Take Five: Mike Garcia

I’m intrigued by it. I don’t know that it’s extraterrestrial — I do believe it’s man-made. And I’m not going to presuppose where it comes from, but I hope it’s American-made. It goes to show that we’ve got to continue to invest in our military technologies and not take it for granted that we are the only superpower out there. We have peer threats out there nowadays, not just near-peer threats. China and Russia have advanced capabilities that we don’t even know about. 

I do think it would be an amazing coincidence if we were the only life forms in this universe. That’s why we’ve got to invest in space programs to start answering some of these questions we all have and maybe one day see the extension of God’s creations on other planets.

Q: Your campaign logo looked a lot like “Top Gun.” What does the movie get right and wrong about being a naval aviator?

A: It’s one of my favorite movies, obviously. What they get right is the camaraderie, the personalities of the pilots. That’s something I miss the most — we were like brothers, very competitive. We were hard on each other, but that made us stronger.

We never played volleyball with our shirts off together in jeans. So that’s probably my least favorite part of the movie. And some of the flying scenes were a little ridiculous, but they did use real jets, the sexy F-14. The “Top Gun” sequel is coming out soon, and they use my aircraft in that movie, the F-18 Super Hornet.