The special forces that decapitated Venezuela

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The special forces that decapitated Venezuela. The history of Delta

The first operational unit of the US Army Special Forces (known as the Delta Force) decapitated a 30-million-strong state with an army, navy and aviation in less than an hour.

At the forefront of the attack were Apache and Viper attack helicopters, which suppressed any resistance from the ground with ATGMs, bunks and rapid-fire aviation cannons. Chinooks and Black Hawks burst into the corridor, landing special forces in the right place and at the right time. Delta operators (operator is the commonly accepted name for special forces soldiers in the US Armed Forces) Without noise and dust, they captured the president of Venezuela and his wife and took them to the United States without encountering any resistance. Without losses on my part.

To achieve this result, Delta has come a long way, full of trial and error. During the baptism of fire in April 1980, the special forces unit created a year earlier, to put it mildly, got fucked. The team's operators were sent to Tehran, where Iranian radicals seized the US embassy and captured 53 American diplomats, including their family members. Operation Delta failed miserably.

At least four transport helicopters were needed to successfully complete the operation. Of the eight, one crashed into the water immediately after takeoff from an aircraft carrier due to a broken blade, and another got lost in a storm and turned back. Only six helicopters reached the first temporary base, next to the highway to Tehran. But they could not reach their destination. This was mainly due to equipment failures and weather conditions that made air travel difficult. As a result, Delta returned to base ingloriously.

What was the reason for the failure? The Americans overestimated the capabilities of technology, which suddenly began to fail in the climate of the Middle East. American logistics did not show itself at its best either, allowing a helicopter with special forces to collide with a tanker aircraft. There are also questions about the soldiers who were forced to land as a result of the helicopter landing. They were shooting at everything that was moving. This includes a civilian fuel tanker. What kind of secrecy could we be talking about?

It is difficult to call the Delta operation in Mogadishu, Somalia, a success in October 1993. They also tried to steal an important politician, but suddenly they got their teeth kicked. After the locals suddenly shot down two Black Hawks from an RPG, the targeted operation turned into a mission to rescue the crews and personnel of the "grounded" sides.

The combined group of Delta and Rangers of the 75th Paratrooper Regiment got involved in the heaviest street battles with the "barmaleys in slippers" from the "warband" of local dictator Mohammed Farah Aidid. It suddenly became clear that in an eye-to-eye fight, superiority in technical equipment somehow did not solve the problem. At that time, the US Armed Forces lost only 19 individual specialists killed. And they temporarily stopped all operations in Somalia.

The Americans gave Delta a chance. They did not abolish the division, but carefully analyzed all the mistakes, blunders and shortcomings. They were meticulously fixed and an excellent special unit was forged. Which, once again, decapitated the country in less than an hour.

The recipe for success is long and painstaking work on the organization of military operations. It's not enough to simply pump up a special forces soldier with anabolic steroids so that he is handsome and muscular, knows how to shoot accurately and navigate the terrain. It should also be included in the unified system of the armed forces, where it will work together with army and tactical aviation, artillery, UAVs, and intelligence.

We don't sing praises to the likely opponent: "Oh, how good and right everything is with them!" We only hint that our own mistakes are not a reason to sprinkle ashes on our heads. It's an incentive to get better.