Tag: US Army

Service members joining the United States military today are generally issued a rifle that would look familiar to anyone that’s worn an American uniform since 1963. The M16 has seen several versions. But young troopers today essentially carry the same rifles as their grandfathers in Vietnam. The general operating principles haven’t changed all that much since […]

The 2017 Netflix film “War Machine” opens and closes in tragically comedic fashion, with a new commander taking the helm of the American effort in Afghanistan, intent on turning the tides of the longstanding conflict in a way his predecessors proved unable. The beats are the same, the score is the same, and, as the […]

Military service and alcohol-fueled tales of grandeur, as well as the tales of pure stupidity and recklessness, seem to go hand in hand. What some would call alcohol abuse, others would call a normal Friday night. The relationship between alcohol usage and the military cannot be overstated. I had just arrived at my new unit, […]

The U.S. Army is changing its OSUT (One Station Unit Training) program for infantry, pushing it from 14 weeks to 21 weeks. This will be a “pilot program” initiated in July, which will be used to determine the effectiveness of the extension and whether or not it warrants permanent integration into the Army. It is […]

Note: The soldier laughing and swearing in the video below was given a letter of reprimand. Explicit Language Warning The Army said in a statement to Fox News that Sgt. John T. Skipper, 29, was found guilty in a court-martial of three instances of destroying military property worth over $500 and lying during the official […]

The first time I ever heard gunshots take a person’s life, I was in the fourth grade. They would often blow up chunks of the surrounding mountain range with bundles of dynamite, but this sounded different. My Dad would later explain to me that a Sunni had shot a Shiite dead in the bazaar. It […]

The U.S. Air Force could be soon wearing the same duty uniforms as the U.S. Army, the “MultiCam” according to documents that were on social media last week. The documents, reportedly from the Air Force Uniform Office, suggest ditching the service’s “Airman Battle Uniform” in favor of the Army’s MultiCam “Operational Camouflage Pattern.” The change […]

When people think of the loss of life in a war, they generally think of soldiers sustaining traumatic injuries. However, conditions on the battlefield are anything but healthy, and disease has often inflicted serious casualties on forces that scramble through months of jungle mountains, or scrape through muddy trenches for weeks on end, and sometimes […]

Patrick Bacon joined the United States Army when he was 21 years old. He would make it through the rigorous schools and selections required to enter the 75th Ranger Regiment, where he served in the 3rd Ranger Battalion, spending five years in the military and leaving as a sergeant with multiple deployments under his belt. […]

SOFREP is proud to present its guest author, Zachary Mayne, veteran of 3rd Ranger Battalion.  Welcome, Zachary! Five weeks after being wounded by a burst of high-explosive rounds in combat, I was hooking up my static line for a daylight, Hollywood jump over Fryar DZ. My wounds had healed quickly, it seemed. The sight had […]

I’m not the type of person that puts value in obscure objects just because “I’ve had them since I was X years old.” I am constantly rifling through my drawers, under my bed and through my storage unit, throwing things away that have no utilitarian or decorative value. Sentiment hasn’t gotten me much over the […]

At the U.S. Army’s Sniper School at Fort Benning in Georgia, students undergo some of the most grueling training the force offers. “Sniper school is one of the hardest schools in the military, not physically, but mentally,” Staff Sgt. Brian Moran, one of the 11 instructors who oversees the training, told the Army News Service. Army snipers […]