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, MWI's Maj. Jake Miraldi is joined by retired Staff Sgt. Salvatore Giunta. In 2010, he became the first living recipient of...
In 2009, Sgt. 1st Class Sean Ambriz was on his first deployment in Afghanistan. When a platoon became pinned down by enemy fire, he...
In 2005, Jeff Marshburn was a reconnaissance platoon leader in the 4th Battalion, 23rd Infantry Regiment, in Mosul, Iraq. While leading his platoon during...