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 October 2008, Maj. Nick Eslinger was a lieutenant on his first deployment as a platoon leader in Iraq. While on patrol one day,...
This episode of The Spear features a conversation with Capt. Lindsay Heisler. An aviation officer and Apache pilot, in December 2015 she was part...
In 2009, Lieutenant Mike Karlson deployed to Afghanistan, new to both his unit and to his job as executive office of its maintenance troop....