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.
This episode features a conversation with Chief Warrant Officer 4 Dylan Ferguson. In 2012, he served as part of the brigade aviation element of...
In 2014, Master Sgt. Raymond Collazo was a platoon sergeant deployed to eastern Afghanistan. Just weeks into his unit's deployment, the platoon was on...
In October 2008, Maj. Nick Eslinger was a lieutenant on his first deployment as a platoon leader in Iraq. While on patrol one day,...