Aviation

Robin Olds roared into combat with a handlebar mustache, a middle finger to bureaucracy, and a brain wired for turning aerial warfare into an art form.

Drones aren’t the future of warfare—they’re the present, and anyone not paying attention is already a step behind.

As Iran buries its war dead, Israel pounds Hezbollah targets in Lebanon, the U.S. Air Force fast-tracks the A-10’s retirement, and Republicans hit a wall trying to deregulate gun suppressors—reminding us that whether it’s on the battlefield or Capitol Hill, the fight never really ends. Here is your SOFREP Saturday Evening Brief for June 28th, 2025.

Helicopters, those damnable, awe-inspiring beasts, taught me the hard limits of man and machine through a litany of mishaps, from hard landings in brown-out dust to emergency ocean bailouts and explosive chaos, revealing their true worth only when pushed to the edge.

We did more than send a message—we carved it into the bedrock with a 30,000-pound pen named MOP and left Tehran to read it in the dark.

After the U.S. dropped bunker busters on Iran’s nuclear sites, Tehran fired off missile barrages at Israel, kicking off a brutal exchange that’s drawn in Washington, rattled the region, and made clear this fight is only getting hotter. Welcome to Sunday, June 22, 2025. This is your SOFREP Morning Brief.

When the WC-135R fires up its engines and climbs into the stratosphere, it’s not chasing storms or enemy fighters—it’s hunting radioactive ghosts that might signal the world’s next nightmare.

Chief Warrant Officer 2 Dustin K. Wright didn’t die in combat, but in the unforgiving crucible of preparation—where the Army sharpens its blade and sometimes bleeds in the process.

In the span of a few haunted hours in Honduras, First Lieutenant Marciano Parisano went from a promising young Black Hawk pilot to a name etched into Army CID’s most urgent case files—and someone out there knows why.

The A-1 Skyraider, a rugged and versatile workhorse of the skies, proved its mettle from the Korean War to the jungles of Vietnam, earning an indelible place in aviation history as the “flying dump truck” that could deliver devastating firepower and absorb substantial damage.

Quiet Skies was a $200 million-a-year ghost hunt that swapped due process for paranoia and turned air marshals into glorified skybound voyeurs with clipboards.

Trump’s new ride may be wrapped in gold and gifted with a bow, but this Qatari jumbo jet is shaping up to be a four hundred million dollar headache masquerading as a bargain.