From Delta Force Operator to Professional Mercenary | Dale Comstock (throwback episode)
The Team House
dee takos
4.7 • 1.6K Ratings
🗓️ 29 October 2025
⏱️ 159 minutes
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Summary
Dale Comstock was the youngest operator in Delta Force when he joined from the 82nd Airborne and was the master breacher on the military's first successful hostage rescue mission, Operation Acid Gambit which rescued Kurt Muse from the clutches of Panamanian dictator Manuel Noriega. Comstock's adventures didn't end when he retired from the Army just before 9/11. He went on the serve as a paramilitary contractor in Afghanistan and then went on to become a mercenary in places like Yemen. On this episode we're going to focus on Dale's post Army life as a security contractor, mercenary, and bodyguard.
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01:55 Transition to Dale's post-service military career as a paramilitary contractor.
02:20 Detailed stories about the contracting mission at Barja Matal, Afghanistan.
15:52 Recounting the moment a Mi-17 helicopter was shot down into the compound's landing zone.
25:04 Concluding the discussion about the Afghan partners killed after the U.S. withdrawal.
31:40 The transition to Hollywood and how Dale became a stunt coordinator and met his wife.
42:00 Detailed discussion of Operation Acid Gambit (The Kurt Muse hostage rescue in Panama).
1:03:19 Shift to his mercenary in Yemen and the Red Sea.
1:18:07 The story of being detained and questioned while working in Hong Kong.
1:30:17 Discussion of his work coaching executives and CEOs and his comparison to the warrior mindset.
2:15:00 Discussing his overarching philosophy on "The Physics of Success" and his new book.
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Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | The Team House with your host, Jack Murphy and David Park. |
| 0:11.8 | Hey, everyone. |
| 0:13.1 | Welcome to episode 151 of The Team House. |
| 0:16.3 | I'm Jack Murphy here with David Park, D, over in that direction producing. We're very excited here to be with |
| 0:23.9 | our guest, Dale Comstock. Dale is somebody who has done a little bit of everything, kind of done |
| 0:29.8 | it all in life. Dale has served in the 82nd Airborne in Special Forces served as a Delta operator. |
| 0:38.0 | I believe, Dale, you were the youngest operator in the unit at the time when you graduated selection. |
| 0:44.1 | This guy participated in Operation Acid Gambit, the Kurt Mews hostage rescue mission in Panama. |
| 0:50.2 | That was the first successful military hostage rescue operation historically that our country's |
| 0:57.8 | ever done. Dale served in the Gulf War, served as a team sergeant. And then he retired and went on |
| 1:05.1 | to become a paramilitary contractor, had further adventures over in Afghanistan, which we're going to talk about a little bit |
| 1:11.9 | in a moment. And then, you know, Dale, he wrote a memoir called American Badass. He thought this |
| 1:18.4 | was kind of his sunset book. He was going to fade away into the ether after he finished this book. |
| 1:24.6 | But instead, crazy things kept happening to him in places like Yemen, |
| 1:31.0 | Hong Kong, Singapore, and even in Hollywood. |
| 1:34.0 | So we're going to talk a lot about Dale's sort of post-service military career. |
| 1:39.5 | There's a lot more to Dale. |
| 1:41.4 | I think you should go read American Badass if you want to hear more about his military career. We're going to kind of talk about his post-service, post-military career and get into some of the things that he's doing today and some of the books he's working on. So, Dale, thank you so much for joining us from Bali tonight. Yeah, man. Thanks for having me. It's a pleasure. Yeah, absolutely, man. |
| 2:02.2 | So sticking with that theme, that little intro that I went off on, I was |
| 2:09.1 | if you could start off telling us some stories about Barja Matal in Afghanistan. |
| 2:13.5 | I believe you were part of a very small group of people that got sent up into, I mean, that was really bad guy country and the terrain just vicious up in that part of Afghanistan. |
| 2:24.2 | Yeah. |
... |
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