This is an incomplete list of operations conducted by the United States Army special forces group known as Delta Force.

Operation Eagle Claw

Delta's very first tasking began the night after they successfully completed their operational assessment on 4 November 1979 when Iranian students stormed the U.S. Embassy in Tehran. Delta was immediately tasked to rescue the hostages and began training on storming the embassy with a compound mock-up built by military combat engineers at Eglin Air Force Base, Florida, while putting together a complex multi-stage rescue operation involving a rigid schedule and demanding helicopter night-flying skills using first-generation night vision goggles.

The rescue force was to be inserted by air force special operations C-130s at night to a remote location in the desert outside Tehran called Desert One, and meet with a group of marine RH-53 Sea Stallion helicopters, flown in from the U.S.S. Nimitz aircraft carrier staged nearby in the Indian Ocean. The helicopters would then be refueled on the ground at Desert One by refueling specialists using specially designed fuel bladders inside the C-130s. The refueled helicopters and the rescue force (composed of Delta and Rangers) would then fly to a hidden staging location outside Tehran and hide until the next evening.

On the evening of the rescue, Delta would drive to the embassy compound using pre-staged trucks, assault the compound and rescue the hostages, and take them across the street to a soccer stadium where the helicopters would have landed to extract them and take them to a nearby airfield which the Rangers would have assaulted and captured. C-141s would then extract the entire rescue force with hostages and the helicopters would be destroyed and left behind.

The helicopters caused the cancellation of the mission at Desert One, when enough helicopters were lost from attrition due to sandstorms, pilot fatigue, and failed hydraulics that the on-site commanders acknowledged helicopter numbers were below the required minimum for that stage to go forward and recommended to President Carter that he cancel the mission, which he did. As the entire rescue force was leaving Desert One, one of the helicopters crashed into a U.S. Air Force special operations C-130 and in the ensuing explosion and panic the helicopters were abandoned en masse leaving unauthorized mission plans which fell into Iranian hands, ruining any chance of a possible second covert rescue attempt following a brief regrouping period.

Central American operations

Delta has seen action extensively in Central America, fighting the Salvadoran revolutionary group Farabundo Marti National Liberation Front and assisting the Central Intelligence Agency-funded Contras in Nicaragua.

Operation Urgent Fury A second Delta mission launched in the early daylight hours of the first day of Operation Urgent Fury in Grenada was to assault Richmond Hill Prison and rescue the political prisoners being held there. Built on the remains of an old eighteenth-century fort, the prison could not be approached by foot from three sides except through dense jungle growing on the steep mountainside. The fourth side was approachable by a narrow neck of road with high trees running along it. The prison offered no place for a helicopter assault force to land.

Richmond Hill formed one side of a steep valley. Across and above the valley, on a higher peak, was another old fort, Fort Frederick, which housed a Grenadian garrison. From Fort Frederick, the garrison easily commanded the slopes and floor of the ravine below with small arms and machine gun fire. It was into this valley and under the guns of the Grenadian garrison that the six Blackhawk helicopters of Delta Force, B Squadron flew at 6:30 that morning.

The helicopters of Task Force 160 flew into the valley and turned their noses toward the prison. Unable to land, the Delta raiders began to rappel down ropes dragging from the doors of the helicopters. Suddenly, as men swung wildly from the rappelling ropes, the helicopters were caught in a cross-fire from the front, as forces from the prison opened fire; and more devastatingly, from behind, as enemy forces in Fort Frederick rained heavy small arms and machine gun fire down from above.

According to eyewitness accounts by Grenadian civilians, a number of helicopters that could, flew out of the valley. In at least one instance, a helicopter pilot turned back without orders and refused to fly into the assault. Charges of cowardice, later dropped, were filed against the Nightstalker pilot by members of Delta who wanted to be inserted.

Aeropostal Flight 252 On 29 July 1984, after Venezuelan Aeropostal Flight 252 departed from Caracas in Venezuela, it was hijacked by two men and forced to land on the island of Curaçao which is part of the Netherlands Antilles. Two days later, a team of 12 Venezuelan commandos successfully stormed the McDonnell Douglas DC-9, killed the two hijackers and rescued all 79 passengers aboard. An unknown number of Delta Force members who had been flown in acted as advisors for the Venezuelan commando team.

Operation Round Bottle

Delta planned an operation for three teams to go into Beirut, Lebanon, to rescue Westerners held by Hezbollah. The action was terminated when negotiations appeared to promise to deliver the hostages in exchange for arms. The operation was ultimately aborted in the aftermath of the Los Angeles Times story that revealed the Iran–Contra affair.

Operation Heavy Shadow

Operation for the capture/killing of drug lord Pablo Escobar. William G. Boykin was said to be the commander of this operation.

Delta Force commandos were inserted after Intelligence Support Activity (ISA) operatives were in Colombia. The ISA operatives were using Beechcraft 300 and Beechcraft 350 aircraft outfitted with special surveillance equipment to determine Escobar's location. Joint Special Operations Command would rotate Delta and DEVGRU detachments in Colombia throughout the hunt. Their mission was limited to training and assisting the Search Bloc, but the aggressive operators found ways to be included on their trainees' missions.

Escobar's phone was tracked and he was killed in an operation. The shooter has been suggested to be a Delta Force sniper but there has not been any evidence to support this theory. In his book Killing Pablo, Mark Bowden suggests that a Delta Force sniper may have killed Colombian drug lord Pablo Escobar. There is no hard evidence of this though and credit is generally attributed to Colombian security forces, particularly the Search Bloc.

Panama

Before Operation Just Cause by US forces took place, there were key operations that were tasked to Special Operations Forces. Operation Acid Gambit was an operation tasked to Delta to rescue and recover Kurt Muse, held captive in Carcel Modelo, a prison in Panama City. Another important operation that was assigned to Delta was Operation Nifty Package, the apprehension of General Manuel Antonio Noriega.

Operation Desert Shield/Desert Storm

Delta was deployed during Desert Storm to the region and tasked with a number of responsibilities. These included supporting regular army units that were providing close protection detail for General Norman Schwarzkopf in Saudi Arabia. Army public relations officers tried to play down Schwarzkopf's growing number of bodyguards. Delta was tasked with hunting for SCUD missiles alongside the British Special Air Service and other coalition special forces. On the last day of the ground war, Delta sniper teams located 26 SCUD missiles in western Iraq, each aimed at Israel. Armed with high-powered .50-caliber sniper rifles from as far as 3,000 yards, Delta squadrons punctured the missiles' fuel tanks and killed their crews. Had the SCUDs been launched, Saddam Hussein's last-gasp attempt at luring Israel into the conflict might have been successful. With Israel in the fight, the delicate Arab coalition opposing Hussein could have been unraveled. General Schwarzkopf who was the commander of the coalition against Saddam Hussein thanked the Delta Force with a letter sent to them which read in part, "You guys kept Israel out of the war!"

Operation Gothic Serpent

On 3 October 1993, members of Delta Force, C Squadron were sent in with U.S. Army Rangers in the conflict in Mogadishu, Somalia code-named Operation Gothic Serpent.

They were tasked with securing several of Mohammed Farah Aidid's top lieutenants, as well as a few other targets of high value. The mission was compromised after two MH-60L Blackhawk helicopters were shot down by Somali Militia. This resulted in an ongoing battle for the next 18 hours and led to the deaths of five Delta operators: MSG Timothy Lynn Martin, SFC Earl Robert Fillmore, Jr., SSG Daniel Darrell Busch, SFC Randy Shughart, and MSG Gary I. Gordon (a sixth operator, SFC Matthew Loren Rierson, was killed by mortar fire some days later), six Rangers, five army aviation crew, and two 10th Mountain Division soldiers. Estimates of Somali deaths range from 133 by an Aidid sector commander to an estimate of 1500 to 2000 by the US Ambassador to Somalia. Two Delta operators, Master Sergeant Gary Gordon and Sergeant First Class Randy Shughart, were posthumously awarded the Medal of Honor for the actions they took and the sacrifice they made to help protect the life of Durant and the crew of Super Six Four (callsign of one of the crashed Black Hawks). They were the first soldiers to posthumously receive the Medal of Honor since the Vietnam War. In 1999, writer Mark Bowden published the book Black Hawk Down: A Story of Modern War, which chronicles the events that surrounded 3 October 1993 Battle of Mogadishu. The book, in a short brief, relates Delta Force's involvement in the operations that occurred before the events leading to the battle. The book was turned into a film by director Ridley Scott in 2001.

Operation Uphold Democracy

Delta Force took part in Operation Uphold Democracy in Haiti; their known role was to serve as bodyguards for visiting UN officials and diplomats, working together with the Polish counter-terrorist unit GROM.Cawthorne, Nigel, The Mammoth Book of Inside the Elite Forces, Robinson, 2008 , p. 97.

Counter-terrorist training

In January 1997, a small Delta advance team and six members of the British SAS were sent to Lima, Peru, immediately following the takeover of the Japanese ambassador's residence. They also provide security for American diplomats and the Olympic team USA while traveling in other countries or participating in the Olympic Games, which continues to this day. During the 2016 Rio Olympic Games in Brazil, members of Delta Force's G-squadron were in charge of team USA's security. Under diplomatic cover, Delta Force, along with its naval counterpart, DEVGRU, also protect the president when he is in countries that are experiencing violence and unrest, and where the United States Secret Service's capabilities are limited. The most notable example of this was during President George W. Bush's surprise Thanksgiving visit to American troops in Iraq in November 2003. And was highlighted more recently by President Joe Biden’s visit to Israel in October 2023 after the 2023 Hamas-led attack on Israel.

Seattle WTO

Members of Delta Force were involved in preparing security for the 1999 Seattle WTO Conference, specifically against a chemical weapon attack.

Operation Enduring Freedom – Afghanistan

Delta Force was involved in operations against the Taliban in Afghanistan since 2001, following the September 11 attacks.

Beginning of operations against the Taliban