You're listening to software, radio, special operations, military news, and straight talk with the guys in the community.

Hey, what's going on? Welcome back to another episode of software, radio. I am your host, Aaron Rad, Radal.

For those of you out there wondering where Rad comes from, the last name is Radal, R-A-D-L. You take off the L, you get Rad.

I go by Rad. I've got a wonderful guest on today. His name is Michael Carmichael. But first, before I introduce you to Michael, any further, I want to talk about our merch store.

All right, the lights stay on. You know, those coffee mugs, the shirts we have for softwareapp.com. Go check out the merch store, support us, and also check out the book club, right?

It's softwareapp.com, book, hyphen club, or just Google it, and you'll find the book club, jump in, enroll in the book club, and get something that you want to read sent to you by elite dudes and guys like me who can pick a book.

Now, with that said, today's guest runs check a vet, which is a website that brings awareness to unalliving yourself, suicide prevention within the veteran military community.

I have Michael R. Carmichael, chief warrant for special forces, green beret, Michael, chief W-4 special forces retired, was born in Helena, Montana in November of 71.

He joined Montana National Guard at 17, signed consent from his parents in high school in 1990, joined up and decided to serve at a young age. It takes a lot of cajonase to serve the military, let alone at 17, to step away from your parents, and then become who you are today.

So, I just want to introduce you a little bit, check a vet. I know that you're not the only co-founder, Chris Miller, former deputy undersecretary of something in the administrations of the presidency.

You know, a lot of titles are involved with him. He's a co-founder with you. I wasn't able to make the show, but we're so happy to have you on, Michael. Let's go ahead and just say hi.

Hey everybody, thanks for joining me, and thank you for having me on today, Rhett.

Hey, it's very cool to have, you know, a green beret on, you know, my backstory is my father was a green beret, and so I have a lot of love for, you know, that culture and that community.

So, thanks a lot for going that path, but I do have a question for you right off the bat, when it comes to becoming a warrant officer in a team of green berets.

Okay, you hear about lieutenants, you hear about the privates moving up into corporals and getting sergeant ranks.

How does one become this elusive mister, this warrant officer in an SF team? May I ask that?

Yeah, that's a great question. So, I stayed enlisted until I thought I was experienced enough to be relevant in the position of warrant officer.

So, I was an E7 promotable, I was going to get promoted to E8, and I pulled my packet because the only thing I wanted to do was stay on the team and stay in the fight.

That's it. So, you have to submit an application and really the guys whose signatures matter the most are your company warrant officer and your battalion warrant officer.

So, a CW-3 and a CW-4. And there was actually a little pushback on me because the sergeant majors all had different plans for me.

In fact, one of them was like, oh, I get it. You just want to hang out and hide under Rucksack.

And I'm like, Roger, that's our major. That's the stuff that's on the posters. Not right to test somewhere. So, back then we actually went to Fort Rucker.

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