MARSOC

Selection Prep: Push yourself hard and then ramp it up more

Over Thanksgiving I was looking with friends and family at the webpage of GoRuck. One of my friends was looking for a challenge to push himself for this upcoming spring, so I recommended that he check out GoRuck’s events.  “Why in the world would someone do this for fun? And why would you ever sign […]

Spec Ops selection prep: Boots and foot care 101

We always get some questions vis-à-vis about passing Selection and most of the questions center around rucking and the land navigation course. While each has their own challenges for the Selection candidate, you’ll have to utilize both together while passing land navigation as you’ll be conducting it with a rucksack on. While we encourage our […]

RAVEN: How Marine Raiders prepare for combat

What takes place before a Marine Raider unit is deemed ready to deploy downrange and pour some hate onto the nation’s enemies? The answer is RAVEN. This final certification exercise is a scalable unit readiness test that encompasses many command structures and capabilities. It can assess, for example, the leadership qualities of a whole company […]

Making the big leap from high school to Special Operations

A good friend of mine is a career law enforcement professional here in New England and although we don’t hang out on a regular basis, whenever we run into one another we’ll stop and catch up. So weaving around a stoppage in the road a few weeks ago, I saw my friend trying to make […]

The Video of the Week: Marine Spec Ops Tactical Driving and Shooting Course

MARSOC Marines participate in the Tactical Driving and Shooting Course. Mastering the fundamentals of defensive driving and precision shooting in close quarters enhances the overall effectiveness of the individual operator and team. Dynamic and realistic training prepares them to operate in austere, and often, volatile environments. Marine Raiders specialize in Foreign Internal Defence (FID), Direct […]

Report: Marine Raider killed by enemy not friendly fire

A Central Command (CENTCOM) investigation has found that a highly decorated Marine Raider, who was killed in Iraq earlier this year, died from enemy and not friendly fire. Gunnery Sergeant Scott A. Koppenhafer, a Marine Raider assigned to the 2nd Marine Special Operations Battalion (2nd MSOB), was killed on August 10 during combat operations in […]

SOF truths with a twist: Good leaders can’t be mass produced

Opinion: Our Special Operations Command has been in the news these days for much of the wrong reasons. And with the number of questions we’ve gotten asking about the different Selection courses for SOF with an increasing number from potential officers, I felt it was time to address an issue. An increasing number of Special […]

The birth of the famous Gatling gun

There are some things that stand the test of time and Richard Gatling’s invention of the earliest days of the American Civil War has certainly fit that description. Gatling was an inventor who fashioned the first machine gun, although a different design by most standards. His basic design with many modern variants is still in […]

Heading to selection? Identify your weaknesses and take them on

This is for the young troops heading to Spec Ops Selection. It doesn’t matter if it is for the Ranger Regiment, Air Force Special Operations, Navy SEAL or SFAS. We all have our strengths and weaknesses. Nobody does everything perfectly, well some very rare guys do, but even they started from somewhere.  When preparing for […]

Spec Ops Infantry? It won’t work

This article should start with the statement that this isn’t an attack on Major General Robert Scales at all. Scales recently wrote an intriguing piece on how to try to “bottle SOF” and make our United States infantry units in the Army and Marine Corps as good as our SOF operators.  Scales earned a Silver […]