by Joey Middleton | Oct 2, 2025 | SOF and Strategic Competition, SOF Operations
Executive Summary: DoD Instruction 3000.07 – Irregular Warfare (IW) OverviewThe Department of Defense (DoD) has reissued its Irregular Warfare directive as a formal Instruction (DoDI 3000.07), effective September 29, 2025. This new framework elevates Irregular Warfare...
by Joey Middleton | Sep 24, 2025 | SOF Operations
The Luzon Strait, 0237 hours. The sea was black glass, silent, deceptive, endless. From the bridge of our modified support vessel, I watched the horizon pulse with the slow rhythm of distant cargo traffic. Somewhere out there between the Filipino islands and Taiwan’s...
by Joey Middleton | Sep 18, 2025 | SOF Operations
By Daniel Byman, Seth G. Jones, and Sofia Triana The wars in Ukraine and the Middle East offer many lessons for better understanding, conducting, and countering irregular warfare.1 On October 7, 2023, the Hamas attack on Israel combined attacks on Israeli military...
by Joey Middleton | Jul 29, 2025 | SOF Operations
By Marius Kristiansen, Kevin D. Stringer New frontiers of strategic competition beckon for immediate special operations forces (SOF) transformation to prevail in the space domain and the polar regions. Aligned with Assistant Secretary of Defense for Special...
by Joey Middleton | Jul 29, 2025 | SOF Operations
Training for Victory: U.S. Special Forces Advisory Operations from El Salvador to Afghanistan. By Frank Sobchak. Annapolis: U.S. Naval Institute Press, 2024. ISBN: 978168247133. Maps. Photographs. Glossary. Notes. Sources cited. Index. Pp. 1-352. $39.95. The closeout...
by Joey Middleton | Jul 24, 2025 | SOF Operations, SOF Policy
By Alexandra Chinchilla Introduction: Rethinking U.S. Military Advising After the failure to build a sustainable Afghan military that could survive without U.S. presence, many scholars and practitioners now argue that U.S. efforts to build foreign militaries are...