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Darkness and confusion may be the biggest killer in future wars—will anyone be safe?

Today’s world, while safer for most than at any other time in human history, is ripe with burgeoning conflict, simmering just beneath the surface. Civil wars and regional spats in nations like Yemen and Syria draw powerful militaries into proxy-conflicts. Looming concerns about a resource-scarce future have prompted Russia to lay claim to the Arctic, […]

The problem with military leadership, as told by 3 monkeys and a step ladder

The military is made up of all sorts of people. The good, the bad, and the ugly all find their ways into uniforms, and although much of the training service members undergo is intended to improve upon our abilities to lead, some aspects of good leadership are innate and unlearnable. Some men and women just […]

Watch: See what it’s like to be on the receiving end of an A-10 Warthog strafing run

The 30 mm General Electric GAU-8/A Avenger rotary canon first entered into service in 1977. The 619 pound monster Gatling gun measured just shy of 2 feet wide and 20 feet long when completed, but more than compensating for its gargantuan size by boasting a terrifying fire rate of 3,900 rounds per minute, fired from […]

Three things that seem like they’ll kill you (but probably won’t)

People have always been fascinated with death, and for good reason. Despite the massive breadth of experiences that one can accumulate over a lifetime on Earth, our final disposition after we exhale our last breath remains a unique kind of mystery: one we will all eventually solve, but can never relay to others. Death represents […]

SERE School from the perspective of a Delta Operator: Surviving as prisoner of war

While taking part in a training course for a special mission, I understood that I would be attending SERE school at some point during the six-month course, though I didn’t really know when. Our SERE training was split into an administrative phase of classroom training, followed by a no-notice internment phase in a prisoner-of-war camp… […]

Crash course in Close Quarters Battle: Doors and Thresholds

Previously, we discussed how various room angles and room dimensions shape the choice of room-clearing tactics you use. But in every scenario, it was assumed you would be entering a room that has its doors open. In part 3 of this series, Eli focuses on the tactics of room clearing when the doors are closed. […]

The RifleMug is an Army Ranger’s solution to your boring coffee cup

Here at the Loadout Room, we tend not to throw our hats into the Kickstarter ring all that often. It’s not that we aren’t a fan of crowd funding projects, it’s that we review gear — and most Kickstarters don’t have stuff for us to smash up on camera behind the office (what we call […]

How two Delta Force jumpers collided at 24,000 feet in accelerated free fall and lived

“The sky, even more than the sea, is terribly unforgiving for even the slightest mistake.” (Author Unknown) Let’s get one thing straight: I hate jumping. Don’t get me wrong, the whole concept and execution is sexy enough, but I was simply cursed with a wicked bout of acrophobia. Two or three days prior to an […]

Surviving SAS selection (Part 1): From the hills into the trees

The time I spent in Hereford was hell on my body, even though it was almost healed from my ordeal on the hills. I had no toenails left, and the blister scars on my feet were still visible and hurt a little bit, especially when I put them in my new jungle boots to break […]

Navy SEALs and backpack nukes: US special operators once carried the fury of the atom in a sack

Thanks to decades’ worth of cultural pressure on the international stage, most nations view the use of nuclear weapons in war as a reprehensible act. Today’s nuclear nations, by and large, ascribe to a model of deterrence: Put simply, our nukes stop them from using their nukes. Although posturing can get quite a bit more […]