Category: Coalition SOF

Ben Roberts-Smith is an Australian soldier who served in Afghanistan and Iraq for over a decade, earning him numerous awards, including the Victoria Cross – Australia’s highest award for valor in combat.

The war in Ukraine is of a highly fluid nature and is a hybrid sort of conflict mixing conventional and special operations forces on the same battlefield. There are some lessons there for SOCOM which they are surely paying attention to.

Green Beret and Medal of Honor recipient Gary Beikirch passed away the day after Christmas after a long battle with pancreatic cancer. He was 72. His heroic actions as a Special Forces Medic in an isolated village of Montagnards in Vietnam are the stuff of legends. Badly wounded himself and unable to stand or walk, he had himself carried to various casualties in order to treat their wounds.

In a seeming de-escalation of the security crisis along the Russian-Ukrainian border, Moscow has withdrawn ten-thousand of the estimated 110,000 troops it has positioned near the border. Moscow did this even as it reasserted its demand of a legal guarantee that Ukraine will never be admitted to NATO, that the U.S. cease selling arms to Ukraine and that it act as mediator in negotiations between Russia, Ukraine and European countries.

The Takuba Special Operations Task Force, comprised of French Special Operations troops has killed a key leader of the Islamic State in the Greater Sahara (ISGS) for his part in the murders of six civilian aid workers and two guides in Niger in 2020.

The U.S. military intercepted and shot down a small drone that was believed to be threatening a U.S. base in southern Syria Tuesday, just weeks after the same base was attacked by drones and rocket fire. It is believed to have been launched by Iranian proxy militias in the region.  Capt. Bill Urban, the spokesman […]

Syrian state media claims that Syrian Democratic Forces led by U.S. troops killed civilians and took hostages during a large airborne operation in al-Busayrah, Syria that was aimed at killing or capturing a known ISIS member.

After nine years, French forces will be leaving the troubled nation of Mali where Islamist terrorists attempted to gain a foothold. France is saying that its presence there is not totally ended but will take on a different posture, presumably in the form of military advisors and other military assistance.

The 2,500 U.S. troops still in Iraq are being renamed “advisors” in a move that even the Pentagon admits is just a change in mission and not one in posture or numbers, saying, “There won’t be a dramatic shift from yesterday to tomorrow.”

The award for SFC Alwyn Cashe has been considered the one award that has been the longest in coming. On October 17, 2005, Cashe, was on a combat patrol in Samarra, Iraq. As an Alpha Company platoon sergeant from Forward Operating Base (FOB) McKenzie, adjacent to Diyala, SFC Cashe was in the lead Bradley Fighting Vehicle when it struck a roadside Improvised Explosive Device (IED). 

British and Australian commandos have fought alongside their American allies for decades.

France is an invaluable ally of the United States in bringing stability to the Sahel and the wider Africa.