The High Side

(U.S. Army photo by Sgt. Paul Won) The 75th Ranger Regiment is preparing to create a 4th Ranger Battalion in order to meet force readiness and crisis response requirements, according to two officials familiar with the preparations. Rangers are expected to start showing up at the new battalion in September, and by next summer have the unit established on a provisional basis.

SEAL Team 6 operators jumping from a C-17 Globemaster while conducting military freefall training. (U.S. Navy) It was the height of the COVID pandemic in late October 2020, and SEAL Team 6 was having one of its thrice-weekly morning briefings. Connected via videoconference, participants in different offices were wearing masks as an intelligence officer briefed potential hostage rescue missions around the world.

Delta Force training for their counter-proliferation mission at the Nevada Test Site (courtesy photo, provided to The High Side). For more than three months, a Joint Special Operations Command task force has been standing by in the Middle East, prepared to execute what some insiders say would likely bethe most dangerous mission the command has ever been assigned: recovering highly enriched uranium from underground facilities in Iran.

A screenshot taken from video circulating on social media of one of the three F-15E Strike Eagles shot down by a Kuwaiti F/A-18 March 1.

Hey folks, hope you’ve been enjoying the recent articles on The High Side. We’ve got more coming at you this summer. In the meantime, Sean Naylor, Zach Dorfman, and myself (Jack) have appeared on a couple podcasts recently that we wanted to draw your attention to. The first is an episode of Eyes On which is the sister podcast of The Team House, featuring geopolitical analysis with former military and CIA officers but this one has the three authors of our most recent article about JSOC spies on it.

The growing challenge of putting operatives under commercial cover When the elite forces of Joint Special Operations Command sprang into action in April to rescue a downed F-15 weapon systems officer in Iran, it created countless headlines. But it was far from the first time this century that JSOC (pronounced “jay-sock”) personnel have conducted daring missions into that country.

Source: “Ceres Air C31 Payload Test” on YouTube The sophisticated theft of 15 crop-spraying drones last month in New Jersey has the FBI worried as experts warn of “ridiculously bad” consequences and “a potential nightmare scenario” if terrorists get their hands on the machines. The unsolved theft has revived fears rampant in the post-9/11 years that terrorists might use crop dusters to disperse biological or chemical weapons with the aim of inflicting mass casualties inside the United States.

Iranian militiamen pose with the boxer shorts that played a key role in the rescue of an American airman. (Photo from @MahdiBaladhi on X.) The Air Force weapon systems officer whose daring rescue by special operations forces captivated the United States over the weekend signaled to his saviors by waving his stars-and-stripes-patterned boxer shorts, a defense contractor familiar with the mission told The High Side.

U.S. troops patrol in Afghanistan in a scene from “Bodyguard of Lies.” “Bodyguard of Lies” is a documentary about the Afghan war that grew out of The Washington Post’s “The Afghanistan Papers” project and Post reporter Craig Whitlock’s similarly-titled book.

Most military veterans can relate to the experience of watching an action movie and getting completely irritated with the inaccuracy of the weapons and tactics in the film. Many a spouse is certainly sick and tired of hearing us rant about bad gunplay in the movies. The same goes for video games, which are even more over the top, with heroes and villains alike able to absorb an entire belt of machine gun fire before going down.