From Tech to Tarmac: A Fighter Pilot’s Second Act in Aviation

Air Force veteran Steve Luczynski shares his remarkable journey from soaring the skies in F-15s and F-22s to navigating national security policy, diving into a cybersecurity leadership path, and eventually pivoting back to his first love—flying—in this episode of Exit Buddy: Veteran Stories to Guide You. With a career that spanned Japan to Europe and a Pentagon stint that sparked his cybersecurity detour, Steve recounts how family stability and a thirst for new challenges initially steered him away from the traditional airline path post-military. He dives into leveraging military-honed skills like translating complex ideas under pressure, chairing the Aerospace Village to reignite his passion for aviation, and embracing multiple career shifts with confidence—proving veterans can pivot again and again.

Chapters

• 01:45 Steve’s 24-year Air Force Career Highlights
• 03:59 Choosing a New Challenge After the Air Force
• 06:03 Pivot #1 to Cybersecurity and the Skills that Made it Possible
• 10:32 Pivot #2 Back to the Skies
• 13:26 The Aerospace Village’s Impact on Steve’s Second Act in Aviation
• 16:14 Asking for Help and Mentorship
• 19:42 The Coffee Talk That Helped Steve Land His First Job
• 22:00 Steve’s Advice to His Younger Self 

Key Takeaways

• Pivot with Purpose: You don’t have to lock into one post-service path—explore your options to align your next move with your family’s needs or a fresh passion.
• Leverage Your Military Edge: Your service-honed abilities—like leading under pressure or solving problems on the go—translate to any civilian field, opening doors you might not expect.
• Embrace Asking for Help: If you’re reluctant to ask for help, skip asking for a job and instead ask about others’ experiences and insights. This opens the door to valuable guidance that many people love to give.
• Fuel Your Passions: Seek out side projects or volunteer roles, like Steve’s Aerospace Village, to reignite what drives you and create a network that supports your next chapter.
• Embrace the Multi-Pivot Life: One career shift isn’t your limit—Steve’s return to flying proves your skills and courage can launch you again and again.

Follow us for more veteran stories to guide your transition journey, and text this episode to a fellow service member who’s navigating their exit. Until next time, keep your wings ready for takeoff!

Visit us at https://exitbuddy.buzzsprout.com to learn more about the show.

Have feedback or questions for us? Email us at ashleyjones.creative@gmail.com.

Transcript

Kathleen Smith 00:28
Hello, wonderful listeners. Welcome to Exit Buddy: Veteran Stories to Guide You. This is Kathleen, and I am joined by my lovely co-host Rachel. Rachel, how are you doing this morning?

Rachel Bozeman 00:39
Doing fantastic and excited to be here and meet a new friend and have a fabulous conversation with our guest. So Kathleen, don’t make the people wait. Who in the heck are we talking to today?

Kathleen Smith 00:52
I’m so excited because this is someone that, as we were chatting in the green room, we’ve known each other for a while. We’ve waved to each other at conferences. Without further ado, we’re joined by Steve Luczynski, an Air Force veteran who’s done it all—from fighter pilot to national security policy development to cybersecurity leadership and more. We have a lot to discuss, so welcome to the show, Steve.

Steve Luczynski 01:16
Awesome morning, ladies.

Rachel Bozeman 01:18
Thanks for being here, Steve. Kathleen teed it up just beautifully. You have done so many incredible things and had the opportunity to wear many different hats. So I have a question for you right off the bat. Tell us about those hats. Tell us a little bit about your career—kind of the things you’ve been able to do, everything from the cool airplanes. I don’t know if everybody would call policies cool, but I think they’re pretty cool. So tell us a little bit about your career.

Steve Luczynski 01:45
I have been incredibly fortunate, no doubt about that. It’s fun, in the sense of looking back on some of these things. I got in the Air Force. I wanted to fly, and I ended up flying F-15s and F-22s, which is amazing. For a short time, I flew the F-15, I became an instructor, went to weapons school—the Air Force’s version of Top Gun, much better, of course. But the things that I was able to do in that airplane, and then getting selected and going over to the F-22 when it was brand new, and for a short time flying both jets at the same time, that was even more fun. In the big scheme of things, those opportunities, the travel started off—assignments in Japan, ended up being over in Europe. So getting to travel both sides of the world, other deployments, things like that. I thoroughly enjoyed my time, and I know it was a good deal because the way that everybody got even, or I should say, the way the Air Force asked me to pay it back was, “Here’s three years in the Pentagon—so glad you had fun, now you’re going to pay it back.” And that was just one staff tour. Luckily, I didn’t have too many others, but that’s where I got into cybersecurity, cyber policy—things I had no idea about getting into it, but seeing how the government works, seeing the behind-the-scenes. It’s the standard phrase of “careful what you wish for.” You’re seeing how the sausage is made. It’s kind of ugly. Sometimes it’s not great. It’s super interesting. And once you learn how it works and how to work within that system and get things done, that’s what made it so rewarding.

Kathleen Smith 03:22
It’s interesting how cybersecurity has been sort of this big field, but everyone’s been doing different things with that, but we’ll get to that later. So you retired as a colonel while you were in the Pentagon, and that must have been sort of a different lens on your military transition. And you had many different choices. Every veteran has some choices when they go through the transition. And you mentioned in our pre-call that you chose family stability and the new challenge in cybersecurity over the traditional pilot airlines path. What was it like to make that pivot?

Steve Luczynski 03:59
For me and my family at the time, staying at the Pentagon was the best—we’d like to get our kids through high school, keep them in place, things of that nature, knowing the military wants to move us around, things like that. So it worked out well where I could time things out, but it also worked well that I was interested in something else. I wasn’t really sure I wanted to go to the airlines at the time. And so being able to—me just having the option to go into cybersecurity, I was incredibly fortunate. And the other part of that was making that decision relatively early, and there’s some thoughts about even sooner, thinking about that is something I wish I would have done. Just the idea that I could look around and see what was in this new landscape—I’m not there. I could choose to be there once I retire, or I could keep doing what I’m doing, go back to flying, things like that. So I had those options. It gave me a lot to look for and at least consider, and that was comfortable, certainly at the time, at least knowing I had options. I didn’t have to just go into one thing, which I think sometimes when you don’t know what’s out there, I know I even—I had that as much as I said I knew the options that I still had to look into it, and had the good fortune of being around people who could help me learn those different areas.

Rachel Bozeman 05:25
I’m so glad that you shared that because I think it’s an important reminder to folks that are transitioning out. Sometimes you may feel pigeonholed or you have to go this certain path because you believe my skills are best aligned there. But I want to talk a little bit about the skills that you had that maybe you picked up throughout your incredible career that were transferable, especially related to that in cybersecurity. So you weren’t the traditional guy sitting behind the keyboard coding. You were out there flying some amazing jets and doing some pretty cool things. So what skills and what things did you pick up that made you able to sit behind that keyboard and contribute in that way?

Steve Luczynski 06:03
Yeah, sure. I definitely—when you hear about a cybersecurity path, I am not doing the code, figuring out the malware, things of that nature. The things that helped me—so, for example, where I worked in cyber policy, they needed us to understand the basics, the terminology, so they would send us to courses and certifications. And it wasn’t so much that I’m magically certified, therefore I know everything, but it was getting into the concepts, knowing that when somebody’s talking about malware and what’s going on, what does that mean? A lot of times what I appreciated learning was, here’s something very technical—whether it’s flying and I’m instructing a student and trying to get that student to understand things, how do you break it down? How do you simplify it? How do you make it where they can think of all the things I told them to do under a high-stress environment while you’re flying? Similarly, that translation skill, the ability to be the young technical expert—which at one point I was young—and explain to the senior leaders, the commander, here’s this complex issue, but in a way that they understand. So now pull that into all that is the U.S. government, cyber policy, and the Department of Defense. And early on, I did not know any of these things, but over time, seeing my colleagues who were very smart on this, who knew how to do these things, how did they ask the questions of the technical people, how did they translate to the senior leaders and vice versa? How do you take these big, lofty—here’s a presidential directive—and how do we turn that into action at the technical level, and that in-between that translation skill, understanding the higher level, the tactical level, and how to bring those together. That’s the kind of skills and experience that some of that I had, a lot of it I had to learn. And for somebody who wasn’t on the keyboard, I at least recognized all that I didn’t know. And so the ability to just keep asking questions—and I had to—I had to ask for patience from the young guys of, “Hey, yeah, no, I get it. You’re right, but I’m going to keep asking because I need to understand it and translate it to somebody who’s even further away from this issue, who has even less time to sit here and pick your brain to then get to yes, so they understand what we’re what you’re trying to do and how we want to go about it.” A lot of patience from all levels and willingness to teach me those things and then being able to apply it on a regular basis and building up over time the confidence that I do know how to get in there and figure it out. This isn’t super easy. Things we did with the F-22, a lot of times we were coming up with the training while we were doing it, and how we were going to approach problems. And again, you have to just jump in there and figure it out.

Rachel Bozeman 09:11
Can I just say this is the first real example I’ve ever heard of someone flying the plane and building the instructions at the same time? We always get to use the phrase, but I’ve never met somebody that’s literally done it, so—

Steve Luczynski 09:25
—and rewriting the manual at the same time. Yes, absolutely. I can promise you that I was in those meetings and had to make those changes. So yeah, I’m with you.

Kathleen Smith 09:36
Top Gun 5.0 or something like that. So exactly—your career, as I’ve watched it over the decades, I’ve noticed sort of the pivots that you’ve done. And I really was sort of interested when you shared on social media how you returned to one of your passions. So after all of this time, you actually went back to your passion of flying, and you noticed that there was a demand for pilots. So tell us a little bit about this other pivot because I think a lot of people who are transitioning think they only have one time to pivot. They can’t pivot several times—that these skills, this strength, this courage that they build can be used again. So can you share how you approach this new career shift, and what gave you confidence to go back and follow your passion?

Steve Luczynski 10:32
So I don’t know if courage is the right word, but the willingness to pivot, seeing friends do something different, talking to them about their experience—similar to, who am I to jump out of the military into a private company, magically in this executive role, old guy. They wanted that kind of experience, presence, things of that nature—not just technical, and it was a balance with other technical people. So the fact that, hey, that worked, I can’t believe that worked, I pulled it off. Having seen that work once before, and seeing friends who have made changes—they again, the typical is, “Well, you flew in the military. Of course you’re going to go fly for the airlines.” Well, I want to try something else. Here’s a friend over here. They did this something else. They didn’t just go—and that’s not diminishing folks who go to the airlines, but it was just the—I don’t know, this is kind of crazy. Let’s try it out. And so those opportunities, from my initial time getting out of the military, going back into government, going into consulting, working for a tech company, and then ultimately, I kind of like this flying thing. I used to be pretty good at it. In my mind, there’s opportunities out there. Because in 2023 when I started looking into it, hiring was still pretty, pretty strong at the time. It was quickly diminishing. But what also happened to me—and granted, this was several years after I got out—but it was realizing what’s most important to me. Is it the money? Is it the time off? Is it the travel? Is it I want to be called the Chief Information Security Officer, the title—what are the things that matter the most to me? And the realization was my schedule and my time off, and what I could do with my time off. That’s not again, that’s not saying that airline—oh, they get all the time off in the world. After a while, they get a better say in their schedule. They get more chunks of time where they’re working and they’re completely focused on work, or they’re home and there is no focus on flying. They can do other things. And so that was attractive to me. Again, I was very fortunate because now I had a network of, “Hey, you’re flying in the airlines, hey, you’re flying in the corporate world, hey, you’re flying over here doing cargo. What’s it like? What are you doing? What’s your schedule like? What’s the money like? How do you like it?” All of those things to again make me understand this is what’s involved. And, yeah, I think I could do that. Sure. Let me get a resume together. I’ve done it before. Why not try it again? And I think at the end of the day, in both cases, getting out of the military—what do you mean? You’re going to that? What do you mean now you’re changing to flying—a family, supporting and understanding dad’s crazy ideas to change again and be willing to go along with that.

Kathleen Smith 13:26
Well, Dad also has many crazy ideas, and I think that there’s one crazy idea that we need to talk about a little bit, which is the Aerospace Village. Villages are small workshops that are happening at various different hacker conferences. They are a wealth of knowledge, a great place to get involved, a great place to network—sort of outside the corporate world and really sort of expand your mind. So the Aerospace Village is a nonprofit you’ve chaired for now four years. So how has that impacted your networking, your skills, your experience? I’m sure we could have an entire episode just on that. But why don’t we just give people sort of the top level of what Aerospace Village is and how it’s impacted your career?

Steve Luczynski 14:15
Yeah, absolutely, and I appreciate you bringing that up. That’s one of the things that drove me, in the sense of not just family, time off, and things of that nature, but also the things I like to do on the side. I tell people the villages—a lot of emails, a lot of video calls and meetings—at times I go, “Wait, that’s the worst hobby on the planet. What am I thinking?” But then other times, it is speaking at a conference. It’s helping others go to a conference to speak about these topics. Or when we do things like DEF CON, we bring a Lego airplane to a STEM event, and you see young folks get hands-on with a very basic replica—an aircraft and how aircraft controls work, and coding that goes into that—super, super simple, but their eyes light up. They get excited. So those are those are the things that drive me, in the sense of a hobby, which all of us are volunteers with the village. It gives us the opportunities to bring aviation, space, and when I say aviation, it’s airplanes, it’s drones, it’s autonomous vehicles, airports, communication, navigation—all of these things together because there is interest in learning more. There are people who want to share what they know, and that’s been great, awesome.

Rachel Bozeman 15:41
Well, I want to go back a little bit in time where you were talking a little bit about your first pivot, if you will, and the ability to ask those questions and the bravery to ask questions for risk of sounding maybe not as informed for those folks that have lived behind the keyboards for their entire career. So I’m going to ask you to pay it forward and give some advice to those that might be transitioning. What is some advice that you have for them when it comes to asking questions about guidance or mentorship from folks that are out there that maybe have done the transition before?

Steve Luczynski 16:14
Yeah, absolutely. And I think the way you said that, the bravery—while it sounds strange, the bravery to ask for help, right? So the standard—we don’t want to ask for help, we don’t want to appear like we don’t know. And I think this applies—sure, I’m an old guy, colonel, 24 years—I think this is just the same for me as it is for somebody who did a four-year tour and then they’re out. It doesn’t matter. We all tend to be reluctant to ask for that help, reluctant to admit we don’t know. Something that to me was the biggest lesson in the sense that—well, the advice was, “Well, contact somebody you knew in the past, a past supervisor.” As an old guy, some of my supervisors are generals or retired generals, and that’s a bit intimidating. And I would imagine, again, for a younger person, their senior supervisors—people who are officers, whatever you want to see—is the difference. There’s that reluctance. Once I ask for help instead of, it’s not a matter of, “Hey, how you doing? I’m getting out. Can you get me a job?” It’s “Hey, I am considering getting out or I am getting out. And I’d like your thoughts. I’d like your perspective, especially if it’s somebody else who got out prior. How did you do it? What did you see? What were the challenges? How’d you write your resume?” Whatever those questions are. And I realized it very quickly was people go out of their way to help you. They love helping you, and I know exactly why, because now I do the same—to pay it forward, to pay back the fact that somebody did that for me, and to take what they taught me and go, “Hey, I’m not telling you how to write your resume. I’m telling you what this guy told me how to write mine, and it worked for me. So maybe you should try it.” And so all of those skills over time and getting over the—well, but I don’t want to ask, and that’s annoying—like, nope, just ask. And I’ve never had anybody go, “Dude, leave me alone. I don’t have time for you.” It might be, “I’m busy. Can I get back to you? Can we do this in a couple of weeks instead of tomorrow?” Absolutely. And the beauty of that is the other part—not just military, but when I had non-military friends on the civilian side, Kathleen, I remember various conferences being around the DC area, where you would talk about recruiter perspective and what companies were looking for, that was incredibly useful to me because that gave me insights from that perspective, in addition to when I talked to friends. So yeah, you were part of helping me on all this too. Oh, thank you. Oh, thank you. I really appreciate the clip over here. Good, good. You deserve it. That’s okay. Thank you. I saw what Kathleen did, putting together panels, talking about what companies are looking for, talking about the recruiters’ perspectives. And I remember seeing that—besides Nova, I have my shirt on, old school—but different events around the DC area, because that’s where I am. And I’ve seen that—besides Las Vegas, where I’ve been on the receiving end, learning. I’ve been on the delivery end, talking about experiences and helping others. So again, these perspectives where I would not normally have thought to look for them were incredibly helpful throughout my entire decision to get out, the transition, and what it took to find a job.

Rachel Bozeman 19:42
Well, Steve, you’re not just full of great advice. You are living what you speak. And I think you might have an example of a time where asking those questions, making those small connections—you might have had a neighbor that was asking a little something about a resume. Tell us more.

Steve Luczynski 19:59
Yeah, it’s—to you want to talk about the most random friend in the neighborhood has an HR recruiting company, placement recruiting, lot of things, very focused on technical skill sets. And so I wasn’t looking for a technical job. I knew that wasn’t me, but my question was, “Do you mind taking a look at my resume, as I’m trying to make sure I’m trying to take a career of flying and get a cybersecurity job—like there’s, there’s not a lot of things that are matching up there. But how do I bring out—led things, led projects, in charge of people? I don’t have profit and loss, but I’ve had to deal with money, all of those types of business things, in a way that people go, ‘Okay, I understand what he’s saying.’” And so over a coffee, looking at my resume, talking about, “Hey, from what you see at the time, I’m still in DC, so you know, way back when we were having this discussion, what do you see in the DC area? I know I could become a contractor. I know people were excited to offer me jobs going back to the Pentagon—not really what I wanted to do. So what are the things that I could do in this technical field that aren’t necessarily for me, just what, what is your perspective?” That was the question. That was the conversation. Also looking at my resume, and again, the conversation becomes the—“Well, that’s not what my company does, but I know a guy who’s trying to hire for this type of role. Are you interested?” I’m like, “Sure, of course, I’m interested. Let’s at least have the conversation.” Never turn down the interview is what I’ve always heard. Turn down the offer. Don’t turn down the interview. I had the interview. It went well. That was my first job. A couple layers of interviews in there also. But that no kidding—simple coffee talk turned into my first job outside of the military.

Kathleen Smith 22:00
That’s really great. And let’s let’s sort of wrap this up on a very sort of reflective point. So going back to your younger self in the Air Force, the day that you were considering leaving and looking forward—the vortex of scary things that are out there—what would you tell your younger self?

Steve Luczynski 22:24
I know one of the things I was very happy about, and I’ll say it’s even before I actually made the decision, starting to look at, “What do I want to do later? What do I want to do when I grow up after this fun Air Force job that I had?” The fact that, of course, I had never thought, “Oh, I’m not getting out. I’m going to keep doing this. I’m going to go back to flying after I’m at the Pentagon.” Well, wait a minute, what’s really going on? In my case, just considering things sooner. And the reason why—hey, Steve, try to consider that even sooner than you did, because it gave me time. I wasn’t in a rush. If you know you’re in for a four-year tour, you kind of know what your timing is. If you think you’re going to stay to 20, you kind of know what your timing is. But as you do that, if you keep one eye on, “Do I want to go back to flying? Do I want to change careers? If I do, what does that look like? What are those other careers that gave me?” That’s part of what gave me the confidence to do this, having the conversation, knowing the options that were out there, so that I could say, “Oh, yeah, I could do that. Let me start talking to people in that field and studying and learning what they are doing.” Again, my experience of hearing recruiters talk, going to conferences, getting the cybersecurity background. And then the other one, I mentioned it a little bit before already, but it’s asking for help, not being afraid to raise your hand and say, “I want to know more. Can you—can I get you a coffee? Can we sit down and talk?” The other small nuance in all of that is when you’re doing your resume, it’s not being afraid to say, “This is what I did. I’m not bragging, even though it feels like it. I’m not trying to be over the top. I’m trying to be truthful.” But yeah, there’s some certain things that were kind of a big deal, and you want to talk about that on your resume. You want to present that because there are some unique things that veterans have that set them apart, that will jump out, and that’s what folks are looking for. So in that asking for help, it’s—“Yeah, all right, here’s this fluffy sentence. Can you help me make it more realistic, more correct, more business, without seeming like I just want to show you my resume and brag about what I do?”

Rachel Bozeman 24:43
So awesome. And so are you, Steve, and we have had an absolute blast talking to you today and are so thankful that you carved out a little more time to chat with us and share your story. So thanks so much for dropping by today.

Kathleen Smith 24:57
Thanks, Steve, you betcha. It was really great listening to Steve’s journey because he highlighted that you can pivot and you can pivot and you can pivot. This is really why I wanted him to be a guest on the show—because you think once you leave one career, that there’s only one choice for you, and you’re given and you learn and you earn various different skills in the military, and those skills can help you make changes that make sure you have a more fulfilling career. Rachel, what did you like?

Rachel Bozeman 25:30
Well, there was so much to like, but I really walked away with a great little sound bite that he shared, and it’s, “Turn down the offer, not the interview.” And I think it was just such an important thing to remember—to ask the questions, to be curious, to don’t turn down opportunities, take that seat, do the things, buy the shoes, eat the cake, because you just never know. And so I thought that was such a great reminder and a great sound bite that I’m going to borrow and share with others—something that you can share with others, my friends, is this conversation and the other ones in the Exit Buddy series. So make sure that you get out there, tell a friend, and have a great rest of your day till next time—bye, toodles.