SEAL Team 6 was minutes away: Taliban prisoner recounts failed rescue attempts

An Australian who was recently released by the Taliban believes that SEAL Team 6 came agonizingly close to rescuing him six times. Timothy Week, an Australian teacher, was abducted, alongside his American colleague Kevin King, from Kabul in 2016. He was released after the U.S. and Australian governments struck a hostage exchange deal with the […]

State Deptartment probes whether US weapons ended up in the wrong hands in Yemen

The State Department and the Pentagon are looking into allegations that U.S. military hardware, sold to Saudi Arabia and the UAE, has ended up in the wrong hands in Yemeni civil war.  The State Department has already sent questions to both of its allies over these allegations but has received “insufficient responses” to the questions […]

Mowing the lawn: How American strikes are destroying ISIS in Libya

Al-Baghdadi might be dead, but the fight against ISIS is not. In the past weeks, the U.S. has been conducting a number of airstrikes in Libya that are greatly diminishing the manpower and resources of the local ISIS branch. U.S. airstrikes in the country have killed close to 50 ISIS fighters, forcing others to hide […]

SOFREP’s exclusive interview with President Assad of Syria

“There is nothing personal, I’m just a headline,” President Bashar Al-Assad said when questioned about how he feels being called a war criminal in the western media. “The bad president, the bad guy is killing the good guys. It is black and white like George Bush’s narrative. The real reason for wanting to topple this […]

Another one bites the dust: Al-Qaida chief killed in SOF raid

In the closing days of September, American and Afghan Special Operation Forces (SOF) conducted a raid that resulted in the death of Asim Omar, the leader of al-Qaida in the Indian Subcontinent (AQIS). According to the Afghan intelligence agency, Omar and an additional six AQIS terrorists were killed in the raid. Among them was also […]

Who owns the night? Taliban use of night vision goggles tips the scale

Despite 19 years of war, the Taliban are still a dominant faction in Afghanistan. Their ability to wreak havoc at will highlights the Afghan government’s feebleness. A frailty that becomes ever more pronounced as U.S. and coalition forces gradually withdraw from the country. In their way toward defeating their opponent – or reducing his will […]

10 signs you served in a war zone after 9/11

Millions of Americans have served at least some amount of time in either Iraq or Afghanistan (or both), since September 2001. Otherwise known as going in-theater, to the sandbox, the show, the dance, the war zone, Asscrackistan, the two-way shooting range, the tax-free zone, and/or countless other affectionate labels, deploying to these areas exposed one […]

Ranger killed by secretive Afghan SOF unit

On November 2018, a Ranger was killed during a raid against al-Qaida fighters in Afghanistan. Sergeant Leandro Jasso, a team leader serving at the 2nd Ranger Battalion, 75th Ranger Regiment, was mortally wounded during room-clearing operations in the Kash Rod district, Nimruz province. At the time of the incident, the Army had announced that Sgt. […]

Irish Tier 1 SOF unit deploys to Mali

The Irish government decided to deploy its elite counterterrorism unit to Mali as part of the United Nations (U.N.) peacekeeping effort in the region. A team of 14 operators from the Army Ranger Wing (AWG), also known as the Irish Army Rangers, will be attached to the United Nations Multidimensional Integrated Stabilisation Mission in Mali […]

Pentagon releases names of two Special Forces operators killed in Afghanistan

The Department of Defence (DoD) released the names of the two Special Forces operators who were killed in action in Afghanistan on Wednesday, August 21. Master Sergeant Luis Deleon-Figueroa and Master Sergeant Jose Gonzalez were killed while conducting combat operations in the Faryab province of Afghanistan. According to a Pentagon statement, the two Special Forces operators […]

Forget China and Russia, terrorists are still a major threat

It is an undeniable fact that the U.S. military has been gradually shifting its focus from counterterrorism and counterinsurgency operations to near-peer threats, such as China and Russia. Navy SEALs have been practicing with increased frequency in the Pacific in anticipation of a potential conflict with the former. Special Forces teams are rotating more frequently […]

Special Operations Command wants to improve SOF forensics

During the 2019 Special Operations Forces Industry Conference that took place earlier in the summer, the U.S. Special Operations Command (SOCOM) offered a rare glimpse into its Sensitive Site Exploitation (SSE) initiatives. In specific, SOCOM is developing a cell phone application that aims to simplify the SSE process. Glen Cullen, SOCOM’s SSE program manager, said […]