by Chris Martin
Hathcock took an active role in ensuring that subsequent generations of snipers would be shaped in his image. He was a driving force behind the establishment of a permanent sniper presence for the Corps, rather than waiting and only raising specialized sniper units in times of need. GySgt Hathcock leveraged his knowledge and influence to develop the USMC’s Scout Sniper Basic Course in Quantico, Virginia.
For decades, the Scout Sniper Basic Course secured the Corps’s leadership in the field. The course became recognized as the gold standard and served as the template that other leading courses throughout the world would subsequently follow.
Hathcock’s individual accomplishments and the legacy he left behind transformed him into a symbol. Although he died in 1999, his impact still reverberates loudly in the sniper community.
* * *
Although the lessons learned by Hathcock and his ilk are still passed along to aspiring snipers and the popular image of the craft he forged remains ubiquitous, the modern-day special operations sniper has evolved into a new species—one that comes in a variety of lethal breeds.
The SOF (special operations forces) sniper has emerged the dominant hunter in a war without distinct boundaries. This new generation of sniper retains that edge that has always been granted a stealthy marksman capable of delivering precision fire at great distances. But bleeding-edge technology multiples that capability; it’s not only rifles that serve as an extension of today’s elite snipers, but fleets of tightly integrated aerial and satellite platforms as well.
Wielding the combined power of highly specialized SOF training, ballistics mastery, unblinking surveillance, close air support, and a team of dozens of subject-matter experts lending aid from afar, in the eyes of his adversaries the post-9/11 SOF sniper is nothing short of a technologically-enhanced warfighting demigod.
These are the men who turn the tide of battles both large and small. They do so with shots delivered across valleys, shots fired across rooms, and shots never fired at all.
They implement foreign policy at the ground level with their wits, skills, and technology. The world is subtly shaped from the shadows by men in MultiCam who exert more real-world influence than your average senator.
These are the virtuosos of precision warfare and reconnaissance. Tasked with the impossible, they are the ones who penetrate behind enemy lines, across borders, execute their orders, and escape unseen.
“If you ask any general who has commanded special operations forces on live operations, they will give great credit to the snipers—there is no more efficient mechanism,” said Craig Sawyer, a former DEVGRU sniper. “It’s a capability that is very, very valuable and effective. They carry out several functions for any special operations mission and it’s always a vital one. They play a huge role.”
They also come in a variety of forms. Some of today’s spec ops snipers are clearly derived from the Hathcock line, simply remade for the modern world. Others are so far removed from that representation that their traditional sniper lineage is nearly unrecognizable.
Utilizing stacked skill sets to drive forward a truly revolutionary era of special operations, the new legends are every bit as epic as the old.
2
Set the Conditions
The wider impression made by America’s special operations forces in Vietnam was nearly as indelible as that of the sniper, although the mammoth and high-profile role spec ops have played throughout the Global War on Terror has done much to alter this.
The idea of bandana-and-bandolier-adorned Green Berets and Navy SEALs sneaking through the jungle deep behind enemy lines remains a popular one. But it’s been joined in the collective consciousness by the veiled operator decked out with insectoid panoramic night-vision goggles (NVGs) and suppressed weaponry moving through urban strongholds in the dead of night.
The rise of terrorism in the modern sense during the 1970s forced the United States to reconceptualize its approach to SOF. Actually, “forced” is perhaps a bit strong, but it did crack the door open wide enough to allow an indomitable Special Forces officer by the name of Charlie Beckwith to eventually smash through the established order. Despite facing numerous stumbling blocks along the way, Beckwith ultimately triumphed in his campaign to provide the nation with a specialized and exceedingly well-trained counterterrorism (CT) component to combat this new threat.
Closely patterned after the British Special Air Service—a fabled unit in which Beckwith served as an exchange officer—1st Special Forces Operational Detachment-Delta was stood up in the late 1970s.
Delta Force soon faced its trial by fire in the attempted rescue of more than fifty Americans held hostage at the U.S. embassy in Tehran, Iran.
The unfortunate reality of counterterrorism units of this sort—tasked with the most politically sensitive, highest priority, or, frankly, impossible missions (and quite often all three at once)—is that their triumphs typically take place out of sight while their failures are flooded by the spotlight of national catastrophe.
And the unfortunate reality for Delta Force was that Operation Eagle Claw proved to be a leading example of this fate. The audacious rescue plan was overly ambitious in its construction and it devolved into an embarrassment of global proportions. The already aborted operation turned to tragedy when a Marine Corps RH-53 helicopter collided with an Air Force EC-130 transport plane during the attempt to exfiltrate Iran.
The incident not only struck a blow to the United States’ reputation, it also tarnished Delta—who only became publicly known as a result—despite its operators being powerless victims.
Danny Coulson, who would later found the Hostage Rescue Team (HRT), the FBI’s civilian equivalent to Delta Force, compared the reaction to blaming a quarterback for losing the Super Bowl if the team’s bus had crashed on the way to the game.
Nevertheless, the development served to make leaders gun shy when presented with the option of calling into action an elite force whose missions—which often straddled the line between traditional military and law enforcement activities—could have vast political consequences.
The debacle also forced the nation to further redefine the command structure of its special operations forces. In Eagle Claw’s wake, the Joint Special Operations Command (JSOC) was founded to coordinate high-priority, national-level missions—a decision that would have massive implications decades down the line.
It also provided yet another crack of the door, this time spotted by another enterprising Vietnam-era officer by the name of Richard Marcinko, who sought to create Delta’s Naval equivalent.
* * *
In other quarters of the military, Delta Force—internally referred to simply as “the Unit”—was viewed with equal portions of awe and suspicion. Its operators had undeniable skills—practical marksmanship and rigorous training not found elsewhere—and organizationally it was scientifically adept and forward thinking.
However, it was also considered insular, secretive, and arrogant.
But if Delta’s soldiers were considered iconoclastic cowboys, Marcinko’s new unit was nothing short of a gang of pirates.
Marcinko eschewed conventional notions when determining the sorts of men and missions that should define SEAL Team Six. His idea of outside-the-box flirted with the lines of legality. He required SEALs that were loyal to him, dedicated to achieving the desired end result, and willing to break rules to make both happen.
“Demo Dick’s” pragmatic approach to this gray world—which demanded operators who could operate independently, decisively, and unnoticed in the darkest pits of the world at a moment’s notice—was not easily rationalized by those who did not see its mandate in the same fashion.
While Marcinko could present an argument in defense of almost every questionable procurement, activity, and team-building exercise (code for nightly drinking sessions), to others the unit was simply out of control.
Marcinko deftly wielded his considerably charisma and developed intense loyalty from his enlisted SEALs. Me
anwhile, he undercut and ran off any straitlaced officers who didn’t get with the program (eventual JSOC commander William McRaven was one such example). He wanted outlaws to combat outlaws and not everyone was comfortable with that idea. But “Six” also possessed capabilities no other unit maintained.
SEAL Team Six had grown out of an existing SEAL intercept/CT initiative dubbed Mobility 6 (or MOB-6). However, it too followed the UK model and was assembled in a largely similar fashion to Delta Force. Rather than platoons, the unit was organized into squadrons and further subdivided into troops, with teams beneath that.
Included in this arrangement was a robust, dedicated sniper capability, necessary for the types of surgical direct action (DA), hostage rescue (HR), and special reconnaissance (SR) missions for which the two units were designed to excel.
Previously, snipers and special operations forces had largely been separate, parallel force multipliers in the American military rather than a single compounded asset.
* * *
“You know why the Unit is so good?” one of its recently retired snipers asked in a clearly rhetorical fashion. “It’s all about unbroken continuity from one guy to the next for the past thirty years. Guys have access to every single hit that’s ever been done and they learn from that and build on that.”
That continuity traces its lineage back to Larry Freedman, one of the earliest and most influential figures of all Delta’s snipers.
A character among characters, Freedman was both animated and idiosyncratic. Just five eight but with an impressive physique (its maintenance said to be driven as much by narcissism as the physical demands of the job), he proudly went by the code name “Super Jew.”
While his custom-made cape brandishing the Hebrew letter “S” may have just been for show, Freedman’s concentration and marksmanship were regarded as effectively superhuman by his peers.
A decorated Special Forces veteran, Freedman proved fiercely protective of the snipers under his watch and worked hard to impart his knowledge to them—as they would for the next generation and so on down the line.
Super Jew intentionally tested the boundaries of personalities and situations just to find their limits. As a result, he was reportedly “fired” by Beckwith six times but returned after each dismissal to continue molding the fledgling CT force.
Freedman technically left Delta Force in 1982, but he continued to school its prospective snipers while serving as the Non-Commissioned Officer in Charge (NCOIC) of the Special Operations Target Interdiction Course (SOTIC)—the primary basic sniper course to which the Unit sent its men. He later returned to serve Delta more directly, acting as an instructor for the Unit into the early ’90s.
Then in his fifties and with a long white ponytail, Super Jew looked more like a Harley-Davidson-riding grandfather—which he in fact was—than a restless, motivated commando. However, that he was as well. Despite a deep-seated mistrust of the CIA that reflected his various dealings with the Agency while a Delta operator, Freedman signed on as a Paramilitary Officer of the CIA’s Special Activities Division.
In that capacity, he continued to shape future generations of spec ops snipers, although his reach widened significantly.
In the summer of 1990, just prior to the first Iraq War, a group of six CIA, DIA, and NSA intelligence operatives were keeping tabs on troop movements. However, they found themselves stranded and surrounded near the Iraq/Kuwait border when Iraq’s invasion came quicker than expected.
With nowhere else to flee, they secreted to Baghdad, hoping to find a means of escape in the heart of the enemy.
After U.S. requests for help were refused by the British, French, and Russians, Polish intelligence—driven by a desire to win over their new Western allies—came to the rescue. Operation Simoom—something of a Polish “Argo”—was successfully executed and the Americans were spirited away to freedom.
Following the triumph, the United States expressed its gratitude by assuming a hands-on role in the subsequent formation of a special Polish military unit called Jednostka Wojskowa GROM.
“Naval,” a recently retired fourteen-year veteran of GROM, reflected on Operation Simoom: “Nobody wanted to do it. We were the only ones and we succeeded. Officially, GROM was created afterwards and then the magic began. This was also the moment that the Americans offered their support in providing us with weapons, money, and training.”
Working in collaboration with the CIA, Polish General Sławomir Petelicki envisioned a unit that would blend the best characteristics of Delta Force, the British SAS, and Germany’s crack CT team, GSG 9. And indeed, Delta played a major role shaping the new unit from its earliest training.
“In 1991, thirteen GROM soldiers were sent to Delta Force for training shortly after the unit was officially formed,” Naval said. “They actually went through the first selection to GROM somewhere in the mountains in America and that was conducted by Delta Force.”
During one of the training marches, a Delta officer teetered on the edge of a cliff and would have fallen if not for the execution of another impromptu Polish rescue operation. An especially powerful GROM operator, “Artur,” reached out and caught the American.
Following GROM’s initial schooling from Delta, a special training group was formed by the CIA to send American trainers to Poland. A familiar face was among these original trainers.
“Larry Freedman, one of the best Delta Force snipers ever, was actually the first sniper instructor in GROM,” Naval said.
Working as an operative of CIA’s Ground Branch, Freedman showed the Poles the ropes. And then a few months later, the white-haired Freedman was right back in hostile territory, seeking the ground truth in a fast-devolving Somalia during the opening weeks of Operation Restore Hope.
On December 23, 1992, his vehicle hit a Russian-built land mine near Bardera City, in the Juba Valley. He was the first American casualty of the conflict in Somalia. His Delta Force progenies would add to that list in the following months as Operation Restore Hope was superseded by Operation Gothic Serpent.
The CIA honored Freedman with an Intelligence Star dedicated to his memory while GROM showed its gratitude by naming a street at their base after him.
* * *
The Joint Special Operations Command (JSOC) … is charged to study special operations requirements and techniques, ensure interoperability and equipment standardization, plan and conduct special operations exercises and training, and develop joint special operations tactics.
The Combat Applications Group (CAG) … tests special operations methods, equipment, tactics, and combined arms interoperability with a focus of the development of doctrine.…
The Naval Special Warfare Development Group (DEVGRU) provides centralized management for the test, evaluation, and development of current and emerging technology applicable to Naval Special Warfare forces.
By the early ’90s, the nation’s deeply classified direct action units and the larger command that controlled them were no longer quite the secret the Department of Defense would have preferred. Colonel Beckwith and Captain Marcinko both authored books detailing the origins of the units they founded, and Hollywood quite naturally jumped on the concept of priority-one CT units that existed on a constant war footing and were assigned a global area of operations.
Movies starring Chuck Norris and Charlie Sheen did not exactly lend credibility to the Pentagon’s stubborn denial of the units’ existence either.
Partially in an attempt to put the genie back in the bottle, the units were rebranded CAG and DEVGRU, respectively. And, like JSOC as a whole, they were purported to be nothing more than glorified test-and-development-centric organizations.
While it’s certainly true they carefully studied and advanced the military in the application of surgical violence, this was work that was tested in the field, not in some lab as their charters attempted to imply.
At least that was the idea. Although the units had captured the imagination of the public, those with the power to ac
tually send these unique solutions into motion remained haunted by the failure of Operation Eagle Claw and thus less likely to get caught up in the hype.
They had not been sidelined completely. During their formative years, Delta Force and SEAL Team Six—collectively referred to as JSOC special mission units (SMUs)—represented the last option a number of conventionally minded military leaders and timid politicians wanted to call upon during a time of need. But in the most pressing cases, they also represented the only option.
Both units had scored significant victories and demonstrated their value multiple times over. Delta executed the first successful hostage rescue of an American civilian on foreign soil when it stormed the Carcel Modelo prison in Panama City in 1989 and freed Kurt Muse. And SEAL Team Six played a key role in capturing Panamanian strongman Manuel Noriega just days later.
But those were very much the exceptions. While “all show and no go” is certainly not a fair description, the reality is that the dog and pony shows—CAPEX (capability exercise)—far outweighed the green lights granted. The units regularly underwent extensive mission workups in response to some larger crisis or another before moving on to start training in preparation for the next mission that would never come.
However, the worsening situation in Somalia demanded an overwhelming response. In August of 1993, President Bill Clinton approved Operation Gothic Serpent in order to hunt down Somali warlord Mohamed Farrah Aidid.
The operation was built around Task Force Ranger. And while the soldiers of the 75th Ranger Regiment’s 3rd Battalion (3/75) were the most numerous in its overall composition, the centerpiece of this 160-troop-strong manhunting task force was unquestionably Delta Force’s C Squadron.