Category: Expert Analysis

Today was General James Mattis‘ confirmation hearing, following which the waiver for him to serve as Secretary of Defense was signed off on.  Contradicting the internet memes and media reputation, General Mattis conducted himself as a the well-read professional that we would have expected from him, rather than a “mad dog.” While a confirmation hearing […]

Barack Obama gave his final speech as the sitting president of the United States Tuesday night, and although over the past eight years I’ve found my personal politics to be at odds with many of his policies, his farewell address served, in my opinion, as a shining example of what American politics should be. Mind […]

Yesterday The Intercept published an explosive article titled “The Crimes of SEAL Team Six” which accuses the unit of institutionalizing war crimes from a former unit commander on down into the enlisted ranks.  Many SOFREP readers wrote to us asking if the allegations in the article are correct.  While SOFREP cannot independently verify every claim made […]

Anybody who has spent time in a military infantry unit knows what foot blisters are. I remember on numerous ruck marches, whether it was for PT or moving from one objective to another on a field op, there were always guys getting foot blisters and hot spots. every time we would stop for a short […]

Last night, Buzzfeed published an unverified report laying out significant ties between President Elect Donald Trump and various members of the Russian government.  Included in the report were allegations ranging from Trump participating in “perverted sexual acts” to his involvement in the hacking of the DNC’s e-mail servers, and how Russian officials have worked to […]

As a special operations soldier, I always held the belief that my fellow operators and I were relatively immune to post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) when compared with other soldiers. Of course, no one is really immune to such a disorder, but it was so rarely a problem with anyone I worked with, and we talked […]

The problem with heroes is that the more you know about a person, the more real they become—the more flawed they become, and the less heroic they begin to seem. Neil Armstrong famously shunned the spotlight after being the first human being to set foot on a world other than our own, an accomplishment that is […]

As has been the case since the Russian government was first accused of working to undermine American confidence in the U.S. presidential election process last October, the Kremlin continued to deny the latest round of allegations levied their way in last week’s intelligence briefings to both the current and incoming American presidents. “These are baseless […]

Jesse Ventura – the Navy SEAL turned pro wrestler, pro wrestler turned actor, actor turned governor, and governor turned crackpot – lost his appeal with the U.S. Supreme Court to reinstate a $1.8 million verdict awarded to him for his defamation case against prolific Navy SEAL sniper, Chris Kyle’s estate. In 2014, a court awarded […]

On April 26, 1937 the world got its first taste of the impact of strategic air power.   German aircraft belonging to the Condor Legion attacked the Basque city of Guernica. Ignoring military targets and concentrating on the civilian population, German planes killed somewhere around 1500 people and wounded thousands more. The gutted shell of the […]

The report card has been in for a while, and the news is not good. U.S. counterintelligence, our ability to protect U.S. national security secrets from our enemies and rivals, is in shambles. It doesn’t take a former CIA station chief like me to see the stark wreckage of failure surrounding the intel community like the aftermath of […]

With a winter apocalypse upon us here in the lower Midwest, where the temperature has plummeted precipitously to the teens and the snow is piled high enough to bury an overly tall mushroom (a “snowfusion” of over three whole inches!), one’s mind begins to wander toward how to survive such an onslaught of nature. Worse […]