Author: Braxton Taylor

Secretary of the Army Dan Driscoll commended six soldiers at Fort Stewart, Georgia, on Thursday for their actions during an active-shooter incident that left multiple troops injured and briefly locked down one of the service’s highest-profile bases.The soldiers were awarded the Meritorious Service Medal for what Driscoll described as a combination of bravery, decisive action, and lifesaving medical care. The shooting unfolded Wednesday in the 2nd Armored Brigade Combat Team area, prompting a rapid response from unit members who subdued the attacker and administered aid to the wounded before emergency personnel arrived.”It will be a little bit before this moment…

An Air Force B-2 Spirit crash at Whiteman Air Force Base, Missouri, in 2022 that caused upward of $300 million worth of damage was due to a landing gear issue, a new accident investigation details.The B-2 stealth bomber, call sign DEATH 12, attempted to land on Dec. 10, 2022, after a training mission and experienced a hydraulic system failure when trying to land, resulting in the bomber skidding more than 9,000 feet down a runway before it burst into flames. Once the crew touched down, the left landing gear “collapsed immediately,” causing the left wing tip to scrape the ground…

After years of delays, United Launch Alliance is set to launch its first military mission on the new heavy-lift Vulcan rocket next week.The mission, USSF-106, will send into geostationary-Earth orbit the Navigation Technology Satellite-3, or NTS-3, an experimental navigation satellite built by L3Harris and funded by the Air Force Research Laboratory.  The company, which is moving its heavy-lift work to the Vulcan rocket, was supposed to launch four Space Force missions last year. That number was pared to two and pushed to 2025, in part due to delays with certifying the rocket after its second flight in October. During that flight,…

LAS VEGAS—When Bailey Bickley took the stage at Black Hat, she shared a photo that stood in stark contrast to the polished glass-and-steel image of a typical defense contractor: a small, cluttered office with taxidermy on the walls.A bison head, a deer head, and almost the entire front half of a water buffalo were visible in the workspace, which also showed a triple-monitor setup with filing cabinets, a copy machine, and plenty of figurines. No other computers could be seen.“This is a real picture of one such [defense industrial base] company. We went to visit their headquarters,” said Bickley, who leads…

ProPublica is a nonprofit newsroom that investigates abuses of power. Sign up to receive our biggest stories as soon as they’re published.In the early morning hours of June 13, a commando team led by a young Iranian, S.T., settled into position on the outskirts of Tehran. The target was an anti-aircraft battery, part of the umbrella of radars and missiles set up to protect the capital and its military installations from aerial attack.Across the country, teams of Israeli-trained commandos recruited from Iran and neighboring nations were preparing to attack Iranian defenses from within.As described by their handlers, their motives were a mix…

Streamlight Inc. recently unveiled the new Streamlight ProTac 2.0 HP, a tactical and everyday-carry-friendly flashlight that delivers large amounts of candela and draws power from Streamlight’s SL-B50 USB-C rechargeable battery pack. This tactical handheld light has many of Streamlight’s classic features that its customers have come to appreciate, including a ruggedized 6000-series anodized aluminum construction. It also includes features such as Streamlight’s “Ten-Tap” programmable tail switch that allows the end-user to cycle between different lighting and intensity giving them the option between three different modes: high/strobe/low; high only and low/medium/high. The ProTac 2.0 HP also features an anti-roll head and…

A soldier opened fire on his coworkers at Fort Stewart Army base in Georgia, injuring five before he was subdued and taken into custody, Army officials said in a press conference Wednesday afternoon. Two of the wounded remain hospitalized Thursday morning, while three others were released Wednesday, CNN reports. Latest: The Army awarded the Meritorious Service Medal to six soldiers who intervened in a brief presentation livestreamed Thursday morning at Fort Stewart. The alleged shooter was a 28-year-old supply sergeant with no prior deployments who used his personal handgun for the violence, Brig. Gen. John Lubas told reporters. He had purchased the…

The Montana Highway Patrol (MHP) has selected the Smith & Wesson M&P15 SBR platform and Gemtech Abyss as its patrol rifle and suppressor of choice, respectively. Officers from the law enforcement agency are already issued M&P9 M2.0s as their primary duty pistol. “This year, 2025, marks the 90th anniversary of the founding of the Montana Highway Patrol,” said Maj. Chan Barry, Montana Highway Patrol operations commander. “For most of those years our Patrolmen, now Troopers, were armed with a Smith & Wesson revolver or pistol. In addition to the Smith & Wesson M&P9 M2.0 that our Troopers carry on their person, we have…

I can already see the skepticism in your scrunched face as you read this byline. It’s the same look I get when I tell anyone that I write poetry. Unless you read it in your spare time or pursued a degree in English literature, you probably have preconceived (and incorrect) notions about what exactly poetry is.Most folks immediately think of Shakespeare, hard end rhymes, and unrequited love, or the clichéd Pinterest poems that everyone from your grandmother to your melodramatic teenage sister shares online. But like music, poetry has many genres, themes, and subject matters—and that includes hunting. Some of…

A Canadian man who played fast and loose with wildlife laws for well over a decade just received his latest punishment—and it’s a severe one. On July 25, British Columbia Supreme Court judge David Crerar sentenced Scott Steer of Gabriola Island to six years of jail time and over $1 million Canadian dollars in fines for Fisheries Act violations. Image of Scott Steer via Nanaimo RCMP.The recent sentencing has to do with, among other violations, the illegal harvesting and selling of more than $1 million worth of sea cucumbers in 2019 and 2020; he reportedly continued to do so as…