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 2007, Chosen Company, 2nd Battalion, 503rd Infantry Regiment deployed to the rugged mountains of eastern Afghanistan. Over their months in a combat zone,...
On December 21, a suicide bomber detonated inside the dining facility on Forward Operating Base Marez outside of Mosul. Twenty-two people were killed in...
Ayman Kafel and his family survived civil wars in Lebanon and Liberia before immigrating to the United States. Following the September 11 attacks, Ayman...