A great organization that without exception has great people. “I was very fortunate (to be) in the Special Operations world. Of his special ops crewmates, Durant, the famed pilot from Black Hawk Down, would say: And it was only going to get worse.” Inside Delta Force: The Story of America’s Elite Counterterrorist Unit, Eric L. I only knew that the accumulated tonnage of all those thousands of steps was immense. I tried to calculate the foot-pounds of energy my feet had absorbed so far today, but I had to give up the effort. I don’t mean they were just sore, I mean they felt like I had been strapped to the rack and someone had beaten the balls of my feet with a bat. It felt like I was dragging a train behind me, and my feet hurt all the way up to my knees. “I was bent forward against the weight of the rucksack. My hands were tingling from the rucksack straps cutting into my shoulders, pinching the nerves and arteries, and restricting the blood flow to my arms.” It was getting more and more difficult to do speed computations in my head. “I had covered just slightly over thirty miles by now, but still had more than twenty to go. To offer some idea of what an individual must overcome to become Delta Force, here’s what author Eric Haney had to say about one particular long-distance hike in his book Inside Delta Force. This is considered one of the most mentally and physically challenging training one will ever face in the US military, or any military. Taking up another sixty-five days is the Military Operational Specialty (MOS) training phase, which culminates with a mission planning cycle that will put your leadership skills to the test.įor the thirty-eight-day Collective Training Phase, soldiers are trained in Special Operations (SO) classes, Direct Action (DA) Isolation, Air Operations, Unconventional Warfare classes, and receive isolation training, NI reported. The training period is forty days long and covers land navigation, cross-country map exercise, and small unit tactics. Technically an elite counter-terrorism Special Missions Unit, Delta Force has been involved in virtually every major U.S. During this period, soldiers are trained on specialized skills necessary to be successful in any Special Forces engagement, NI reported. If the boxes are all checked by now, then you will aim to pass the individual skills phase of training. Next up is the Special Operations Preparation Course (SOPC), which can take four weeks and typically leads up to the Special Forces Assessment and Selection (SFAS) program. Special Forces troopers who eventually want to join Delta Force must qualify for and complete this particular training. If you pass that, then you will attend Airborne Training at Fort Benning. To get started, one must attend infantry One Station Unit Training (OSUT), which combines Army Basic Training and Infantry AIT (Advanced Individual Training) in one fourteen-week course, NI reported. To initially qualify, recruits must be enlisted in the Army, be male, have at least four years in service and two and a half years of service left on enlistment, and is within the rank of E4-E8. Credit: Handout.Ĭurrently, the Delta Force receives its recruits from all across the Army, including many candidates from the Ranger Regiments and Special Forces Groups, NI reported. The 1st Special Forces Operational Detachment–Delta, commonly referred to as Delta Force, Combat Applications Group, “The Unit”, or within JSOC as Task Force Green, is a special operations force of the United States Army.