Articles by Dave Patterson

In today’s accounts of the tensions between the US and China, we often hear the following description: “It’s a new Cold War.” Ok, so what was the “old Cold War”? The end of World War II set the stage for… Read More

The US Coast Guard has served the country throughout its history, tracing its origin to “4 August 1790, when the first Congress authorized the construction of ten vessels to enforce tariff and trade laws and to prevent smuggling.” Consequently, with… Read More

The glory days of fighter aircraft dogfights are not gone — just different. On March 21, President Donald Trump announced from the Oval Office that the US Air Force had selected a winner in the Next Generation Air Dominance (NGAD)… Read More

Throughout human history, the end of one war has usually proven to be the makings of the next. So it was with “The Great War,” World War I. The peace negotiations held in Paris between January and June 1919 transformed… Read More

By its founding nature and culture, America has been reluctant to engage in foreign wars. However, in the early 1900s, things happened in Europe that eventually drew almost the entire world into war. The history of the US military in… Read More

“Space, the final frontier,” said William Shatner as Captain James Tiberius Kirk in the intro to every episode of the 1960s television show Star Trek. Kirk and his crew were military members of Starfleet whose mission was, among other things,… Read More

President Donald Trump is rapidly carrying out deportations of illegal alien criminals. He used military aircraft, most notably the C-17 Globemaster III cargo aircraft, to do that. However, the use of the large US Air Force airlifter has drawn criticism… Read More

Until Congress passed the National Security Act on July 26, 1947, no military department of the US Air Force (USAF) existed. Two months later, W. Stuart Symington became the first Air Force secretary, and a week later, Gen. Carl A…. Read More

“From the Halls of Montezuma to the shores of Tripoli” is how the US Marine Corps song starts. The Marines have historically been deployed over beaches in amphibious landings. According to the official History of the Marine Corps, in 1776,… Read More

America’s Navy is more powerful than any other in the world, but that wasn’t always the case. The US Navy was first designated the Continental Navy. Not long after the Revolutionary War ground battles at Lexington and Concord, Massachusetts, on… Read More

Syria has been all over the news lately. Surrounded by Turkey to the north, Iraq to the east, and with Jordan, Israel, and Lebanon, to the south and southwest, Syria has been one of the most fought over and conquered… Read More

How did the United States of America develop into the most powerful nation in history? This is the first of a series on the history of the US Armed Forces that will answer that question. In this, the first part… Read More