Delta Force by Charlie A. Beckwith

Author:Charlie A. Beckwith
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9780062268181
Publisher: HarperCollins

TWENTY-SEVEN

FALL OF ’78 and on into the winter and the next year, Delta went back to basics. We reexamined our shooting program in view of improving it. We’d made mistakes, but we’d gotten smarter and we were profiting from them. Delta used a lot of ammunition—perhaps 30,000 rounds of .45 ammunition a week. The guys used handguns on the range in the morning and submachine guns in the afternoon. Our shooting improved.

The snipers began to concentrate on skills. We broke down the skill, tore it apart, and reassembled it. The snipers began to handload their own rounds. This took each man three hours a day. They became a little more careful about how many rounds they threw down range and more prudent about where they put them. Proficiency increased.

Our hardware had been upgraded when we began equipping our shooters with those 40XB heavy-barreled sniper rifles Remington was building especially for Delta. These rifles would shoot less than half a minute of angle at 100 yards. That’s almost like putting bullet holes on top of bullet holes.

One day I was out on the range with Boris’s sniper team. He was shooting one of the new rifles mounted with a 12x Redfield scope, and his scores were very high. He rolled over to look up at me. He was smiling.

“Boss, you’ve taken away all my excuses. I’ve got the best rifle, the best scope, I’m loading my own ammunition. I’ve got no more crutches to lean on. The ball’s in my court. The only thing I gotta do now is work harder.”

That was the kind of attitude you found in Delta. The troops were talking to each other and to their officers.

Innovation became commonplace. We developed small powerful lights which could be affixed to submachine guns for use at night to spot targets. Body armor was identified and improved on. Morale was very high even if the average workday was long. People came in at first light and left long after the sun had gone down.

Counterterrorism was at this time low on the public’s recognition scale in the United States. Our country was not directly threatened, so terrorism didn’t hold a high priority in the thinking of our intelligence community. The Army attaché in Nigeria, let’s say, had as his number one priority Communist activities in the country. His second priority was probably analyzing the capabilities of the Nigerian Army and the political affiliations of its key officers. And, so it would go, with an interest in terrorist activities somewhere down around sixth or seventh on his list. The CIA and the State Department began to try to change those priorities. Intelligence sources were crucial to Delta’s role in combating terrorism.

Delta’s communications division was putting together a state-of-the-art package. Several million dollars were spent on it. It had to be lightweight, portable, durable, secure, and cover a wide spectrum. Plans were made to patch into ships and relay through them. The thrust of the package was small, man-portable satellite communications. For a small unit Delta had a sophisticated and well-tailored package.

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