Badass

by Susan Katz Keating “There’s a certain sound…” The song stuck with him for years afterwards. He was being marched to his execution in the jungles of Vietnam, and had been ordered to carry a radio to pick up “Radio Hanoi,” but he secretly dialed in to a station that …

“We are a tough people, we used to have war all the time. Fighting is in our DNA.” At a major international fighting event this year, all four athletes competing for world championship titles hailed from the Caucasus. The event, UFC 311, which was held in California on Jan. 18, …

by Boris Egorov At the end of 1980, on the outskirts of Moscow, a number of Soviet policemen picked an argument with a KGB major. They had no idea what dire consequences the encounter would have for them and the entire Soviet police force.  On the morning of December 27, …

Britain’s Prime Minister Winston Churchill in World War II wanted “specially trained troops of the hunter class, who can develop a reign of terror down these coasts [of occupied Europe], first of all on the butcher and bolt policy… leaving a trail of German corpses behind them.” This translated into …

by Susan Katz Keating In retrospect, it seems fitting that I met Viktor Belenko in Reno. He was a gambler hanging out in a gambling town, surrounded by pilots in their fast moving aircraft, barreling wildly around pylons. I went there many years back, looking for stories to be found …

by Jose Campos Against the rugged expanse of the East Presidio sector, U.S. soldiers from the 1st Battalion, 12th Infantry Regiment, rolled forward in a Stryker armored vehicle, patrolling a landscape that has become a frontline in America’s ongoing border security operations. Under the direction of U.S. Northern Command, these troops …

What do you do when your aircraft canopy shatters in flight? “Keep flying,” Dutch aerobat Narine Melkumjan says. She took to social media to share the video of herself doing just that during the “distressing” experience, hoping that her fellow pilots would take note. A couple of years ago during …

As a young second lieutenant in 1943, James Swett embarked on his first combat mission at the age of 22. Within 15 minutes, he was a fighter ace with seven enemy kills to his credit. Swett arrived for duty in February 1943 at Henderson Field on Guadalcanal Island in the …

Ed Freeman was close to retirement when war broke out in Vietnam. He was an experienced pilot by then and assigned to the 229th Assault Helicopter Battalion, which was sent to deliver troops to what became known as the Battle of Ia Drang, the first major battle between the United …

Night Stalkers put their machines front and center in yet another badass vid from the 160th SOAR. Watch how they do it.