now see that, then then you're creating a use case for optics comms that has not been done before, i.e. you know, so optics comms has always been single point to single point. 00;17;02;14 - 00;17;09;29 John And so one of the things that we've actually looked at is making it multiple access. So single point to multiple users and vice versa. 00;17;10;01 - 00;17;12;13 Chelsie Working on some groundbreaking capabilities. 00;17;12;18 - 00;17;13;03 John Hopefully. 00;17;13;07 - 00;17;30;03 Chelsie If you can and going for that that's that's awesome. I mean I just I was very impressed and I thought that sounded very cool. Even though I didn't understand it. I was like, I got to ask, you make me understand this? Because the idea of spreading a laser beam just seems like amazing to me because I just, I have no idea how this works. 00;17;30;03 - 00;17;50;23 Chelsie And most, most of our listeners also don't understand. So it's it's very fun to hear this team that we have at Navigate Lanark. Who does understand that and who is working on this and who's behind the warfighter giving them all these tools to be the best that they can be, whether it's downrange or in an exercise or in any use case that they need it. 00;17;50;28 - 00;17;52;21 Joe For sure, mirrors all the smoke. 00;17;52;23 - 00;17;53;22 Alex And. 00;17;53;25 - 00;17;55;04 Chelsie Yeah. 00;17;55;06 - 00;18;00;29 Alex Well, we thank you, John, for joining us on the podcast, and thank you for the work that you and your team are doing to support the warfighter. 00;18;01;00 - 00;18;05;22 John Yeah. Thank you. Thank you all for having me on. Was it was a blast, Alex. 00;18;05;22 - 00;18;25;20 Chelsie I really liked how our engineers and scientists are using quantum technology combined with atmospheric optics to solve a communication issue for the warfighter, and I sounded so smart when I said that. Right. Because if I hadn't just listened to this interview or talked to Doctor Wells, I wouldn't even know what those were. So you learn something new every day. 00;18;25;20 - 00;18;30;05 Chelsie I feel smarter, and you can now call me a subject matter expert in this. In this topic. 00;18;30;12 - 00;18;33;11 Alex Yes, you'll be the next one will be interviewed on the podcast. 00;18;33;14 - 00;18;37;08 Chelsie Oh yeah. Totally. It is impressive though. I love what we're doing. 00;18;37;11 - 00;18;53;24 Alex Yes, it's amazing work and it's really great to see how the technology we're developing is really helping the warfighter. Now let's slide into our military moment with Master Chief Robert Mendoza. Thank you, Master Chief, for joining us today. Please tell us what you do for Network Atlantic. 00;18;53;27 - 00;19;11;04 Mast Chief Mendoza So Master Chief Mendoza here initially I've been with command two years now. I started off as a command chief for for a navy gallant and recently turned over with, commemorative Kevlar. And when that after that happened, I went to Bahrain for six months to go help out the officer in charge, Lieutenant commander Wynne. At the time. 00;19;11;04 - 00;19;29;00 Mast Chief Mendoza We've since transferred, but, went to go help out with, our processes and what all we do out there in that that area of responsibility. And since being back, I got back last month. And now I'm just gathering all the pieces, and I'm trying to help out where best I can be fit right now, with a short amount of time. 00;19;29;05 - 00;19;30;18 Mast Chief Mendoza Because I'm due to retire here soon. 00;19;30;20 - 00;19;35;20 Alex Yeah. Speaking of your retirement, can you tell us what your journey in the military and in the Navy has been for you? 00;19;35;24 - 00;20;00;07 Mast Chief Mendoza Oh, that's a that's a great question because, I've been in the Navy 30 years now. And I'll start from the beginning. I tell you, when I first joined, no military background from family whatsoever. Right. And I was trying to find a purpose, and I always wanted to be a pilot at the time. And I was told that, hey, if you join the military, you might have an opportunity to do so without understanding the intricacies behind what you got to do to get to that point. 00;20;00;09 - 00;20;16;15 Mast Chief Mendoza Nonetheless, I first was going to be United States Marine. And just true story. And funny is that when I went to the Marines, like, hey, we weren't three miles, are you capable? And, I was like, out of shape at that time. And I'm like, I do not want to start something. And all of a sudden be removed from the equation with or not have not having that capability. 00;20;16;15 - 00;20;32;17 Mast Chief Mendoza Right. Little did I know they would train me for that regardless of I went to the Navy and they said, we run a mile and a half. I'm like, that's where I'm going. I'm going to go to the Navy. Right? And I took the opportunity to be in the Navy. And from that point on, again, wanting to be a pilot, I was introduced to the aviation community. 00;20;32;20 - 00;20;55;18 Mast Chief Mendoza Hint some Navy avionics master chief and operating squadrons or carriers, intermediates, meanest departments and and lead those causes which brought me into the environment of being an aviation electrician by trade. So since then I've been on carriers I've been on I worked with the F-18 community. They made 53 community helicopters, age 60. 00;20;55;21 - 00;21;22;26 Mast Chief Mendoza I've been in, and aircraft intermediates, maintenance departments. And that's been my, experience throughout my naval career. I've also been a recruiter as well. I volunteered to be a recruiter at one point in time of my career for three years. I did that out of the, home state, and city of Houston, Texas. And I enjoyed that experience as well, because I got to kind of go back to where it all started for me and go back to the people of the community, the kids of where it seemed like there was the impossible and just show as an example. 00;21;22;26 - 00;21;42;04 Mast Chief Mendoza Hey, I can provide you an idea of what it's like to to get somewhere. And here's an opportunity, here's an avenue. United States military. Right. So I did that. I have 12 deployments behind me in my career at the time frame, and I'd go back out again if I had to. As I just told you, I just came from Bahrain and volunteer to do that as well to help out. 00;21;42;04 - 00;22;03;12 Mast Chief Mendoza So it's been a great opportunity. I wanted a different change. I joined because I wanted to have that discipline. I wanted to gain the opportunity to, excel in education, which I have, and I've attained where I need to be right now with associates, master's, bachelor's. And it's just endless opportunities. And that's why I took that journey. 00;22;03;12 - 00;22;22;20 Mast Chief Mendoza And I'm glad I did at the same time. Now I'm coming to my retirement and it's a little heartbreaking, if you will, because, as I've mentioned, that feels like a breakup and you don't want to leave it, but I've got to move on and it'll be a great opportunity. And I've trained others and I've mentored others. And so I know the opportunities are there. 00;22;22;20 - 00;22;27;08 Mast Chief Mendoza And people what I've learned, I've passed on and I think I'm a little off at that in that manner. 00;22;27;11 - 00;22;31;15 Alex That's great. What, what was your favorite, deployment location? 00;22;31;18 - 00;22;49;11 Mast Chief Mendoza My favorite deployment location. Well, I enjoyed being on ships out at sea, so that's my favorite deployment when we want to talk about location. But from a stance of a country, if you were a or a land area, I truly I enjoy it, I loved it and appreciate it when I was in Australia. That was a great opportunity and an experience to go to Sydney and Perth. 00;22;49;13 - 00;23;05;26 Mast Chief Mendoza And while we were there, I never knew about a place. Call it, Hobart, Tasmania. So we went down south to them as well. So that was a great opportunity that I got to do earlier in my career. In the 97 to 99 timeframe. I've never been back since, but that was my best experience there completely. 00;23;05;28 - 00;23;09;18 Alex What's one piece of advice that you would give to someone who's interested in joining the Navy? 00;23;09;23 - 00;23;25;10 Mast Chief Mendoza Oh, that's a beautiful question right there. When I was a recruiter, I used to go to high schools, colleges, universities, to the medical staff, to engineering staff. And, and that was the one question I was always asked. Hey, what's the advice you're given? Why should we join and why should I be a part of that organization? 00;23;25;13 - 00;23;46;08 Mast Chief Mendoza I'll tell you like this. From my personal perspective, it's what do you want to gain for yourself? What are you trying to obtain and achieve? And the military has that opportunity. Now, don't get misunderstood. I feel just like anyone else. I feel homesick, like to be home with family, don't want to be taken away. Don't want to be in a in a time of war. 00;23;46;08 - 00;24;03;10 Mast Chief Mendoza All of them different things. But you got to find. What is it that, the military is going to benefit you. And I can tell you like this. It can be a sense, a heritage. It could be a sense of belonging. It could be for educational opportunities. It could be for travel. It could be to develop that next big trade for yourself, whatever it may be. 00;24;03;12 - 00;24;14;01 Mast Chief Mendoza I will tell you to to believe in those who have that opportunity and, have taken it and listen to different variations of what everyone's experiences are and make it your own, if that's going to be the choice for you. 00;24;14;08 - 00;24;16;19 Alex Also, is there anything else that you would like to add? 00;24;16;21 - 00;24;36;24 Mast Chief Mendoza I'll say that I appreciate the opportunity to sit here with you all. I think it's an amazing opportunity. I think there should be more opportunities like this for mass majority of our people to kind of get involved with and speak on. And I'll tell you that again, my career has been aviation background. Right. Coming to, an information warfare command was a little intimidating at first. 00;24;36;26 - 00;24;55;01 Mast Chief Mendoza And when I met Captain Niagara at that time, I was here to become the command math chief. And how to set a position before. Yes, I assume those roles and responsibilities. But here was interesting, because I'm an aviation background individual coming from the fleet, and now I'm here in an information Warfare Command environment, working with a bunch of civilian personnel that I never had before. 00;24;55;04 - 00;25;10;27 Mast Chief Mendoza So trying to learn the aspect of who does what, how from a military structured environment. And I'm used to to now where as we got to integrate ourselves and work together, was a unique with unique experience. And I hope that others can gain that as well and take advantage of that opportunity. 00;25;11;02 - 00;25;12;24 Alex Thank you, Master Chief, for joining us today. 00;25;13;00 - 00;25;16;12 Mast Chief Mendoza Thank you. Appreciate it. 00;25;16;14 - 00;25;31;04 Chelsie I was so shocked when he said he had been in for 30 years because he sounds so young. But I was really impressed that he took advantage of so much education. Like he got a master's degree throughout his career, so that that was a lot to be able to get while serving. 00;25;31;07 - 00;25;41;11 Alex Yes. And I was really impressed with his extensive career as well and his bond with his shipmates. He I think he's really great to work with. And, and, he definitely shows that in the work that he does. 00;25;41;11 - 00;25;46;08 Chelsie That's always good. That's that's a wonderful thing to enjoy working with your coworkers. Right? Alex? 00;25;46;10 - 00;25;48;25 Alex Absolutely. He loves me. 00;25;48;28 - 00;26;07;07 Chelsie There's Joe, there's our audio tech. Joe, I was wondering when you were going to chime in. Yeah. So it's been a great episode. We got to learn so much about the amazing technology that we're creating to secure communications for the warfighter and then get some insight with a very seasoned, sailor who had a lot of great advice. 00;26;07;07 - 00;26;08;26 Chelsie So I think it was a great episode. 00;26;08;26 - 00;26;15;20 Alex Alex. Yes, this was a really great episode. And, it was fun to listen to our subject matter experts, as always. 00;26;15;23 - 00;26;24;00 Chelsie And to learn more about anything we've mentioned in the podcast, check out our social medias under Nav or our Quick Atlantic website. Links are in the description. 00;26;24;05 - 00;26;36;13 Alex This wraps up another wonderful episode. Thanks for listening. If you have a simple story that you think should be included in this podcast, please contact us at our Public Affairs email address which is listed in the description. 00;26;36;16 - 00;26;53;18 Chelsie Naval Information Warfare Center, Atlantic, also known as Violet, is the East Coast branch of the Naval Information Warfare Systems Command within the Department of the Navy, we develop a range of technologies that provide state of the art capabilities to the United States military.