Cold War

For decades, the Central Intelligence Agency, along with its West German counterpart the Federal Intelligence Service (BND), secretly controlled the Swiss-based company Crypto AG, which enabled them to engage in decades of communication interception. Crypto AG, which went defunct in 2018, sold encryption devices to governments across the world. However, this CIA-owned company managed to […]

Television and radio news outlets are providing updates on the current spread of the Coronavirus. The Coronavirus first presented itself to the medical researchers in 1960 when it was found in the respiratory tract of a patient with a common cold. It gets its name from the crown-like spikes which radiate out from all over […]

Amidst the rugged Radfan mountains and the political upheaval of 1964 Aden, the SAS faced treacherous tribal rebels, culminating in harrowing skirmishes and a stark reminder of war’s brutalities within Aden’s city limits.

The use of soft power in foreign policy is often aided by the knowledge that should it not be effective, military (hard) power is waiting in the wings. Following this argument, it seems logical to conclude then that when boots are on the ground, soft power has come up short. The military’s mission is to […]

This is the second part of a series, you can read part one here. The Egyptian Air Force. That was the true menace. Soldiers and tanks, the royalists could manage. But against the enemy MiG 17 fighters and Ilyushin II-28 bombers they were helpless. So, the mercenaries’ first task seemed simple: recce Sanaa, the Yemeni […]

What happens if you put a Yemeni tribal fighter, an Egyptian soldier, a European mercenary, a Saudi prince, a Jordanian king, and an Israeli politician together? A war teeming with geopolitics, controversy, war crimes, covert ops, and sheer adventure. The North Yemen Civil War (1962-1970), fought between an Egyptian-backed puppet government and a royalist tribal […]

Submachine guns had been Russia’s forte’ during the Second World War, when several million copies were produced of the PPSH-41 and PPS-43 variants. With millions available, tacticians found that the employment of such weapons spurred the creation of a new doctrine of warfare, where firepower was favored over accuracy. This innovation would peak with the development […]

The hypersonic arms race going on between Russia, China and the United States has seen its fair share of legitimate developments happen alongside a flurry of international rhetoric that sometimes doesn’t seem quite so legitimate. Now, the head of Russian ship-maker United Shipbuilding Corporation, Alexei Rakhmanov, is claiming that all modern warships in the Russian […]

When it comes to action-packed blockbusters, no one in the game has demonstrated a propensity for creating solid-to-great movies that share a single cinematic universe like Marvel has. From the early days of “Iron Man” to significant tonal shifts in movies like “Guardians of the Galaxy” and “Thor: Ragnarok,” Marvel has shown us that they […]

In 1969, America won the Space Race by landing on the moon. In the half-century since, technology has made just about everything easier except getting back up there. In this two part series, we explore some of the reasons why a modern moon mission is a long shot in its own right. In part one, […]

On July 20, 1969, Neil Armstrong and Edwin “Buzz” Aldrin fulfilled the dreams of generations as they stepped out of the thin protective shell of their lunar lander and onto the alien surface of our moon. For the first time in history, mankind occupied not one, but two separate and distinct celestial bodies, making their […]

In our modern world full of seemingly countless potential threats, the idea of “prepping” for a disaster has become increasingly commonplace among even the most unplugged of Americans. Whether it is Iran’s and North Korea’s steady progress toward operational nuclear weapons, growing concerns about China and Russia, or even domestic fears about terrorism, economic collapse, […]