Afghanistan

Flying over Panjwai in early March was an apocalyptic image. No signs of vegetation or life, just barren fields for miles, consisting of deep farm rows, bordered by thick mud walls, with grape huts jutting out unnaturally from the landscape every few hundred meters. When I landed at VSP (Village Stability Platform) Belambai, the ODA […]

Read Part One here. Rumors were going around within a week of being on the job that we were deploying to Afghanistan that winter, only four months away. Right before we loaded up for a month-long rotation to the National Training Center (NTC), it came down the pipe that our battalion would be given the […]

WASHINGTON — A Pakistani militant who planned a devastating truck bomb attack on a hotel in Islamabad in 2008 — which left two members of the American military and dozens of others dead — was killed in recent days by an American drone strike in Afghanistan, the Pentagon said on Saturday night. The militant, Qari […]

KABUL — He is a ghost with a blood-soaked past, a man with so many enemies that even his closest aides, trying to orchestrate his return to the Afghan capital he once attacked, coyly insist they have no idea where he is. Six months ago, Gulbuddin Hekmatyar emerged briefly from the shadows, appearing via video […]

“Wait…you were his platoon leader?” I’ve received this particular question probably about a hundred times over the last five years, and roughly 95% of the time, it’s followed by a particular look of recognition, doubt, and horror, all combined into one washing over the asker’s face. As I recall the details of the story, and […]

The top U.S. general in Europe said on Thursday that he had seen Russian influence on Afghan Taliban insurgents growing and raised the possibility that Moscow was helping supply the militants, whose reach is expanding in southern Afghanistan. “I’ve seen the influence of Russia of late – increased influence in terms of association and perhaps […]

President Donald Trump is using Special Operations troops to carry the fight against Islamic terrorists across the globe in an attempt to minimize large conventional troop deployments. Trump will continue the plan put in place by the Obama administration to train, equip, advise, and support the indigenous forces in the region rather than post large […]

Passing Selection is the rite of passage for every Special Operations unit in the world. And that is why we’re here right? The courses are designed to be incredibly hard for a reason and a very good one. The operating environment that Special Operations many times must perform in is often extreme. Carrying a lot […]

The land is lush in this river-fed region of eastern Afghanistan. The highway that leads to the Pakistan border, 60 miles away, passes fields of ripening wheat, cucumber and cauliflower. The nearby city of Jalalabad is bustling, with crowded sidewalks and traffic jams of produce trucks, auto rickshaws and tractors. But for a large, nearly […]

British SAS troops stationed in Iraq have been issued with a “kill or capture” list containing the names of up to 200 British terrorists fighting alongside ISIS. In a report by The Sunday Times, MI6, MI5, and GCHQ have furnished intelligence to the SAS operators in Iraq with target orders to eliminate British nationals who […]

Stryker vehicles in service with the US Army have been in use for over a decade. Now the vehicle may soon have the ability to defend itself from unmanned aircraft systems using a laser weapon. US Army Space and Missile Defense Command and the Army Forces Strategic Command recently demonstrated the Stryker’s ability to defend […]

Our military forces have been in combat non-stop since 9/11. They’ve shown that they’ve been equal to the task and have performed as we’ve come to expect from our armed forces. However, the on-going conflicts have seen increased leanings on our Special Operations Forces, who, despite being just a fraction of the overall force, are […]