The 29-year-old sergeant fought with gun, grenades, and knife in a dark house with sewage flooding the floor and broken mirrors glinting on the bullet-marked walls.

This week the White House will issue its second Medal of Honor in recent months for extreme valor in the Battle for Robert’s Ridge, recognizing one of the most intense and influential firefights of the post-9/11 era. It will be awarded posthumously to Air Force Combat Controller John Chapman. Sometimes at night they huddled over a… Keep reading →

President Trump will present the Medal of Honor, the nation’s highest award for valor, to Master Chief Special Warfare Operator Britt Slabinski for embodying the U.S. military’s code of “leave no man behind.” The “Battle of Robert’s Ridge” claimed the lives of seven U.S. elite troops and was one of the bloodiest engagements for Special Forces up to that point in the post-9/11 Global War On Terror. 

Budget battles between the Army and what would become the Air Force date back to the court-martial of Billy Mitchell in 1925. In the late 1990s the two services hurled imprecations, arguments and doctrine at each other as they fought over a shrinking pool of money, a situation not unlike what we face today. Those stresses are… Keep reading →

Americans are understandably weary of our nation’s longest war. But even when the last troops come home from Afghanistan – which they won’t for at least three years – their battles won’t be over, and they’ll still need our support. Just as there are almost three million World War II veterans still alive today, we… Keep reading →