This episode features a story from Joe Ritter, an Air Force officer and MQ-9 Reaper pilot. The MQ-9, the largest remotely piloted aircraft in the US military's inventory, has a wide range of the capabilities—from providing intelligence, surveillance, and reconnaissance to conducting battle damage assessments to helping a ground element direct their fires to striking enemy targets with air-to-ground Hellfire missiles. Ritter and his sensor operator brought all of these capabilities to the fight during a single mission in Afghanistan in October 2018.
In this episode of The Spear, retired Marine officer David Berke joins to share a story from 2006, when he was a forward air...
In 1998, retired US Air Force Colonel Mike "Starbaby" Pietrucha was an electronic warfare officer flying in an F-15E Strike Eagle, enforcing the northern...
On October 3, 2009, several hundred Taliban fighters attacked Combat Outpost Keating, an isolated outpost manned by B Troop, 3-61 CAV and a small...