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 2012, Master Sgt. Brody Hall was a sniper section leader in a scout platoon in the 173rd Airborne Brigade, deployed in eastern Afghanistan's...
This episode of The Spear features a story from US Air Force Major Joe Ritter. An RPA pilot, his story takes place both at...
This episode features the first of a two-part conversation with Ryan Hendrickson. In this part, he shares a story from a 2010 deployment. On...