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.
"Trust your NCOs" is common advice given to every new lieutenant. This adage, the overwhelming majority of the time, is valid. But when it’s...
As an executive officer of an infantry company at Forward Operating Base Fenty in Afghanistan, Michael Houghton was heavily involved in one of his...
In the second episode in a two-part series, Dan Gade joins The Spear to tell the story of his 2004 deployment to Ramadi, Iraq....