training

Sometimes it is weird how a picture or something you see on television can trigger a memory. The odd thing is that many times, these things can be totally unrelated to the memories that they trigger and yet, they all come back in a flash. And this one memory about being a student in the Special […]

We’ve written a ton of different Selection preparation articles and, being creatures of habit, stuck with the tried and true methods that got us from point A to point B. And truth be told, there is no substitute for learning to navigate and carrying a rucksack. Because when a candidate is in his Selection course, […]

The new optimization of the Special Forces Qualification Course is reducing the total training time to just 24 weeks to receive their Green Beret, raising doubts about the quality of the soldier being produced.

In the first three articles of this five-part series, you learned what it means to be Special Forces; how those warriors are found; and how they are groomed over time to allow them to accomplish the missions they are tasked with. In this article, I’ll explain why, even with great soldiers and great culture, there still needs to be […]

When training Special Ops candidates or qualified operators, there are many, many tests I have them perform to determine where their strengths and weaknesses lie. A SOF soldier needs to have a solid base of strength in the following: upper body pushing and pulling, single and double leg, and core; he also needs to have […]

So, there we were. It was late winter and we were doing helicopter insert/extract training, known as helocasting, in the Chesapeake Bay in Virginia. The water was somewhere around 45 degrees. It was cold enough that we were wearing our dry suits instead of wet suits. The dry suits we wore were essentially onesies, with […]

The United States military has resumed some offensive operations with Iraqi military units against Islamic State targets. The U.S. will also shortly resume the training of Iraqi units. (The two sides are currently trying to work out the details — we don’t currently know who the U.S. negotiators are.) This resumption of operations comes just […]

The Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, General Mark Milley was in Brussels to speak at a gathering of NATO commanders. There he said that the U.S. wants to reduce its footprint in Africa. Meanwhile, France’s President Emmanuel Macron was hosting a conference of the G5 nations (Burkina Faso, Chad, Mali, Mauritania, and Niger) […]

Over 40-years ago, Iranian militants seized the U.S. Embassy in Tehran, Iran, and took 98 hostages. The majority of them would be held for 444 days until they would be freed just before Ronald Reagan became President.  The events that unfolded during the crisis would put in motion the creation of the United States Special […]

After the Iranian missile attack on the joint U.S./Iraqi bases, many are wondering what happens next. And then, will the U.S. still be forced to leave Iraq, after Iraqi lawmakers passed a non-binding resolution to kick out American troops from the country?  First of all, some of what will transpire will have to do with […]

The Israeli Defense Forces (IDF) have created a new combat force that they are calling the “Multidimensional Unit” and are assigning soldiers from across the military to it. According to the Israelis, this combined unit is the first of its kind in the world. Lt. Gen. Aviv Kochavi, the IDF’s Chief of Staff, ordered the […]

Soldiers who came from a light infantry or a Ranger battalion will have already mastered the art of rucking for long distances. For soldiers coming from a different background, that is where they are sailing into uncharted waters.