War

by Susan Katz Keating“We weren’t Special Forces or Airborne. We were mostly just a bunch of draftee grunts who turned out to be damn good soldiers.” The soldiers proceeded cautiously through the jungle highlands west of Pleiku, near the Cambodian border, on the morning of May 18, 1967. The men …

by Greg Chabot During this time TF- 1/6 soldiers were living in three locations in the city. Troops were at the Provincial Governor’s office known as Blue Dome. And at the Civil Military Operations Center, which had Other Government Agency and Coalition Provisional Authority detachments as well as city offices. And …

The recipe was simple: make a fire; boil water in any metal container at hand; put the ammo in the boiling water; and cook for four to five hours. by Nikolay Shevchenko During the Soviet war in Afghanistan, Russian soldiers were often seen boiling their ammo for hours in a …

by Susan Katz Keating Russia hails the Oreshnik as unstoppable; but in 2023, seven of its hypersonic Kh-47M2 cousins were shot down by U.S.-made Patriot air defense systems. Moscow says the strike was payback, using its sharpest blade: the Oreshnik hypersonic ballistic missile. In the overnight hours into January 9, …

by Susan Katz Keating Why did Soviet forces abandon Afghanistan in 1989 after nearly 10 years of war? Western analysts have burned through terabytes trying to explain it. What else besides the fierce Mujahideen drove the Red Army to retreat with nothing to show but shattered pride? Some credit the …

by Gatimu Juma It should have been a routine flight. The Bush War was well underway in Rhodesia, but on that day in 1978, civilian air travel was safe. Or so it seemed. On the afternoon of September 3, 1978, the passengers and crew aboard Air Rhodesia Flight 825 learned …

by A.R. Fomenko VIENNA BUREAU – On the battlefields of Ukraine, steel beasts now crawl under strange new hides – bristling, porcupine-like shells known as “hedgehog armor.” It’s the latest mutation born from drone-saturated warfare, where a cheap quadcopter can gut a million-dollar tank before the crew even knows it’s coming. …

by Susan Katz Keating China and other foreign actors are using Ukraine as a testbed, deploying cut-outs and deniable assets to gather real-time data on drones, intelligence sources told Soldier of Fortune. The grainy figures moved across the screen, creeping through murky terrain like shadows come to life. A blip …

by Fred A. Ganous, SGM, USA (Ret) Our deployment in Iraq from 2006 to 2007 was a rollercoaster of emotions, marked by both triumphs and tragedies. The crash of “EASY 40” still stands as one of the darkest days of our deployment. This UH-60 Blackhawk, bearing tail number 84-23984, was …

by David Nelson, The War Horse I woke up early on the morning of Dec. 6, 1972, to pack and say tearful goodbyes to my wife, Martie, and our one-year-old daughter, Amy. We’d decided ahead of time that my father-in-law “Pop” Lowry would drive me from Temple, Texas, to Love …