Delta Force
Based on Wikipedia: Delta Force
In April 1980, eight American helicopters flew low across the Iranian desert toward Tehran. Their mission: rescue fifty-two hostages held in the American embassy. None of them would make it. A catastrophic collision, mechanical failures, and a sandstorm called a haboob turned Operation Eagle Claw into one of the most humiliating military disasters in American history. Eight servicemen died in the burning wreckage.
The unit that planned and trained for that mission was barely two years old. It was called Delta Force.
The Man Who Saw What America Was Missing
Charlie Beckwith was a Green Beret officer who had seen something in the jungles of Malaya that haunted him for years.
In the early 1960s, Beckwith served as an exchange officer with the British Army's 22nd Special Air Service Regiment, better known as the SAS. The SAS wasn't like other military units. Its soldiers operated in tiny teams, completely autonomous, capable of vanishing into hostile territory and accomplishing missions that conventional forces couldn't touch. They were, as Beckwith would later describe them, "a force of doers."
When Beckwith returned to the United States, he wrote a detailed report arguing that America needed its own version of the SAS. The report went nowhere. The Army's Special Forces—the Green Berets—were focused on unconventional warfare, which meant training and advising foreign fighters rather than conducting their own direct combat operations. Beckwith was essentially told to sit down and stop making waves.
He didn't.
For more than a decade, Beckwith kept pushing. He briefed generals and Pentagon officials. He argued, cajoled, and made himself a nuisance. The answer was always the same: no.
The World Changes
Then came the 1970s.
In 1972, Palestinian terrorists took Israeli athletes hostage at the Munich Olympics. The rescue attempt failed catastrophically, with all eleven hostages killed. Hijackings became almost routine. The Red Brigades, the Baader-Meinhof Gang, and dozens of other terrorist groups seemed to strike at will. The world was suddenly full of threats that conventional military forces couldn't handle.
The Pentagon's answer came too late for the hostages in Munich, but it finally came: Charlie Beckwith would get his unit.
When Army leaders asked how long it would take to build a mission-ready counter-terrorism force, Beckwith said two years. This wasn't a guess. He had actually consulted with a British brigadier named John Watts, who told him eighteen months was realistic—but advised him to ask for twenty-four months and not let anyone talk him down. Beckwith followed the advice.
To justify the timeline, Beckwith and his staff drafted what they called "the Robert Redford Paper." The name was a joke, but the document was dead serious: a detailed outline of the selection process, training requirements, and historical precedents for building an elite counter-terrorism unit from scratch.
On November 19, 1977, Delta Force officially came into existence.
Finding the Right People
Creating a unit is one thing. Filling it with the right soldiers is another.
Beckwith designed a selection process that was deliberately punishing. The goal wasn't just to find tough soldiers—the Army had plenty of those. The goal was to find soldiers who could think independently, operate without supervision, and keep going when every fiber of their being screamed at them to quit.
The physical portion started simply enough: push-ups, sit-ups, a two-mile run. Then came the swimming test—fully dressed. Then the land navigation problems began.
Land navigation sounds straightforward. You get a map, a compass, and coordinates for your destination. You walk there. But Delta's version was designed to break people. Candidates had to cross miles of mountainous terrain carrying increasingly heavy rucksacks, often at night, with constantly shrinking time limits. The instructors never told candidates how much time they had or how they were doing. You either finished or you didn't.
The final test was called "The Long Walk."
Candidates had to cover forty miles of rough terrain carrying a forty-five-pound rucksack. The time limit was secret. The route was brutal. Many candidates who had survived everything else broke down during those final miles.
Even today, the attrition rate is staggering. Paul Howe, a former Delta operator, described his selection class: out of 120 applicants, only twelve to fourteen completed the process. Kevin Holland, who served in both SEAL Team 6 and Delta, recalled that his class started with 120 candidates; sixteen passed selection, and only eight finished the six-month training course that followed.
The Proving Ground They Never Wanted
Delta Force was certified as fully mission-capable in the fall of 1979. Weeks later, Iranian revolutionaries stormed the American embassy in Tehran.
The timing was almost absurd. Beckwith had spent years arguing that America needed a counter-terrorism unit. Now, just as Delta finally existed, the largest hostage crisis in American history erupted. The unit that had been created precisely for this kind of scenario would get its first real-world test.
Operation Eagle Claw was a nightmare of complexity. Delta operators would fly to a remote desert staging area called Desert One, transfer to helicopters, fly to a hiding spot outside Tehran, infiltrate the city in trucks, assault the embassy compound, rescue the hostages, and extract via helicopter to a nearby airfield where transport planes would fly everyone to safety.
Every step required perfect execution. Nothing went perfectly.
Unexpected sandstorms degraded the helicopters. Three of the eight aircraft suffered mechanical failures before reaching Desert One. With only five helicopters remaining—one fewer than the minimum needed—mission commanders aborted the operation. During the chaotic withdrawal, a helicopter collided with a refueling aircraft. Eight American servicemen died in the explosion.
The review commission that investigated the disaster found twenty-three distinct problems with the operation. Command and control between different service branches had been a mess. The helicopters had been pushed beyond their limits. Communications had failed. Contingency planning had been inadequate.
For Delta Force, the failure was devastating. But it led to changes that would make American special operations far more capable.
Rising from the Ashes
The military's response to Eagle Claw's failure was to build the infrastructure that should have existed before the mission ever launched.
The 160th Special Operations Aviation Regiment—nicknamed the "Night Stalkers"—was created specifically to provide helicopter support for special operations. These pilots would become the best in the world at flying dangerous missions in impossible conditions.
The Navy created SEAL Team 6 to handle maritime counter-terrorism, ensuring that hostage situations on ships or oil platforms wouldn't require the Army to improvise.
Most importantly, the Joint Special Operations Command was established to coordinate all these elite units. JSOC (pronounced "jay-sock") would become the invisible hand controlling America's most sensitive military operations for the next four decades.
Today, Delta Force operates under JSOC's control alongside its sister units: SEAL Team 6 (officially the Naval Special Warfare Development Group, or DEVGRU), the Air Force's 24th Special Tactics Squadron, and the Intelligence Support Activity. These are the military's "Tier One" special mission units—the forces that handle the most complex, dangerous, and politically sensitive operations that the president and secretary of defense can order.
Inside the Unit
The structure of Delta Force mirrors the British SAS that inspired it.
At any given time, the unit has roughly a thousand personnel, though only about 250 to 300 are the "operators" who actually conduct direct action missions and hostage rescues. The rest are combat support specialists—intelligence analysts, communications experts, pilots, medics, and other professionals who make the operators' missions possible. These support personnel are described as being among the very best in their respective fields.
The unit is organized into squadrons. A Squadron, B Squadron, C Squadron, and D Squadron are the assault forces—called "sabre squadrons" in a nod to SAS terminology. Each squadron is commanded by a lieutenant colonel and contains three troops: two assault troops and one reconnaissance troop. The assault troops are further divided into small teams of five or six operators each.
E Squadron handles aviation support and is based separately at Fort Eustis, Virginia. G Squadron specializes in what's called "advanced force operations"—getting into target areas ahead of the main assault force to gather intelligence and prepare the battlefield.
The unit is headquartered at Fort Bragg, North Carolina, though almost everything about its facilities is classified.
Who Gets In
Despite its secrecy, Delta Force does actively recruit. Notices appear in military publications at Fort Bragg, describing the unit as "organized for the conduct of missions requiring rapid response with surgical application of a wide variety of unique special operations skills."
The basic requirements are straightforward: enlisted soldiers must be between grades E-4 and E-8, have at least two and a half years of service remaining, be twenty-two or older, and score 110 or higher on the Armed Services Vocational Aptitude Battery. Officers must be captains or majors. Everyone must be eligible for a security clearance and free of any serious disciplinary issues.
In practice, most successful candidates come from elite backgrounds already. General Wayne Downing, testifying before Congress in 2006, estimated that about seventy percent of Delta operators come from the 75th Ranger Regiment, either directly or after serving in Special Forces.
But meeting the requirements doesn't mean passing selection. The course is held twice a year at Camp Dawson, West Virginia, in spring and fall. The physical challenges are only the beginning. Candidates who survive the land navigation tests face extensive psychological evaluation and then appear before a board of Delta instructors, unit psychologists, and the unit commander.
The board's questions are designed to exhaust candidates mentally. Every answer is dissected. Every mannerism is analyzed. After enduring this interrogation, the candidate learns whether they've been selected.
Becoming an Operator
Passing selection earns a candidate a spot in the six-month Operator Training Course. Contact with family and friends during this period is minimal.
The training begins with marksmanship—not the precision shooting that snipers learn, but the close-range instinctive shooting that hostage rescuers need. Trainees fire thousands of rounds at stationary targets until accuracy becomes automatic. Then the targets start moving. Then trainees move into the "shoot house," clearing rooms of targets while avoiding "hostages."
The progression is deliberate: one trainee at a time, then pairs, then three, then four-person teams. When the skill level is high enough, other trainees serve as the hostages. Live ammunition is used. The stakes are real. Trust between team members becomes absolute.
Beyond shooting, trainees learn demolitions and breaching—including how to pick locks on everything from cars to safes, and how to create improvised explosives from common materials. They learn sniper positioning and communications procedures. They study espionage tradecraft: dead drops, surveillance, counter-surveillance, signal systems. The Central Intelligence Agency's Special Operations Group reportedly assisted in developing this portion of the curriculum.
The final product is a soldier who can operate as a one-person intelligence-gathering and direct-action capability, but who also functions seamlessly as part of a precisely choreographed team.
The Quiet Professionals
Delta operators are sometimes called "quiet professionals," and the phrase is more than just a motto. The unit operates in what the military calls a "low-visibility" posture. Operators often grow beards and wear civilian clothes. They blend in where conventional soldiers would stand out.
The CIA's Special Activities Center, which conducts the most sensitive covert operations ordered by the U.S. government, frequently recruits from Delta's ranks. Former operators bring skills that are invaluable in the intelligence world: combat experience, surveillance expertise, and the ability to operate in hostile environments without support.
The unit's official existence is no longer denied—those recruitment notices at Fort Bragg make that impossible—but the details of its operations remain among the most closely guarded secrets in the American government. Specific missions are almost never acknowledged publicly. When they are discussed at all, it's usually in memoirs written by former operators years after the fact, or in leaks that neither the unit nor the government ever confirm.
What is known is that Delta has been involved in virtually every major American military operation since its creation. The unit hunted war criminals in the Balkans. It operated throughout the War on Terror in Afghanistan and Iraq. It has conducted hostage rescues, assassinated terrorist leaders, and gathered intelligence in places the public will never hear about.
Charlie Beckwith died in 1994, having lived long enough to see his creation become the most capable counter-terrorism force in the world. The unit he spent years fighting to build has far exceeded what even he imagined was possible.
It started with a single officer who saw what America was missing. It survived a catastrophic failure that would have destroyed a lesser organization. It evolved into something without precedent in military history: a surgical instrument for the most dangerous operations the government can conceive.
Delta Force remains what Beckwith always wanted—a force of doers.