Under the hard sun of the Kenyan bush, U.S. Marine Raiders and Kenyan Marine Commandos moved through a series of realistic training scenarios designed to sharpen combat skills and tighten coordination between the two forces. The Joint Combined Exchange Training program, held Jan. 23 through Feb. 5, 2026, pushed through …
Read More »‘Troops of the Hunter Class’: Creating Britain’s Legendary Commando Force
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 …
Read More »Horse Soldiers in the Rhodesian Bush War: Inside the Grey’s Scouts Mounted Infantry
In a span of weeks, Sergeant Roy Elderkin converted a group of polo players, Foreign Legionnaires, soldiers, and civilians into highly effective mounted infantry. by Gatimu Juma The shooting started at 20 yards. Six mounted infantry from a new unit, Grey’s Scouts, were riding through thick Rhodesian thornbush when the …
Read More »Germany Used This Massive Rail Gun Against Soviet Forces in World War II
The Gustav gun needed a crew of 2,000 men to operate it. The German Schwerer Gustav rail gun was the largest artillery piece created during the Second World War and was the only Nazi wonder weapon to be used in combat against the Russians. The concept of the super gun …
Read More »Operation Iskra: The Soviet Assault That Cracked the Siege of Leningrad
In January 1943, Soviet infantry crossed the frozen Neva River under direct fire to reopen a land corridor into the starving city. by A.R. Fomenko VIENNA BUREAU – The soldiers lay motionless in the snow at the edge of the ice, their weapons beside them. The men of the Soviet 136th …
Read More »Chernobyl Burning: Radioactive Timber and the Black Market
by A.R. Fomenko VIENNA BUREAU – A massive wildfire inside the Chernobyl Exclusion Zone is reviving scrutiny of the radioactive timber trade, wartime disruption, and the shadow economy investigators say has operated inside the contaminated forest for decades. Flames vaulted across the tree tops, carried by wind gusts that whipped through …
Read More »In Iraq, We Rolled In to Feed the Village – and Everything Was Oddly Quiet
by Cliff Wade It was the kind of place where a man earned his name on a bracelet for all eternity. Iraq, September 2007 In an attempt to win over hearts and minds, we would sometimes be tasked with delivering humanitarian assistance (HA) to local villages or neighborhoods. We would …
Read More »Operation Nimrod: Speed, Aggression, Surprise
Six armed men on April 30, 1980 stormed the Iranian embassy in London. The men took hostages, and issued demands. After six days, the terrorists killed a hostage and threw his body outside. Enter the British Special Air Service (SAS) and Operation Nimrod. British crisis expert Robert McAlister analyzes what unfolded from there. ANALYSIS …
Read More »‘The Deer Hunter’ Came to Town on a Cold Night in Denver
Depressed over the April 30, 1975 fall of Saigon, this Army veteran went to see a new movie. by Jack Hawkins Released in Los Angeles in 1978, The Deer Hunter was already becoming a legendary film by the time it hit “flyover country” a few months later. I was between …
Read More »The ‘Liberator’ One-Shot Pistol Secretly Given to Resistance Fighters in World War II
by Robert Ramsour The FP-45 was an unknown and surreptitious pistol developed in WWII to help our captured allies regain control of their country, or province. In order to conceal its real function as a firearm, our government represented this pistol as a flare projector. It was officially called the …
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