Category: Expert Analysis

For the purposes of full disclosure, I have a duty to inform you all that I am a U.S. Navy (Reserve) F/A-18 Hornet pilot. And while some may remark of a bias because of that, please follow along and draw your own conclusions. When I read the remarks of the current Chief of Naval Operations, […]

There is a wealth of information, printed and electronic, now available on just about every conflict, trouble spot, and threat matrix around the world. Much of this flood of information can lead to a vetting problem; there is always something taken out of context or twisted to fit an agenda. The other problem, when doing research […]

The election could go either way. The senator had a better-than-even shot at winning the presidency, but events on the other side of the globe could could sway votes as much if not more than the domestic issues that the Democratic politician campaigned for. Revolution was brewing in one nation and war was raging in […]

Venezuelan President Nicholás Maduro and his predecessor, Hugo Chavez, have been pointing to the U.S. as the boogeyman to unite Venezuela under their single-party rule for years. As Venezuela’s economy has begun an accelerating slide toward collapse, not only have the government’s repressive measures to try to keep a lid on the collapse (as well […]

Mexico has scored another coup in the narco-insurgency. On February 27—in Morelia, the capital of Michoacan—Servando “La Tuta” Gomez was rolled up by Mexican police. “La Tuta,” also known as “El Profe” (The Professor) because of his past as a teacher, was the “spiritual” and operational leader of the Caballeros Templarios, the Knights Templar Cartel. […]

On Saturday, Will Rodriguez published a piece here at SOFREP that laid bare an apparent use of American-made weaponry by Iran in Iraq. My article is not a point-by-point engagement of Mr. Rodriguez’s piece. Rather, it is simply a response that highlights some potential alternatives for continuing to remain so rigid in our approach to security policy in […]

ISIS’ branding and propaganda has been enormously successful since they seemingly came out of nowhere to seize the city of Mosul last summer. Islamist groups from Yemen to Central Asia to Libya are purportedly pledging allegiance to the group and flying its black flag. Washington, the Kremlin, and Beijing are all warning of the danger […]

After a somewhat tedious look at the scientific background to high gravitational (G) forces and how they affect the human body in flight, we need to understand how military aviators flying high-performance aircraft maintain consciousness and continue to press their attack in such a physically demanding and stressful environment. The G-LOC Before we get into that, I need to address the dreaded G-induced Loss Of Consciousness. […]

On the night of January 18, 2015, the mother of Argentine prosecutor Alberto Nisman was trying to contact him by telephone. When, after repeated calls, she couldn’t get him to answer, she went to his apartment accompanied by Argentine federal police. Repeated ringing of the doorbell wasn’t answered. The door was locked from the inside. […]

Guerrilla warfare is nothing new. Neither is proxy war. China’s history of using indirect methods to erode and undermine their enemies without battle goes back to the earliest treatises on warfare written by the general T’ai Kung. (Sun Tzu’s admonition that supreme excellence is found in victory without fighting has nothing to do with pacifism […]

The same drop in oil prices that has hit the Russian economy so hard has hit Venezuela’s even worse. Under the late President Hugo Chavez, the Venezuelan economy had become completely reliant on oil revenues. In 1998, the year before Chavez was elected president, oil accounted for 77 percent of Venezuela’s exports. By 2011, 96 […]

Author’s note: The following is a mix of author-generated hypothesis and researched fact, written to provide historic and modern intelligence operations parallels. I imagine that the conversation went something like this (with a lot of liberty taken here): Clerk: “Sir, there is someone here to see you. He says that you are expecting him, and that he […]