Unlike the beards of Special Forces operators, the hipster beard conceals a shameful history filled with artisan cheese, craft beer, and homemade shoes.

SOFREP is pleased to announce a new publishing partnership with St. Martin’s Press. The military editor for St. Martin’s, Marc Resnick, had this to say about St. Martin’s relationship with SOFREP: “I’ve had the pleasure of publishing great books with Brandon Webb, including his bestselling memoir The Red Circle. To enter into a publishing partnership with […]

Kurdish YPG forces receive American AC-130 gunship support for a ground assault.

Special Operations may be able to dodge the worst of the coming DOD budget cuts, but the military as a whole will be hit hard.

Our BS meters are already way into the red.

Note: This is part six of a series. You can read part one, part two, part three, part four, and part five here. The South African contractors of STTEP trained and served alongside the Nigerian Strike Force in combat against Boko Haram starting in January of 2015, putting a significant dent in the terrorist organization and helping […]

Unconfirmed accounts in the Iraqi media are reporting that Saddam’s Hussein’s second in command, Izzat al-Douri, has been killed in the Hamrin mountains north of the city of Tikrit.  Al-Douri has long been in hiding since the 2003 invasion of Iraq and was the highest ranking Baath party member to escape capture by coalition forces.  He […]

Note: This is part five of a series. You can read part one, part two, part three, and part four here. The second part in this series began to lay out a few of the internal drivers for Nigeria’s conflict with Boko Haram. The religious aspect is not to be overlooked, of course, but often it is poverty […]

Does America place its troops in unnecessarily dangerous situations because of overly restrictive Rules of Engagement in places like Afghanistan?

Note: This is part four of a series. You can read part one, part two, and part three here. Like Executive Outcomes in the 1990s, STTEP faces an uphill battle against a media narrative that has accused the South African contractors of being white, racist mercenaries who helped prop up apartheid. STTEP’s chairman, Eeben Barlow, scoffs at such a notion. […]

Barlow’s approach emphasizes turning the tables on the enemy by running him to ground, exhausting him, and then killing him with overwhelming firepower.

South African PMCs have been training a Nigerian strike force and have integrated them into their unit during combat operations against Boko Haram.