Tag Archives: Featured

by Mark Grdovic In the spring of 2003, the US Army’s 10th Special Forces Group tied down 60 percent of the Iraqi Army north of Baghdad while US and coalition forces attacked from the south. Mark Grdovic was on the ground as part of the mission he helped design. The following is …

by Jerry Kraus South African parachute veterans, a black Super Huey, and one hell of a water jump over Florida. Last fall, I attended a small reunion of Soldier of Fortune friends at the NRA Whittington Center in Raton, New Mexico. After a long day of shooting, I found myself …

by Heath Hansen Happy National Airborne Day to all you servicemen and servicewomen who volunteered to serve your country at a “higher” level! Created in 2002, by then President George W. Bush, National Airborne Day honors all the Nation’s airborne armed forces. READ MORE from Heath Hansen in Soldier of …

Some never made it off the drawing board. Others are carried, worn, and remembered more than a century later. Walk across a modern military installation and WWI keeps turning up. It’s in the arms room, the protective-equipment locker, procurement contracts, and even over the radio. The war produced an extraordinary …

by Igor R. Salikov Excerpted from Putin’s ‘Viper’ Detachment: One Man’s Role in a Russian Special Forces Unit and the Invasion of Ukraine, by Igor R. Salikov, published by Frontline Books. War is a tiresome thing, even in conversation. Especially if you tell the truth. These are not dashing stories …

by Susan Katz Keating Why did Soviet forces abandon Afghanistan in 1989 after nearly 10 years of war? Western analysts have burned through terabytes trying to explain it. What else besides the fierce Mujahideen drove the Red Army to retreat with nothing to show but shattered pride? Some credit the …

by Sean “Sako” Sakinofsky Few movie knives are as famous as the custom Jimmy Lile survival Bowie carried by John Rambo in First Blood. It became one of the defining images of 1980’s action films. The likelihood of a Green Beret medic like Rambo walking out of military service with such …

by Susan Katz Keating The movie just dropped. The files keep coming out. We’ve been covering this for years. Here’s your field briefing. With a major UFO film hitting theaters, the timing feels almost scripted. But at Soldier of Fortune, we didn’t wait for Hollywood to greenlight a script before …

by Martin Kufus Editor’s note: This is an excerpt from  Plow the Dirt but Watch the Sky, a memoir by Martin Kufus, a former editor at Soldier of Fortune. This chapter shows Martin’s experience at the Special Forces SERE Instructor Qualification Course, where he encountered the legendary Col. Nick Rowe – …

by Susan Katz Keating The call came in the early morning hours from a friend who heard it through a friend before it was news. A CH-47 Chinook carrying U.S. special operations personnel had been shot down in Afghanistan. The helicopter, call sign Extortion 17, was brought down on Aug. 6, …