Stephen A. Carpenter

Boots on the Ground: the History of Project Delta Stephen A. Carpenter

Early in the Vietnam conflict the U. S. command structure recognized a need for solid verifiable intelligence about enemy locations, movements and tactics. Much of the enemy's covert activity was occurring in Laos and Cambodia, areas where U. S. presence was not permitted. Project Delta was the first successful unit that evolved to perform long range reconnaissance and other counter insurgency missions deep in enemy territory. Project Delta's operations remained classified until 1996. For the first time, the history of this storied unit has been recorded from volumes of declassified military documents and from hundreds of hours of interviews conducted in 2009. The author is a former member of the U. S. Army's Special Forces and was a recon team leader in Project Delta.