The Romans knew well from that time that victory over the enemy began with logistics
What was inside the legendary “sarcina”, the backpack that carried the Empire on its shoulders.
Imagine marching for tens of kilometers under the scorching sun, wearing heavy armor, a shield, a sword… and carrying a backpack that weighed more than 13 kilos.
This was the daily life of the Roman legionary. And this backpack was called precisely sarcina.
Much more than a simple weight, the sarcina was a symbol of discipline, resilience and autonomy of the most feared army of antiquity. Each soldier was trained to be almost an individual army on the move.
But what was inside the sarcina?
The Romans knew that victory began with logistics. So each legionary carried with him the essentials to camp, feed himself, shelter himself and survive for days, all on his shoulders.
Here’s what a Roman soldier carried:
●Dolabra (shovel/tile): used to dig trenches and build fortifications.
● Wooden poles (sweats): with these, they quickly erected defensive fences around the camps.
● Water ramp and clay or leather containers for carrying liquids.
● Portable mill: a stone mill to grind their own grain and produce their basic food ration.
● Iron frying pan, spoon and knife: for cooking and eating in the countryside.
● Rations: usually raw grain, dried meat, hard cheese, vinegar (mixed with water to purify) and even dried figs.
● Wool blanket or sheet (sagum): essential against the cold and rain.
● Spare tunic and personal items, such as coins, amulets or cards.
● Hygiene and sewing kit: because even an empire needs clean soldiers and tunics in good condition.
And all of this was tied together perfectly in a wooden frame, like a cross, fixed to a stick called a furca, which the soldier rested on his shoulder.
The most impressive thing is that these men walked for days, carrying everything, with the same rigidity and order with which they dominated the battlefields.
They were called, with a hint of sarcasm, “Marius’ mules”, in reference to General Gaius Marius, who reformed the Roman army and imposed that each soldier was responsible for his own equipment. A simple move, but one that transformed the Roman legion into a ruthless war machine.
The sarcina was not just a backpack. It was a symbol.
A reminder that Rome’s strength did not come only from swords, but from the ability of each man to stand, march and fight with everything he needed on his back.
This youthful rascal was the most successful fighter pilot of all time. He was around 21 years old in this picture.
Estimated reading time: 11 minutes
The famed Luftwaffe pilot Major Erich Hartmann was the most successful fighter ace ever, but he had a rocky start. He accidentally taxied a Ju-87 Stuka through a building after a ferry flight before he even saw action. On his first combat mission, Hartmann got fixated and ran his plane out of fuel without hitting an enemy aircraft. He ultimately crash-landed sixteen times. However, by the end of World War 2, he had flown 1,404 combat missions and had been credited with an astounding 352 aerial victories. Seven of his kills were American, while the rest were Russian—all at the controls of the Messerschmitt Bf-109. His tally will never be bested.
This is Erich Hartmann in the cockpit of an F-86 Sabre Jet flying for the West German Air Force after his period of Soviet captivity.
Prestigious Pilots
Hartmann shot down his 352d Allied plane mere hours before the war ended. He surrendered to American forces only to be handed over to the Soviets. They were none too grateful for his having shot down some 345 Russian aircraft. He served a decade in a communist gulag before returning to West Germany where he joined the West German Air Force. Hartmann was forcibly retired in 1970 over his opposition to the West German purchase of F-104 Starfighters, which he deemed unsafe. He spent his twilight years as a flight instructor. As a pilot myself I would dearly love to have his signature in my logbook.
By contrast, the leading American ace, Major Richard Bong, had 40 aerial victories. In both cases, these two men were treated like rock stars by their respective governments. Hartmann was awarded the Knight’s Cross with Oak Leaves, Swords, and Diamonds. At the time this was the most prestigious combat decoration offered by the German military.
Major Richard Bong was America’s highest-scoring ace of World War 2.
Major Bong earned the Medal of Honor. Both of these extraordinary aviators were extensively exploited by the media of the day to drum up support for their respective war efforts. So why the massive disparity in kill counts between these two esteemed pilots? That all comes down to national policy and priorities.
Destined to Fly
German aces flew until they died. Aside from the occasional leave, Hartmann flew combat constantly from October 1942 through the end of the war. By contrast, American policy was to rotate successful aces back to the States to sell war bonds and train new generations of pilots. This practice, combined with a seemingly infinite supply of top-quality warplanes, is what helped the Allies win the air war.
Both men later claimed that they were not great shots. Their preferred technique was to approach a target aircraft unawares and engage from close range out of an ambush position. While this seems neither chivalrous nor glamorous, war never is either of those things. The mission was to kill the enemy, and Bong and Hartmann were masters at it.
Before The Croc He Lived in Wisconsin
Richard Bong was born in Superior, Wisconsin, in September of 1920. He went by Dick. He was a compulsive model builder in his youth and played clarinet in his school band. In 1938 Bong enrolled in the Civilian Pilot Training Program and earned his wings. In May of 1941, he enlisted in the US Army Air Corps Aviation Cadet Program. One of his flight instructors was Captain Barry Goldwater who went on to become a US Senator of some renown.
Richard Bong was a hotshot pilot at a time when America desperately needed hotshot pilots. He was the right guy at the right time.
Bong eventually trained to fly the Lockheed P-38 Lightning. The Lightning was, in my opinion at least, the coolest-looking airplane ever to take to the skies. While training in California he was grounded for allegedly looping his twin-engine fighter around the Golden Gate Bridge and buzzing a woman low enough to blow the laundry off her clothesline. Because of this grounding, he missed his squadron’s combat deployment to Europe. As a result, he fell in on the 84th Fighter Squadron of the 78th Fighter Group and deployed to the Pacific theater.
P-38s were in short supply in 1942, so Bong claimed his first two kills at the controls of a P-40 Warhawk. However, by January of 1943 American industry was getting advanced aircraft to the combat zones in quantity. On 26 July 1943, Bong downed four enemy aircraft in a single day flying a Lightning. The young man was on a roll.
Major Bong placed a photograph of his girlfriend on the side of his fighter plane alongside his personal kill tally.
Quickly Improving
Dick Bong racked up an impressive record, besting Eddie Rickenbacker’s WW1 score of 26 in April of 1944. Shortly afterwards he returned to the States to sell war bonds and tour fighter training schools. When he returned to the Pacific in September he was assigned to V Fighter Command staff, nominally as a gunnery instructor. In this capacity, his job was simply to hunt Japanese aircraft.
As previously mentioned, Bong often disparaged his own marksmanship. However, one day while flying cover over an aircrew rescue mission he did some remarkably rarefied shooting. It was simply that, in this case, his quarry was not a Japanese warplane.
That Others Might Live…
This would not be my first choice as a place to ditch a plane.
The area of operations this day was Papua New Guinea. Papua New Guinea occupies the eastern half of New Guinea and represents some of the most forbidding terrain on earth. Mangrove swamps and impenetrable jungles were rife with both malarial mosquitoes and, no kidding, cannibals. It was a particularly sucky place to get shot down.
On the day in question, one of Bong’s fellow aviators had gone down in some particularly nasty jungle. Combat Search and Rescue was not the rarefied art that it is today, so any rescue efforts would be left up to Bong’s squadron. Once they had established the approximate location where this man had gone down, three of Bong’s squadron mates struck out in a tiny boat across an expansive lake in search of him. Bong orbited above to ensure that no Japanese fighter planes crashed the party.
The record saltwater croc was 28 feet. This is a life-sized replica on display in Australia. Wow.
…In A Deadly Place
Papua New Guinea is home to scads of stuff that can kill you. The New Guinea crocodile tops out at around 11 feet and typically keeps to itself. However, the legendary saltwater crocodile that is indigenous to the same area is a freaking monster. I saw these things in Australia back when I deployed there as a soldier in the 1990s, and they were positively prehistoric. Saltwater crocs enjoy a notoriously grouchy disposition and can reach lengths of 21 feet or more.
As Bong’s three mates made their way across this expansive lake in their tiny little boat, the eagle-eyed fighter pilot noted a disturbance in the water behind their craft. Swooping in for a closer look, Bong noted one of these leviathan crocodiles rapidly gaining on the boat. He had no means of communication with the hapless pilots, all three of whom were almost assuredly not aware of the threat steadily approaching from the stern. As such, Bong did what any decent fighter pilot might have done. He armed his guns.
The Airplane That Hit A Crocodile
The Lockheed P-38 Lightning is a uniquely sexy airplane.
The P-38 was unique among the pantheon of WW2 fighter aircraft in that it had a combination of four AN/M-2 .50-caliber machineguns along with a single 20mm cannon Hispano M2(C) 20mm cannon all clustered tightly in the nose. Each fifty packed 500 rounds, while the 20mm had 150. More conventional American combat aircraft like the P-40 Warhawk, the P-51 Mustang, and the F4U Corsair sported half a dozen AN/M-2 guns. The fact that those of the Lightning were collocated in the nose offered a greater density of fire and subsequent accuracy potential than aircraft with wing guns that had to be zeroed to converge at a fixed point in the distance.
However, the 20mm produced a lower muzzle velocity than the fifties and subsequently offered disparate ballistics as a result. In a running dogfight that’s not that big a deal. When you’re trying to keep your buddies from being eaten by a crocodile, however, it becomes fairly critical.
The guns on the P-38 were concentrated in the nose of the aircraft. This offered some formidable firepower density.
Just a Quick Burst of Bullets
Bong deactivated his fifties and left his 20mm hot. Slowing his speed to something comfortable he judged the geometry of the engagement and set up his attack run. By now the enormous predator was getting close to his pals. Pulling back his throttles until the big fighter was in a shallow glide, Bong aligned his glowing reticle with the huge reptile and squeezed off a burst.
A 20-foot crocodile is one of the most formidable predators in the natural world. However, its tough leathery hide is no match for half a dozen 20mm high explosive rounds. Bong blew the beast to pieces without harming his terrified buddies. Dick Bong famously adorned the side of his fighter plane with the smiling visage of his fiancée, Marjorie Vattendahl. Though his plane eventually sported 40 separate Japanese flags representing the enemy aircraft he had downed in combat, there was no indication that Bong ever added the crocodile to his official score.
The Rest of the Story
The single-engine Lockheed P-80 was notoriously unforgiving of mechanical failure.
As the nation’s top-scoring fighter ace, Major Bong was considered a national asset too valuable to risk further in combat. Bong was therefore sent home for good in January of 1945. After marrying Marge and taking a little well-deserved break, Bong assumed duties as a test pilot on the Lockheed P-80 Shooting Star, one of the first American combat jets.
The death of Major Dick Bong in an aircraft accident came as a shock to the entire country.
Right to the End
On 6 August 1945, Bong took off in a P-80 to perform an acceptance test flight. It was his 12th hop in the type. The Shooting Star’s fuel pump failed on takeoff, and the plane settled toward a small field at Oxnard Street and Satsuma Avenue in North Hollywood. Bong ejected from the stricken plane, but he was too low for his parachute to open. He died the same day we dropped the atomic bomb on Hiroshima. Newspapers from coast to coast gave both events comparable billing. Major Richard Bong – fighter pilot, national hero, and crocodile hunter – was indeed a proper legend.
Just after midnight on June 13, 2025, an Israeli operation codenamed Rising Lion unfolded in two distinct but mutually reinforcing acts. First came swarms of small explosive drones that Israeli commandos had reportedly pre-positioned inside Iran months earlier, striking air-defense radars and communications nodes, while decoying attention toward Tehran’s western approaches. Minutes later, over 200 Israeli fighter aircraft—many of them F-35 Adirs carrying standoff munitions—conducted precision strikes against more than 100 nuclear and military targets across Iran, including senior military leaders.
The result was operational dislocation: Iranian early-warning networks were saturated by low-observable drones, senior commanders were killed or forced into hardened shelters, and decisionmaking channels fractured just as long-range penetrating fires arrived. This shock-and-awe approach by Israel explains the limited initial Iranian response, firing only 100 drones compared to the mixture of over 200 drones and ballistic and cruise missiles fired during Operation True Promise in April 2024.
The attack illustrates how combinations of conventional long-range strikes and unconventional operations have a unique role in modern war, reminiscent of the dawn of modern special operations and the “ungentlemanly warriors” of the British Special Operations Executive (SOE) and U.S. Office of Strategic Services (OSS).
Advantage in battle, when each side can see the other side using even commercial satellite images, goes to the side more able to generate asymmetries that produce shock and dislocation. That effect requires more than a standoff precision strike: It requires the ability to pair airpower with special operations to generate effects across the depth of the battlespace simultaneously.
As a result, Operational Rising Lion is a blueprint for future joint campaigns and suggests key investments the U.S. military will need to make to adapt to the changing character of war. These include accelerating efforts to integrate special forces with low-cost drones—similar to the foundational work with Project Replicator—with long-range precision strike campaigns, alongside rethinking defense in depth to protect critical assets.
Relative Superiority in the Drone Age
Admiral William McRaven defined relative superiority as the moment a smaller attacking force gains a decisive advantage over a larger, better-defended adversary through a combination of training, speed, and surprise. Israel’s strike, like Ukraine’s earlier Operation Spider’s Web, validates how small, autonomous systems—when staged forward and synchronized with long-range fires—compresses the timeline to relative superiority.
In both cases, drone swarms exploited gaps in air defenses, sowed confusion, and set the conditions for follow-on strikes. Modern war combines scale and precision. Autonomous navigation, low-cost attritable designs, and cross-domain intelligence networks enable planners to choreograph hundreds of aim-points across massive distances.
This combination extends the depth of the battlespace and the relationship between strategy, operations, and tactics. It creates a new form of campaigning in which a series of audacious raids, defined by relative superiority, create operational-level effects, which in this case shocked Iran sufficiently to conduct strikes in depth across the country targeting leadership, nuclear facilities, air defense, and ballistic missiles.
“Ungentlemanly” Warfare, Then and Now
While drones, stealth fighters, and global intelligence networks are new, combining conventional and unconventional warfare are not. During World War II the British SOE and U.S. OSS pioneered sabotage, special reconnaissance, and raids—described during World War II as “ungentlemanly warfare”—and integrated them with larger conventional campaigns.
The mandate of these agencies was to soften deep targets so conventional forces could attack at decisive points, whether by air, land, or sea. Israel’s Rising Lion resurrects that model, substituting pre-positioned drones and fifth-generation strike packages for Jedburgh teams and Royal Air Force bombers.
Seen in historical context, Israel’s Operation Rising Lion offers three takeaways about joint military campaigns in the twenty-first century. First, deep integration of special operations forces (SOF), autonomous drones, and AI-enabled intelligence, surveillance, and reconnaissance is now the baseline for theater entry because these “ungentlemanly robots” overwhelm air defenses and disrupt command loops faster than any single strike package.
Second, layered defenses must also assume insider threats, as pre-staging shows that distance is largely psychological and physical depth becomes porous when loitering munitions can hide inside something as ordinary as a commercial truck.
Finally, the fusion of covert emplacement with long-range fires erodes strategic warning, compressing decision timelines for defenders and allies and shrinking crisis-management windows from hours or days to mere minutes, paralyzing the adversary.
Preparing for the Next War
While the operation is still ongoing, Rising Lion is a harbinger of how the U.S. Department of Defense needs to adapt to the changing character of war:
Adapt to the new blueprint of offensive strike campaigns. To increase its ability to generate asymmetries in the emerging battlespace, U.S. policymakers should expand SOF-autonomy experimentation by formalizing tactics for covertly planting autonomous sensors and munitions that can cue conventional long-range fires. In many respects, this drive should build on prior efforts like Mosaic Warfare and Replicator to create entirely new campaign designs and even prototypes.
Rethink the old idea of defense for the new era. Adversaries can now conduct strategic-level attacks next to major targets like bomber airbases (Operation Spider’s Web) and military command and control facilities (Operation Rising Lion).
The United States should make investments in defenses that envelop critical infrastructure—not just military bases—in layered security umbrellas that combine counter–unmanned aircraft systems radars, patrol drones, and behavior analytics used to detect deep-cover operatives.
This deliberate approach to twenty-first century defense in depth needs to be packaged with U.S. exports to its partners and allies. If democracies adopt these measures, they will be far better positioned to survive waves of “ungentlemanly robots” and missile salvos in the next fight.
Reevaluate deterrence signaling at the strategic level. Attacks launched from inside an opponent’s borders render traditional red-line messaging far less credible. There is no sanctuary, meaning for low costs, adversaries can jump up the escalation ladder to conduct no notice demonstration attacks on interior zones (e.g. Furthermore, using low-cost drones to strike high-value nuclear targets changes the costs and benefits of coercion, allowing states to gamble without exposing themselves to high sunk costs.
Benjamin Jensen is director of the Futures Lab and a senior fellow for the Defense and Security Department at the Center for Strategic and International Studies (CSIS) in Washington, D.C.
Helicopters offer military commanders unprecedented capabilities. In the down
and dirty places where they operate, however, they can be fairly dangerous.
Every military aviator is the best military aviator since Wilbur and Orville first slipped Earth’s surly bonds back in 1903. We typically have very attractive, exceptionally long-suffering spouses. Personally, I wouldn’t trust a 22-year-old unsupervised with glue, much less a $26 million combat aircraft. Alas, Uncle Sam felt otherwise.
All man-children are bulletproof and immortal until about age 25. That’s why 19-year-olds make the best soldiers. We’re never going to die. This curious affliction untethers the human male to do some of the most remarkable stuff.
I was out turning and burning with a friend in the jump seat. My buddy was a veteran of numerous real-world special operations missions. He and I had worked together for nearly a year. On this particular day we were in the desert. I planted my sleek expensive machine after an hour or so of transforming jet fuel into chaos, and we all disembarked. My pal promptly threw up all over the place. I felt genuinely terrible.
As a pilot, making someone sick who is a jerk is darkly satisfying. By contrast, this was just the nicest guy in the world. If nothing else I didn’t want him embarrassed in front of his troops. I made my way to his side and quietly apologized. He smiled and explained no apologies were necessary. He simply had a fear of flying — once he swished a little water from his Camelbak around to clean out his piehole — he explained
All military aviators are confident — making complex machines do amazing things is just part of the job.
Almost Always Do As You’re Told
When my friend was an ROTC cadet, he attended Air Assault school. Air Assault is a miserable two-week course teaching one what is required to work in and around combat helicopters. The Air Assault graduate in my day developed proficiency rigging sling loads and rappelling out of helicopters. He also did a great deal of forced marching, running and pushups.
My buddy was about to board a UH-1H Huey for some rappelling training. The crew chief rendered the requisite safety briefing. My friend and his comrade were going to sit in the gunner’s well on the side of the aircraft. With the doors pinned back, this offered an unparalleled view. However, it was critically important they not unfasten their seatbelts until directed specifically to do so at the other end of the trip. Failure to do this could result in a long drop followed by a sudden stop. The two young soldiers strapped in while the crew spooled up the airplane.
With everything shipshape, the pilot lifted the 9,000-lb. aircraft to a tidy three-foot hover and executed a quick pedal turn in anticipation of takeoff. In so doing he inadvertently pushed the tail rotor into a tree. The tail rotor assembly exploded and separated from the aircraft along with its 90-degree gearbox.
With all those rotating parts, helicopters can be fairly unforgiving of inattention.
Fortunately, this horrific scene was just a training exercise.
Everything Is Physics
The sudden loss of tail rotor authority would itself have been a fairly big deal. However, the loss of the associated mass of these components turned out to be far worse. Now the center of gravity of the aircraft shifted catastrophically forward.
The pilot did what he was trained to do and initiated a hovering autorotation by dropping power precipitously. This caused the aircraft to settle hard as the center-of-gravity shift now also translated the aircraft forward in an uncommanded fashion. The helicopter settled heavily and rolled frontward on its skids from butt to nose. It hit with sufficient vigor to splay the skids out.
All this happened very quickly. My pal could tell something was amiss as the aircraft was now shaking badly. The violent loss of the tail rotor assembly had also been fairly loud. My buddy could feel the aircraft pitching forward. For one tiny pregnant moment the Huey was motionless on the ground.
My friend looked at his battle buddy sitting next to him, and the guy looked back. They spoke not a word, but both of them yanked open their seatbelts and just stepped out of the aircraft as though they were strolling through a park. The doomed Huey then rolled forward and bounced back into the air. The helicopter went butt over nose and came down inverted onto its own rotor system. The aircraft proceeded to eat itself, killing everybody else onboard.
Denouement
My pal had actually been in three helicopter crashes. You’ll likely hear about the other two eventually someday as well. His willful failure to follow instructions that fateful day at Air Assault school was the sole reason he still drew breath.
God’s will is crystal clear in the rearview mirror. It’s just frequently a bit fuzzier through the windshield. My friend was hardly a coward. Quite the contrary, he was one of the bravest men I ever knew. It was simple — he was justifiably afraid of flying.
This youthful rascal was the most successful fighter pilot of all time. He was around 21 years old in this picture.
Just after midnight on June 13, 2025, an Israeli operation codenamed 
