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.
On October 3, 2009, several hundred Taliban fighters attacked Combat Outpost Keating, an isolated outpost manned by B Troop, 3-61 CAV and a small...
In 2007, Tony Luberto was a maintenance platoon leader deployed in Baghdad. Early one morning, he awoke to the devastating sounds of a Katyusha...
Many episodes of The Spear have featured stories of action at the tactical level. This episode departs from that pattern, as Capt. Pete Mitchell ...