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 February 2012, Capt. Jannelle Allong-Diakabana was a military police platoon leader deployed in Nangarhar province, Afghanistan. One day, as she and her platoon...
In 2004, Tim Strabbing was a lieutenant and platoon commander in the Marine Corps, deployed to an area just outside Fallujah in Iraq's restive...
In 2007, Chosen Company, 2nd Battalion, 503rd Infantry Regiment deployed to the rugged mountains of eastern Afghanistan. Over their months in a combat zone,...