Steve Balestrieri

Steve Balestrieri

Steve is a SOFREP Senior Editor. He has served as a Special Forces NCO and Warrant Officer before injuries forced his early separation. He writes for SOFREP and covers the NFL for PatsFans.com and his work was regularly featured in the Millbury-Sutton Chronicle and Grafton News newspapers.

Air Force Discharges 27 Troops For Refusing COVID Vaccine

The Air Force has discharged twenty-seven enlisted airmen for refusal to get the COVID vaccine. This occurred during the ongoing battle playing out in the courts, the media and in Congress over government authority to issue such mandates in the first place.

First Casualty: The Untold Story of the CIA to Avenge 9/11- Review

Award-winning author Toby Harnden has written a riveting account of the very first days of the U.S. invasion of Afghanistan that followed the September 11th Attacks in 2001. Harnden’s book, “First Casualty: The Untold Story of the CIA to Avenge 9/11,” relies extensively on personal interviews with the particpants of these early battles to overthrow Taliban control of Afghanistan.

Sergeant First Class Alwyn Cashe, Two Special Operations Soldiers To Receive Long Delayed Medal of Honor

The award for SFC Alwyn Cashe has been considered the one award that has been the longest in coming. On October 17, 2005, Cashe, was on a combat patrol in Samarra, Iraq. As an Alpha Company platoon sergeant from Forward Operating Base (FOB) McKenzie, adjacent to Diyala, SFC Cashe was in the lead Bradley Fighting Vehicle when it struck a roadside Improvised Explosive Device (IED). 

India’s Military Chief of Staff Killed In Helicopter Crash

General Bipin Rawat the Chief of Staff of the Indian military has been killed with at least eleven others in a fiery helicopter crash in northern India. General Rawat, was traveling with his wife and staff to the Defense Services Staff College in Wellington in the Indian state of Tamil Nadu to deliver a lecture. He was sixty-three years old and came from a family of distinguished military service.

Did FDR Give His “Day of Infamy” Pearl Harbor Speech High on Cocaine? 

Under The Influence In one of the stranger, side-stories about Pearl Harbor and the immediate aftermath is the story that when President Franklin D. Roosevelt gave his speech to Congress on December 8, 1941, after the Japanese sneak attack on Pearl Harbor, that he quite possibly was under the influence of cocaine.  The issue was […]