Army

The battlefield is about to drown in cheap, buzzing machines, and the Army is betting its future on swarms that die by the dozen so soldiers don’t have to.

In the harsh neon glow of a Kansas hotel room, a 28-year-old Guardsman inked a “covert relationship” with ghosts he thought were Russian agents, pocketed cash, snapped pics of Fort Riley, and tried to mail an American helicopter radio to Russia—only to learn later the feds were the ones writing the script.

On a moonlit run into North Vietnam on November 21, 1970, Bull Simons and 56 Green Berets hit Son Tay with surgical violence, found the cells empty, and left the nearby Secondary School littered with bodies that looked a lot more like Chinese advisors than local NVA, a truth the official record preferred to bury.

A former Army HUMINT team leader who treated Top Secret access like a ticket to Beijing now has four years to think about the keys he tried to hand a hostile service.

Back home I kept checking my watch as if Iraq still owned my hours, wrestling to set down anger and pride so I could ask the only question that matters: what moral ground must we stand on before we spend blood again.

He didn’t chase glory; he ran toward gunfire because that’s where his brothers were, and that’s where duty called.

High standards aren’t toxic; they’re the cure, learned the hard way one rep, one minute, one bite at a time.

Trump’s pick puts Hegseth’s closest soldier in the Army’s engine room, a hard charging infantryman who turns guidance into orders and makes the machine move on time.

At Grafenwoehr, a steady breath, a buddy brace and a clean trigger squeeze turn practice into battlefield readiness.

Thousands of miles from home like sand in the wind, I moved through Iraq’s villages learning the hearts of its people as Majnun once wandered, yet the constant guiding me through rain and dust was my Leila, the radiant beacon calling me home.

What rattled the ranks wasn’t haircuts or PT scores but the clear signal that oversight would be trimmed and those who balked should leave, a pressure play dressed up as readiness.

War is not glorious; it is the white hot rattle of a MEDEVAC, two blood slick hands locked after an IED blast near Kandahar, and a young sergeant who learns the hard Latin that war is only sweet for those who have not been through it.