Fort Bragg is home to two of the most important formations in the Pentagon’s sprawling, complex special-operations bureaucracy: the U.S. Army Special Operations Command, or USASOC, which includes the Rangers and the Green Berets; and JSOC, the “black ops” component of the military. Cloaked in secrecy and sloshing with money, JSOC has operational control over the most elite commando units of each of the major service branches, including the Navy’s SEAL Team 6 and the Army’s Delta Force, which it uses to carry out the nation’s most politically risky, no-fail missions, like the killing of Abu Bakr Al-Baghdadi, the emir of the Islamic State, in 2019. Over the past 20 years of continuous war, from the snowy passes of the Hindu Kush to the desert scrublands of Somalia, JSOC’s budget and autonomy have continuously grown, and so has the scope of its mission. Based out of a high-security compound inside Fort Bragg, it has become a covert military within the military.
Hellbound and Down 