New Haven, Connecticut Two weeks later:              McCoy turned over in bed as his wife grumbled next to him.  The phone on the nightstand was ringing.  The red numbers on the clock said that it was three in the morning.  Rubbing his eyes, the retired General knew that only a handful […]

New York City              Ted Snyder nervously tapped his foot against the floor. “Relax,” the younger of the two Biermann brothers told him, seeing the worried expression on his face.  “The medical examiner confirmed that it was a heart attack.” “Maybe they weren’t looking for the right thing in the tox […]

            The twin rotor blades on the CH-47 helicopter slowly, almost lazily, began to turn as the pilots cranked the engine. The forward operating base at Tarin Kot, Afghanistan was stirring, slowly at first, but more and more Multi-Cam clad Special Operations soldiers began to arrive at the airfield.  They […]

160th SOAR: Special Operations Aviation Regiment.  Army helicopter unit which flies Special Operations missions, often delivering Special Operations soldiers to their targets.   AAR: After Action Review. Soldiers typically conduct an AAR post-mission to evaluate what was done wrong and how to improve performance for the next mission.   AK-103: An updated form of the […]

The plot of this novel is a work of fiction which ties a series of events together into a story, however, most of the individual situations, scenarios, and conversations in this book depict and describe factual events.  The author was told by numerous people in the Special Operations and Intelligence Community that he would be […]

Wandering around the SHOT show this year, I managed to find a few interesting things, but the reality is that the industry moves extremely slowly.  I would argue that the gun industry as a whole hasn’t changed all that much over the last 100 years.  Everyone is trying to market the next gizmo for the […]

We hear little about the Special Operations units of Scandinavian nations, but in recent days the veil has been lifted, if only just a little, to give us a small look at what our allied SOF units have been up to in Afghanistan.  Policy-makers in Sweden have refused to confirm or deny any operations that Swedish […]

I grew up reading Soldier of Fortune magazine, which probably doesn’t surprise anyone who knows me. The stories about Special Forces soldiers in Vietnam and mercs rolling around El Salvador made an impression on me, along with all the books I read about LRRP/Rangers, SEALs, MACV-SOG, and other American men who fought and died in […]

On the 17th of December this past year, a joint police and military operation commenced in the Valley of the Apurímac, Ene and Mantaro rivers (VRAEM) in which Peruvian forces launched multiple synchronized strikes against clandestine airfields used to smuggle an estimated 1.2 tons of cocaine per day.  Four 30-man teams were reportedly launched from […]

What the American Special Operations and Intelligence community needs is a program which establishes these networks long before a crisis emerges. Positive steps have been made in this direction, but all fall short of maintaining long-term, consistent, and reliable intelligence gathering on a tactical level. This paper proposes a program which recruits willing Special Forces […]

FOREWORD By Jack Murphy Whenever I talk to active duty special operations soldiers, both sergeants and officers, they all have one question in common, “What the hell are we doing?” That may be the question of this generation of soldiers and intelligence professionals. Sorry, America, you won’t get much of an answer to that question […]

During the planning of the D-Day (formally known as Operation Overlord) invasion of mainland Europe, “the Jedburgh concept was born in the minds of political and military leaders at the highest levels…” (Irwin, xviii). The Jedburghs were to be small, three-man teams which were multi-national in composition. American Jedburghs served under the Office of Strategic […]