View From The Porch

Wednesday saw the official retirement of the AV-8B Harrier II V/STOL ground attack aircraft by the USMC after four decades of service.

" Here’s a joke about the U.S. military services that you may have heard: The Army and Navy are branches, the Air Force is a corporatio...

Did you remember to leave cheap whiskey and crayons out for the ghosts of Dan Daley, Smedley Butler, and Chesty Puller last night? .

" If you're not a shooter, that might not sound like a big deal, but hitting a target more than a quarter mile away with no optica...

On this day in 1775, in Tun Tavern in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, the very first U.S. Marine made his mark on the dotted line, laid the pen ...

239 already? You don't look a day over 225. .

Happy Birthday to all Shock Trooper Devil Dog Blood-Sucking War Machines everywhere! There is a new Sunday Smith up at the other blog. ...

I just finished re-reading Gates of Fire for the first time in several years. The most-remembered highlights of the book are the one-liners...

On this day in 1775, in Tun Tavern in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, the very first U.S. Marine made his mark on the dotted line, laid the pen ...

On this date in 1775, the first guy to sign on the dotted line in Tun Tavern in Philadelphia turned, looked at the second guy in line, and s...

The 42-kiloton Russian VTOL cruiser Kiev , launched in 1972, was the terror of Tom Clancy novels and the boardgame Sixth Fleet when I was ...

You know what's cooler than a bulldozer? An armored bulldozer with a belt-fed 40mm grenade launcher, that's what .

...but I teared up .

On this date in 1776, the Continental Marine Corps captured Nassau in the Bahamas. For reasons that remain unclear to me, we gave it back. ...

So the USMC came to town about a week ago to practice urban warfare in our modern nation-building era. The plan was to practice deploying fr...

Tonight I will likely dream about being a sandbag .