In the Peruvian Amazon, U.S. soldiers are learning how jungle terrain turns routine movement into a test of endurance, fieldcraft and small-unit tactics. by Staff Sgt. Mickey Miller, U.S. Southern Command SAUCE, Peru — The jungle has a way of making even simple things complicated. Movement slows. Equipment gets heavier. …

Aboard a hot, bucking C-130, a young 101st Airborne paratrooper fought to hold himself together until the stick began to move. by David F. Crosby The C-130 rocked back and forth and lurched up and down. The late summer air made flying low in the afternoon turbulent, and the aircraft’s …

In the months after 9/11, Green Berets were in the southern Philippines to help take on an al-Qaeda-linked force more than 1,000 strong. Two decades later, roughly 20 terrorist fighters remained. by Jose Campos The Green Berets moved through the jungle, cutting through undergrowth in the ungoverned space where violent …

The B-17 called Old 666 was already a wreck when they claimed it. What happened over the Pacific turned the bomber and its crew into legend. During World War II, there was a crew with the U.S. Army Air Forces 43rd Bomb Group of the Fifth Air Force that became …

The rifle is billed as a domestic weapon, but building the production capability required Belarus to look beyond its borders, sources say. by A.R. Fomenko VIENNA BUREAU – When Belarusian leader Aleksandr Lukashenko visited a weapons plant in the Minsk region over the summer, he was shown a rifle presented …

by John Gartner As I sat looking out the port side window of the Dakota, I could see below me the vast expanse of Lake Cahora Bassa dam. The grey skeletal branches of long-drowned trees dotted the shoreline and seemed, in my reverie, to be reaching imploringly skyward. The surface …

U.S. Marines put field-expedient charges to work at a demolition range during exercise BALTOPS 26. by A.R. Fomenko VIENNA BUREAU — The steel beam lay twisted in the mud outside Skrunda, Latvia, its center torn open by an expedient cratering charge. Moments earlier, it had served as a target during a …

Two American radio operators listened as distant voices from the Baltics alerted one another of approaching danger. by Grant Barrett Late one night, my longtime friend Kevin and I listened as anxious voices from across the globe came through an amateur radio network. Some speakers spoke in broken English, while …

From a mark of cowardice in World War I to a sniper’s calling card in Vietnam, the white feather crossed generations and battlefields to become a symbol of defiance. by Jose Campos A single feather, plucked from a bird and handed to a recipient, once carried enough weight to end …

From the helmets of the 101st Airborne in Normandy to a psychological weapon and morale booster in Vietnam, one playing card became a military legend. by Jose Campos The body lay in the jungle on the losing side of a firefight between American and Viet Cong fighters. On the dead …