by Susan Katz Keating Morning reveille had not yet sounded at the Marine Corps barracks on Oct 23, 1983, when a Hezbollah terrorist drove a bomb-laden truck into the building in Beirut, Lebanon. The massive blast lifted the barracks off its foundation, and reduced it to rubble – instantly killing …

by Susan Katz Keating The Soviets called it Chernaya Gora: Black Mountain. That is where a unit of elite Spetsnaz forces met their deaths in Afghanistan, atop a remote observation post overlooking Kunar. I learned about the treacherous place in 2015, while researching an article for the Army National Guard.  …

COMMENTARY by Susan Katz Keating The work has been called the most dangerous form of journalism. Amid my daily influx of emails, text messages, and phone calls, I frequently am hit up by people who want to go downrange under my name. They approach me with variants on the following requests. …

by Susan Katz Keating My K-Zero is missing. For those of you who are not up to speed on the plate carrier drama, there was an issue previously when I asked my friend Skip to help test the K-19 carrier from Agilite. The plan was to see whether the one-size …

by Susan Katz Keating “The Taliban are behind my door.” The whispered words came through the phone in the pitch of night, hours after Kabul fell on August 15, 2021. My friend “Hakim,” a man I had been trying from afar to help leave Afghanistan, called me from inside his …

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. …

COMMENTARY by Susan Katz Keating Fifty years of Soldier of Fortune brings one question repeatedly to my inbox: Where did this all begin?  The answer is not a mystery; it’s history. Soldier of Fortune grew from Vietnam, and its legacy still drives us today. To understand Soldier of Fortune, you have to …

Why I’m more focused on the bombs that didn’t explode COMMENTARY by Susan Katz Keating At least 19 people are dead in Colombia, and more than 70 are wounded, after dissident guerrillas staged twin attacks on Thursday. A Black Hawk helicopter was brought down with a drone. A truck bomb ripped …

Through the window of Putin’s presidential jet, two F-35’s slid into formation as they left U.S. airspace. It’s a view almost no one on Earth will ever see. America’s stealth fleet rarely shows itself—let alone escorting a Russian head of state out of U.S. airspace. History at 35,000 feet. The …

COMMENTARY by Susan Katz Keating As Soldier of Fortune marks its 50th year, I often am asked, Who reads your magazine? It’s a fair question; one that is rooted in the publication’s history.  Created in 1975, Soldier of Fortune sprang up from the aftermath of Vietnam. It began as a critical …