Modern American Snipers (39 page)

Before joining Delta, he already had five combat deployments to his name. And among other assignments, he had previously been a 3/75 Ranger sniper, AMU competitive shooter, 3/75 Ranger Sniper Platoon Sergeant, 1st Platoon Alpha Company 3/75 Platoon Sergeant, and NCOIC of the 3/75 Reconnaissance, Sniper, and Technical Surveillance Detachment.

Delta Force operator Jared Van Aalst was killed in combat on August 4, 2010, in Kunduz Province, Afghanistan.

When Jack Murphy learned of VA's death, he was still bitter and struggled to let the old issues with his former (two-time) platoon sergeant go.

That changed in 2012 after he was contacted by one of Van Aalst's old friends, a former Ranger and active-duty Special Forces soldier:

“I don't know you, Jack, but I know all about you. Me and VA went way back and he told me all about you. He told me you were in all kinds of shit. He said you were in trouble and asked for my advice. I asked if he thought you could Ranger through it, and VA said, ‘Yeah, he can.' I told him he knows what to do.”

“The reality was that VA was looking over my shoulder in a big way,” a still-regretful Murphy said. “The reason why I was taken care of the way I was, was literally because of VA looking over my shoulder and making sure I did not get fucked. Anyone else would have been completely fucked. And what VA did was send me back to an infantry squad and looked after me there.

“I knew absolutely nothing about this at the time. I thought VA hated me. I thought VA hated me as much as I hated him. I only found this out after the fact and it's something that bothers me to this day that I was never able to put this stuff behind me. VA was the bigger man in the end and I could not let this anger and animosity I had go when I should have. We weren't at each other's throats, but it was something where, once I was out of the Regiment and out from under his chain of command, we should have been friends. It's something that eats at me inside to this day. But it is what it is.”

*   *   *

“One shot, one kill” has long been the sniper's creed. And it's one that's been joined in the military parlance by another, similar phrase that has risen in prominence during the Global War on Terror: “One team, one fight.”

That sentiment is a truism of particular significance at the sharpest end of special operations where missions, campaigns, task forces, and commands are “joint” by definition.

As the overarching battle to counter global terrorist networks gained momentum, the nearly institutional feud separating the Joint Special Operations Command's Tier 1 units—Delta Force and DEVGRU—had subsided considerably.

September 11 and the resultant years of constant deployments and bloodshed flushed away much of the petty bickering. Besides lending renewed perspective, the attacks also changed the game for counterterrorist outfits. The old source of friction had become fiction, as both units were overloaded with more work than they could have previously imagined possible.

Rather than be locked in competition for the make-or-break op that might crop up once during the course of an operator's career, it was more a matter of deciding which unit would undertake the thousands of missions over here and which would undertake the thousands of missions over there.

Following 9/11, Delta and DEVGRU were both given plenty to “eat” and they feasted, racking up respective HVT kills and captures tallying into the hundreds of millions of dollars in terms of the bounties that had been placed on their targets' heads.

Additionally, a full decade before 2001, JSOC had mandated joint training exercises between its SMUs, and not just among the snipers. In the early days this was a rocky experience for both sides. But eventually a genuine sense of comfort and familiarity had been fostered between the two—both operationally and professionally.

“When we started to train together and play nice together, it was definitely us against them,” admitted former DEVGRU sniper Howard Wasdin. “But the big thing is, after we trained with them for a while, we all got better. And after being in combat with them, Delta Force guys actually came to my hospital room and said, ‘Hey man, I wish we bonded more with you guys before the firefight.' Once you're in the soup with somebody, you see theirs and they see yours and there's a mutual respect that's forged. I think with us being in Somalia with the Delta Force guys, that sharpened the tip of the spear and that was the springboard for how things are today.

“Is there still going to be sibling and professional rivalry? Of course there is. With any elite team there will be—that's like two Super Bowl teams playing. But the mutual respect and trust is there and that's what really matters.”

This was borne out when DEVGRU lent out a handful of assaulters to serve as substitute Unit operators in 2005 after Delta had been rocked by a rapid series of causalities in Iraq.

*   *   *

One pre-9/11 DEVGRU sniper actually became a post-9/11 member of the Unit.

In the '90s, a talented young country boy rose through the ranks to become one of SEAL Team Six's youngest ever operators. He continued his upward climb through the ranks at Red Squadron and soon became one of the youngest to ever become a sniper with Black Team.

However, frustrated with the interservice politics, he left SEAL Team Six following just four years and instead went to work for his father's company.

Then 9/11 happened.

He immediately sought out DEVGRU's Master Chief.

“Hey, I'm still in great shape and I shoot all the time. I'll go back through Green Team. I'll go through selection. I'll do whatever you want. Just let me back in, I want to contribute.”

“Up yours. Go back to vanilla teams and work your way back up.”

Next, he called the Army recruiter.

“What's it going to take to get me to Delta?”

“I don't know but we'll find out.”

He was placed in the Army National Guard for twenty-four hours and then transferred to the Army to go to selection. He made the cut and deployed multiple times as a breacher.

Down the road, he crossed paths with some old ST6 Teammates while overseas.

“Damn man, what are you doing?”

“Hey, I got here any way I could.”

“Roger that. Good on you.”

*   *   *

When Stanley McChrystal took command of JSOC, he attempted to integrate the units to an even greater degree. However, the respective operators bristled and flatly rejected his early attempts to shape and treat the two as if they were virtual doppelg
ä
ngers—the same in all but name.

Leaders with the power to pull the trigger on national-level missions have largely treated the two as interchangeable. They are both viewed as far exceeding the tactical threshold necessary to execute even the most technical and challenging CT taskings. The parsing beyond that might not go much deeper than, “Who's available?” or “Who's there already?”

But what may seem like small nuances to outsiders—irrelevant details—can be considered mission critical gulfs—in talents, in capabilities, and in mind-set—to those more on the inside.

And it's obvious that even if the relationship is stronger than it once was, the animosity still smolders (largely) under the surface.

Unsurprisingly, operators on either side of the equation contend their unit's superiority is self-evident and that the most-high profile missions are practically their birthright.

SEAL Team Six was criticized for basking in the spotlight after finally having their “daddy” decide who got to pitch in the big game and being awarded the one op everyone wanted.

Following suggestions that future missions of the sort should instead go to Delta Force or the Ranger Regiment due to the Army units' track record of offering a more discreet solution, an anonymous DEVGRU operator struck back in an open letter to
SOFREP
editor Jack Murphy.

In the somewhat ironic counter, the active-duty SEAL wrote, “First I will give credit where credit is due. Delta is one of two (the other being DEVGRU) of the most hard core and prolific group of warriors ever assembled in the history of warfare.… That said, let's break things down to a digestible level. Ask your CAG friends about the highest profile op they've done lately … and you'll hear the crickets chirping loudly. It's not because they are not talking about it, but because they are not being chosen to do them.

“And don't even try and use the excuse that it was only because McRaven was running the show. There have been some other ops (post-Bin Laden) that were way more technical than the Bin Laden op and it was an Army General that chose our Navy element to do it.

“The real answer is … it was, and still is, OUR time. Period.”

Not surprisingly, retired Unit sniper John McPhee had a vastly different take.

The operator opined that the vast differences separating their respective selection and training methodologies, along with the average experience of the units' respective operators, results in a cavernous separation in terms of capability.

“I'm only willing to talk because I'm tired of the bullshit training,” McPhee said. “I'm tired of people dying because of ego. Ego has killed more guys than this nation's enemies. I'm not for or against SEALs—I'm against bad training. SEAL training is based on hazing to be the best you can be. In the Unit, you prove yourself and then they treat you like a man.

He continued, “To get to a SEAL Team, there's no selection, no psych evaluation, board selection of any kind. [Without those] you will almost never get the
right
guy. A couple buddies say you're good and you're good.

“In the Army, you want to be a Ranger, get a Ranger Tab, and go to a battalion, you get selected and evaluated. Rangers that have gone to BUD/S call it pool fitness and say it's not that hard. After a few years, maybe you want to become a Green Beret, you think they're cool. So you go to SF selection, get a psych evaluation. It's the same thing as you move on. By this time, you've probably had six years of the most intensive training in the world. It's a stepped professional system. Four to six selections, evaluations—oral, psych, physical—on the way up. The Army is just more professional.

“Human nature says if you have two guys who are the same age and have the same natural abilities, the guy with the best training is going to be the one who performs the best.”

McPhee, who now instructs cutting-edge gunfighting techniques utilizing frame-by-frame video review that would leave NFL teams envious, also claimed that SEAL snipers are years behind their Unit counterparts in terms of tactics and technology (a sentiment supported by another former Delta operator): “SEAL Team snipers only switched to first focal plane sights about two years ago. They're like a decade behind. They still had that Vietnam mind-set—dial in the DOPE and all that bullshit.”

Ultimately, results are what matter and McPhee was unconvinced in that area as well.

“The problem with SEAL Teams is they kill everyone,” he said. “That only creates more problems and makes more enemies. The Unit only kills those who need to be killed.”

Even the much vaunted Operation Neptune Spear did not escape his harsh judgment. “These guys were running their mouths. It was ego and lies. They high-fived and then raced to see who could make the first million from a book deal or movie. They put us at risk, not just on the battlefield but at home. They put our families at risk. They need to learn to shut the fuck up. They compromised technology to our nations' enemies because they didn't plan for total destruction. They could have just asked the pilots, ‘How do I destroy this?'”

He was particularly critical of the atypical grouping for the operation, which teamed Red Squadron's most senior men as an “all-star” troop of sorts. While that may have put a great deal of experience on the ground, it also meant they were not a well-oiled, cohesive squad who had run dozens of ops together.

“If they would have run into any real resistance they would have gotten chewed up,” he said. “You can't just pick teams and expect everything will be okay. And they broke their only rule—don't shoot the guy in the face.”

*   *   *

Despite being just a few dozen men strong and deeply classified, DEVGRU's Red Squadron is perhaps the single-most recognizable symbol of both the triumphs and the sacrifice of the Global War on Terror.

Even before GWOT, its snipers distinguished themselves with heroism in Mogadishu, Somalia.

And then one of its own—Neil Roberts—was the first SEAL to die following 9/11, doing so with great bravery under horrifying circumstances.

Reports indicate that it was Red Squadron that then lit up CNN at the start of the Iraq War, rescuing Jessica Lynch.

And then Red Squadron's Black Team snipers demonstrated their remarkable capabilities with a simultaneous triple headshot that again had the world watching on in awe.

And finally, the squadron was made the centerpiece of what can only be termed the most high-profile and high-priority special operations mission of the century: the cross-border elimination of Osama bin Laden.

It's perhaps something of a fluke of fate that so much has fallen Red Squadron's way, enabling them to rack up multiple missions that have inspired bestselling books and Hollywood blockbusters.

But these assignments and accolades also seem to lend credence to the reports of DEVGRU's transformation from a rough-edged hatchet into a finely honed blade. From highly suspect to highly professional. From Marcinko to McRaven.

However, some special operations sources allege that the squadron adopted an eye-for-an-eye mentality following the brutal killing of Roberts and has been pushing boundaries ever since—a band of skillful yet ruthless heroes/outlaws.

Even its greatest triumphs have the asterisks—such as the $30,000 in cold cash ransom money that seemingly vanished from the lifeboat in the confusion following the rescue of Captain Richard Phillips.