SOFREP Cartoon: U.S. Southern Command’s Pirate Upgrade

New Mission, Same Ocean

Every few decades, the Pentagon rediscovers that the sea has not changed, only the excuses for sailing it. The flags are different, there are more lawyers, and the briefing slides glow brighter, but the task remains brutally familiar: find the ship, board the ship, take the cargo, and call it a day.

The Wardrobe Department of Empire

When strategy runs out of clean lines, it starts borrowing from history. The modern operator is handed a mission set that looks suspiciously like something last issued with rum rations and rope ladders. It is less a transformation than a wardrobe change, like a Formula One pit crew suddenly told  the team will be racing the Nürburgring in spurs and leather.

Progress, With Cutlasses

This is what adaptation looks like when great power competition drifts offshore. Sanctions become boarding actions, geopolitics becomes grappling hooks, and the high seas remind everyone that technology never erased brute force; it only updated the vocabulary.

The ocean does not care what year it is, and it never has.