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Comment by danielvf | Hacker News Reader

When Delta was founded, the US Special Forces were broken down into three team types.

Alpha Team - (or A-team) was a group of 12 men who would operate in the behind enemy lines together.

Bravo detachment - A similarly sized headquarters group of men who would stay behind and support and communicate with multiple A-teams. (Sort of like a NASA mission control team)

Charlie detachment - An overall administrative headquarters team over multiple A and B groups.

When a new form of special forces was organized with a different focus for the team's capabilities, they just grabbed the next word in the Nato phonetic alphabet - Delta.

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This is new information for me; very cool; I assumed there had to be a reason. What's your background in the subject matter?

To the gentleman's post above, it does seem to me that Delta has a more negative public image as compared to say the Navy Seals... is there any specific reason for that? or do you disagree with that comment?

Source: I am not an operator nor ex-military, but my line of work lets me interact with a bunch of ex-SOF guys.

It's interesting you say that, as my understanding is that the perception is flipped within the SOF community. Most of the guys I've spoken with have nothing but positive things to say about people from Delta. On the other hand, at least two Rangers have told me that they were explicitly told to stay away from the SEALs (specifically, Team 6) when deployed together.

As I understand it, the average age in Delta is significantly higher than that of the operators in SEAL Team 6 and that has something to do with it.

This is in the book the post is about.

I seem to remember that these are how the SF units are structured

Alpha is a large fire team capable of being broken down into subunits

Bravo is the next level up (platoon) and Charlie (company)

Close.

The A-team is effectively a platoon (it’s the size of a squad—well, about the size of a USMC rifle squad, a bit bigger than an Army rifle squad—and normally commanded by a Captain, which is more typical of a company, but its the organizational level below the company, which typically has ~6 of them.) A B-team is the company HQ element (so a company has one B-team as well as the A-teams.) A C-team is the battalion HQ element (an SF battalion has ~4 SF companies + 1 C-team.)

An ODA (A-Team or Alpha Team) is composed of 12 guys, designed to be broken down into 2 equal sub-units.

Usually an ODA has a senior guy and a junior guy for each job (Medic/Comms/Engineer/etc).

Here is a good, simple overview:

https://www.americanspecialops.com/special-forces/odas/

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