When we were teens, my brother and I "invited" a very quiet, ex-Delta Force gentleman over to our woods to play paintball against us. We weren't entirely smart, but figured he'd join the other loud mouth, overconfident, just out of airborne school soldiers we'd had over, and he would end up with a big splat of yellow paint in the middle of his facemask a few times. We were bit cocky.<p>"Sure", he said.<p>"One two conditions." Pause. "There's no time limit, and no boundaries." Pause for a beat. "I'm going to run off and lie dog for three days. Then I'll get up. Hunt you down. Kill you."<p>In that moment I achieved enlightenment. Maybe the reason that some people or groups could do far more than others was not some special gifted super-power, but the willingness to put in unthinkable amounts off work for the slightest edge in advantage. Stack this up across all possible advantages, and the results would look impossible.<p>If you want to read about the Delta Force, I highly recommend the slim book "Leadership and Training for the Fight" by Paul Rowe[0]. It's not technically a history of anything, but it lets you live inside the head of someone with a very different way of viewing the world - almost an alien mindset, and see how they solve problems and function.<p>[0] <a href="https://www.amazon.com/Leadership-Training-Fight-Operations-Enforcement/dp/1616083042/" rel="nofollow">https://www.amazon.com/Leadership-Training-Fight-Operations-...</a>
I only know one story of "delta force" from my friend in the military. My friend got a crappy shift stationed at a small exit gate on a base in Iraq. It was around 2am and 4 atvs were trying to leave the base with duffel bags. These people on atvs had no badges in a black unmarked uniform with balaclavas on. My friend kept the gate closed. They spoke down to him yelling at him to open the gate in some kind of hurry. They refused to show any orders. My friend took his machine gun and pointed it at the first guys forehead. These guys were not leaving and were about to get shot. He had shot people before at the gate and he moved his index finger onto the trigger. My friend demanded to know what was in the duffel bags, see orders and ignored his radio. The men on atvs demanded him to answer his radio. My friend was getting ready to open fire. The first guy on the atv saw this wasn't going well - tried to calm things down - and opened a duffel bag. It was cash. 4 atvs carrying 20+ duffel bags of cash. Luckily for my friend, he <i>finally</i> answered his radio, and it was the base commander ordering him to let the atvs out of the gate. He let them go. The 4 atvs drove off into the night with duffels of cash. He referred to them as "spookes" - and this scenario was quite common after that.
I was aircrew in the USAF and I saw Pararescue and SERE instructor training. That stuff is absolutely insane and sadistic. Even then, at the top of my physical fitness/ability, I wouldn’t have been able to cut it. The endurance and stamina required is just unreal. The majority of those classes wash out too. It’s high pain and high risk from the beginning.<p>I can’t imagine going a step beyond and training for the special forces of the special forces, haha
I've been curious about the Delta Force for a while, and I am wondering if there's some sort of training available for civilians that could give you at least a glimpse of the preparation they go through. I'm sure there are many, but I've never heard anything particularly good about one in particular.<p>Any suggestions based on personal experience?<p>To be clear: main reason I'm interested in this is simply because it's the kind of preparation that could help you in case you find yourself in a very rare, but potentially lethal, situation (e.g. someone attacking you with a knife in a dead alley, or stuff like this - not the best example but you get the idea).
"You haven't failed until you stop trying" or "Failure is a choice" ... There's lots of other phrasings of that, still good advice.
Eric Haney’s book is great, another one along the same lines is “Quiet soldier” by Adam Ballinger, about a guy who did selection and trained with the part-time (Territorial Army) SAS battalion.
There's something more than a little gross in reading that Delta Force (gotta love self-aggrandizing names. I suppose Hep-Cat-with-Guns was rejected out of hand.) was inspired by the British campaign in the Malaya Emergency[0], which seems to have set the modern standard for blood-soaked, torture-ridden "counter-insurgency" warfare.<p>The Wikipedia page [1] references on event as the "British Mai Lai". But it happened in 1948, decades before the Mai Lai [2] massacre.<p>N.B. I'm expressly not saying that there's anything uniquely wicked about British or American soldiers, many of whom seem to be decent sorts, doing jobs that I could not. But the mythos of so-called elite forces is a giant stinking vat of horse pickles, and always was. (Bret Devereaux's material about the Spartans seems like proof enough [3])<p>[0] <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Malayan_Emergency" rel="nofollow">https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Malayan_Emergency</a>
[1] <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Batang_Kali_massacre" rel="nofollow">https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Batang_Kali_massacre</a>
[2] <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mỹ_Lai_massacre" rel="nofollow">https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mỹ_Lai_massacre</a>
[3] <a href="https://acoup.blog/category/collections/this-isnt-sparta/" rel="nofollow">https://acoup.blog/category/collections/this-isnt-sparta/</a>