KYIV, Ukraine — The Russian drone orbited over the Ukrainians’ position all day. Denys Antipov, a first lieutenant in Ukraine’s 95th Airborne Assault Brigade, recognized the silhouette of an Orlan-10, an unmanned aerial vehicle typically used for ...
Whatever happens in the coming weeks, President Volodymyr Zelenskyy will go down as the face of Ukrainian resilience during the Russian invasion of his country. His response to the Russian invasion of his country has been widely praised, both at ...
You can learn a lot about the differences in national cultures by looking at the service rifles they issue their troops. In some ways, different countries, continents, and cultures take turns swapping in advancements in small arms technology. The ...
An all-new Punisher series is coming to the Marvel Universe in March of 2022, and with it comes a major change to the vigilante superhero’s iconic logo. In a strange step back from the well-established symbol, Marvel has decided to distance the ...
KYIV, Ukraine — When the clocks strike midnight this evening, it will mark a new year — and for Ukraine, the beginning of a ninth straight calendar year at war. But you’d hardly know it walking around the capital city of Kyiv today. Across town, ...
When I was about 6 or 7, I discovered my dad’s pictures from Vietnam. In them, he and Marines from his infantry company — posed around the An Hoa Basin — were in the prime of their youth. Men I knew from fishing trips were 20 years younger, filthy, ...
I was already awake with my usual insomnia around 2:30 in the morning on Thursday, Dec. 16, when I heard a loud, frightening bang. It sounded like something hard hitting metal. Then I heard it again. I rushed to the window, threw it open, and looked ...
In 2003, I discovered that a friend claimed he had been called “bloodthirsty, civilian-killing scum” in an airport after returning from 1991’s Desert Storm. I was the one who picked him up at the airport in 1991. He didn’t mention this interaction ...
The day after Gen. Colin Powell died at 84, I was eating chili at a dingy bar in Austin, Texas, when a haggard, middle-aged waiter appeared over my shoulder, inquiring to the Willie Nelson look-alike behind the bar, “Did Colin Powell die?” Willie ...
This op-ed appeared first in The Conversation on Oct. 13, 2021. The Conversation is a community of more than 135,400 academics and researchers from 4,192 institutions. The views of the authors do not necessarily reflect those of Coffee or Die ...
In April 1961, several retired French generals, aided by a coterie of active-duty colonels and their units, responded to pending Algerian independence by taking key territories in the occupied territory and initiating an ultimately unsuccessful coup ...
Do you remember the Battle of Ia Drang? The words echoed loudly in my memory after a journalist friend called me and broke the terrible news that my friend and mentor — one of America's finest journalists — passed away Wednesday, Aug. 18. The ...
As soon as the United States announced a final withdrawal date from Afghanistan, I knew the elite Afghan special operations warriors, who had inflicted the most damage on the Taliban, would be targeted first. I also knew these warriors, whom I had ...
On July 2, the Pentagon’s top spokesman announced that command of U.S. military operations in Afghanistan would be transferred to the U.S. Central Command (CENTCOM) from NATO’s Resolute Support Mission, which previously commanded U.S. forces in the ...
The Global War on Terror is nearly two decades old, and somehow the Air Force still hasn’t acquired a dedicated light attack aircraft to use for close air support (CAS) in counterinsurgency (COIN) operations. The beloved A-10 Thunderbolt, serving ...
As the US National Defense Strategy seeks to counter China’s influence in the Indo-Pacific region and address future threats to trade routes that the US and world economy depend on, the US Navy has a lot of challenges ahead. Infantry and tanks ...
Glancing down at the park map wadded in my fist, I studied the road names. My vision blurring, I struggled to read the words as they danced rhythmically with my heartbeat. I trombone-tested my near and far sight, feeling the ...
War. It’s an experience that I craved from the first time I had memories. As a Gen-X, latchkey kid I was raised by Rambo, Commando, The Punisher, and Rocky. I was also fed a trickle of lies from a stolen valor dad while he was around. This ...
AVDIIVKA, Ukraine — When you hear the sound you remember it and there’s no mistaking it for anything else. The thunder rolls in from the trenches — from where you are, about a mile away across a field and behind a tree line. The intrusive sound ...
May 4 is International Firefighters' Day. After his first day on the job as a new firefighter in Asheville, North Carolina, Mike Schoeffel, wrote this essay about what he saw and felt. The thing they don’t tell you about a dead body is the way ...
Power belts, eye protection, and hand grenades — oh my! And all the sergeants major said, “Hell yeah!” While the staff sergeants rolled their eyes. Let me explain. In the Army, the senior enlisted service member of any (battalion-level or ...
Even as a small girl growing up in Australia’s countryside, I knew April 25 was a day not to cry or complain or run amok through the dusty tracks. My father would pull my sister and me from our slumber at dawn, when the rouge light was still ...
In 2003, as the 75th Ranger Regiment shifted its attention to the war in Iraq, C Company of the 2nd Battalion, 75th, was doing time as “the forgotten company” in Afghanistan’s Kunar Province. Deep inside the Hindu Kush Mountain Range, narrow roads ...
Trench warfare is a true test of a soldier’s grit. The thing is, there’s no escaping the danger. You could die just as easily while walking to the toilet as you could while holding the line under artillery fire. You never know when the shelling will ...
CORSICANA, Texas — We are flying on “jump run,” cruising at about 100 mph in a World War II vintage aircraft dubbed “Southern Cross,” a C-47 troop transport like one of the 2,000 planes that dropped thousands of American paratroopers over Normandy on ...
The screen showed a noose left hanging inside a bathroom near the mirror. I asked a classroom full of soldiers what it meant to them. One soldier, white, said that it was probably a dark joke, maybe about suicide, or maybe even a coded message to ...
Nearly two decades into a war on terror, American service members and veterans enjoy strong public support. And while a certain amount of “thank you for your service” is always warranted, even in peacetime, some veterans seem to suffer with what I ...
The recent bill passed by the House of Representatives, known as the George Floyd Justice in Policing Act of 2021, is brimming with reforms and federal mandates for law enforcement. There is too much to unpack in a single article, but it is safe to ...
Two days before we were blown up by an insurgent IED in Ramadi, my teammate got a letter from his dad — with a Purple Heart postage stamp on it. We looked at that stamp, sitting on Camp Hurricane Point in 2004, with incredulity. It was bad ...
Eugene Goodman never expected to find himself fighting for his life again, but as he ascended the stairs inside the US Capitol building and shouted into his police radio, that’s exactly what he was doing. It was Jan. 6, and Goodman, a Capitol Police ...
