Category: Expert Analysis

Recent news that DNI Dan Coats is looking for ways to streamline the gargantuan US Intelligence Community have returned the question of how American intelligence should be organized and structured to the fore. While previous efforts at “reform” were largely stillborn and confined to the marginal reshuffling of existing capabilities, the election of Donald Trump […]

Editor’s note: The following is a white paper submitted by Dr. Jason Thomas, PhD. Jason is a friend of SOFREP and specializes in field-based assessments in complex operating environments. —Desiree Abstract The proposition that counterterrorist and counterinsurgent strategy and tactics may be contributing to the natural selection of terrorists and insurgents requires real, as opposed to […]

When I was in the sixth grade, the middle school I attended had a special program that allowed students with good grades to miss class time occasionally to take part in a form of “independent study.” The program required that each student choose a topic, research it thoroughly over the course of a year, and […]

“We are the worst nightmare of the enemy,” Lieutenant Colonel Rapi told me while speaking of the Philippine Scout-Rangers when I met him at Special Operations Command at Fort Magsaysay. To find out why the Scout-Rangers are so formidable, I had to travel to the Philippines southernmost major island called Tawi-Tawi. It was early in […]

Read Part 19 HERE “I’ve worked with a lot of different nations and Korea is one of the best in Asia. Singaporeans are pretty good, Japanese are good, but Koreans are well structured, disciplined, and well equipped,” Tae said. With American help the damage caused by the war would be minimized however. The North Korean […]

I’ve been scouring social media for the past few days because I’ve gotten a few messages about training for selection and the gist of several of them had me wondering if some of the potential candidates were reading a few things that are out on social media and taking it as gospel. The first and […]

The G36 could easily be pictured in the hands of a police commando resembling a stormtrooper who’s escorting Snake Pliskin to some wall of a prison island that was once a chunk of the United States. Instead, it’s finding its way into the hands of Kurdish Peshmerga soldiers on the front lines of a war where it’s muzzle thumping […]

Mike Flynn, former head of the Defense Intelligence Agency and short-lived National Security Advisor under President Trump, has found himself at the center of allegations levied at the Trump Administration regarding Russian collusion in the 2016 Presidential election.  Recent revelations regarding payments totaling more than a half million dollars given to Flynn by companies representing […]

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 […]

Phil Campion, offers some survival tips from his book, “Big Phil Campion’s Real World SAS Survival Guide.” Check out the video below.

When I was in training to become a SERE Specialist I was sent on a second solo evasion living exercise because I did terrible at my first one. The weather wasn’t terrible and I mostly had sun. The temperature dropped well below freezing at night but I was allowed to have a fire. Life was […]

Russia, like many countries all over the world, tends to import a fair amount of culture from the United States.  Whether you hate American “imperialism” or benefit from an alliance with our government, it may actually be harder to escape the grip of our pop-culture than our foreign policy. In the past few decades, superhero […]