[Ryan Robertson]
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, UH, AIR FORCE AND AVIATION CAREER UP TO THIS POINT.
[LtCol Jessica Ruttenber (Ret.), Former KC-135 Pilot]
“Yeah, absolutely, Ryan. And thanks for having me. Um, 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, it 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 their 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 in Afghanistan. Later in my career, I had three children. I’m married to another Colonel. I am retired, if you didn’t say that I am retired, Lieutenant Colonel Jessica Brett, my husband, is currently serving at Maxwell Air Force Base. And at the end of my career, the things that prevented me from meeting by 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. ”
[Ryan Robertson]
COLONEL, WHAT KIND OF CAUGHT MY EYE WHEN I WAS SCROLLING SOCIAL MEDIA? YOU HAD A POST WITH, YOU KNOW, SOME TAPE OVER YOUR MOUTH, 404. NOT FOUND, AND IT WAS, IT’S 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 AIRMAN’S HISTORY WAS BEING REMOVED FROM THE ONLINE ARCHIVES. CAN YOU KIND OF TALK ABOUT HOW THAT IMPACTED YOU, HOW THAT IMPACTED YOU, BECAUSE I KNOW THAT YOU HAD SOME PERSONAL ACHIEVEMENTS WHILE IN THE AIR FORCE, AND CAN’T FIND THOSE ONLINE RIGHT NOW?
[LtCol Jessica Ruttenber (Ret.), Former KC-135 Pilot]
“It was initially sad, but, you know, I think we saw it for coming for months, and then when the executive order came out in late January, I think they called it restoring America fighting force, which went on to talk about dei makes us weaker. It 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 join 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 millions of dollars of work a year of people that are impacted that want to see the service improved. We never fell under dei 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, 3040, 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, the stories of individuals anywhere from the Teske airmen to the Wasp from World War Two to some of the first like Nicole Malachowski Fifi, she was the first female Thunderbird pilot. And then a lot of people who had nothing to do with being a first was was just doing their jobs. It’s just my friend is Jennifer cannon. She was flying the F 15, and they did a piece on her in Iraq about her. I forgot which sortie was, like her 100th combat sortie, and it was just removed simply because it mentioned that she was a woman, and that really hurt. 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’t let Black people fly airplanes. Yes, there was a time we didn’t let women fly airplanes. Yes, there was a time we didn’t let women fly combat airplanes until 1993 and yes, there was a time we didn’t let women be in combat, and some of those were as late as 2016 so I don’t think eliminating those first is a dei message, as much as it’s eliminating our history. And eliminating history is censorship.”
[Ryan Robertson]
WHEN YOU SEE THE 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 THAT PROGRESS, DO YOU, YOU KNOW? DO YOU AGREE WITH CRITICS THAT THE SECRETARY OF DEFENSE IS TRYING TO RETURN THINGS BACK TO, YOU KNOW, ESSENTIALLY WHITE, STRAIGHT, WHITE MALES BEING IN CHARGE OF EVERYTHING AND RUNNING EVERYTHING. I MEAN, HOW DO YOU HOW DO YOU SWALLOW THE PILL THAT YOU’RE BEING ASKED TO SWALLOW?
[LtCol Jessica Ruttenber (Ret.), Former KC-135 Pilot]
“Well, 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 side inside the department defense that I’m putting such a public forum out there. But as a veteran, I felt a deep that desire, that’s the wrong word. A deep What do you call it? Possibly 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 could be frightening when you have a single income family, you’re a single parent, or maybe one working, you know, 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 1/3 of the government employees are veterans.”
[Ryan Robertson]
SO, HAVE YOU EXPERIENCED, I MEAN, YOU YOU SAID YOU WERE EXPECTING SOME, SOME BLOWBACK. WHAT SORT OF BLOWBACK HAVE HAVE YOU EXPERIENCED, IF ANY? AT THIS POINT?
[LtCol Jessica Ruttenber (Ret.), Former KC-135 Pilot]
“What’s very specific, other than, you know, 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 a three 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 nine GS. Think more of a Boeing 737, one 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 was kind of like a self inflicting 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 recall program that was overturned last month for fighters and bombers, high performance aircraft ejection seats, again, they were flying less than three Gs take off 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 c1 30 is the C 17. 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 try 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.”
[Ryan Robertson]
YOU KNOW, ONE OF THE, 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, 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?
[LtCol Jessica Ruttenber (Ret.), Former KC-135 Pilot]
“Well, I mean, that’s a very niche, you know, group of individuals we have about 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 student 30 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 Christia presco That was working at the Pentagon, I was able to connect the two, and I was aha moment for me. I had been flying three pregnancies. Actually, I had a miscarriage 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, empty Hammer pants, right? Not necessarily ideal, either. Do you do. And then so 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 playing 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 berries 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 push 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, you know, the 20, 30,000 other individuals that don’t necessarily have someone like Ryan calling them and asking them to do an interview, or, you know, CNN calling, you know, Fifi from the Thunderbirds to do an interview. I’d like you know our mid level enlisted to be honored and not they might not have the same resources, or a lieutenant that serve 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 to 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, you know, illegal, so that we can FOIA this information in the future, just make sure, at least, is 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.”
[Ryan Robertson]
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?.
[LtCol Jessica Ruttenber (Ret.), Former KC-135 Pilot]
“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. 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 a 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 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?”
[Ryan Robertson]
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 A LOPSIDED VIEW, IF YOU WILL, ON ON, NOT WHAT THE DATA IS SHOWING, BUT KIND OF WHAT CULTURALLY WE JUST ASSUMED TO BE TRUE.
[LtCol Jessica Ruttenber (Ret.), Former KC-135 Pilot]
“Well, change is hard. Women haven’t been in ground combat operational roles for 10 years. So it’s 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 out 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’re older, you’re 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 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.”
[Ryan Robertson]
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 FOR IT MENTIONS A WOMAN, OR IT MENTIONS A, YOU KNOW, A BLACK INDIVIDUAL OR A CHINESE INDIVIDUAL THAT’S SERVING IN THE MILITARY. LIKE, WHY? WHY IS IT IMPORTANT FOR YOU THAT THOSE STORIES REMAIN UNTOUCHED ON THE INTERNET FOR FUTURE GENERATIONS WHITE? LIKE, WHY? WHY THE FIGHT?
[LtCol Jessica Ruttenber (Ret.), Former KC-135 Pilot]
“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.”
[Ryan Robertson]
COLONEL. THANK YOU SO MUCH FOR JOINING US TODAY. REALLY APPRECIATE YOUR TIME. IF THERE’S ANYTHING ELSE YOU’D LIKE TO SAY, SHE WOULD, YOU KNOW, NOW’S YOUR CHANCE.
[LtCol Jessica Ruttenber (Ret.), Former KC-135 Pilot]
“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 doesn’t matter who they are, just repost it.”
[Ryan Robertson]
ABSOLUTELY COLONEL. THANK YOU SO MUCH FOR YOUR TIME.
[LtCol Jessica Ruttenber (Ret.), Former KC-135 Pilot]
“Appreciate it. Thank you, Ryan.”