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 1968, after one season as a professional football player, Rocky Bleier was drafted by the Army and sent to Vietnam. During a firefight,...
In 2010, Rick Witt was a new SEAL team commander preparing his unit to deploy to Iraq when one of his subordinate platoons encountered...
As a young platoon leader in Iraq during the 2003 invasion, John Faunce experienced the chaos of combat, including shifting missions, limited intelligence, and...