by Susan Katz Keating The United States and Israel launched coordinated strikes across Iran early Saturday, hitting military and regime-linked targets in a major joint combat operation against the Islamic Republic. The Pentagon announced the mission as Operation Epic Fury. Israeli described its own part as Operation Roaring Lion. President …
Read More »War Predators in Ukraine: They Come to Study the Killing Fields
by Susan Katz Keating China and other foreign actors are using Ukraine as a testbed, deploying cut-outs and deniable assets to gather real-time data on drones, intelligence sources told Soldier of Fortune. The grainy figures moved across the screen, creeping through murky terrain like shadows come to life. A blip …
Read More »The Dentist Who Held the Line: Ben Salomon’s Machine-Gun Stand on Saipan
by Jose Campos The wounded were stacked shoulder to shoulder on the aid station floor, their uniforms covered in blood and dirt. Some called out for morphine. Outside, rifle fire cracked through the darkness, coming closer. The line had broken. Captain Ben L. Salomon moved from man to man, working …
Read More »Ty Carter Raced Through Withering Fire to Rescue a Wounded Soldier in the Battle of Kamdesh
by Katie Lange The morning of October 3, 2009, brought a hail of gunfire to Combat Outpost Keating in Afghanistan – and for Army Staff Sgt. Ty Carter and American soldiers from his unit, it was a day of tremendous courage in combat. READ MORE about brutal combat in Afghanistan …
Read More »This American Paratrooper Was Captured by SS Troops During ‘Operation Market Garden’
When Gene Metcalfe boarded the C-47 that would drop him just outside of Nijmegen, Holland, a British lieutenant gave him a box of condoms. Gene was to be among the first to jump into what should have been a picture-book meadow, free of German troops. Instead, it was defended by …
Read More »Massacre at Bien Hoa: These Americans Were the First to Die at War in Vietnam
by Susan Katz Keating America’s fight in Southeast Asia began before our country knew that a war was unfolding, on a single night when two men were the first to die by enemy fire in Vietnam. It happened on July 8, 1959, in Bien Hoa, some 20 miles outside Saigon. …
Read More »We Knew They Weren’t Coming Back: Vietnam’s Brutal ‘9 Days in May’
by Susan Katz Keating“We weren’t Special Forces or Airborne. We were mostly just a bunch of draftee grunts who turned out to be damn good soldiers.” The soldiers proceeded cautiously through the jungle highlands west of Pleiku, near the Cambodian border, on the morning of May 18, 1967. The men …
Read More »‘Get the F— Down!’ The Day an Entire City Went Insane in Iraq
by Greg Chabot During this time TF- 1/6 soldiers were living in three locations in the city. Troops were at the Provincial Governor’s office known as Blue Dome. And at the Civil Military Operations Center, which had Other Government Agency and Coalition Provisional Authority detachments as well as city offices. And …
Read More »Ammo Soup, Comrade: Soviet Soldiers Cooked Their Rounds in Afghanistan – In a Pot
The recipe was simple: make a fire; boil water in any metal container at hand; put the ammo in the boiling water; and cook for four to five hours. by Nikolay Shevchenko During the Soviet war in Afghanistan, Russian soldiers were often seen boiling their ammo for hours in a …
Read More »Russia Says Deadly Oreshnik Missile is Unstoppable – But Is It?
by Susan Katz Keating Russia hails the Oreshnik as unstoppable; but in 2023, seven of its hypersonic Kh-47M2 cousins were shot down by U.S.-made Patriot air defense systems. Moscow says the strike was payback, using its sharpest blade: the Oreshnik hypersonic ballistic missile. In the overnight hours into January 9, …
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