The U.S. Army’s Gun-Toting Space Soldiers
This story originally appeared on Nov. 9, 2015. In space, no one can hear you scream. But in the early days of the space age, the Pentagon had a bigger problem — namely, earthly notions of ballistics...
View ArticleU.S. Worried North Korea Is a Biological Time Bomb
This story originally appeared on April 25, 2014. It appears Pyongyang is preparing for yet another nuclear weapons test. But North Korea may pose as much of a biological threat as an atomic one. While...
View ArticleMud Wars: How the U.S. Air Force Tried to Muck Up Vietnam
This story originally appeared on Jan. 19, 2014. It’s a safe bet to say most people outgrew their fascination with playing in mud sometime in elementary school. Perhaps even fewer would consider it a...
View ArticleIn ’Nam, the U.S. Army Turned Truck Drivers Into Maritime Cops
The 458th Transportation Company wasn’t supposed to be the U.S. Army’s river police force. The soldiers were truck drivers America, and didn’t know much about patrolling hostile waterways. But the Army...
View ArticleHere Are the Leaflets the United States Dropped on Islamic State
This story originally appeared on Jan. 22, 2016. On Nov. 15, 2015, U.S. Air Force A-10 ground-attack planes and AC-130 gunships blew up a truck park near Abu Kamal, Iraq. The American pilots destroyed...
View ArticleThe Pentagon Dropped Billions of Leaflets … That No One Read
This story originally appeared on March 20, 2015. The United States and its allies dropped some 2.5 billion propaganda leaflets during the Korean War. But after the 1953 armistice which halted the...
View ArticleThe U.S. Army’s Failed Quest to Create Floating Tank Divisions
This story originally appeared on Feb. 1, 2016. Amphibious assaults are the domain of the U.S. Marines, not the Army. But there was a period in history when the Army tried to out-do the Marines in...
View ArticleSoviet Nuke Attack Could Have Cut Off U.S. Missile Submarines
This story originally appeared on Oct. 16, 2015. A key component of the U.S. doctrine of mutually assured destruction — commonly and appropriately known as MAD — was that American troops would still be...
View ArticleThe Air Force Can’t Quit NASCAR
This story originally appeared on Feb. 29, 2016. America’s most famous auto raceway looms large between a beach and a mall not far from the airport in Daytona Beach, eastern Florida’s self-styled...
View ArticleDated U.S. Army Manual Tells Female Troops to ‘Guard Against Rape’
This story originally appeared on Oct. 31, 2014. Decades ago, the U.S. Army offered sometimes degrading suggestions on how to avoid rapists, survive a sexual assault and what to do in the aftermath of...
View ArticleThe U.S. Army Had a Whole Unit of Psychic Spies
This story originally appeared on Aug. 27, 2016. On Sept. 15, 1995, Army chief of staff Gen. Gordon Sullivan held a meeting with a colonel from the service’s top watchdog agency as well as with another...
View ArticleAmerican Hand Grenades Have Some Odd Connections to Sports
This story originally appeared on Dec. 29, 2014. Most people would probably agree that playing catch with a hand grenade is a bad idea. On one occasion in 2005, three young people died in Bosnia while...
View ArticleSpies Helped the USAF Shoot Down a Third of North Vietnam’s MiG-21s
This story originally appeared on Dec. 30, 2014. On Jan. 2, 1967, around 30 U.S. Air Force F-4 Phantom fighter jets flying from Ubon in Thailand shot down a full third of North Vietnam’s MiG-21s—for a...
View ArticleThere Was No Way a P-51 Could Replace the A-10
This story originally appeared on Dec. 17, 2014. The U.S. Air Force has a complicated relationship with its low- and slow-flying A-10 Warthog attack jet. And that’s putting it mildly. The flying branch...
View ArticleThis Rocket Launcher Was the U.S. Army’s Last Flamethrower
This story originally appeared on April 27, 2015. To be on the receiving end of a flamethrower is surely terrifying, but man-portable versions have their limitations. The big one is that they...
View ArticleNSA Spies Helped Save Drones From a Fiery Death Over Vietnam
This story originally appeared on Feb. 24, 2015. The Air Force unleashed its first major drone program during the Vietnam War. In short order, the North Vietnamese compromised the aerial spies’ codes...
View ArticleThe U.S. Air Force Almost Sent ‘Starter’ Attack Planes to Europe
This story first appeared on Feb. 23, 2014. In September 2009, the U.S. Air Forces in Europe asked to host the first squadron of light attack planes that, at the time, were planned for purchase by a...
View ArticleU.S. Commandos Were Fond of Captured AK-47s
This story originally appeared on May 26, 2015. While the Soviet Avtomat Kalashnikova has become the iconic weapon of bad guys in Hollywood blockbusters and big-budget video games, U.S. commandos made...
View ArticleSouth Vietnamese Troops Almost Fought on Battle Bicycles
This story originally appeared on March 26, 2016. In early 1965, villagers across South Vietnam might have watched a curious military formation race through their hamlets. No, not heavily-armed troops...
View ArticleB.Z. Gas Rendered the Enemy Too Irritable to Fight
This story originally appeared on Oct. 27, 2014. During the Cold War, the Soviet Union and its Warsaw Pact allies could expect all sort of dangers if they ever got into a war with the United...
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