Modern American Snipers (22 page)

Think of Delta as jazz improvisation to DEVGRU's classical score.

John McPhee, a former Unit advanced assaulter said, “No one does free flow like the Unit. Why? No one else trains the right way. Effective training focuses on mind-set, lessons learned, and absolutely no ego. Plus there's no myth or sacred cows. If it sucks let's call it that and move on to better stuff. I could teach a SWAT team to do it in a couple weeks but they don't have the right mindset. They see it as ‘too fast, too loose, too dangerous.' Well, what happens if you don't do it and the adrenaline is flowing when you're out on a target? You get shot.”

As the campaign against al-Qaeda in Iraq and other enemy forces lifted off, the Unit took its trademark speed, surprise, and violence of action out from the controlled conditions of the training kill house and into the wilds of Sadr City, Fallujah, and other extremist lairs.

In mid-2004, A Squadron rescued multiple hostages while the Unit as a whole began the systematic decimation of AQI. By May of 2005, the Delta-spearheaded campaign had resulted in the deaths of Zarqawi's top twenty-one lieutenants while capturing another thirteen, leaving just one unaccounted for. Three months later, some two hundred of AQI's leaders had been eliminated.

*   *   *

While Delta's Task Force Green took the fight to AQI in the areas surrounding Baghdad, the Rangers of Task Force Red operated to the north in much the same manner—and with equal ferocity and frequency.

That actuality might have come as something of a surprise to those not paying full attention. Call it the Black Hawk Down effect.

Too often when outsiders (including those in other spec ops units) think of the 75th Ranger Regiment, they envision a sort of supercharged version of a conventional infantry unit, filled with eighteen-year-old Privates who get the honor of playing “blocking force to the stars”—pulling security for Delta Force and SEAL Team Six.

And in fact, the Rangers of a slightly earlier generation were somewhat more “conventional” in their approach—hard-charging and disciplined infantrymen to which the rest of the Army could look to set an example. And they'd be called in to back up their big brothers from Bragg on occasion, too. This was the case in Mogadishu in '93, and subsequently this image became the defining one for a generation whose primary source of Ranger knowledge is
Black Hawk Down
.

But the accelerating pace of operations required that the Rangers both evolve and step up in a major way. Before long, the 75th Ranger Regiment assumed responsibilities not massively far removed from those of JSOC's special mission units, at least in a pure DA capacity.

The days of holding down street corners while CAG (the unit designation most often used by Rangers in reference to Delta Force) goes to work have largely become a relic of an older world. Post-9/11 Rangers are eager to dispel the fallacy when presented with the opportunity to do so.

“That's the great myth,” former 3/75 Ranger sniper Jack Murphy said. “As far as the operations I did in Ranger Battalion—the amount of times we did security or support for any other unit—I could probably count on one hand.”

Isaiah Burkhart, a former 3rd Battalion sniper team leader, added, “It's a poor misconception that all we do is block positions or whatever. That's not true. I think in my four deployments as a sniper, on three of them, I worked with CAG at some time. And in all that time, in the hundreds and hundreds of missions that I did, I know one for sure, and maybe two, where I was actually ever on a blocking position. That's a pretty low percentage.”

GM, another ex-3/75 sniper, opined that while the Regiment—even the very active, very lethal Regiment that has emerged over the past decade—has been slow to capture attention in the way its more celebrated SOCOM counterparts have, people are finally starting to catch on.

He said, “Vietnam made SF and SEALs look like gods. They rode that forever. And when you really look at it, between Vietnam and GWOT, there's really been nothing. I mean, there's been a few things here and there, but nothing crazy like 'Nam or like this. Not too long ago I used to hear, “[Rangers] don't do anything; they just do blocking positions for the guys at Bragg.' That was the reputation. ‘You all don't do anything, y'all just pretty much carry their water.' Nobody says that now.
Nobody
.”

A major reason no one says that now is due to the heavy influence of Stanley McChrystal, who thrust his former unit into the spotlight when he ascended to the very top of the black spec ops world.

“I think if McChrystal were wounded on the battlefield, he would bleed red, black, and white—the official colors of the 75th Ranger Regiment,” wrote former Ranger and Delta officer Dalton Fury. “He is 110 percent U.S. Army Ranger. As the Ranger Regimental commander, McChrystal was considered a Tier 2 subordinate commander under the Joint Special Operations functioning command structure. The highest level, Tier 1, was reserved exclusively for Delta Force and Seal Team Six. This always seemed to bother McChrystal. His nature isn't to be second fiddle to anyone, nor for his Rangers to be considered second-class citizens to the Tier 1 special mission units.”

McChrystal became the tenth consecutive Army general running the Joint Special Operations Command, a stretch of Army leadership that dated back to JSOC's inception. However, he wasn't so much just another Army “daddy” as he was the Rangers' “daddy.” And he made sure the 75th Ranger Regiment would play a lead role in this new age of special warfare.

*   *   *

The Regiment largely planned and executed its own operations in Iraq, supported by JSOC's intelligence fusion and complete with access to the 160th Special Operations Aviation Regiment. Bolstered by top-flight gear and weaponry paid for by inflated budgets, sporting relaxed grooming standards, and executing surgical raids on myriad high-value targets, the GWOT-era 75th Ranger Regiment more closely resembles an outsider's (similarly misguided) idea of Delta or DEVGRU than it does the tired BHD image.

“I'd say that people have this conception that SEAL Team Six is saving the world,” Burkhart lamented. “I really don't have anything bad to say about those guys. They are an amazing unit in their own right. But they've been so publicized and everything, I don't think people realize the Regiment … we had our set of targets we went after all the time. We were getting bad guys all the time. And we were not just going after these little small guys.”

In Iraq, Task Force Red's JOC (Joint Operation Center) prominently displayed a large graphic featuring images of the top HVTs in the task force's sights. Arranged like a pyramid, Zarqawi sat at the very top, with a spiderweb of connections linking the remainder of the most wanted terrorists on JSOC's target deck beneath him.

Burkhart said, “As the deployment would go on it was like, ‘Check this guy off, check that guy off, check this guy off.…'”

Once JSOC's industrial counterterrorism campaign was put into full effect, the 3rd Battalion alone was responsible for eliminating multiple HVTs who held down places near the very top of that chart. “These guys were top ten guys in the whole country,” Burkhart said. “They were on Delta's top ten list, the CIA's top ten list. These were the dudes that we really want to get. We were doing big things. We were getting big guys.”

In the summer of 2005, the blistering pace required that 3/75 put two platoons into rotation near Mosul so that they could press the initiative twenty-four hours a day.

“One platoon would do day ops for two weeks straight while the other platoon was doing night ops,” Burkhart explained. “We generally didn't do day ops that much, but we were up there because there was so much going on. It was such a big hub for guys coming in from Syria; it was a major meeting point and from there they spread out to the rest of the country.”

Fortunately, the battalion arrived at FOB (Forward Operating Base) Marez in Mosul in July 2005 armed with an extremely potent, dedicated sniper capability. Unfortunately, the line companies did not fully appreciate that fact, at least not initially. While 3/75's sniper platoon had enjoyed considerable success at the Haditha Dam during the initial invasion of Iraq and in its previous deployment to Afghanistan, the rifle platoons still did not understand how to fully exploit their organic force multipliers nor did they necessarily recognize their value.

As a result, the snipers were forced to sell themselves to secure work. GM said, “Half the job in Battalion of a sniper was being a sniper. The other half was being a businessman. You had to build relationships with the platoon sergeant and the PL [platoon leader].

“If you have a bad relationship with the platoon sergeant or anybody there, they are going to shut you down. They are not going to put you on manifest. They're going to cut you at every turn. I saw that with one guy. He was an asshole. They wouldn't put him on missions. They didn't want to bring him out. They just thought about him as a liability. He ended up getting fired from the [sniper] platoon.”

*   *   *

While the rifle companies still needed to be convinced, 3rd Battalion's sniper platoon was hitting on all cylinders and just waiting to be set loose.

Jared Van Aalst had only returned from the Army Marksmanship Unit to serve as the section's platoon sergeant. And just prior to the battalion's Mosul deployment, he showcased his skills by scoring a blowout victory in the 2005 U.S. Army Rifle Individual Championship.

While the advantage inherent with being based at Fort Benning and in proximity to the AMU provided 3/75 was a factor, that alone did not account for the section's sharpened edge. That had been instilled by Van Aalst's management style and the resultant environment that had been fostered. Snipers were forced to perform under constant stress or risk being jettisoned back to the line with little warning.

“Sniper section guys were different,” said GM, a former 3/75 sniper team leader. “It was just kind of the personality profile. They were quiet, they were into guns, they were kinda into themselves, they were secluded, and they didn't like to talk to people. They kind of do their own thing, you know? And all of them are extremely competitive alpha males.

“It was a shark tank essentially. They ate the weakest one. If a weak guy came in, he didn't last long. And we're talking about Ranger team leaders. You could go at any time. They could fire at will. It was stressful.”

In fact, it was so stressful that established snipers in the section (and some stayed in their position for several years) welcomed the introduction of new blood to the platoon … simply so that the blood most likely to be spilled in the water was not their own.

“You wanted a bunch of new guys because it would take heat off you,” GM continued. “It was so stressful because they're constantly looking to fire guys. They even said, ‘We're going to put someone's head on the chopping block because that's how we get the best out of people.' The ‘Hey, he's a good guy—he's my drinking buddy…'—that didn't work there. You performed or you didn't. When I was there, it was like twelve guys and nobody was safe. It's what you want—that culture of fear to get the best out of people.”

The uncompromising approach evoked Jack Welch's vitality model in which the bottom 10 percent of a company are slated to be fired each year. “You want it to be competitive and it was. That's why it became so good.”

*   *   *

3/75 Sniper Platoon leaders Van Aalst and Robby Johnson demanded a certain degree of experience in potential candidates for the section—one had to be an E-4 and have already earned their Ranger Tab. (Around that time the other battalions' sniper platoons experimented with accepting much less experienced Rangers.)

But beyond that, the right mind-set was all that mattered. There was no extensive selection process, simply an interview (“You never knew what was going to get asked, never. They'd feel you out. And then, ‘Okay thanks' and they'd send you out”), an internal background check, and a psych evaluation to determine if someone could succeed in the role.

GM said, “They needed guys who were thinkers who you could send out in the middle of nowhere and he could do his own thing. He's fire and forget; you don't have to worry about babysitting him.”

The personable Isaiah Burkhart is enthusiastic and welcoming. Despite his four deployments as a 3/75 sniper in which he played a decisive role in some of the more intense combat operations American SOF has conducted since 9/11, he doesn't exactly fit the profile (in fact, one sniper got his walking papers simply because even Burkhart couldn't find a positive thing to say about him).

Now an Oregon State grad living back in Oregon with his wife and their young daughter, Burkhart admitted that he had to, in a sense, fake it to make it in Sniper Platoon. To do so, he first had to identify the traits that were most coveted.

“I don't know if I necessarily had
it,
but I did a good job of not standing out,” he said. “I think
it
is a mentality of believing that you are the best maybe even if you're not all the time, but still being humble enough to know when you've screwed up. They have that mentality of, ‘We're better than you' type of thing. And I honestly do believe at one point in time the 3rd Battalion had the greatest sniper section in the entire military.”

*   *   *

Prior to the battalion's 2005 deployment to Mosul, Jack Murphy became one of the victims of the notorious 3/75 Sniper Platoon shark tank. While others credited Van Aalst's leadership style and the pressurized atmosphere it produced with elevating the section to new heights, Murphy felt the corporate approach reeked of insecurity and was too often petty and counterproductive.

“Jared was an interesting cat,” he said. “I had a strange relationship with him to say the least.”