Background

On December 20, 1989, Operation Just Cause, a military operation to overthrow Panamanian dictator Manuel Noriega involving special forces, Army aircraft and heavy equipment , killed 23 American military personnel, including four SEALs.

On October 3, 1993, during the UN peacekeeping operation in Somalia, special forces from the Delta unit, the 75th Ranger Regiment and the 160th Special Operations Aviation Regiment attempted to capture the subordinates of field commander Mohammed Aidid in Mogadishu. During the ensuing battle , the Americans lost 18 people killed and two Black Hawk helicopters. The battle in Mogadishu influenced the US leadership's decision to withdraw American troops from Somalia.

On March 4, 2002, during Operation Anaconda in Afghanistan, a battle took place on the Takur Ghar ridge, during which SEALs were ambushed three times in one day due to uncoordinated actions. As a result, according to open sources, the special forces lost eight people killed and a Chinook helicopter.

On June 28, 2005, 11 US Navy special forces soldiers were killed in the Kunar province of Afghanistan. Three of them were surrounded and shot by the Taliban in the mountains, the rest died in a Chinook helicopter that came to the rescue, shot down by militants.

On February 26-28, 2006, in the Iraqi city of Ramadi , six members of the Delta special forces unit were killed during an operation to search for the assistant to the leader of the Iraqi al-Qaeda cell, Abu Musab al-Zarqawi. All of them were shot during cleansing operations of buildings recaptured from militants.

Largest losses of US special forces