The Loadout Room
Professional Gear Reviews
Fire is life. It’s cooks our food, it keeps us warm, it drives away the darkness in which we sometimes find ourselves. There’s something incredibly calming, almost meditative, about sitting in front of a crackling blaze. We stare at it intently, slowly getting lost in the flames. Fire connects us, with each other, with ourselves, […]
That’s right – SOFREP is back. What began in 2012 as a small military blog quickly grew into a leading source for all-things related to Special Operations Forces (SOF), Foreign Policy, and Defense news. In 2018, our editorial team saw an opportunity to expand beyond our SOF focus, so the decision was made to broaden […]
While it could be said that every unit which falls under the “special ops” umbrella is comprised of operators who can move, shoot, and communicate with lethal efficiency, different units developed to address specialized challenges. As the years wore on, and particularly since the onset of the Global War on Terrorism, lines may have blurred […]
The tragic events of September 11th, 2001 brought about the deaths of thousands of innocent Americans, who had their lives cut short by the cowardly acts of a small group of terrorists. It’s difficult to try to look back on such a series of events without being reminded of that sense of loss, of pain, […]
America’s special operations units have seen a dramatic uptick in the missions sets they’ve been tasked with throughout nearly two straight decades of the War on Terror, but despite some overlap in combat operations, each specialized unit has a specific area of expertise to draw from. The Navy SEALs, as most could assume from their […]
“Spooge” somehow became the nickname for the cans of spray adhesive we used to stick paper targets, bull’s eyes, and the like to a target silhouette downrange. It simply was the quickest and most convenient way to quickly attach paper to cardboard and get on to the business of sending maximum rounds down range on […]
It can be said that the need to band together in groups is intrinsic to what makes us human beings. Long before the dawn of civilization, humans gathered together in like-minded groups in order to offer one another protection, defend resources, and share the mental and physical challenges of survival. Forming a cooperative group, or […]
Hurricane season on the Atlantic coast usually runs from the beginning of June to the end of November. So far this season, we’ve been fortunate to only see on full scale hurricane and a hand full of tropical storms meander their way toward shore. However, as history has shown, it only takes one serious storm […]
Operator – someone who operates. In the civilian world, that could be someone operating an excavator, a wheeled tractor, and other similar heavy equipment. Historically, the term applied to people who worked in the old-school telephone centers and operated the manual telephone switchboards that were necessary in order from someone to call another number. In […]
There are few things more exciting in life than checking something off your bucket list. One of the big ones on my list was to take a long destination ride on my bike through the Tail of the Dragon in North Carolina and Tennessee. I had done a few day trips here and there, which […]