Category: Army

A National Guard officer coming home from Afghanistan was gouged by United Airlines $200 for a checked piece of luggage. John Rader a 1LT coming home from a deployment to Afghanistan said United Airlines made him pay $200 to check a military-issued bag on his flight to Austin, Texas, from El Paso, the final leg […]

The SOFIC Conference is over and the turnout, especially on Tuesday, was heavy. The conference is a fantastic display of weapons, equipment and nice to have gadgets for the Special Operations Forces on not just the United States but others as well. While it is billed as a gathering for US personnel, there was a […]

One of the things that always gets a ton of mileage on social media when discussing Special Operations troops is the attrition rate. Drop in on any of the major sites and the talk of the training attrition rates always comes up. Would-be SOF candidates are always doing the math in their heads, trying to […]

Most of what we write here at SpecialOperations.com deals with the training side of the house. What you’ll need to do to pass the Selection and Assessment courses and the follow-on training in the qualification courses, with a fair bit of history thrown in. Today isn’t any of that. Although in the past, the history […]

Tampa Bay is hosting the Special Operation Forces Industry Conference (SOFIC) this week and the floor of the marketplace is an impressive place to see. Some of the best manufacturers of weapons and equipment are there with their latest wares and it is a maze of cool gear for the cool guys and a ton […]

Shoulders and back day in the gym before heading off to do the classic SOF (Special Operations Forces) Triathlon. A run, a rucksack march, and a swim with fatigues and boots. If you can do all three of these things well, you will have the physical aspect for most of the selection courses checked. Training: […]

Just a few short months after Pearl Harbor, the United States was locked in a global war with both the empire of Japan and Nazi Germany. And the country had no formal intelligence gathering apparatus. So, in July 1942, President Franklin D. Roosevelt created the Office of Strategic Services (OSS) and appointed BG William “Wild […]

The final training in Special Forces Qualification Course (SFQC) is the Unconventional Warfare (UW) exercise “Robin Sage”, which we went over in detail in an earlier post, that you can read here: The prospective Green Berets put all their training together and infiltrate into the fictional country of Pineland via an airborne operation. The SF […]

“Free Pineland!” This is the cry many a prospective Special Forces student will hear during their final phase of the Special Forces Qualification Course (SFQC) that culminates in the premiere Unconventional Warfare (UW) exercise in the military, Robin Sage. After many months of training, in some cases over a year, prospective Green Berets put all […]

The National Special Forces Association has collaborated with artist Rebecca Clark to honor the Special Forces men of past and present with a National Green Beret Memorial. The advisory board for this project includes five General Officers from the Regiment and officers and NCOs who have also served in Special Forces. The planned location for […]

In the multiple conflicts on-going since 2001, there has been a dramatic rise in Traumatic Brain Injuries (TBI) due to the close proximity our soldiers face with explosions, bombs, and weapons. TBI has been called the ‘invisible wound of war’ as many times the soldiers suffering from its effects won’t notice the toll for months, […]

The United States’ Special Operations Forces are seemingly everywhere and that perception is not far off. In 2016, they were deployed to 138 countries around the globe or about 70 percent of the world. From battlefields in Iraq, Afghanistan, and Syria, to Somalia and West Africa, to advising counter-narcotics units in the Andean Ridge, working […]