Brad McLanahan Books in Order

The Brad McLanahan books pick up after decades of stories about Patrick McLanahan and push Dale Brown’s universe into a new era of cyberwarfare, combat robots, and battles fought far above Earth. Brad is Patrick’s son, raised around bombers and experimental aircraft and suddenly forced to carry that legacy on his own shoulders.

The bridge between the two generations comes in Tiger's Claw, where an aging Patrick is recalled yet again to deal with a Chinese missile shield threatening US forces in the Pacific. Brad, kicked out of the Air Force Academy, is pulled into the fight and given a front‑row seat to his father’s last great mission. By the end of that book, it’s clear the torch is passing.

In Starfire Brad steps fully into the lead. Now an engineering student, he helps design an orbiting solar power station meant to beam clean energy back to Earth and support exploration of the solar system. What begins as an idealistic project is quickly dragged into geopolitics when world leaders see how easily a power beam from orbit could become a weapon. The novel mixes campus‑level teamwork with global maneuvering and shows Brad learning how to think like both an engineer and a strategist.

The stakes on the ground rise in Iron Wolf and Price of Duty. Russia moves aggressively into Ukraine and threatens Eastern Europe, while the United States is distracted or slow to react. Backed by a wary Polish president, former US president Kevin Martindale funds a private strike force built around Cybernetic Infantry Devices—towering powered armor suits nicknamed “Iron Wolves.” Brad is pulled out of his internship to train and lead this mixed team of Polish and American pilots and operators, discovering that command brings as many political headaches as combat dangers.

Later books like The Moscow Offensive and The Kremlin Strike show just how far that arms race can go. Russian strongman Gennadiy Gryzlov bankrolls a mercenary army and smuggles his own versions of the combat robots into the United States, aiming to hit American cities from within. When that fails, he shifts the fight into orbit, building a weaponized space station capable of knocking out satellites and threatening targets on the ground. Brad, Polish ace Nadia Rozek, and the Iron Wolf Squadron have to learn space operations on the fly to keep up.

By Eagle Station, Brad and Nadia are working closely with the newly formed US Space Force. Russia and China join forces to build a secret base on the far side of the moon, arming it with a rail gun that could control access to lunar orbit and the helium‑3 resources everyone wants. The series turns into full‑on space warfare while still keeping the focus on a handful of pilots, engineers, and commanders making hard calls far from home.

Across the Brad McLanahan line you can expect big hardware—spaceplanes, orbital platforms, advanced drones and exosuits—but also a familiar Dale Brown mix of messy alliances, stubborn presidents, and friends who don’t always agree on how far to push. You don’t have to read every earlier Patrick McLanahan book to follow Brad, but knowing where he comes from adds extra weight to the moments when he tries to live up to, or sometimes break away from, his family name.