This episode features a story from Maj. Joe Ritter, an MQ-9 pilot—the first remotely piloted aircraft story featured on The Spear. The MQ-9 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 Captain Lindsay Heisler. An aviation officer and Apache pilot, in December 2015 she was part of a mission...
Infantry battalions operating tactically rarely have the possibility to directly impact alliance constructs, foreign policy objectives, and national security strategy. But Dan Leard’s 1-38...
In 2019, Master Sgt. Zach Rosser was a platoon sergeant in a Patriot missile battery. His unit was preparing for a deployment—the soldiers expected...