by Chris Martin
During one particularly eventful weekend, B Squadron shredded through an entire network in the so-called Triangle of Death located southwest of Baghdad. On a single evening, Delta operators raided four houses in Latifiyah, taking out the gang’s leader, Abu Mustafa, and more than a dozen of his men.
Supremely confident following their rolling sequence of assaults, the squadron hit another compound the following day, electing to go in without the cover of darkness in its favor. This proved to be a critical miscalculation that would have lethal consequences.
Under intense fire as quickly as they departed the 160th SOAR Black Hawks that ferried them to the objective, the Delta Force assaulters were pinned down. A Night Stalker AH-6M Little Bird was then knocked out of the sky by enemy fire while attempting to defend the Unit operators on the ground. The helicopter’s pilots, Chief Warrant Officer 5 Jamie Week and Major Matthew Worrell, were killed in the crash.
The assault element continued to pursue its objective, killing more than two dozen terrorists and apprehending four more in the process. However, despite scoring a tactical victory in the face of overwhelming odds, B Squadron’s top officer was relieved of his command due to the mission plan that was deemed over-the-top even considering the Unit’s ultra-aggressive stance.
* * *
Meanwhile, the close-knit collaborative relationship that formed between Delta’s B Squadron recce snipers and their 3/75 counterparts was forged even stronger after they returned home following the ’05 deployment to Mosul.
Multiple Rangers interviewed termed the Delta/Ranger relationship akin to one shared by a big brother and a little brother, and the B Squadron Delta snipers lived up to that unwritten contract, enthusiastically taking the Ranger snipers under their wing.
In ’06, RS—the Delta recce Sergeant Major—invited the 3/75 Ranger sniper platoon up to the Unit’s expansive, high-tech facility for a two-week advanced sniping master class.
According to one of the ten or so Ranger snipers who attended the session, “It was like drinking from a fire hose; it was the best training of my entire life.”
RS and a couple of other snipers from his troop subjected the Rangers to Delta-style drills. They were instructed on the finer points of climbing and various other tricks of the trade. The Ranger snipers trained with shot timers, worked on barricade shooting, firing with both hands, learned unorthodox positions, and were even introduced to the low-vis vehicle interdiction techniques B Squadron’s snipers had used with such lethal efficiency in Mosul.
“They treated us like we were one of them,” a former Ranger said. “It was really nice. We used their gym and they have a frickin’ Olympic-sized pool in their compound with diving platforms and everything. The place is an amazing complex.”
The connection carried over to subsequent deployments as the Delta recce operators again took on the role of big brother. In 2007, the B and 3/75 snipers rotated into Baghdad.
A former regime palace in the Green Zone had been transformed into a sort of black SOF village known as Mission Support Fernandez—named after Delta C Squadron Master Sergeant George Andy Fernandez—the first Unit operator killed in the Iraq War.
Adjacent quarters at MSS Fernandez housed not only the Rangers and Delta operators, but also British SAS troops of Task Force Black and an Army Special Force CIF Company, along with a collection of OGA spooks and soldiers from the conventional 1st Armored Division, who “would barely ever go out but were there as a last ditch, ‘Come save our ass with your Abrams tanks’ capacity.”
A minirange was set up for pistol training and zeroing rifles, which encouraged further cross-training. One of the Delta recce troop snipers who had worked with RS to train the Ranger snipers in Fort Bragg pulled aside one of the two-man Ranger sniper teams and said, “Anytime you’re not going out, I’m paging you and you’re coming out with us.”
It was a heady experience for the 3/75 sniper team leader, who found himself in mission briefings surrounded by an abundance of warfighting experience, including the Unit commander along with a bevy of Master Sergeants and Sergeants Major. “Holy shit—this is crazy.”
Typically, when operating together, the Delta and Ranger snipers would perch on the opposite sides of a 160th SOAR Little Bird’s outer benches where they could quickly dismount atop strategically located rooftops to overwatch a raid on a target building.
However, on one occasion, the objective was deemed especially sensitive, with the possibility of escape a genuine concern. As a result, the sniper team was positioned well ahead of the primary raiding party to swat down any potential squirters.
While one Black Hawk loaded up with the primary assault element, another carried just the two Delta snipers, two Ranger snipers, a JTAC (joint terminal attack controller—a soldier trained to direct close air support), and an assaulter armed with a Squad Automatic Weapon, who tagged along in the event things went sideways.
The recce element set down five kilometers from the objective to conduct an offset infil.
“The six of us were on our own,” the Ranger recounted. “We had to walk through a couple villages and set up positions around a big complex, overwatch it for an hour before the full complement of CAG guys flew in. It was a fifty-minute flight and we were put down in the middle of fucking nowhere. ‘We are in some shit right now.’”
While it may have seemed like they were on their own, this small six-man sniper team actually had some pretty serious support in the form of the dedicated aerial assets assigned to them—two F/A-18s, an AC-130, and other platforms waiting on standby.
“The assets that were just flying above us the whole time we were out there … it was pretty amazing,” the former Ranger sniper said. “It was equivalent to the amount of assets a whole conventional Army brigade might get—if they requested it months in advance.”
Once the snipers were in position, the larger Delta Force team swooped in and secured the targeted individuals without incident.
While the evening was not punctuated by a chaotic firefight, merely playing in the big leagues alongside their Tier 1 counterparts proved to be an eye-opening experience for the Ranger snipers.
* * *
Working with Delta’s recce troop could be an eye-opener for those watching from on high as well. In late 2007, 1st Lieutenant Brian “STUFR” Watts (his call sign had been “Flex” before he was “hostilely renamed”) was at the stick of one of those dedicated assets.
An F-16 pilot with the 421st Fighter Squadron, Watts belonged to one of the three USAF F-16C squadrons that continually rotated through Iraq and served—along with Navy F/A-18s—as the primary close air support platforms watching over the troops.
JSOC’s exceedingly brisk OPTEMPO required the air assets remain flexible just to keep up as missions were nonstop and ever in flux. Watts explained, “What the tasking would start off with versus what actually ended up happening—rarely did they gel. After the briefing, the Army liaison guy would come back and say, ‘Okay, here is what you’re doing at this time, this time, and this time.…’ And then you’d get ready to go and he’d come back in again. ‘Okay, no. Now you’re doing this and this.’ And then you’d walk out to the jet and it would change again.”
He continued, “I remember my first mission over there. I was getting ready to fly for the first time in a combat zone and the mission literally changed four times before takeoff. It was a kind of surveillance thing for the Tier 1—that’s what we classified it over there. They were waiting for a high-value target to come back to a building and they were set to action them, all teed up and ready to go.”
The fighter pilot reflected on the experience of being just one small ($20 million) cog in the JSOC counterterrorism machine. He said, “A lot of times we would provide overwatch. Now how many assets they had besides us … What we kind of found out was we’d think we’d be on to something but they’d also have two Predators or whatever. You’d be thinking, ‘Okay, we’re all ready to go,’ but, ‘Nope, we’ve got a drone.
’ ‘What the fuck? Why are we sitting here burning holes in the sky?’
“At other times, one guy in the [two F-16C] flight would track the target and the other would track the U.S. guys. There was a code and a relay so the Delta guys—or whoever they were—could sit and watch what we were seeing. They’d take their helicopters and just put them down in the desert and wait until the guy got to where they wanted to roll up on him. We’d just provide security and make sure nobody was sneaking up on them out in the middle of nowhere.”
Watts was taken aback by the level of detail JSOC’s recce assets were able to provide in advance of an operation, providing an almost prescient degree of intelligence.
When working in support of conventional troops, the F-16C pilots of the 421st Fighter Squadron (call sign “Ninja”) would take on the role of subject matter expert, providing in-depth descriptions of their aircraft, munitions, and time-on-station during their check-in. They’d also lend suggestions as to what types of weapons would be of most use and when.
When supporting Rangers, the check-in was of a generally similar sort, although considerably condensed.
However, when tasked with a Delta operation, the fighter pilots simply did as they were told. “It was pretty much check in and just shut up,” Watts admitted. “Give them your call sign; tell them you’re on station. They’d acknowledged and they knew the drill. They know what’s going on. They probably knew what that guy they were targeting was eating for breakfast.
“They would literally say, ‘This car is going to go here, and then two guys are going to come up, and then they are going to go there,’ and so on. And you’d just sit there and watch it unfold exactly as they said it would. There was obviously a lot of intelligence that was going on. It was just nuts.”
The pilot appreciated the opportunity to work amid such refined competence: “You know when you are being utilized properly and when you are not—when a guy knows exactly how to use your asset to help them—and these guys were, as expected, all over it. It was fun to sit back and have a front-row ticket to a lot of the stuff.”
* * *
While U.S. Army Special Forces primarily concentrate on unconventional warfare and foreign internal defense missions, each SF Group boasts its own specialized direct-action-centric component in the form of a CIF Company. This relatively under-the-radar capability skirts the line between “black” and “white” and “Tier 1” and “Tier 3.”
These CIF (Combatant Commanders In-extremis Force) Companies grant each geographic area of responsibility (AOR) of the Unified Combatant Command structure with a dedicated, specially trained unit that is prepositioned and able to immediately respond to highly sensitive operations.
Not surprising considering their SF lineage, combined with their advanced direct action, counterterrorism, and hostage rescue training, these (approximately) forty-man CIF Companies are also utilized to raise and train the Tier 1 CT units of other nations.
These capabilities led to JSOC calling upon them in a time of need: a CIF Company was made part of the larger JSOC equation operating out of Baghdad, allowing the industrial CT campaign to continue unabated even after Delta Force had been hit especially hard.
In 2006, the 7th Special Forces Group’s CIF Company (C/3/7), which included a troop led by former Delta recce legend John “Shrek” McPhee, took up shop at MSS Fernandez alongside JSOC’s band of U.S. and coalition black SOF and operated as an extension of the Unit.
The following year, SF CIF was given its own quarry and set off the leash in another direction. While the Delta-spearheaded Task Force 16 would continue to hunt down Zarqawi and dismantle AQI, the Special Forces DA specialists would take the lead on the new Counter Iranian Influence (CII) mission with the newly created Task Force 17.
Prior to that, U.S. intelligence had estimated that upward of 150 members of Quds Force—a special unit of the Iranian Revolutionary Guard tasked with “extraterritorial operations”—were operating inside Iraq. Quds Force was there training, directing, and arming Shia militias, known as “Special Groups.”
Unwilling to ignore this growing issue any longer, even while the White House deliberated the next step, Delta Force took the initiative and mounted a shock raid on the Iranian Liaison Office in Irbil in northern Iraq in January of ’07, storming in from the roof and the ground simultaneously. Five Iranian operatives were captured while attempting to destroy documents, signifying the official commencement of a second major CT campaign in Iraq.
While Delta and JSOC returned their focus to al-Qaeda in Iraq, CIF, along with their newest creation, ICTF (Iraqi Counterterrorism Task Force)—owned the CII mission while still being fueled by JSOC’s massive intelligence collection and processing capabilities.
The ICTF had only recently been activated. Recruits were trained by SF in conjunction with Jordanian SOF at the Jordanian Counterterrorism Training Academy in Amman, and then returned to Iraq to operate alongside their American mentors in the field.
This fork of the industrial CT campaign proved as torrid as the one that raged versus AQI. In late 2007, Task Force 17 killed almost fifty Shia militiamen during the course of a daylight raid in Sadr City while suffering no casualties—and causing no known friendly civilian casualties.
The team narrowly escaped a potential Black Hawk Down redux as the assault force battled their way through the streets to avoid being surrounded by a gathering swarm of enemy reinforcements.
* * *
While some soldiers received specialized marksmanship training, Army Special Forces did not have a formalized sniper program until the creation of the Special Operations Target Interdiction Course (SOTIC) in 1983 (which was rebranded as the Special Forces Sniper Course, SFSC, in March 2007).
SFSC is conducted at Range 37, a 130-acre training facility near Mott Lake at Fort Bragg, and serves as the primary basic training course for prospective SF and Delta snipers, along with a small handful of fortunate snipers from other units.
“That’s the one everyone wants to go to but there are not very many slots coming down,” former Ranger sniper Jack Murphy said.
As with most 3rd Battalion Ranger snipers, Isaiah Burkhart received his basic qualification through the U.S. Army Sniper School at Fort Benning. However, after serving as a 3/75 sniper for more than two years, he was finally granted the opportunity to attend SOTIC.
“The general rule was, because the battalions don’t get that many slots for SOTIC, it was the more senior guys who would go,” Burkhart explained.
The slots are so rare, in fact, that Burkhart was the only sniper from the entire regiment in his class. He found the course to be worth the wait. Compared to the U.S. Army Sniper School, he said, “SOTIC was definitely a higher level. The technicality of it is higher. You get a lot more into actually doing more equation stuff, fine-tuning things. The Army one is more of a ‘Big Army,’ big house, ‘You’re a dumbass until I tell you otherwise and you do exactly what I tell you’ kind of thing.”
Burkhart’s SOTIC class was loaded up with Sergeants First Class and Master Sergeants (as an E-6, he was the least senior man in attendance) and the students were treated accordingly. “It’s definitely more of a gentleman’s type course. You’re in big boy land.”
Students were provided with the training but then expected to follow through on their own, no babysitting or hand-holding included.
As its name suggested, Burkhart also found that SOTIC geared itself more toward teaching spec ops skills. He explained, “I would say that the U.S. Army School was a little more intensive in the stalking department. They were definitely more of an old-school, conventional warfare approach in the sense of stalking and fieldcraft-type stuff. Whereas with SOTIC, we had an entire week of doing low-vis stuff: following people, sneaking into somewhere to take photographs, and going back to Photoshop to do an overlay over a photo and map out entrance points, cameras, and things like that. They even had a Subaru that was all set up like a low-vis tracking vehicle.
“It was
a really good course—the best sniper school that I’ve ever been to.”
A Special Forces soldier who successfully completes the Special Forces Sniper Course is considered a “Level I” sniper. That not only suggests an HR-ready skill set, but also qualifies him to return to his Group and train other Green Berets—generally mimicking the SFSC curriculum, albeit in an abbreviated manner.
Those trained in this fashion are deemed “Level II” and can operate as an ODA sniper as long as they are teamed with a Level I sniper. They are also considered qualified to train partner nation snipers.
Each ODA strives to have at least two Green Berets with sniper training—and sometimes in practice has several more—but generally that’s only considered a secondary role, if that. As a former Unit and SF sniper said, “In an A-Team, sniper is a detail not a position, and one guys don’t really want.… ‘Why did I get stuck on the roof for this op?’”
That’s not the case with the CIF Companies, which are broken down into assaulter and sniper cells similar to Delta Force or DEVGRU. The CIF snipers are dedicated, full-time sharpshooters in the same way that Ranger snipers are; however, they also have hostage rescue training similar to that of Delta snipers (although they are not tasked with the same advanced reconnaissance role, at least not nearly to that degree).
To gain entrance to a CIF, an SF soldier has to pass more stringent physical requirements and complete the two-month Special Forces Advanced Reconnaissance Target Analysis Exploitation Techniques Course (SFARTAETC), which drills its students on surgical direct action and room-clearing techniques necessary for the assignment.
