[3] The publication was founded as The Army and Navy Journal and Gazette of the Regular and Volunteer Forces, a weekly newspaper printed in New York City.

Francis, who had covered the Civil War as a reporter for The New York Times, would go on to write for the Sun, where he penned one of the most famous editorials in American journalism: Yes, Virginia, there is a Santa Claus.

The first issue was published on August 29, 1863,[4] with this motto: "Established in obedience to an insistent demand for an official organ for members of the American Defense and those concerned with it.

"[8] William Church would go on to help found the National Rifle Association of America in 1871;[9][10] he and his newspaper remained fixtures in the political firmament for decades.

Speakers at the dinner included Gen. Adna Chaffee, soon to become Chief of Staff of the U.S. Army, and New York mayor Seth Low; letters of regret were read from President Theodore Roosevelt, Navy Secretary William Henry Moody, Secretary of State John Hay, and financier J. Pierpont Morgan.

Reilly was a West Point graduate who had commanded an artillery regiment in France during World War I,[14] and who would go on to co-found and lead the Reserve Officers Association.

The name of the newspaper changed as well, achieving its all-time longest length as The American Army and Navy Journal, and Gazette of the Regular, National Guard and Reserve Forces.

Perhaps the earliest was "The Eclipse of American Sea Power" by Captain Dudley W. Knox, then the newspaper's naval correspondent (1920–23) and ultimately one of the most influential historians to wear a U.S. Navy uniform.

[15] In 1925, the newspaper was purchased by John Callan O'Laughlin, a former Associated Press reporter who served during World War I as a major in the U.S. Army's Quartermaster Corps.

He was an intimate of Roosevelt's, having worked as a go-between with the Russians in arranging the Russo-Japanese peaces, and later serving briefly as the president's first assistant secretary of state.

[5] O'Laughlin installed himself as editor and publisher, and changed the newspaper's name to the Army and Navy Journal; The Gazette of the Land, Sea, and Air.

[20] Its offices were then located at 1701 Connecticut Avenue NW in Washington, D.C.[21] O'Laughlin wrote to Gen. Douglas MacArthur, then the Army chief of staff and acting Secretary of War, offering to have his newspaper make and award medals for the best-run camps of the Civilian Conservation Corps.

Soviet state-controlled press had recently decried the Journal's call for Moscow to establish a second front against Nazi Germany in Poland.

[7] In March 1958, the trustees of O'Laughlin's Gridiron Club trust sold the Journal to its long-time editor, LeRoy Whitman, and its general manager, Dorothy Cone Brown.

[32][33] On July 6, 1968, Schemmer renamed the publication Armed Forces Journal and turned it into a weekly magazine with a new focus: in-depth analytical coverage of defense issues.

[35] In March 1988, Schemmer and Levens sold AFJI to Pergamon-Brassey's Defense Publishers of Greenwich, Connecticut,[36] a U.S. subsidiary of Britain's Maxwell Communications.

[36] Schemmer, who stayed on as editor, said the larger company had first approached him about five years previously, and that he and Levens had finally sold because they believed Maxwell offered "enormous possibilities for international expansion.

An Associated Press report described AFJ as a magazine that "gives military officers analysis, insight and commentary on the latest technological and strategic developments.

[44] The Washington Post described it as "a blistering attack on U.S. generals" and a signal of the "public emergence of a split inside the military between younger, mid-career officers and the top brass".

In March 2016, Tegna sold the renamed Sightline Media Group to Regent, a Los Angeles-based private equity firm controlled by investor Michael Reinstein.