AFG

I don’t even know what this one stands for. But it was a combined live fire exercise led by Afghan Tactical Air Controllers (ATACs). ATACs are trained by coalition JTACs to be the eyes on the ground and call in air strikes. In this exercise, it was the first time they were tasked with also…

or Pew-muh as the Brits call them. I got to spend two days with the Puma pilots and aircrew, harnessed in and shooting pictures out of the open doors of the British workhorse. The assignment was to take photos of landmarks around Kabul for a comparison to archived images, showing the growth and development that…

Remember my post about TM? Well, after he returned to the states, he wrote this article: https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/checkpoint/wp/2016/10/16/band-aid-on-a-bullet-wound-what-americas-new-war-looks-like-in-afghanistans-most-violent-province/ Resolute Support leadership had a conniption, removed two colonels from their posts, launched an official investigation (15-6) and created an environment where all subordinate commands are afraid to talk to the media and blame their PAOs if they…

Fat Kid Fridays. Fridays are really the only day we look forward to eating at the DFAC. Because Friday is the Afghan weekend and most Afghans do not work, it’s a “low-ops” day for most of us on RS HQ. This just means, unless something is going on, we don’t have to come into the office…

On November 9, a huge bomb detonated. It wasn’t something I was prepared for; a situation pushed to the back of my mind because the chances of it actually occurring seemed so unlikely, nearly impossible. Then it happened. Shock, disappointment, helplessness, fear and a few other unfamiliar emotions I don’t know how to describe quickly set…

It’s 2200 (10 pm) and I just now got back to my room. This isn’t an exceptionally late night, I’ve worked until 10 pm several times since I’ve been here. The difference being that on those nights, I was working. Tonight, I had very little going on; I browsed facebook, I reluctantly ate some sugar…

Mophie was my first. The first embed I coordinated from the initial request through the final escort out the gate. Mophie, a nickname derived from her AOL email address, was kind of a hot mess from the beginning. Often uttered throughout the process were the words, “fuckin mophie”. When a reporter reaches out to us, we…

One of the reporters I escorted to the PEH was beginning a 10 day embed that we had planned/coordinated for him. PEH Afghan Air Force school was not the story he wanted to tell and he made that very obvious throughout the tour of the school. Aloof and uninterested, he didn’t participate in any of…

Pohantoon-e-Hawayee (PEH) is the officer candidate school for the Afghan Air Force. It is a one-year program and upon graduation the candidates are commissioned as officers and then go on to specialty schools such as pilot training or maintenance engineering school. The school is on the Afghan Air Force base, which is co-located with the…

When I am in place I am unfamiliar with and ask someone, “Hey, where’s the head,” they are usually an army soldier and they look at me like “what the hell are you talking about.” To which I return a very similar look to express “oh shit, you’re a soldier, what the hell do you…