Marine Corps veteran Athena Ives reflects on her service in the Lioness Program during the Iraq War, the challenges faced by women supporting combat operations, and how Taylor Sheridan’s television series Lioness has renewed attention to their often-overlooked contributions to military operations.
Operation Prime Chance marked an early combat success for U.S. Special Operations Command during the Iran–Iraq War. In September 1987, Army special operations helicopters and Navy SEALs intercepted and seized the Iranian minelayer Iran Ajr, demonstrating emerging joint maritime special operations capabilities.
By Jessica Walton. The Taliban are conducting an increasingly sophisticated information warfare strategy that incorporates Western tourists and social media influencers. Foreign visitors enjoy freedoms denied to Afghan citizens, then return home praising Taliban hospitality and tolerance.
By Matt Ikenoyama. A 2025 review in the European Journal of Psychotraumatology, led by Victoria Williamson, found that conventional PTSD treatments, prolonged exposure among them, often inadequately address moral injury and may exacerbate symptoms.
An AFT score and the promotion points it earns are two different numbers. Since replacing the ACFT on June 1, 2025, the Army Fitness Test has used five events worth up to 500 points altogether.
250 years ago this fall, Knowlton’s Rangers were established and helped Washington achieve his first battlefield success of the war. The unit was a specially designated unit for long-range reconnaissance behind enemy lines and other dangerous work.
Taliban propaganda exploited coalition mistakes, government corruption, cultural divides, and trusted local networks to undermine America’s Afghanistan campaign. The article examines how insurgent narratives shaped perceptions, weakened Afghan legitimacy, and offers enduring lessons for future irregular and asymmetric conflicts worldwide.
The 10th annual Global Special Operations Forces (GSOF) Symposium Europe will take place this year from 6-8 October 2026 in Rome, Italy. The event is co-sponsored by the Italian Ministry of Defense, with support from the Italian Special Operations community, and will bring together members of the global SOF community, industry.
Washington spent most of two decades building a counterterrorism force in northern Somalia. A dispute between Mogadishu and Puntland took the Puntland Security Force (PSF) apart in two days.
This essay provides an account of H.L. Hunley’s daring attack on the Union’s USS Housatonic on 17 February 1864. H.L. Hunley was a civilian submersible on loan to the Confederate Navy. The Union had a larger navy than the Confederacy, so the Union used this advantage to blockade southern ports to prevent resupply.
Any operator who has survived one, or multiple recycles in their special operations training pipeline can tell you that failure is a far better teacher than success. Retired U.S. Navy SEAL Dr. Reynaldo Baviera has had more of those opportunities for learning than most.
After four years of war, Russian society increasingly shows signs of fatigue, frustration, and desire for peace. Oleksandr Sukhobrus examines how shattered expectations, battlefield setbacks, Ukrainian drone attacks, mounting casualties, and domestic repression have changed public attitudes toward the conflict.
Pollution flowing north from Mexico’s Tijuana region is contaminating coastal waters near Coronado, exposing Navy SEAL candidates and other personnel to health risks while disrupting maritime training.
Five years after the Taliban captured Kabul, this article examines the Doha Agreement, U.S. troop withdrawal, collapse of Afghan security forces, chaotic airport evacuation, and volunteer “Digital Dunkirk” organizations that helped endangered interpreters, commandos, citizens, and families escape Afghanistan in August 2021 to safety.
By Matt Ikenoyama. SOCOM’s Preservation of the Force and Family program names spiritual health as one of its pillars; an important aspect in operator syndrome. Moral injury isn’t an endocrine problem or a sleep problem. It’s a violation of conscience, and working with it means working with guilt, meaning, and trust. That’s the territory chaplains train for.
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