The Havok Journal | Military & Veteran News, Commentary, Culture

• Blueberries and Bracelets October 27, 2026
  Adam was not so comfortably settled into his fighting position after consolidating on the objective following the early-morning assault. He was glad to finally rest the SAW (Squad Automatic Weapon) he had carried throughout the night on the berm in front of him. With 200 rounds of ammo, it added another 25 pounds to his […]
  Tab Taber
• Stop Hurting and Retraumatizing Gold Star Parents October 27, 2026
  This first appeared in The Havok Journal October 27, 2016. the issues discussed are just as relevant a decade later. When Congressman Frederica Wilson aired her grievances regarding a private call from the President to LaDavid Johnson’s newly, devastated Gold Star family, I tried to figure out the deep pain, conflict, and adrenalized reactions I […]
  Scoti Domeij
• Buying the Equipment Wasn’t the Hard Part October 27, 2026
  By William Brooke Webb Jr. The hardest part of adding a new testing capability to my laboratory was researching and finding the right team to do the job. The equipment was expensive. The additional antibiotic susceptibility testing equipment alone required a commitment I remember as approximately $450,000. But buying equipment and being ready to operate […]
  Special Guest
• We Probably Learned the Wrong Lessons from the GWOT October 26, 2026
  Twenty-five years after September 11, 2001, the U.S. military is adapting from two decades dominated by Iraq and Afghanistan toward an environment described in joint doctrine as a competition continuum. That transition has produced several broad interpretations of the Global War on Terror: that counterinsurgency does not work, that building partner forces is inherently futile, […]
  Charles Faint
• Challenges After Service: Special Warfare Combat Crewmen October 26, 2026
  By Anthony Smith It was sometime around midnight; we were sitting in the dark, blacked out, with no lights and no movement. We were watching our objective. All of a sudden, we were compromised, and machine guns started ringing out. We pushed down the throttles, and a giant rooster tail kicked up behind us as the […]
  Special Guest