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.
This essay provides an account of the British submersible attack against the German dreadnought Tirpitz in the fjords of Norway in September 1943. The Kriesgmarine (German Navy) moved Tirpitz to a protected anchorage in the Kaafjord, well out of range of allied reconnaissance aircraft and bombers.
Walk into almost any team room in the SOF community and you will find them: a rack, a shelf, sometimes just a desk drawer heavy with metal. Challenge coins accumulate around SOF the way sand accumulates in a rucksack. Almost no one can tell you, years later, exactly where each one came from.
By SOAA. China’s recent submarine-launched ballistic missile test highlights the military power supporting Beijing’s unrestricted warfare campaign. This article examines inadequate launch notifications, defense supply-chain restrictions, and calls for a comprehensive U.S. strategy to counter PRC coercion worldwide more effectively.
Historian Ben Powers interviews retired Army First Sergeant Christopher “Moon” Mullins about his forthcoming biography of Lieutenant General William P. Yarborough. Mullins discusses Yarborough’s wartime leadership, airborne innovations, institutional battles, and enduring role in shaping the identity, culture, and doctrine of Army Special Forces soldiers.
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