Military career
Van Arsdale served 25 years in the Army, eleven of which in Delta Force, eventually rising to the position of squadron commander in the special operations unit. One of his last combat deployments was to Somalia in 1993 as part of Operation Gothic Serpent, where he was in charge of the operations center during the Battle of Mogadishu. At the conclusion of the battle, Van Arsdale helped lead a rescue operation to extract beleaguered Army Rangers and Delta Force operators.

He was a technical adviser for the film Black Hawk Down, which was based on the events surrounding the battle.

For the last two years of his Army service, Van Arsdale was assigned to The Pentagon as the Counterterrorism/Special Projects Branch Chief in the Office of the Secretary of Defense. He was awarded the Silver Star for valor and the Purple Heart for wounds received in combat. Van Arsdale retired from the Army in 1999 at the rank of Colonel.


Business profile
After retiring from the Army, Van Arsdale was an assistant general manager at the Bechtel Nevada Corporation, a government-contracting firm that managed the Nevada Test Site and other Department of Energy facilities.

Van Arsdale is currently chief executive officer of Triple Canopy, Inc., a Herndon, Virginia-based security services company. He is also president of Unconventional Solutions, a private consulting firm specializing in national security and counterterrorism planning. He is affiliated with the Next Century Corporation, and has served as founding executive director of the Institute for Security Studies at the University of Nevada, Las Vegas.

Affiliations
Van Arsdale is a member of the Special Operations Association, the Special Forces Association, the Association of the United States Army, the International Security Management Association and Mensa. He was also a member of the National Academy of Engineering Committee on Combating Terrorism, and is an adjunct professor at the University of Nevada, Las Vegas.