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 Ryan Hendrickson. After almost losing his leg in an IED blast in 2010, he was back in Afghanistan...
In early 2003, Karl Blanke was a Marine platoon commander during the early stages of the US-led invasion of Iraq, when his battalion was...
In 2009, Sgt. 1st Class Sean Ambriz was on his first deployment in Afghanistan. When a platoon became pinned down by enemy fire, he...