Over the last year, U.S. officials have seized more illicit fentanyl at Arizona’s ports of entry than anywhere else on the US-Mexico border, suggesting a possible shift in synthetic drug trafficking routes. “We’re seeing shipments of all kinds coming in fast through new routes into Arizona,” one Border Patrol agent …

by Bruce Pannier “Well guys, are we going, or are we going to sit here taking a piss?” It has been 25 years since the culmination of the so-called Russian constitutional crisis, when the country’s president, Boris Yeltsin, sought to dissolve the parliament and then ordered the military to crush …

By Royce de Melo Our correspondent has high hopes for his new sniper rifle, but finds that the knockoff Soviet-style Dragunov has a few surprises. As soon as we finished the club’s Saturday morning orientation for new members, I went out the main building’s door and headed to the 300-yard …

Perfume, purloined jewelry and a millionaire’s son form the complex story of Herbert Repsold, a Navy deserter who also was known as the Perfumed Burglar. In the early 1900s, Repsold was a troublesome youth. Growing tired of his son’s antics, the elder Repsold cut off his son’s cash and forced …

by Katie Lange  Editor’s note: SOF publisher Susan Katz Keating knew Col. Pappy Boyington in the 1980’s when he frequented the Nut Tree airport in Vacaville, California. Here is a story of his life in uniform. Colonel Gregory “Pappy” Boyington was one of the service’s greatest and most legendary pilots. …

by Ronald Winter, The War Horse Ask any Marine if they can remember the first day they actually became a Marine and you likely will be told it was boot camp graduation day. Whether it was Parris Island or San Diego, only when the senior officer in the graduation program proclaims the graduates …

by Cliff Wade Iraq, 2007 Much more often than not, our missions in Iraq were meticulously planned out well ahead of time. However, there were occasions when opportunities were presented that did not allow enough time for applying the proper troop-leading procedures, and we just winged it.  One such instance …

by Kevin Maurer, The War Horse Editor’s note: As the situation in Syria heats up, here’s a look at a rare event from 2018, when U.S. and Russian forces clashed. The fight occurred in Syria. ~SKK Explosions flashed in the fog hanging over the Euphrates River like a coming summer …

by David Chetlain, The War HorseI spent 18 months in training before reporting to my first submarine. I learned a lot about damage control, sonar, electronics, and how to distinguish a sperm whale from a humpback whale. But nothing prepared me for the disconnection from Earth that distorted my perception …

The recipe was simple: make a fire; boil water in any metal container at hand; put the ammo in the boiling water; and cook for four to five hours. by Nikolay Shevchenko During the Soviet war in Afghanistan, Russian soldiers were often seen boiling their ammo for hours in a …