Preserving legacy and the fight for military history: Weapons and Warfare

Hello, and welcome to Weapons and Warfare for Straight Arrow News. I'm your host

Ryan Robertson. On tap for this week, a very important conversation about history and the

fight to preserve it. American author and Naval Academy graduate Robert Heinlein once wrote

A generation which ignores history has no past and no future. Despite those wise words

there are those who would like you to ignore history, maybe even forget it. But there are

others who are even more determined to make sure historical acts are not just recognized when they

happen, but their memory endures the test of time and those who would rather erase it. I recently

had the chance to visit with retired Air Force Lieutenant Colonel Jessica Ruttenberg about her

fight to keep decades of American military history alive. All right. Thanks for joining us today

Colonel Jessica Ruttenberg. We just went over how to pronounce that name. Hopefully I said it

correctly 30 seconds later. Colonel, thank you so much for joining us today. Really appreciate your

time. You know, before we kind of get started into why I asked you to come on the show

if you can kind of give our audience a Reader's Digest version, if you will

of your Air Force and aviation career up to this point. Yeah, absolutely, Ryan. And thanks for having me. Well, I grew up in Florida and I saw the Blue

Angels flying, but it was back in the day when women couldn't be fighter pilots. But I still

was fascinated and went on to go to high school and college and eventually women could be fighter

pilots. Unfortunately, I wasn't tall enough to be a fighter pilot, which we can get into later

But basically, almost half the women in the United States are tall enough to fly fighters

currently with our current inventory. But I was lucky enough to fly the KC-135 and got to see the

entire world. And I served for 21 years in the Air Force. I did a lot of deployments to flying

in Iraq and Afghanistan. Later in my career, I had three children. I married to another

Colonel, I am retired. If you didn't say that, I am retired Lieutenant Colonel Jessica Rettenberg

My husband is currently serving at Maxwell Air Force Base. And at the end of my career

the things that prevented me from meeting my fullest potential, as well as my airmen

are policies I worked on that just happened to benefit women. And from there, you know

I left the Air Force. I continued to work in the nonprofit sector in aviation

offering scholarships to underserved communities. And Colonel, what kind of caught my eye when I was scrolling social media? You had a post with some tape over your mouth, 404 not found. And it was in response to the Secretary of Defense and the Trump administration as a whole, kind of their campaign against diversity, equity and inclusion, and how some of your and your fellow airmen's history was being removed from the online archives

Um, can you kind of talk about how that impacted you, how it impacted you

Cause I know that you had some personal achievements while in the air force and can't find those

online right now. It was initially sad, but you know, I think we saw it for coming for months

Um, and then when the executive order came out in late January, I think they call it

restoring America fighting force, which went on to talk about DEI makes us weaker

eventually translated into a DoD document from the Secretary of Defense's office

eliminating diversity, equity, and inclusion across our publicly facing social media platforms

and articles, websites, those kind of things. So there was instant panic. But even before that

I was on a team called the Department of the Air Force's Women's Initiative Team, WIT. I didn't

joined that until later, which gave me a platform to talk about database-driven solutions to help

women serve to their fullest potential, was immediately disbanded, immediately, as well

as several other organizations that was a volunteer, all organization volunteered, billions of dollars of work a year, of people that are impacted that want to see the service

improved. We never fell under DEI. As a matter of fact, we were established in 2008 under the Bush

administration. And we just got lumped in it. It was collateral damage. And we were just dismissed

Thank you for your service. Thank you for helping. And we were dismissed. So that kind of started

that. And I think we all stopped, took a deep breath. We knew that was coming. But, you know

our advocacy work and being leaders, you don't necessarily need a position or a forum to do that

You can be an informal leader. But then all the accomplishments that we had done over the years

that were like actual helping the Air Force, saving the Air Force millions of dollars by

eliminating old barriers, 30, 40, 50 years old. They just didn't know they still had. They didn't

intend it to be that way. Those stories started getting erased. So our history started getting

erased about the women's initiative team. And then one by one, these stories started disappearing

as well as stories of individuals, anywhere from the Tuskegee Airmen to the WASP from World War II

to some of the firsts, like Nicole Malachowski, uh, beefy. She was the first female Thunderbird

pilot. And then a lot of people who had nothing to do with being a first was just doing their

jobs. It's just my friend is Jennifer Cannon. She was, um, flying the F-15 and they did a piece on

her in Iraq about her. I forgot which sortie it was like her hundredth combat sortie. And it was

just removed simply because it mentioned that she was a woman. And that really hurt. And that

to me, started telling me as a red flag, this is censorship. We're not erasing diversity

equity, inclusion. I think our definition of diversity, equity, inclusion are different

Just because we happen to not look like each other in a story doesn't mean that story needs

to be eliminated Not to mention there was a time yes we didn let Black people fly airplanes Yes there was a time we didn let women fly airplanes Yes there was a time we didn let women fly combat airplanes until 1993 And yes there was a time we didn let women be in combat And some of those were as late as 2016 So I don think eliminating those first is a DEI message as much as it eliminating our history and eliminating history is censorship

When you see the removal of some of those things and some of the rollback of some of the progress, and, you know, not progress in the term of like liberal, Democrat, progressives, conservatives, but progress in the terms of we used to do things one way that was bad, and then we progressed to do things another way that was better

When you see the rollback of that progress, do you agree with critics that the Secretary of Defense is trying to return things back to essentially white, straight white males being in charge of everything and running everything

I mean, how do you swallow the pill that you're being asked to swallow? I don't like to attack individuals

I like to challenge ideas. So I do feel like the progress we made, it feels like two steps forward, one step back

But I am hopeful that as others stand up and that I thought about it for a minute before posting that thing on LinkedIn, I said there's going to be some blowback

Some people are not going to be too happy, maybe even inside the Department of Defense, that I'm putting such a public forum out there

But as a veteran, I felt a deep, not desire, that's the wrong word, a deep, what do you call it, possibly

A sense of duty? Duty, a sense of duty to those who I had served with that are currently serving, that don't have the latitude to speak publicly on behalf of themselves or the United States Air Force of how they feel

And I think there's some people that are still even out, not retired, but maybe even just veterans that are afraid, even in the civilian sector, that they're too right or left wing

They're going to be also singled out and that can lose opportunities for them, especially that can be frightening when you have a single income family

You're a single parent or maybe one working parent outside the home

Those actually have real possibilities if you're going to be targeted and lose your job

Let's say you work for the government because we know that one third of the government employees are veterans

So have you experienced I mean, you you said you were expecting some some blowback

What what sort of blowback have have you experienced, if any, at this point

One's very specific other than undoing the women's initiative team is a lot of policies that we worked on that we had shown was increasing, you know, the warfighter capability and our readiness was labeled as a female item and was rolled back

One was early as last month. The women's initiative team worked with several agencies such as A3 and the Surgeon General's Office to expand the role of women flying during their pregnancy

The FAA does not consider pregnancy a grounded condition for a normal, healthy pregnancy in a non-combat environment

So don't think of an F-15 in Afghanistan pulling 9Gs. Think more of a Boeing 737 flying stateside

And women have been doing this for decades. I flew three pregnancies, two different aircraft

But when we looked at the data, we saw that it was just generalized

We had dozens and dozens of different aircraft with different types of hazards

And most of the restrictions we had didn't apply to those aircraft

And women were wanting to continue to fly and continue to pilot the mission or be a flight nurse or a boom operator in the back

And so it's kind of like a self-inflicted barrier. And during a pilot crisis and air crew members take so long to train in years and millions of dollars to make

wouldn't you want them to stay in the cockpit as long as possible and minimize their recoil program

That was overturned last month for fighters and bombers, high-performance aircraft, ejection seats

Again, they were flying less than 3Gs, takeoff and landing currencies. And then they restricted how long the individual could fly as well for the heavy aircraft

That is like the KC-135, the C-130s, the C-17s. They don't let them fly in their first trimester

And it was a knee-jerk reaction. And from what I could see that was inquired from Congress, from some of the Democrats was, hey, can you tell us why you said women shouldn't find the first trimester

And it was simply, well, you're more likely to have a miscarriage. But that's not really data driven

That's kind of like a bias because women are always going to be more likely to have a miscarriage in the first trimester

But flying a plane doesn't change that. And furthermore, once you have a heartbeat, which is usually around six to eight weeks, that significantly drops the risk to less than 1%

If less than 1% was acceptable in the second trimester, why wouldn't it be acceptable in the first trimester

This is not a pro-life or pro-choice argument. This is just showing you there really isn't that much risk

But when you just kind of have this benevolent, I'm going to look out for you and not actually look at risk models and medical data

that was the first blowback about women having autonomy over their own bodies in the DOD

You know, one of the things that when I was doing my research on you, one of the things that you did

kind of champion was the idea of a maternity flight suit. So obviously, the Air Force has

been okay with pregnant women flying before because you brought this flight suit, you know

to market essentially. So when you see that rollback and like you called it a knee-jerk reaction

how do we fix it? How as a society, how as a veteran community, I'm not a part of the veteran

community, but like I support the veteran community. How do we make sure that the folks who

the data shows can and maybe should be flying, how do we make sure that they can stay in the skies

Right. Well, I mean, that's a very niche, you know, group of individuals

We have about four or four years per year, so you don't get as much media attention on that

But I do want to say that Captain Chelsea Jones who was a C pilot at the time in 2019 came up with this concept for the maternity flight suit after we were able to advance some of the windows women could fly

And it was other individuals like Boss, Christina Presco, that was working at the Pentagon

I was able to connect the two. And it was an aha moment for me

I had been flying three pregnancies. Actually, I had a miscarriage in my first one, which is statistically normal

and I've been flying these pregnancies with just bigger and bigger flight suits that were like

draping on my arms and my legs became tripping hazards they would actuate the controls

inadvertently and if I did you know velcro them down I look like you know for an 80s 90s reference

MC Hammer Pants. And then Chelsea came out and like just sewed it and made it and I was like

why didn't I even think I should be asked you know they told me just wear your husband's flight

suit I'm like first of all you're assuming my husband's a pilot and then two like that's not

the answer I'm physically it's a safety uniform to do my job and women have been flying for decades

without one so that just shows you the culture change that I was in my generation allowed to be

there, but her generation, I'm not just allowed to be there and tolerated that I deserve to have

all the barriers removed for me to do my job to, you know, support the national defense. And

so what I think we need to do with that moving forward, the second part of your question is

what do we do is we need to push back. And that's what I'm doing on these posts. At first

I pushed back by posting about a different woman every day since around Thanksgiving

and telling their stories. And I think it's great that people have attention

Thank you for listening to this. If you're still listening to this, I have plenty of articles about me on the internet

I'm worried about the 20,000, 30,000 other individuals that don't necessarily have someone like Ryan calling them

and asking them to do an interview or CNN calling Fifi from the Thunderbirds to do an interview

I'd like our mid-level enlisted to be honored and they may not have the same resources

or a lieutenant that served that has one story about them, if we're not like putting a light on

that and saying this is not okay, those just quietly go away. So that's the first thing is to

make some noise. So first was preserving the stories. Second was make some noise. Third

I started making videos on how to FOIA the Freedom of Information Act and to verify that they're

actually archiving this and not just getting rid of it, which would be illegal so that we can FOIA

this information in the future, just make sure at least it's preserved. And then work with our

lawmakers, like I did working with several Democrats to push back on the Secretary of Defense about the

policy in the Air Force about flying while pregnant. And with that, you know, if you're the subject

matter expert, or you're the veteran, I mean, they go to you and say, what do you think the problem

is? What is the answer? Can you help us write the letter? And that's what I did in this single case

So when we're, you know, the criticism or I guess the supporters of doing away with DEI and supporters of kind of this idea of restoring the warrior ethos is kind of how it's been characterized

do in your experience your opinion do women hurt the readiness capability of the united states

military and do pregnant women hurt the readiness or lethality of the united states military

i get what you're asking i think unfortunately the first 10 years i was so busy trying to make

a name for myself i didn't think about these things um so i could see how someone could kind

of go down that path without any more information. But I will say that we can't do it without women

If you look at the Army recruiting, they just met their first recruiting goals in the last 10 years

That wasn't because they had a surge of men. It was because they had a surge of qualified women

Women were more likely to be qualified because they weren't going to be disqualified for

medical conditions, being overweight. They had higher education. They were less likely to have

the criminal record. So the surge of women was able to meet the Army's recruiting goal. Second

of all, I think it's a very narrow vision to say women who are pregnant are going to hold us back

I get it. You can't deploy during your pregnancy. That feels like you're maybe a burden to your

unit. But the truth is, it's just a drop in the bucket when you zoom out and look at the larger

picture. We have a lot of people that are non-deployable. Men are more likely not to be

deployable because they have administrative actions, such as the Article 15 that they have

to process, which takes quite a bit of time. Yet we don't focus on men are less likely to be

deployable because of judicial, you know, administrative issues going to the JAG. We

focus on women who are pregnant as the only piece of data. So I think it's a little lopsided

to look at it one way or the other. Does that make sense

Absolutely. Yeah, absolutely. Why, you know, I can suppose and I can, you know, make my suppositions about why

why that might be, but why do you think the military is still so focused

Like the, it's, it's a lopsided view, if you will, on, on not what the data is showing

but kind of what culturally we just assume to be true. Well, change is hard. Women haven't been in ground combat operational roles for 10 years

So it was 2016. We had our first female rangers, but the legislation changed in 2013

So I think the generations are changing. I when I was an instructor pilot, one thing that really surprised me was as I became older

lieutenant colonel, the things that I experienced was not necessarily the same views and experiences of those that were 15 years younger than me

I would take a warning just pause if you don't want to hear this but I would take

out my pump after having children and I would fly and it very discreetly just

pop it in and pump I was flying and I found that was like oh my gosh you know with a certain generation when I first started that were flying there were a lot older than me And not to say that just because you older you going to feel that way But I think the younger generation was more socialized with it I was flying with this

guy and he's just like, oh yeah, is that a Medela breast pump my wife just gave birth five months

ago? You know, is that the cordless or the bat? I was like, whoa, when did this conversation change

So I think with time and education, it'll be okay. I just think we have a lot of people that are

like the things the way they've always been. Change is hard. Change is scary. And in the

absence of information, you know, we're going to have fear and fear drives poor decisions

My last kind of question for you. And if you have more to say after this, then great

Why to you, why is it important for, you know, the stories that have been removed, the

It mentions a woman or it mentions a black individual or a Chinese individual that's serving in the military

Why is it important for you that those stories remain untouched on the Internet for future generations

Why the fight? Because this is the story of America. We are not just a white nation

We come from all kinds of backgrounds, all kinds of religions, and that is our recruiting population

And I don't want to see a all volunteer force that relies on just part of a population because we start isolating them

I do think it's in our national interest if we want to be a competitor with China and Russia that we have our talent pool to fool from

And we don't just say, okay, I just want males from this section or this ideology, because we won't make our recruiting goals

We won't have the most talented pool. And when we eliminate our history, we're saying you don't matter or there's not enough representation to have young individuals see themselves in those roles

Colonel, thank you so much for joining us today. Really appreciate your time. If there's anything else you'd like to say, Sherwood, you know, now's your chance

No, I just thank you for having me on here. And if you want to help and you want to be very simple about it

you see a post about some amazing individual that was a veteran, just repost it

It doesn't matter who they are. Just repost it. Absolutely. Colonel, thank you so much for your time

Appreciate it. Thank you, Ryan. We'll be right back

All opinions expressed in this segment are solely the opinions of the contributors

Okay, folks, that will just about do it for us this week on Weapons and Warfare

Quick editor's note, though, while the interview you just saw focused on content that was taken down by the Department of Defense

clearly not everything featuring women or people of color is gone. We still make use of lots of content here on the show that comes from the DoD, and a lot of those visuals have people that don't look like me

And if you want to see more people that don't look like me, be sure to download the Straight Arrow News app today so you can hear from the other great journalists we have on staff

And don't forget to like and subscribe to our social media feeds

For my wrap this week, I'm going to spend some time on something that's demanded so much of all of our attention

The protests against immigration enforcement taking place in cities across the United States

I have mixed feelings about them. I hate seeing the images of the vandalism and the looting

Having covered numerous protests throughout my career, though, I know there is a difference between protesters and agitators

If you are one of those agitators, I think you should be arrested

And don't waste your phone call on me when you find yourself locked up

But protest is patriotism. And when it comes to those actually protesting peacefully against our nation's current immigration enforcement policies

you should probably listen. At the core of so much of this fight are the rights of habeas corpus and due process

Two things the Constitution of the United States says everyone in the country gets, citizen or not

Why? Let me explain. Habeas corpus is Latin for you should have the body

Basically, the idea no one should be locked up if they did not commit a crime

How do we know if someone commits a crime or is suspected of such

Due process. A person's right to a fair experience through our legal system

So why are people protesting? Well, in some cases, it's because their neighbors or loved ones were locked up when there is no proof they committed a crime

Like being here illegally. John Adams, the second president of the United States

believed so strongly that everyone in this country deserved their rights to due process and habeas corpus

He actually defended in court the British soldiers charged in connection to the Boston Massacre

Just imagine the chutzpah that must have taken. Now, clearly, Mr. Adams and I come from different times

But if one of our nation's founding fathers believed so strongly in due process and habeas corpus that he was willing to put his entire career, reputation, and legacy all on the line, well, shoot, maybe we should pay attention to that, too

For senior producer Brett Baker, video editor Brian Spencer, and graphics artist Dakota Patio, I'm Ryan Robertson with Straight Arrow News, signing off