Tag Archives: Featured

by Gatimu Juma With civilians trapped and time running out, French Foreign Legion and Belgian paratroopers jumped into Zaire in 1978. The French segment was known as operation Bonite. CAPE TOWN BUREAU – The doors opened in the skies over Zaire, and the Legionnaires stepped into empty air. Below them …

by Robert M. Kurtz Excerpted from Mercenaries, Gunslingers, and Outlaws: Two Years as a Security Contractor in Iraq. Whoever set up the last IED that directly targeted my vehicle showed a little more ingenuity than usual. We were somewhere just outside of Bagdad; all the convoys seem to run together …

COMMENTARY by Susan Katz Keating The images are so gruesome I won’t post them. But they’ve been flooding my inbox, as if I didn’t already know that men are getting chewed up on the battlefields of Ukraine and Russia. These particular images come from a social media account that claims to …

“So this is how it ends. We were trapped.” Hunted by Russian drones, targeted by tank fire, and cut off from escape, a foreign volunteer recounts the day he expected to die in Ukraine. by Jonathan Stumpf A loud bang, a metallic clang, then blue smoke pours into the small …

by “Sol Prendido” One of the most influential capos in Mexico’s history met a tragic end – and so did his doctors. One of the most powerful drug lords in Mexico was Amado Carrillo Fuentes, who was born in Navolato, Sinaloa, in 1956. El Señor de los Cielos (Lord of …

How do you learn to fly a kamikaze drone? In Russia, one answer lies inside a secretive training program run by Octagon, a drone school linked to remnants of the Wagner Group. Though Wagner technically no longer exists, Octagon claimed to continue running combat drone courses in Russia, even after Wagner …

The crew of Little Eva bailed out of their B-24 Liberator over northern Australia in 1942. They spent the next four months trying to get out through flooded wilderness, tidal coastline, and river country. Not everyone made it. by Jose Campos The trees caught him hard enough to stop the …

The Germans thought they were under attack by an entire force. In reality, the chaos came from a lone Canadian moving through the dark. by Jose Campos The Germans heard him before they saw him. Grenades detonating one after the other in the dark, machine gun fire, the crackle of …

by Susan Katz Keating What began as questions about activity in Boston evolved into a wider Soldier of Fortune investigation involving operational warnings, networks, and patterns hiding in plain sight. Some stories don’t arrive fully formed. They come in pieces: a source leaning forward across a table, a sealed envelope …

by Fred A. Ganous, SGM, USA (Ret) The departure point was LZ Washington in downtown Baghdad, which stayed busier than the Atlanta airport. The pilot in command was a Chief Warrant 4 who was well-trained in his aviation duties. He saw a convoy of five U.S. army vehicles come under …