Military

USS New Orleans fire, Microsoft protests, Russia hits Ukraine. It’s Thursday, August 21, 2025. This is your SOFREP Morning Brief.

Merlin’s AI autonomy takes flight: from C-130Js to KC-135s, the US military bets on aircraft-agnostic tech for the future.

I succeeded in Professional Military Education by treating it as an opportunity and a responsibility—checking my ego, preparing before day one, doing the reading, organizing relentlessly, and using every spare minute to learn for the soldiers who would depend on me.

Between Hamas’s butchery, Israel’s grinding war, and a fog of propaganda that makes truth provisional, Gaza is where civilians are crushed while Washington looks away.

From wielding a guitar in the heart of Seattle’s grunge movement to bearing arms as a Green Beret, Jason Mark Everman’s journey is a vivid testament to the transformative power of resilience and ambition.

Start your Friday with SOFREP’s Morning Brief, bringing you the latest in defense and global affairs for August 15, 2025.

Friday’s Trump-Putin summit in Alaska isn’t a breakthrough—it’s Moscow running the same stalling play it’s used since 2014, buying time while pressing its summer offensive.

Trump-Putin summit looms as crises flare in Gaza, Sudan, Haiti, and the South China Sea. Here’s your Wednesday evening world snapshot.

If you don’t own the air at five hundred feet and fifty yards, you’re not maneuvering—you’re waiting your turn on the casualty list.

We idled through Al Dujahl’s midnight arteries, numb and hollow, while men in the shadows watched us like witnesses at the thin border between heaven and hell.

VA faces staffing woes, Trump reshapes Kennedy Center, and Mexico hands over cartel bosses. Welcome to your Wednesday Morning Brief.

Planter-turned-mercenary Jean “Black Jack” Schramme carved his legend in the Congo Crisis—a self-styled guardian of order who tried to bind a failing state with Katangan steel and hired guns.