The 75th Ranger Regiment hits the ground in Syria for Raqqa offensive

After months of planning and deliberations, the 75th Ranger Regiment has been deployed to Syria to participate in the war against ISIS as the coalition closes in on the so-called caliphate’s capital city of Raqqa.  Yesterday, the first images emerged of Stryker armored vehicles on their way to Manbij.  This comes weeks after Rangers deployed […]

Special Operations Command urgently needs to rethink its approach to Operational Security

Much has been made about Operational Security (OPSEC) in recent years, much of it revolving around high level politicians or even congressional staffers leaking information about sensitive military operations such as the SEAL Team Six raid in Pakistan that killed Bin Laden.  While it is true that Pentagon staffers and politicians leak information to the […]

Fighting human trafficking during Super Bowl with DeliverFund

“No plan of operations extends with any certainty beyond the first contact with the main hostile force.” That is a quote from German military strategist, Helmuth von Moltke, in its unabridged form, as he uttered it during his tenure as chief of staff of the Prussian General Staff from 1857 to 1871. Words to live by, […]

Are anarchists a national security threat?

When most of us think about anarchists we imagine teenagers wearing scarves over their faces who run around outside economic summits and tip over cars and trash cans.  While this is obnoxious, we don’t place them in the same threat category as a group like Al Qaeda that has demonstrated an ability to plan and […]

Detachment A: counter-terrorism and Operation Eagle Claw (Part 3)

Read Part One HERE and Part Two HERE. As the Cold War matured, the mission of Det A evolved, shifting gears to face a new threat that the Western World was unprepared for. In the early 1970’s there had been a rash of aircraft hijackings, many perpetrated by the Palestinian nationalists belonging to the Popular […]

75th Ranger Regiment goes covert in Pakistan

With dramatis personae that include the CIA, Delta Force, DEVGRU, the Intelligence Support Activity, Pakistani Commandos, the Taliban, and spies from Pakistan’s Inter-Services Intelligence Agency (ISI), this story has the makings of a future Brad Thor bestseller. The only difference is, this story happened over the course of an eight-month period for a very small […]

‘Spectral’ is military science fiction done right

I am somewhat infamous for my negative reviews of movies about special operations forces. I’m not one of those guys who watches these films expecting some high degree of hyper-technical accuracy. Fictional films are just that. However, I find a lot of these films to be silly, as they claim to recreate something with authenticity, […]

Three SOF phrases that I hate

The military is full of professional jargon and SOF is certainly no exception.  With the growing interest in Special Operations, I hear a lot of terminologies used to describe us which makes me cringe.  The worst part is that some of these terms are thrown around so often that they become an institution in and […]

5th Special Forces Group member killed, linked to ISIS final takedown

On Thanksgiving day, a EOD tech assigned to 5th Special Forces Group was killed in Ayn Issa, Syria.  US CENTCOM (Central Command) announced yesterday that a US soldier was killed by an IED blast, but withheld further details.  To understand why an American Special Forces advisor would be in Ayn Issa with the Kurdish YPG and affiliated […]