18 Oct 2026 05:00
Rappel Incident - Ep 636
This episode starts with something none of us wanted to talk about.A member of the Air Force community was killed during a rappelling demonstration at a UTSA event in San Antonio.At the time Trent and Peaches recorded, next-of-kin notifications were still being completed and the member had not yet been publicly identified.First and foremost:Much love to his family, teammates, and everyone at the 6th Combat Training Squadron.Trent and Peaches walk through the publicly available footage from the perspective of two guys who have spent a lot of time around this type of training.And the first clarification matters:This was a RAPPEL.Not a fast rope.Those are different techniques with different equipment, different safety considerations, and different levels of risk.The available video raises obvious questions about descent speed, rope friction, routing, hardware, hand position, and whether the system was functioning correctly.But neither Trent nor Peaches claims to know exactly what failed.Equipment?Routing?Connection?Human error?Something else entirely?That is what the investigation is for.What they do know is that a roughly 170-foot free rappel gives you very little room for error.Buddy checks matter.Rigging matters.Equipment checks matter.And just because you have done something a hundred times does not mean evolution 101 deserves any less attention than evolution one.The conversation then moves into TACP, CCT, JTACs and the old ROMAD concept.Peaches explains how young Airmen who were not yet JTAC qualified could still become extremely useful members of the team by learning radios, aircraft integration, procedures and enough of the job to become an extra capability if somebody went down.Trent talks about his first Afghanistan deployment in 2006, where the TACP and Combat Controller on his team took the time to teach him enough of their job that he could help if things went sideways.Back then, that mattered.Teams were taking casualties.ODAs were getting combined.People were getting wounded and medevaced.And the mission still had to continue.Later, Peaches tells a completely different story about running into a senior enlisted leader years after realizing they had apparently crossed paths downrange.That turns into one of the strongest leadership conversations in the episode.A senior leader arrives on a tightly controlled itinerary.Airmen are standing in a hangar who were not part of the scheduled stop.His staff expects him to keep moving.Instead, he sees them, changes direction, walks over and speaks to every one of them.Schedule be damned.Peaches follows that with another story about a Chief Master Sergeant of the Air Force visiting wounded service members while somebody reminds him that a general is waiting.His answer was essentially:The general can wait.Because sometimes leadership is as simple as remembering which people actually matter.The episode closes by returning to the rappelling footage and one final point:Rappelling is dangerous.Take everything seriously.LINKSOnesReady.comOperatorTrainingSummit.comCHAPTERS00:00 - Ones Ready01:09 - Why This Episode Starts Differently01:32 - Fatal Rappelling Incident at UTSA02:04 - What Happened?03:12 - Rappel vs. Fast Rope04:02 - Why Fast Roping Is Different05:25 - We Don’t Know the Cause Yet06:06 - 6 CTS Det 2 and Next-of-Kin Notification07:43 - A Celebration Turns Tragic08:30 - Breaking Down the Available Video09:39 - Equipment Failure or Routing Problem?
