This month, we’re celebrating our anniversary. And here’s a look back at our very first stories on the site.
My friend Sohaib Kureshi is a Neurosurgeon in San Diego and I’ve talked to him about visualization and its performance enhancements at length. I think (while I’m no brain surgeon) he would agree with me when I say that you can practice and get good at something without physically doing it. This helps if you have a certain degree of physical learning already complete ( e.g. you have some foundation to build off of—like you already know how to ski but you can practice getting better in your head).
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This month, we’re celebrating our anniversary. And here’s a look back at our very first stories on the site.
My friend Sohaib Kureshi is a Neurosurgeon in San Diego and I’ve talked to him about visualization and its performance enhancements at length. I think (while I’m no brain surgeon) he would agree with me when I say that you can practice and get good at something without physically doing it. This helps if you have a certain degree of physical learning already complete ( e.g. you have some foundation to build off of—like you already know how to ski but you can practice getting better in your head).
Special Forces operate by building rapport with indigenous forces, creating long term relationships before conflicts even begin to take shape. High-tech gizmos provide the flash for movies and video games but in reality it is the human element that determines so much of what actually happens where the rubber meets the asphalt. To get a better idea of what the Special Forces mission is, and the long lasting effects that individual soldiers can have around the world, we present…
Bin Laden gets face-shot
When the Osama Bin Laden raid went down, there was a flurry of news reporting, many initial reports stumbling over themselves as both the media and the White House struggled to get their stories straight. Who executed the raid? How was Bin Laden killed? Who is Seal Team Six? Our readers already knew the answer to that last one, but you get the idea. From what I gather, and we don’t have the whole story even today, is that the actions on the objective were fairly straight forward. Maybe there were one or two terrorists who had armed themselves, but it doesn’t sound like that slowed ST6 down much, if at all. Everything was kosher until they began to exfil off the objective.
(Ever since we began, we’ve been slamming incorrect military representation in main stream media.)
One of the reasons the guys created the SOFREP media site is that we are tired of the press and industry getting it all wrong with everything Special Operations. The recent Times blog post by Mark Thompson is a great example. He obviously has no idea what he’s talking about, and is indeed proof that they ARE in contradiction with their “military intelligence” blog title.
Mark is quoted saying:
“Who’d have thunk the gang that got bin Laden would have to go outside their own tight circle to study pugilism? ”
Well let me tell you something Mark, smart people bring experts to help and to learn new perspective. We’ve been doing it for years and who’d of thunk it? The US Special Operations community, that’s who, Mark.
Read more of this analysis here.
As a former Helo Aircrew SAR swimmer (before I went to BUD/S) I recognize the importance of the Navy’s helo support mission with regards to over water flights. TF 160 is bad ass, but Navy pilots are used to flying in adverse maritime conditions and that’s an important skill, especially when supporting the SEAL mission. Aviation plays a huge role in the SOF mission, so expect to see more on SOF aviation in the future. Me and the guys are working on building out a special SOF aviation nav feature. More to follow.
I was a normal kid raised in a very conservative family in north Texas. I wrestled growing up for different schools and leagues. I will never forget what brought me to the military, and that was my sophomore year in high school and watching those planes fly into those towers. Even if we were to go to war again, to this day, I would have no problem fighting for this country again.
Even before, we’re been doing analysis on foreign artillery and weaponry compared to ours in the US military.
Shortly after the US acknowledgement about the lost a RQ-170 Sentinel UAS originally flown out of a US base in western Afghanistan, Iran wasted little time proclaiming victory in defeat of otherwise superior US technology. While watching television footage of a highly advanced American ISR UAV being paraded by Iran on Al Jazeera television is unsettling for most of us, I feel pretty confident when stating these proud claims of technical superiority or vigilant surveillance leading to the apprehension of this particular UAS are false (as usual).
As always, debunking myth from reality.
SERE School sucks, no getting around it, no beating around the bush here. It isn’t fun and isn’t meant to be. That said, SERE is critically important training for any soldier who could find himself (or herself) trapped behind enemy lines, such as pilots and Special Operations personnel. SERE stands for Survival, Escape, Resistance, and Evasion. During the three week block of instruction, you are trained on each of these skills.
Let’s face it: We’ve all been caught in some situations that have left us thinking “Man, I sure was lucky nothing bad happened”, or maybe even made some stupid decisions, causing us to say to say to ourselves, “If Mom knew what I was doing right now, she would have a heart attack.”
You know the moments I’m referring to: That time you hitch hiked down coast highway with your girlfriends (not mentioning any names!), or the time you went for a run in the middle of the night because you couldn’t sleep, not realizing until you were four miles from home that it was the stupidest idea you’ve ever had. (Don’t worry Mom, I’m not speaking from experience!)
“Hi everyone…”
Read his first welcome not here.
To our loyal community, we thank you for sticking with us! Here’s to more years of military-grade content, powered by veterans like you!
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