Brian S. Petit is an adjunct lecturer for the Joint Special Operations University. He teaches JSOU’s National Resistance Course for US and international partners. Brian is a former US Army Special Forces Colonel (retired in 2017) with command tours in the Balkans, Iraq, Afghanistan, Southeast Asia, The Philippines, Europe, and Africa. In 2013, Colonel Petit published Going Big by Getting Small: The Application of Operational Art by Special Operations in Phase Zero. His book was on the US Special Operations Command (USSOCOM) Commanding General’s 2015 recommended reading list and is in use in both military and academic curricula. He has published in Special Warfare, Military Review, Small Wars Journal, and War on the Rocks. He is married with three adult sons. The Petits live in Salida, Colorado.

Dr. Marsh is director of the department of research & analysis in the Institute of SOF Strategic Studies at the Joint Special Operations University, USSOCOM. He conducts research on global special operations forces with a particular focus on Russian SOF, including strategy and foreign policy.  He also serves as editor of Special Operations Journal, published by Routledge. Prior to joining JSOU, Marsh was a Professor of National Security and Strategic Studies at the U.S. Army School of Advanced Military Studies (SAMS). Dr. Marsh holds the Ph.D. in political science from the University of Connecticut, in addition to having completed graduate study at Moscow State University. He conducted much of his dissertation research at the Russian Academy of Science, and later was a post-doctoral fellow at the Institute on Culture, Religion, and World Affairs at Boston University. Dr. Marsh was also a visiting fellow at Tsinghua University (Beijing) in 2001, where he conducted research on political and social change in China. Dr. Marsh is the author of five books, including Russian Foreign Policy: Interests, Vectors, and Sectors, co-authored with Nikolas Gvosdev of the Naval War College. Dr. Marsh has also published more than 70 journal articles and chapters in edited collections.

Colonel Jaroslaw Jablonski has been a member of the Polish Special Forces since 2002. COL Jablonski received his MA in defense analysis from the US Naval Postgraduate School (NPS) in 2009 and a PhD in information and knowledge management in 2012. COL Jablonski has a combined more than 40 months of deployment time to Balkans, Operation Iraqi Freedom, and Afghanistan in support of the ISAF. At present he serves as POLSOF Exchange Officer in USSOCOM.

Dr. Kevin D. Stringer, Colonel, U.S. Army (Retired) has spent the past decade as a Eurasian Foreign Area Officer and Army strategist in the special operations community. He served as a military faculty member at the U.S. Army War College in 2021. He is an Associate Professor at the General Jonas Žemaitis Military Academy of Lithuania and a Lecturer on Strategy at the University of Northwestern Switzerland. 

Beginning in 2013, he led the U.S. Special Operations Command Europe (SOCEUR) development team which produced the Resistance Operating Concept (ROC). He has advised Ukrainian Special Operations Command and in an earlier career has taught graduate students in Kyiv, Odessa, and Dnipro.

Author of the book Military Organizations for Homeland Defense and Smaller-Scale Contingencies (Praeger Security International, 2006), Dr. Stringer has published in Naval War College Review, Joint Force Quarterly, Military Review, Parameters, Special Operations Journal, and Journal on Baltic Security. His research interests are irregular warfare, special operations, and Russian indirect action.