Tag: Special Operations

KABUL, Afghanistan — Two wounded American soldiers and the body of a third have been evacuated from a battlefield in southern Afghanistan after hours of clashes, a U.S. military official said Wednesday. “All casualties have been evacuated” following fighting the day before near the city of Marjah, in the southern Helmand province, U.S. Army Col. […]

Special operators have an inherently difficult, demanding, and dangerous job. As a result, they are afforded many luxuries that regular troops are not—a minor consolation prize for them. Some of those perks might even seem small and insignificant to a casual observer.

  WASHINGTON — The White House will nominate a veteran Special Operations commander to lead U.S. Central Command, underscoring the Obama administration’s affinity for using secretive elite military forces in Iraq, Syria and Afghanistan. Senior officials this week approved Army Gen. Joseph Votel, who has headed U.S. Special Operations Command since Aug. 2014, as the […]

  MACDILL AIR FORCE BASE, Fla. — Defense Secretary Ashton B. Carter said Thursday that the United States has asked more countries to send Special Operations troops to join the fight against the Islamic State, and not just typical partners like Britain and Australia. Carter did not name the countries, but said “there are states […]

What exactly happened in the run up to the Benghazi attack has been extremely difficult to penetrate, as perhaps as few as 50 people in the entire world were read on to these classified, compartmentalized operations.

Military, government, academic, and policy gurus are forever formulating new doctrine, concepts, terminology, and acronyms for the military. Years ago there were very few terms to consider (compared to now) in the special operations world – Unconventional Warfare (UW), Foreign Internal Defense (FID), Internal Defense and Development (IDAD), Counterinsurgency (COIN), and a few others. It […]

I have chosen to use the example of training a special operations combat medic to illustrate Grinder’s levels of skill acquisition and the crucial importance of reality-based training, however the principles are equally applicable to any operator in any field.

Unless you’re an Iran analyst or have read, The Twilight War, by David Crist, you likely don’t know that the United States and Iran have been playing a game of cat and mouse in the Persian Gulf for decades. The “tanker war” of the 1980s pitted American naval might against Iran’s far less capable fleet […]

Through nearly 15 years of a war that has taken the U.S. military from Afghanistan to Iraq and battle zones beyond, one constant has been the role of Special Operations Forces in leading the charge. A new TV series spearheaded by a former Navy SEAL goes inside this insular military culture by using first-person accounts […]

Today, during morning military operations in the Helmand province, an unidentified U.S. special operations member was killed and a second U.S. soldier wounded in a firefight against the Taliban

Admittedly, I’d rather not be shot with either, but if I had to choose, I’d take a round from the AK-47 over the M4 any day of the week. To add a caveat to that statement, I’m talking from relatively close range here—say up to 150-200 meters. To understand why, it’s important to first take a […]

Following the San Bernardino shootings, the FBI was finally forced to make an announcement that they were pursuing a terrorism investigation, whether the White House liked it or not.