Dustin Jones is a former senior staff writer for Coffee or Die Magazine covering military and intelligence news. Jones served four years in the Marine Corps with tours to Iraq and Afghanistan. He studied journalism at the University of Colorado and Columbia University. He has worked as a reporter in Southwest Montana and at NPR. A New Hampshire native, Dustin currently resides in Southern California. He wants to hear your stories and tips at dustin.jones@blackriflecoffee.com.
The Navy is holding more than 30 sailors — from junior enlisted members to admirals — responsible for failing to extinguish a fire aboard the USS Bonhomme Richard last July. Though the fire’s cause was determined to be arson, the ship was ultimately ...
With the last chance to get jabbed or get out coming as soon as Nov. 2, close to 430,000 service members — most of whom are in the Army — are in danger of missing the military vaccine deadline, according to the latest Pentagon data. However, one ...
Starting Oct. 1, the Marines began judging their marksmanship in a new way. Marines will no longer shoot their qualifying courses of fire in the traditional order of prone, kneeling, and standing positions. To qualify as riflemen, Marines now face a ...
When the Army announced this past summer that 60 men who fought in the Battle of Mogadishu would have their valor awards upgraded together, the news struck home for a band of veterans of the fight who have long felt overlooked. Men of the 10th ...
Eighteen veterans of the Army’s 75th Ranger Regiment who fought in the 1993 Battle of Mogadishu will have their combat awards upgraded in a ceremony at Fort Benning Friday morning, Oct. 1. For each, a valor award from the battle will be upgraded to a ...
A Marine commander who catapulted to national notoriety last month by recording YouTube videos critical of the Afghanistan withdrawal is in pretrial confinement in the Regional Brig aboard Camp Lejeune pending an Article 32 hearing. Marine Corps Lt. ...
When James Gonzalez heard Gen. Kenneth McKenzie admit in a live news conference that a drone airstrike last month in Kabul had not hit a terrorist but instead had killed 10 civilians — including seven children — he was dumbfounded. Gonzalez spent ...
When Alyssa McClellan heard Afghan refugees were bound for Oklahoma, she felt compelled to do something. That isn't unusual for Sooners (Oklahomans). Though it's only the 28th most populous state in the US, Oklahoma ranks third for the number of ...
The Air Force inspector general will review the drone strike that killed 10 civilians — including seven children — in Kabul, Afghanistan, on Aug. 29. The review — which will comb through US Central Command’s already completed investigation of the ...
The United Nations hoped to raise more than $600 million in humanitarian aid for Afghanistan during talks in Geneva Monday, Sept. 13. But donors doubled that goal, pledging $1.2 billion for the Afghan people, with the US Agency for International ...
The Army joined the Air Force, Navy, and Marine Corps Tuesday, Sept. 14, with strict, midwinter vaccine deadlines for all troops. According to an Army press release establishing deadlines for troops to get the COVID-19 shot, "Active duty units are ...
Of the 32 ministers and senior officials the Taliban named to their newly formed government in Afghanistan this week, at least 14 have been sanctioned by the United Nations, and at least three appear to have been released from Naval Station ...
The Taliban claimed this week to have taken the Panjshir Valley, the last holdout of the National Resistance Front of Afghanistan, an anti-Taliban group that Western nations had hoped would represent a legitimate military challenge to the Taliban. ...
A Marine Raider was awarded the Navy Cross Aug. 26 for single-handedly assaulting a series of ISIS-held cave complexes in Iraq, in an attempt to rescue three injured teammates. Commandant of the Marine Corps Gen. David Berger presented the award to ...
The US Navy released on Sunday the names of five Helicopter Sea Combat Squadron 8 crew members who were killed in a crash off the coast of San Diego Tuesday, Aug. 31. The investigation into the incident is ongoing, but according to the Navy, the ...
On Monday, Aug. 30, US forces evacuated Kabul’s Hamid Karzai International Airport, capping a war that lasted two decades and leaving Taliban militias to run Afghanistan. Shortly after the last US plane left, air traffic over the Asian nation ...
Logansport, Indiana, soccer coach Mike Turner remembers Humberto Sanchez from 2016. “He was, in a sense, he was a soldier,” Turner told the Pharos-Tribune. “You have role players on your team and we categorize guys. We have soldiers, soldier ...
Ben Arlotta knew where Rylee McCollum would have been. “The good ones are always the ones standing up front," said Arlotta, McCollum's wrestling coach and a friend of his family. "The ones leading the patrol, leading from a point of example and ...
On the 7,293rd day since the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks, US Central Command Commander Gen. Kenneth McKenzie Jr. announced the end of the Afghanistan war minutes after the last US aircraft — call sign "Moose88" — took off from Hamid Karzai International ...
ISIS-K, the Islamic State group’s Afghan branch, has claimed responsibility for a deadly attack outside the Hamid Karzai International Airport in Kabul Thursday, Aug. 26, that left 13 US service members killed and another 18 wounded. News reports ...
The evacuation efforts in Kabul have moved into “retrograde” in the last 24 hours as US forces pivot toward a Tuesday, Aug. 31, deadline that, so far, President Joe Biden says the US will stick to. A Coffee or Die Magazine reporter in Kabul and ...
The next battle for Afghanistan is already starting in the one valley where battle never really ends. Freedom fighters and remnants of the Afghan military are holed up in Afghanistan’s Panjshir Valley, to the north of Kabul, and near the Pakistan ...
It's hard to accurately explain the scale of this. Like a World War II siege or retreat mixed with a natural disaster. Dunkirk and Hurricane Katrina combined. All of the gates are impassable. Not only impassable but a hazard to human life. ...
President Joe Biden reiterated Friday, Aug. 20, a pledge that the US would get all American citizens and their families out of Afghanistan. A deal brokered between the US and the Taliban this week promises safe passage to Hamid Karzai International ...
Tensions are on the rise at Kabul airport as the United States and the rest of the world race to evacuate citizens and vulnerable Afghans. Reports have begun to surface of troops from England and other nations moving off of Hamid Karzai International ...
Inside Kabul, they were sure the city would hold. On Friday, Aug. 13, an Afghan National Army colonel inside the capital told Coffee or Die Magazine that Kabul would take three to four months to fall to the Taliban. The same day, one former Army ...
Resistance fighters are gathering in Panjshir province on Afghanistan's eastern border, according to reports trickling out of the country. Videos and news reports indicate that several bands of anti-Taliban militias and groups are gathering in ...
The Department of Defense confirmed that US troops killed two gunmen who opened fire Monday, Aug. 16, at the Hamid Karzai International Airport in Kabul. Pentagon press secretary John Kirby also told reporters that one American service member may ...
Thousands of US troops are being positioned for a potential evacuation of the US Embassy as the Taliban continue to tighten their grip on Afghanistan, according to a Pentagon spokesperson and reporting by The New York Times. The contingency plans ...
Secretary of Defense Lloyd Austin announced Monday that he intends to mandate all US military troops, civilian contractors, and employees to be vaccinated for COVID-19 by mid-September. But some military members — and several Republican lawmakers — ...
