As the Australian and Afghan soldiers crept into the Oruzgan village of Derapet in the dawn half-light and saw locals quietly slipping away, they knew a fight was coming.

All videos © Matthew VanDyke.  Check out more at Matthew’s website to learn about the new documentary that he is currently filming inside Syria.  On his biography page you can also read about how Matthew decided to travel to Libya to help some of his freinds fighting the war against Gaddafi’s forces, including his capture […]

Feral Jundi recently directed my attention to this article which I felt I needed to pass on to our readers.  It is written by Eeben Barlow, the founder and CEO of Executive Outcomes.  EO was the Private Military Company that went into Angola and Sierra Leone, leading highly successful operations at a fraction of the […]

A while back I wrote about a joint operation I did with a LRS unit in Iraq in 2009 but for the life of me I could not recall the specific unit designation.  Thankfully, I had a member of that patrol reach out to me recently to help jog my memory and provide some details.  […]

I first wrote about the status of HALO (or MFF) being integrated into the Special Forces Qualification Course in Part II of this series.  Now it looks like we are that much closer.  The big issue was securing the sheer number of aircraft that would be required for training every single Q-Course student in MFF […]

I guess I’m one of those lame non-Hollywood type dudes.  When my ODA was offered the mini-gun in Iraq I made it clear that I wasn’t interested.  With the amount of dust and debris you pick up driving around Iraq the maintenance needed on the mini-gun can be overwhelming.  I know, it seemed really cool […]

A sneak peak at things to come…   Two hours on camera with Keith Nell about the Rhodesian SAS, Counter-Insurgency, assassinations, cannibals, and a KGB mastermind.

If you read much fiction about Vietnam, or even watch movies about it, chances are you’ll frequently bump into a character who has become a stereotype of the subgenre. This stereotype was rarely, if ever, seen in film or fiction before Vietnam. The character is eccentric on his good days; psychotic the rest of the […]

Apparently there be some gringos in the mix. -Jack Al-Shabab used the port to bring in weapons and earn revenue. But the al-Qaeda-aligned group has told the BBC the attack has been rebuffed and none of the city has fallen. Kenyan troops are part of the AU force trying to wrest control of the country […]

On August 5th, 1964 three fast moving patrol boats of the North Vietnamese Navy’s 135th Torpedo Squadron sped across the black waters of the Gulf of Tonkin towards the United States Navy’s USS Maddox which was conducting an intelligence gathering operation off the coast of communist controlled shores in South East Asia. Taking evasive maneuvers, […]

On November 23rd, 2009 over 100 armed men descended on a convoy belonging to Filipino political candidate Esmael Mangudadatu.  The candidate was not traveling with his entourage, which consisted of dozens of people including family members and journalists. With a bounty put on Mangudadatu’s head, gunmen consisting of private bodyguards, off duty soldiers, policemen, police auxiliaries, a civilian […]

Folks, please join me at the Tunnel to Towers run with Team Schlitz this coming Sunday, September 30th.  Michael lost both his arms and got third degree burns on 80% of his body during an IED blast in Iraq.  The money from this event will be used to build Michael a smart home down in […]