William F. "Bill" Cronin III on a security detail during Operation Desert Storm. Like his fellow operator Mike Vining, he looks more like an accountant than one of the most experienced men in the Army's SMU. Don't judge a book by its cover. Cronin began his Army career in Special Forces before going on to spend nearly 15 years as an operator in the Unit, a career that covered some of the most demanding years in its history. After retiring, he moved into business, working at every level from angel investor to VP of Operations across six startup companies. He later co-founded Quick Services LLC with fellow SOF veteran Mel Wick, built on a simple idea that came out of 9/11: stay in the fight. Today he also serves as a director of The Station Foundation, which supports the health, wellness, and readiness of special operations members and their families.

Real footage: Delta Force operators on a raid in the Baghdad suburbs, early GWOT. In those years, raids like this were the rhythm of Delta's deployments. Most were never seen.

Shooting large caliber suppressed in a small room is still pretty damn loud. Ear pro is always better than tinnitus.

Staff Sgt. Logan Melgar was a 34 year old Army Green Beret deployed to Bamako, Mali, in 2017, supporting counterterrorism operations as part of a joint special operations detachment. He shared a house in the city with members of DEVGRU, the Navy's Special Mission Unit, and Marine Raiders. On June 4, 2017, he was killed in that house by the men he served alongside. At around 5 a.m., two SEALs and two Marine Raiders broke down his door with a sledgehammer as he slept, as part of what they had planned as a "tape job" to humiliate him over a perceived slight. One of the SEALs, a former professional MMA fighter, put him in a chokehold while the others restrained and duct taped him. Seconds later, Logan stopped breathing. He never regained consciousness. What followed took years. Three of the men pleaded guilty, and the fourth was convicted at trial. One SEAL received a sentence of 10 years in confinement. The others got sentences ranging from 6 months to 4 years. Logan should be remembered for who he was: a Green Beret who volunteered for the hardest jobs the Army has to offer, and whose family has spent years demanding the truth. His death remains one of the darkest chapters in the recent history of the special operations community. De Oppresso Liber! 🇺🇸

Cody Alford joined the Marine Corps on an infantry contract and quickly set his sights on becoming a Scout Sniper. As a young Marine, he fought in the Battle of Fallujah, where he was shot in the head and somehow survived. He has since described the moment as an out of body experience, believing he was dead before being pulled back into the fight, with his teammates urging him to grab the radio and call for support. That wound didn't end his career. Over more than 15 years in uniform, he went from Scout Sniper to Force Reconnaissance Marine and eventually to MARSOC, where he served as a Marine Raider and senior leader. He was later medically retired after a series of cognitive issues tied to traumatic brain injury. Life after the Marine Corps came with its own fight. Going from a senior leader in special operations to someone without a title or a mission forced him to rebuild his identity from the ground up. He and his family sold almost everything and spent years living in a converted van traveling the country. Today, he is an entrepreneur, mental health advocate, and motivational speaker, and the founder of Defy The Norm, helping others push past their own limits.

Luke Page served as a Tactical Air Control Party with the 17th Special Tactics Squadron, the Air Force unit that brings air power to the 75th Ranger Regiment. A graduate of TACP class Falcon 75, he spent his time in uniform as the airman on the ground connecting Rangers to the aircraft overhead. After leaving the military, Luke fought a different battle against stage 4 lymphoma. He passed away on October 27, 2020, at just 35 years old, leaving behind his wife, Haley, and their son, Branson. His family asked that, instead of flowers, people donate to the HunterSeven Foundation, which works to help post-9/11 veterans facing cancer and illness. Not every warrior we lose falls on the battlefield. Luke's fight deserves to be remembered all the same.

Thomas Greer and John "Shrek" McPhee, two operators from the Army's SMU who served together in the Unit and fought side by side at Tora Bora in December 2001, when Greer was the senior commander on the ground leading the hunt for Osama bin Laden in the mountains of eastern Afghanistan.

Ukraine's Special Operations Forces have received the Heckler & Koch G95, the HK416A8 variant that is also entering service with the German Bundeswehr. The rifles were supplied through German military aid, putting some of the newest small arms in the German inventory directly into the hands of Ukrainian operators. The HK416A8 was selected by the German Army in December 2022 as its new standard assault rifle, replacing the G36 after decades of service. In German service, it carries the G95 designation. For Ukrainian SOF, it adds to an inventory that already includes thousands of earlier HK416s, also supplied by Germany. The rifles in these photos also show something every operator understands: no rifle stays stock for long. Optics, lights, and accessories get added and arranged to match the mission and the man carrying it, and the setups seen here reflect the demands of a war that has shaped how Ukrainian units fight.

Delta Force operators from C Squadron ride the outboard benches of an MH-6 Little Bird over Baghdad during the GWOT. Around the city, some called them Baghdad SWAT.

This U.S. soldier's M16A1 has one of the strangest attachments of the Vietnam War: the XM2 personnel detector, better known to the troops as the "People Sniffer." Developed by General Electric for the Army's Chemical Corps and fielded in 1967, it was built to find an enemy that was nearly impossible to see in thick jungle by detecting the chemical traces of human sweat and urine. The system had a sensor carried in a backpack and an air intake tube mounted at the end of the rifle. Wherever the muzzle pointed, the device sampled the air. In theory, it would lead a patrol straight to a hidden enemy position. In practice, troops found plenty of problems. The detector made noise, which is the last thing you want in an ambush position, and it was sensitive enough to pick up the sweat of the soldiers carrying it. The enemy also adapted quickly, reportedly hanging buckets of urine in the jungle to send the sniffers chasing ghosts. The airborne XM3 version mounted on helicopters saw much wider use, but the backpack model became a footnote. It's a strange piece of gear and a reminder of how hard American troops worked to find an enemy who rarely wanted to be found.

The operator standing near the center in the "daisy dukes" and white T-shirt is Special Warfare Operator 2nd Class (SEAL) David J. Warsen of SEAL Team 3. Known as "Davey" to those closest to him, he was killed in action on August 16, 2012, when the Black Hawk he was riding in was shot down by a rocket propelled grenade northeast of Kandahar, Afghanistan. Davey grew up in Kentwood, Michigan, and graduated from East Kentwood High School. He enlisted in the Navy in March 2009 and graduated from BUD/S a year later. Family members remembered him as an upbeat guy who was incredibly proud to be a SEAL and worked hard for it. His deployment was scheduled to end on October 1, and he and his fiancée, Karlyn, had planned to marry that December. He was 27 years old. Six other Americans and four Afghans were also lost in the crash, including his teammate, SO1 (SEAL) Patrick Feeks. Today, a stretch of M-6 near his hometown carries his name, and each year his family and community gather to keep his legacy alive.

In the early hours of May 25, 2025, Goodyear, Arizona, police officer Dakota Berry was driving back from booking a suspect into jail in Phoenix when he came across the aftermath of a crash on Interstate 10 near 91st Avenue. One of the cars was on fire, and the driver was trapped inside, honking the horn for help. Berry didn't wait. He ran to the car, smashed the driver's side window with his glass-breaking tool, and pulled the young woman out by her feet. Her hair was on fire, so he tried to put out the flames with his bare hands before grabbing a fire extinguisher. Then, even with burns to his own hands, he went back to work setting out flares to keep other drivers from crashing into the scene. He was later treated at a burn center for his injuries. At the hospital, he learned that the woman he saved, Asharie Cheatham, was the daughter of Goodyear Fire Captain Simeon Cheatham. Berry later said he would have done the same for anyone. He has since been honored by the Goodyear City Council and received the ASIS Award for Valor. Asked about the rescue, he kept it simple: "Just simply doing my job."

These promo photos show the CZ BREN 3, the third generation of Česká zbrojovka's modular rifle family. CZ first unveiled it at Eurosatory 2024 in Paris, describing it as the result of feedback from soldiers, police officers, and special operations personnel who carry earlier BREN rifles. That feedback includes lessons from the war in Ukraine, where large numbers of BREN 2s have seen heavy use. Most of the changes are in the upper. The gas block now has three settings, with a dedicated suppressed setting replacing the old "off" position. The bolt and carrier have been redesigned with dual extractors, and the side folding stock has a reinforced lockup. The rifle is chambered in 5.56×45mm NATO and .300 Blackout, with barrel lengths ranging from 7 to 16.5 inches. It also pairs with CZ's new 40mm grenade launcher. The select-fire BREN 3 is available only to military and law enforcement customers. The real question now is how it performs in the hands of the people it was built for.

A CQB training run, broken down: eyes off the entry point, an uncleared space, standing in the fatal funnel, then a 40 mm fired at point-blank range. Small mistakes stack up fast. Train CQB wrong, and it can get you killed for real. #CQB #FatalFunnel #TacticalTraining

Employees of Vietnam Electricity, the country's state-owned power company, getting some self-defense training. It's nice to see the accounts receivable department putting in the work. We doubt many customers will be refusing to pay their bills after this. In Vietnam, large state companies maintain their own self-defense units as part of the country's Militia and Self-Defense Forces, so office staff and engineers train with rifles alongside their day jobs. And the lineup is a history lesson in itself: a Type 63, an M16, and an AK in the back. Three rifles, three very different stories. Pay your electric bill on time.

A U.S. Marine with 1st Marine Special Operations Battalion in the village of Watan, Helmand Province, Afghanistan, on April 3, 2012. We've seen plenty of ways to carry 40mm rounds for the M203, but we have never come across a storage setup quite like this one. The name on his unit may also look unfamiliar to newer followers. In 2012, the Raider title wasn't in use yet. MARSOC's combat element was the Marine Special Operations Regiment, or MSOR, made up of three Marine Special Operations Battalions. The change to the Raider name was announced in 2014 and became official on June 19, 2015. The MSOR became the Marine Raider Regiment, and the MSOBs became Marine Raider Battalions, reviving the name of the Marines who fought in the Pacific during World War II. The name was new, but the men and the mission were already there. Have you seen a 203 setup like this before?

This is Mike Vining, an operator with the Army's SMU, at a Ranger camp in 1985. If the photo looks familiar, that's because it has been shared countless times online. And no, he wasn't a Ranger before he went through selection. The SMU did sometimes train alongside the Rangers, and that's how he ended up in this shot. His actual background was explosive ordnance disposal. After a combat tour in Vietnam, where his EOD team destroyed the largest enemy ammunition cache found in the war, he joined the newly formed SMU in 1978. He went through the unit's selection course and graduated from its very first Operator Training Course, becoming one of its founding members and its first EOD specialist. Over the years that followed, Vining took part in Operation Eagle Claw, the assault on Richmond Hill Prison during Urgent Fury, Desert Storm, and Uphold Democracy in Haiti. He served as Chief EOD Technician and Breaching Sergeant Major within the Unit, and later investigated the 1996 Khobar Towers bombing. He retired as a Sergeant Major in 1999. More than just a meme, he's one of the original operators.

A heavily armed U.S. Navy SEAL poses with a modified M60 machine gun and belts of ammunition during the Vietnam War. In the rivers, canals, and mangrove swamps of the Mekong Delta, SEAL platoons operated in small teams deep in enemy territory, often at night and far from help. When contact came, it was usually close, sudden, and violent. To give a handful of men the firepower of a much larger unit, SEALs modified their M60s for the fight they were in. Shortened barrels, removed bipods, and other changes made the gun lighter and handier in thick vegetation, and the men carrying them packed in as much ammunition as they could manage. Those M60s were built to break contact and win the first few seconds of a firefight. Photos like this capture a defining era for the Teams, when the SEALs earned their reputation one patrol at a time.

Polish prosecutors have released their findings on the deaths of two GROM operators, Sgt. Karol Rubin and Senior Pvt. Rafał Kotnarowski, who were killed during a nighttime parachute training jump near Eloy, Arizona, on September 19, 2025. The two were taking part in a group night free fall jump from around 3,000 meters when the accident happened at about 2:50 a.m. local time. According to investigators, an unplanned change of positions in the formation caused the two jumpers' flight paths to cross. They collided and became entangled in the air. One of them did not cut away his main canopy and was unable to deploy his reserve. The other cut away, but by then he was already too close to the ground. After a year long investigation, prosecutors found no involvement by any third party, and the case has been formally closed. Rubin came from Orzysz and Kotnarowski from Suwałki. Both were experienced jumpers who served with Poland's Special Mission Unit, and both were lost doing the kind of demanding training that keeps GROM ready for whatever comes next. Former GROM commander Gen. Roman Polko summed it up simply: they ran out of a soldier's luck.

Did this Chadian sniper really take the scope off his anti-materiel rifle to use as a spotting scope? You know you're in a well trained and well resourced army when the optic comes off the big gun, zero and all, just to stand in for a piece of gear that costs a fraction of the price. And before anyone says a good spotting scope is expensive, take a look at what he's peering through right now. A $200 Bushnell spotter would have him in business. It's not top tier glass, but it would be a massive upgrade over his current method, and his rifle would still be ready to shoot when he needs it. Improvise, adapt, overcome. Just maybe not like this. 😅