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.
In this episode, Maj. Jake Miraldi walks listeners through the 2009 Battle of Barg-e Matal in eastern Afghanistan's Nuristan province. He was part of...
In 2003, Maj. John Spencer was a platoon leader in the 173rd Airborne. In this episode, he talks about the very first mission after...
On July 13, 2008, around two hundred Taliban fighters ambushed American and Afghan soldiers in a remote area of eastern Afghanistan. The ensuing fight...