The Oregon Air National Guard’s 142nd Wing dropped live bombs from its F-15EX Eagle IIs — the first time an operational Eagle II unit has done so, according to official photos and captions released Wednesday. The drops came during a three-week deployment to Nellis Air Force Base, Nevada, that ended this month.The wing said the deployment, in support of the Air Force Weapons Instructor Course, produced “a historical milestone, dropping live bombs from operational F-15EXs for the first time.” The images show jets on the ramp and in the air on Aug. 27, some carrying a live 500-pound Mk-82 on…
Author: Tommy Grant
In the 1980s, where does a young, aspiring firearm enthusiast from NYC buy his first handgun? On the streets, of course.I did not grow up around guns the way many traditional American gun owners did. Like maybe you did. Learning the fundamentals of shooting with a Ruger 10/22, a 22 pistol, or a classic 1911 would have been ideal.Unfortunately, I was born in Brooklyn, New York, and raised in Queens in the 1970s and 1980s. If there was a civilian gun culture in New York City back then, it mostly belonged to police officers, security guards, and the occasional hunter…
Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman sought assistance from U.S. President Donald Trump on Thursday to help fight Yemen’s Iran-aligned Houthis, two sources familiar with the matter said on Friday, as the Houthis stepped up their threat to the Red Sea.Trump held at least two phone conversations with the Saudi leader on Thursday, sources said. In the end, Washington told Riyadh that it was not willing to take direct military action for now but would help with intelligence sharing and targeting, the two sources said.The White House did not address a Reuters question on any phone calls between the two…
Twenty-five years after the deadliest attack on U.S. soil, Americans paused on Friday to commemorate the nearly 3,000 people killed when hijacked planes slammed into the World Trade Center, the Pentagon and a field in Pennsylvania — and to wrestle with the consequences of September 11 that reverberate to this day.In New York, family members of the victims, many carrying pictures of their loved ones, joined Vice President JD Vance and four former U.S. presidents at Ground Zero in Lower Manhattan. The ceremony began, as always, at 8:46 a.m. Eastern Standard Time with a moment of silence to remember the…
A major artificial intelligence company said that Iranian bad actors used its publicly accessible software to target U.S. service members in the Middle East.The Thursday Anthropic report covers the time period between December 2025 and August 2026 and highlights the misuse of its large language model Claude, which it says the threat actor used to make targeting recommendations against U.S. Navy forces in the region.“The threat actor used Claude to compile targeting handbooks…to identify and track naval positions based on open-source information,” the report said.The bad actor used the AI software to collect information that included a list of U.S.…
Missile defense in wartime involves many complications. Human operators must deal with high-speed objects, short timelines and sensor data that isn’t always clear.The Pentagon now wants artificial intelligence that can cut through the confusion. It’s seeking “AI-based software tools to turn fragmented sensor data into a continuously updated understanding of space and missile threats fast enough to drive operational decisions,” according to the Defense Innovation Unit solicitation, which is due Sept. 24. “Existing tools struggle to distinguish closely spaced objects, track emerging threats, and keep threat models current.”The project, known as the “Space Threat Intelligence Synthesis Engine,” will leverage AI’s…
A video shared by Iran Wednesday purported to show an American Saildrone unmanned surface vessel near the Strait of Hormuz in flames after being attacked by the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps has been making the rounds on social media.U.S. officials disputed that claim.“All of our Saildrones are accounted for and fully operational,” an official told Military Times.The video comes on the heels of another incident in which an Anduril Dive-LD autonomous underwater vehicle — designed for long-range surveillance and other undersea missions — was captured on Sept. 8. U.S. Navy Capt. Tim Hawkins of U.S. Central Command told Reuters that…
For many Americans, 9/11 can seem like a distant memory, with millions not even born yet. But for U.S. Air Force Capt. Hanna Born, the 2,977 lives lost that day will always be something to remember and honor.Born, an instructor pilot assigned to the 23rd Flying Training Squadron at Fort Rucker, Alabama, has a personal connection to that day, propelling her to join military service and begin Run to Remember, her journey to share on social media a mile for every life lost, she told Military Times.Just before Born turned three years old, she and her four-month-old sister were inside…
The Brief: A 37-year-old man was wounded and arrested after forcibly entering a Milwaukee home on Thursday morning. Upon encountering the intruder inside, a resident used a firearm to shoot the suspect, halting the break-in. Responding police officers took the wounded intruder into custody and transported him to a hospital. The resident was uninjured and cooperated fully with law enforcement. The Milwaukee County District Attorney’s Office will review the case under Wisconsin’s Castle Doctrine, which provides legal protections for occupants who use force against individuals forcibly entering an occupied home. MILWAUKEE, WI — A dangerous daytime break-in attempt ended with…
This story was originally published in the August 2003 issue of Outdoor Life.What is the Bear Matrix? It’s a world of horrific maulings, canine teeth gnawing on scalps, claws ripping into flesh and people being eaten. No, this isn’t a nightmare—it’s a computer database compiling info on more than 500 bear attacks that have occurred in Alaska since the early 1900s.The gatekeeper of this data is U.S. Geological Survey research biologist Tom Smith. Smith is one of the few people who can analyze the patterns contained within the database, and his research shows that bear attacks are anything but random…