by Jose Campos These seaborne first responders knew what they were looking for, and how to proceed. The crew of the U.S. Coast Guard Cutter Kimball pulled up alongside the suspected drug smuggling vessel, seized its contraband, and took suspects into custody. And the suspects’ boat met a swift end …

Soldiers from the New York Army National Guard and the Moroccan Royal Armed Forces received field training on machine guns and a Carl Gustaf recoilless rifle at the Aurora Range in Tantan, Morocco. Soldiers took part in machine gun crew drills where they learned about swapping barrels, handling a malfunction, …

The southern New Mexico border is a vast expanse of unforgiving terrain, where people enter at their own risk. These U.S. soldiers assigned to Task Force Sentinel take to the skies in a UH-72 Lakota helicopter to patrol the terrain. Come along for an inside look at a patrol flight …

by Alex Quade Diyala Province, Iraq — Special Forces Operational Detachment Alpha (A-Team) 072 rolled into the village. It was dead quiet. Nothing moved. Suddenly, “squirters”—people running away from the village and cars leaving at a high rate of speed. Clearly, something of interest was in that village. A-Team Commander …

by Jose Campos They knew the enemy was coming. On that day in March 1971, Army 1st Lt. Brian Miles Thacker and his seven-man team braced for the inevitable. But when the North Vietnamese Army (NVA) launched their assault, it was not a question of whether the firebase would fall …

by Jose Campos SIERRA BLANCA, Texas – The arid landscape outside Sierra Blanca has long been a favored corridor for human smuggling and narcotics trafficking, exploited by organized criminal networks. Now, with U.S. troops in the field, the human part of the landscape has changed. Under orders from U.S. Northern …

Review by Greg Chabot I’m always looking to upgrade my EDC when it comes to edged weapons. Preferring a fixed blade over folders it can sometimes be difficult to find a knife that has mounting options and ease of concealability that a folder can give. I believe I have finally …

by Carole Engel Avriett Excerpted from Midnight in Ironbottom Sound, by Carole Engel Avriett. Editor’s note:  Early on September 5, 1942, the US Navy’s USS Gregory was sunk by Japanese fire near Guadalcanal. One sailor, Mess Attendant 2nd Class Charles Jackson French swam for hours through shark-infested waters while towing …

Book Review by Heath Hansen John Lechner’s Death is Our Business is an intense, no holds barred journey through the history of the most notorious Private Military Companies (PMC) in the world. Yevgeny Prigozhin, once a small time criminal, selling hot-dogs on a street corner and in time growing his …

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 …