A recent trend of videos has swept across veteran social media and even leaked into general social media – it’s called the alpha male boot camp, and boy, do I have thoughts on it.

To properly set this up, I have to explain what these boot camps are and what they involve. There is more than one such boot camp, but they seem to have a similar approach: They promise average dudes the opportunity to be something more. They want to take you and put you through hell to prove you have what it takes to make it! 

Becoming alpha

You have what it takes to make what? I’m not sure. I’ll be the first to admit that there is a lot of satisfaction in completing complex tasks. These boot camps seem to be rooted in the idea of the feeling of accomplishment. They also lean hard into the silly culture of being an “alpha.” However, they ignore the fact that the guy who created the “alpha” concept after observing wolves, later realized his observation was wrong and spent his life attempting to correct it. 

What these boot camps seem to promise is that you’ll achieve the same feeling of satisfaction that you would if you graduated from a real boot camp. It reeks of the guy that says stuff like, “I almost joined, but….” and gives you some made-up story. I won’t name or give any more press to the companies conducting these boot camps, but their website is full of SEO-driven gobbly gook. It’s a lot of words that say nothing. 

They promise that doing their boot camp will make you a better man. In fact, it will save your mental health, marriage, and even your business! They also go into a lot of stuff about chimpanzees and bonobos, and I’m not really sure why that comes up. Anyway, they’ll turn you into a man (or maybe a chimpanzee, I think). All you have to do is pay them 18,000 dollars and suffer through 75 hours of movie-inspired boot-camp-like obstacle courses, exercises, and yelling. 

A misunderstanding of the point of boot camp 

Let’s start with the first problem. You have to pay these guys 18,000 dollars just to get yelled at, do some calisthenics, roll around in mud, and barely sleep. At first, I didn’t think it was real. In fact, I kept thinking that many of these clips were out of context and that those boot camps were something else. They certainly couldn’t cost eighteen grand! But they do, and it’s silly, and somehow, they are going to take you from zero to hero in 75 hours. 

However, they seem to fundamentally misunderstand the point of boot camp. There is also a reason boot camp takes longer than 75 hours. Boot camp offers potential recruits a multi-pronged approach to turning the average person into a basic-trained Soldier, Marine, Airman, Sailor, Coast Guardsman, or Guardian. In reality, the idea is to create an almost empty vessel that your service of choice can turn into the service member they need you to be. 

Boot camp breaks you down and builds you up. That seems to be what these alpha male boot camps promise, but it seems unlikely they can do it with a mere 75 hours of abuse and mistreatment. Boot camp is designed for you to slowly earn your title. You start at zero at boot camp. That’s how you’re broken down. 

Afterward, you accomplish a succession of harder and harder tasks. Boot camp is more than the yelling and the punishment exercises. You do things you never thought you could, like hit a target at 500 yards, complete an obstacle course, get CS gassed, and so much more. You live in a very close setting with your fellow recruits and develop a team. You can’t do that in 75 hours of yelling and push-ups. 

Related: These elite Marines combine tradition with special operations innovations

The reality of these camps 

Let’s also make sure it’s known that boot camp is the easiest part of your military career. Sure, you get yelled at, have no free time, and have zero privacy, but you adapt. Recruits still sleep in beds, eat three hot meals a day, and have central A/C. When you hit a deployment, you could be baking in 106-degree heat, be 36 hours with no sleep, and if you’re lucky, you won’t get stuck with a veggie omelet MRE right before your six-hour guard shift. 

Also, when watching the videos, the instructors do not show passion. Instead, it’s so phoned in I couldn’t help but roll my eyes. The instructors seem like they are having a tantrum rather than attempting to motivate their students. Compare these guys to a Marine drill instructor, and the difference is night and day.

Boot camp serves a purpose, and it won’t make you an alpha male. If you really want the boot camp experience, what I’m saying next might shock you: there are six organizations that will send you for free! They’ll even pay you to do it! There, you can get yelled at by accomplished service members who’ve been there and done that, not dudes who refer to themselves as secret geniuses. 

My favorite boot camp can be found at Marines.com. 

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As Allied forces closed in on Berlin from two different fronts, the German military, the Nazi Party, and a mustachioed meth addict known as Hitler were getting awfully desperate. They began recruiting children and old men into a people’s militia known as the Volkssturm and tried to produce a number of last-ditch weapons for them. 

Germans were well known for their ingenuity and high-quality weapons. For example, the MP40 was one of the best submachine guns of the war, if not the best; the KAR98K was a fantastic rifle; and the MG34 and 42 created general-purpose machine guns.

The German military had well-made, reliable, and innovative firearms. Yet, those firearms were also expensive and slow to produce, and as the Allies bore down on Berlin, they were also getting tough to obtain. The factories responsible for producing many of these guns had been destroyed, so they weren’t pumping out MP40s, KAR98s, or MG42s anymore.

This called for the development of simple firearms that were quick and easy to produce. In modern times, these guns are referred to as last-ditch weapons. 

The MP 3008 

One of the most successful designs of the war was the British Sten gun. This simple 9mm submachine gun was crude, cheap to produce, but decently reliable. The Sten’s blowback-operated design could be produced en masse with ease.

The Germans were familiar with Sten guns and had even created a batch of them for friendly forces. So, in 1945, the engineers at Mauser took the Sten Gun design and created the MP 3008.

The MP 3008 retained the simple design of the Sten gun. It was an open bolt, blowback operated 9mm submachine gun that could use MP40 magazines.

Yet, the Germans made a few design changes to the classic Sten gun design: The MP 3008’s magazine was placed under the gun instead of to the side and the barrel handguard was ditched since the gun could be held by the magazine well.

The MP 3008 simplified the Sten design even more, and it could be produced in one man-hour of work. The Germans ordered a million of them from Mauser, but hardly any were produced before the war ended. 

Related: And you have my axe: The American lumberjacks of World War I

Volkssturmgewehr

The Volkssturmgewehr, or people’s storm rifle, was a latch ditch attempted to arm the German citizen militia forces with rifles. The idea behind this gun was to arm the citizens with a capable automatic rifle that offered more range and power than a submachine gun but was smaller and easier to wield than a battle rifle.

The Volkssturmgewehr was a semi-auto-only rifle with a 14.9-inch barrel that weighed a little over 10 pounds. It used a gas-delayed blowback action that was simple to manufacture and the magazines and cartridges from the StG 44 assault rifle. 

The Germans assembled the Volkssturmgewehr out of only 39 parts, not counting the screws and rivets. Only 12 parts required milling, and 21 could be stamped. Although the weapon was easy to produce, it was, reportedly, very inaccurate. 

Volkspistole 

The go along with the Volkssturmgewehr, the Germans began developing a Volkspistole, a people’s pistol. The Volskpistole never made it past the concept stage, but Walther, Mauser, and Spreewerk all produced prototype handguns.

In the first half of 1944, the Germans lost over 100,000 pistols, so the demand for replacements was high.

Although the Walther P38 was a fine pistol, it was difficult and expensive to produce. The German Army needed a new pistol, and the Volkspistole project was supposed to be a cheap replacement.

The war was ending too quickly, and a new pistol certainly wouldn’t have made much of a difference. 

Related: This bent-barrel rifle was one of Nazi Germany’s most weird weapons

Wimmersperg Spz

The Wimmersperg Spz was a German last-ditch concept assault rifle that was also inspired and influenced by the Sten gun. In fact, the Germans used Sten receiver parts and pieces to make the gun. Sten guns and similar tube-style submachine guns were very easy and to produce.

The weapon used StG 44 magazines, barrels, and ammo. This allowed the Germans to use components they already had mixed with components that were easy to produce. There were three Spz prototypes: the Spz-1, a long model with a pistol grip; the Spz-kv, a short model with burst controls; and the Spz-kv, which used the gun’s magazine as its pistol grip. 

The Wimmersperg Spz assault rifles were never produced, and the only current model is a recreation from technical drawings and specifications. These guns would have been quite crude and likely fairly weak. Mixing a submachine gun receiver with high-pressure rifle rounds wouldn’t have created a very capable weapon. 

Einstossflammenwerfer 46

Outside of standard firearms, the Germans also produced the Einstossflammenwerfer 46 which was a handheld single-shot flame thrower. The weapon was meant to be easy to produce and cheap. The low price and ease of manufacturing made it a disposable, one-time device in most cases. 

The weapon was primarily used by the Volkssturm, but it also saw action with the German paratroopers. This handheld single-shot flamethrower would ride under the user’s arm and allow them to fire a half-second burst of fire out to 27 meters. It was enough fire to clear a bunker or scare troops away from an entrenched position. Nearly 30,000 were produced and fielded. 

One last effort 

As the German military faltered and floundered, it attempted to find any way to hold out. I doubt most of them believed they could stop the Allies from getting to Berlin, but they could set themselves up for better negotiations or were simply too scared to question their leadership.

These last-ditch weapons tell a story of fear and desperation and were a clear sign that the good guys were winning. 

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Who doesn’t love a good war movie? It’s not uncommon for movies to occupy more than one genre, but one blend we rarely see is the comedic war film. Off the top of my head, we have In The Army Now, Inglorious Bastards, and well, does Stripes count? And now, we also have the World War II action comedy The Ministry of Ungentlemanly Warfare, which is inspired by a true story, to add to the list. 

Let’s dig into it! 

The Ministry of Ungentlemanly Warfare was released in April and I was anxious to see it. The film, directed by Guy Ritchie, stars Henry Cavill as the leader of a group of lovable rogues on a British Black Operation in Africa. Cavill plays Major Gus March-Phillips, a colorful leader of the commando force who leads an interesting crew. 

We have a revenge-fueled, heavily muscled Swede; a frogman with a penchant for explosives; an experienced sailor; and a master planner. The men are on an unauthorized operation that will get them killed by the Nazis and imprisoned by the British if they’re discovered. They report directly to a handler known as M and his assistant named Ian Fleming. Yes, the same Ian Fleming who wrote the James Bond novels. In fact, it’s widely believed that James Bond was based on the real Gus March-Philips. 

Their goal is to sink a ship that is resupplying German U-boats, since if the U-boats aren’t stopped, the Americans can’t get into the fight. Their mission is of dire importance, but the higher-ups of the British government believe Hitler can be negotiated with, so they disapprove of any such mission. So, Prime Minister Winston Churchill, M, and Fleming are all working behind the scenes to get the crew of commandos where they need to be. 

Working separately from March-Philips’s team, two Special Operations Executive (SOE) agents are also after the same goal: Marjorie Stewart, a real-life actress and singer who worked with the British SOE, and fictional SOE Agent Mr. Heron, who owns a club the Axis powers drink at.

Related: Why are these 5 Navy SEAL movies so popular?

Action and comedy 

The movie is an entertaining romp with a charming and often hilarious cast who seem like they are having a blast, and their chemistry is fantastic.

The commandos act like smooth criminals: they are barely ever surprised and always keep a cool head. They trade quips and make fun of Nazis as they chew their way through throngs of enemy soldiers. 

Although it’s a predictable movie, it’s still enjoyable. Its action is fun, but it’s nothing thrilling or standout. The real charm of the film comes from the actors and cast.

However, the movie lacks a notable villain. The head Nazi is a generic bad guy. He’s no Hans Landa from Inglorious Bastards and is more annoying than menacing and simply isn’t memorable. Everything outside of our crew of commandos just seems plain. Still, it’s a fun flick that is worth seeing in theatres. 

But how accurate is it? (Minor spoilers ahead!)

Related: Combat Obscura’s unadulterated authenticity still resonates today

The real Ministry of Ungentlemanly Warfare

Movies have to be entertaining. In reality, even a black op was likely fraught with tons of downtime and boredom. Although the British government did oppose the mission, it was because of Spanish neutrality since Spain owned the African colony where the operation took place. The little things like March-Phillip’s incarceration are fictional, but other things, like Anders carrying a bow, are very real. 

Most of the men in the film have a real-life equivalent, and sadly, most died before the war ended.

It’s true that Major March-Phillips led a small crew on a fishing boat, but the operation required more than five men, and another troop transport carried the rest of the commandos. The commandos were already established as part of the SOE and were part of the No. 62 Commando, specifically the Small Scale Raiding Force. The real mission involved stealing three Italian vessels, and the Commando team was successful in their mission. 

Much like the film, the colony’s Axis soldiers were distracted by a party thrown by an SOE agent. The commando force did have to blow the anchor chains to escape. However, the actual operation was successful without a shot being fired. The Nazis were caught with their pants down, often literally. They surrendered immediately and were kicked off the boat. 

The Commando team turned the ships over to the British Navy, and the SOE got a huge reputational boost as a result of its success. The Germans were embarrassed and a propaganda war ensued. The operation was kept top secret until it was declassified in 2016. 

The Ministry of Ungentlemanly Warfare is a ton of fun and a great popcorn action flick. The fact that it’s based on real heroes who conducted a real operation only makes it more interesting.

I recommend watching the movie and then reading the book about the operation. I have already placed my order, and I can’t wait to learn a bit more about the real men behind one of Britain’s most successful black ops. 

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When the Iraq war kicked off, I was a young teen, but I remember a slate of media releasing alongside it. There were movies and shows, as well as more History Channel documentaries than you could shake a stick at. When Iraq died down and Afghanistan ramped back up, everything went kinda silent. Yet, small creators, actual veterans of the war, filled the gap, and that’s the story with the war documentary Combat Oscura. 

Combat Obscura presents the story of Lance Corporal Miles Lagoze – a combat cameraman attached to the 1st Battalion, 6th Marines – through his own lenses, using footage filmed by Lagoze during his time as a combat cameraman in Afghanistan. The 70-minute documentary doesn’t have an overarching narrative and has no narration; instead, it consists of various scenes of the Afghan war. It moves along at a quick pace: it never lingers on one subject or event.

As an Afghan veteran of the same period, I feel I’m fairly qualified to testify to the documentary’s authenticity. To that measure, I’ll say Combat Obscura is brilliantly accurate. It shows violence, boredom, and frustration. Marines smoke weed on screen – although their faces are often censored. They play with kids, give them chocolate, and sometimes are rude and cruel. 

The movie keeps jumping between scenes that detail the Afghanistan War experience.  These can range from gunfights and violence to Marines rapping and joking around in an immature way. Seeing men in a vicious firefight first and then them joking around and acting immature and childish is a harsh reminder. The same men making puns about a level are killing people the next day. 

Controversy can be a hot selling point, but I imagine, for Miles Lagoze, the controversy his documentary created was more terrifying than the generated publicity. Lagoze made a film that the Marine Corps was not happy to see. Although he did go through official channels, namely the Pentagon, to ensure the footage was declassified, the Marine Corps wasn’t happy about it. 

The Corps threatened legal action on the basis that the footage was shot with Marine Corps-issued cameras during the work of Lance Corporal Lagoze. Yet, it didn’t follow through with any pending legal action, and in 2018, the documentary was released. 

Related: ‘SEAL Team’ is surprisingly good TV

A documentary not for kids 

Some of the things you see the Marines do are not good, and some of those make me angry. The cursing and dark jokes are one thing, but a scene that disturbed me was a Marine pointing an M9 at Afghan children as an apparent joke. I’d have kicked that guy’s ass if I was his leader. The use of recreational drugs might be surprising to someone who had never been there, but it was a dirty secret in country. It was well-known enough that we were piss tested in the middle of Afghanistan. 

The violence is extreme and reminds you it’s not an action movie. In one brutal fight, we see a Marine severely wounded, and Lagoze himself catches shrapnel to the face from a grenade. Another Marine interviews him after, and it’s sobering. He confesses, “I don’t want any more combat.”

We see a ceremony for a young Marine killed in action, and it reached in and ripped my heart out. I was that Marine’s age in Afghanistan. I’m blessed enough now to be nearly 34 and to have made it home. You don’t think about dying at 19, but at 34 you often reflect on how close you came. Most documentaries tell a selective truth. But Combat Obscura does something many war documentaries don’t: it tells the whole truth – the ugly, often not very glamorous, truth about war. 

There are some violent depictions in combat, some very dark jokes, and some crude humor. At the same time, you might cringe a bit at the younger men and their immature antics. I ask that you reserve judgment of these Marines. 

They are young men put into a brutal place during a brutal time. Their minds are still developing, and we tasked them to go to war. A war we’d been fighting since these kids were little kids. If anything deserves judgment, it’s the society that expects them to seamlessly transition from killers to Boy Scouts at an age where they can’t even buy a beer. 

You can check Combat Obscura for free on Tubi. I look forward to any other projects Miles Lagoze produces. 

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In the last eight years, we’ve seen a radical change in how the Marine Corps conducts business. There used to be a joke about how the Marine Corps always gets Army hand-me-downs, but that’s no longer true. The branch has grown into a very modern force that’s been willing to embrace new tactics, technology, and equipment, including the use of battlefield robots.

Although not yet seeing widespread use – or adoption at all – the Marine Corps has been experimenting with several robots.

Mk-2 Instant Eye

Mini drones, or quadcopters, have become a modern piece of warfare and have been used in Iraq, Syria, Ukraine, and Israel as of late. The current squad-level Marine Corps drone is the Mk-2 Instant Eye. The Mk-2 is a micro-sized drone that is extremely easy to carry and potentially tough to detect.

Toss the drone up in the air, and it will provide you with an eye in the sky. This allows Marines to take a quick peak at what lies ahead and detect ambushes, traps, and more. It’s small enough that Marines can fly it through buildings and windows to get up close with whatever could be hiding in that room. This gives Marines an organic recon capability that’s safer than sending out Marines.

The Mk-2 Instant Eye suffers from the same weaknesses as other commercial drones: Namely, it has only 30 minutes of battery life and its video link has a line of sight range of only two kilometers. The Mk-2, in its current iteration, is a tool that will need multiple batteries or be used conservatively. However, these issues could be resolved as technology improves.

Ultra-Light Robot 

The Ultra-Light Robot isn’t the most creative name, but, hey, Marines like to keep it simple. On my first deployment to Afghanistan, our attached Explosive Ordnance Disposal (EOD) element broke out their EOD bot. The thing was massive and, funnily enough, was controlled by an Xbox 360 controller. It reminded me of Johny 5. Thinking back, it’s easy to see why the Ultra-Light Robot is Johnny 5’s replacement. 

The EOD bot was way too big to tote, but the Ultra-Light Robot is about the size of a shoe box. It’s a treaded robot that weighs about 10 pounds in total. It is designed to be throwable so Marines can toss it over a wall, through a window, or anywhere else. Its tow arms allow it to flip over and manipulate the environment as necessary. 

The Ultra-Light Robot is remote-controlled and provides high-definition visual reconnaissance. Further, a single Marine can control multiple robots. The Ultra-Light Robot will be used by EOD to interrogate explosives and by Recon Marines for reconnaissance.

Related: 5 futuristic military technologies that will shape the battlefield

Explosive Ordnance Disposal Remotely Operated Vehicle

Jeez, we went from the simply named Ultra-Light Robot to the very long Explosive Ordnance Disposal Remotely Operated Vehicle.

As the name suggests, the Explosive Ordnance Disposal Remotely Operated Vehicle is designed to deal with explosives, but only at sea. Marines will be able to toss this water-borne drone into the sea and guide it via a tablet-like device. The robot is equipped with arms and a high-definition camera and will give Marines the ability to defuse or destroy explosive devices near the shore. 

The robot will fit perfectly into the Marine Corps’ new littoral role that will have troops working in and out of littoral zones. It promises to allow for safe landings and safer extractions for the Marine Corps’ new ship killing forces. 

“This robot gives Marines eyes in the water,” Master Sgt. Patrick Hilty, an Explosive Ordnance Disposal project officer at Marine Corps Systems Command said. “It is a capability the Marine Corps has never before had,” he added.

Kratos XQ-58 Valkyrie

The XQ-58 Valkyrie isn’t exclusively a Marine Corps robot, but the Marine Corps has purchased two of these aerial drones for experimentation and testing. The XQ-58 Valkyrie system is designed to be a wingman for pilots and is capable of escorting F-22 and F-35 fighters. 

The XQ-58 Valkyrie is controlled by the parent aircraft and can be used as a scout, provide defensive fires, and even become a sacrificial lamb in a dogfight. The drone utilizes a stealth-like design and can be used as a single device or in a swarm with or without direct pilot control. 

This fascinating system can be launched from traditional runways, as well as support ships, shipping containers, and even semi-trailer trucks. It’s small, but easy to operate, allowing it to be deployed in areas where a good airfield isn’t present. 

Related: AI-piloted F-16 takes on human pilot in ‘complex dogfights’

The robot dog 

According to the Military Times, the Marine Corps experimented with a Chinese-made Go1 robot dog. The Marine Corps as a whole would not adopt a Chinese-produced robot, but as a commercial off-the-shelf experimentation, it’s fine.

The Marine Corps did the most Marine Corps thing possible with the Go1… and strapped a LAW rocket launcher to it.

The LAW is a lightweight, anti-armor rocket launcher with a fire-and-forget design. It made a big comeback in Afghanistan and has remained a part of the Marine Corps arsenal. The idea of strapping one to the robot is simple: The robot can be controlled and deployed to engage a threat while Marines remain behind cover. 

A big threat to the infantry is armor, and being able to land hits with anti-armor tools while Marines remain concealed is invaluable. Marines engage a variety of threats – machine gun bunkers, dug-in troops, and obstacles all present a significant danger to Marines. This could be solved with the judicial application of anti-armor launchers. While the Go1 will not be adopted, similar robots could eventually fill this role as Marines’ best friend. 

The future is robotic 

The eight-year-old inside of me is very excited about the idea of robot-fueled warfare, but the adult feels some concern.

The Marine Corps isn’t the only force experimenting with robots, and America’s enemies are most definitely some form of similar technology. Only time will tell if the battlefield of the future might be crawling with robots, drones, and more. The one thing that remains the same is that Marines will be Marines, and we can take some solace from that. 

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