Basic Underwater Demolition/SEAL training is over for the men of Class 228. It took them six months—seven including the Christmas break and holidays—and a great deal of sweat and pain to get through BUD/S. Half of the men in that class had been there a lot longer. The day after 228's graduation, a pair of new Third Phase trainees were on the BUD/S grinder to change the big gold numbers on the PT platform. They now read 229. Class 228 is history, but who were those guys? Why did those 20 men make it to this graduation and the other 137 fail? What made 10 of the original 114 who went straight through so unique? I thought a great deal about this as I left BUD/S with Class 228. Certainly, these men embody the Navy's core values of honor, courage, and commitment. But so did many of the men who failed and dropped out. Perhaps the key attribute is some rare, ill-defined personal quality that can only be rendered by a long trial of pain and cold water. Perhaps this is a quality found only in the heart of a warrior. And it's still not over. The odds are that two or three of the BUD/S graduates in Class 228 will never achieve deployment status as a Navy SEAL. They will find the higher standards of advanced training too difficult. Or perhaps, once they get their SEAL pin, they will lose their focus and their will to excel. And still others are surprised that it never gets easier—that the life of a warrior is one of sacrifice and continuous training.
I did learn something of Class 228 when I met their parents. Uniformly, they were men and women who had high expectations of their children; parents who set goals and subscribe to a strong work ethic. I sensed there was a commitment to personal and family values in their homes. It was difficult to tell who was more proud, the parents or the graduates, but few of the parents were surprised that their son made it through BUD/S. They expected it and were simply delighted to attend the graduation and share in their son's accomplishment.
I personally have come to believe the single trait that will get a man through BUD/S is the will to win. The desire to win is different from refusing to lose, or not quitting. A man can get through BUD/S by refusing to quit, if he can meet the performance standards, but he will not be a leader—a “goto” guy in his SEAL platoon. BUD/S cultivates this will to win, but to one degree or another, top trainees bring it with them when they walk through the door of the Naval Special Warfare Center. Some realize this only after they leave BUD/S.
Seaman Ken Greaves first came to BUD/S in 1975 and classed up with Class 85. He wasn't sure if he wanted to be in the Navy or go to college. His girlfriend wanted him to leave the service. He got through Hell Week, but didn't have the desire to finish BUD/S. He DORed. The thought that he was a quitter stalked him for years—even decades. There was also the knowledge that somehow he belonged with this group of warriors. Not many get a second chance, but Ken Greaves did—and he didn't waste it. With his Naval Reserve affiliation and an extremely rare age waiver, he was able to return to BUD/S. He graduated with Class 197 in March 1995— twenty years after his first attempt. Ken Greaves was two months shy of his thirty-ninth birthday. He was also the class Honorman. After a tour at SEAL Team Three, Petty Officer Ken Greaves returned to the reserves and his civilian job—mission accomplished.
Ensign David Nicholas joined up with Class 40 in January 1967. During First Phase, he was medically dropped due to a strained Achilles tendon. But Dave confided to a classmate that the injury was just an excuse. He wanted to DOR; BUD/S was just too painful. After a year in the fleet, he knew this was not right, and that he had unfinished business at BUD/S. Fortunately, or so it seemed, there was a war on. Dave was able to get back into BUD/S and graduated in August 1968 with Class 46. He was assigned to Underwater Demolition Team Eleven, but he immediately volunteered for SEALs. His request finally granted, he joined SEAL Team One early in 1969 and began SEAL cadre training in preparation for deployment to Vietnam. On 17 October 1969, David Nicholas was killed on his first combat operation.
Today, BUD/S graduates don't automatically become SEALs, nor are they immediately ready for duty—far from it. Following BUD/S, they are ready to begin the serious skill building that will make them qualified SEALs and then “deployable” SEALs—SEALs who are certified mission capable for specific maritime special operations. Up to this point in their careers, they have toiled in the protective cocoon of BUD/S. For the most part, they were told what to do and they did it. BUD/S was a blend of testing and teaching, and the teaching was highly structured, force-fed basic knowledge. This will change. For the next six months, they will learn individual combat and operational skills to qualify for their coveted SEAL pin—commonly called the Trident or the Bird. And, for the most part, they will be in a teaching environment. Following their Trident qualification, they will be assigned to a SEAL platoon and begin the eighteen-month platoon work-up and training cycle. In the platoons, they will have to integrate their individual skills and personalities to the mission requirements and disposition of their units. SEALs are organized into teams, but the work of Navy SEALs is done by platoons. As a platoon, they conduct a range of maritime special operations. Within the platoon team, there are individuals with assigned specialties—air operations, special weapons, communications, ordnance, combat swimmer operations. Each man has a role to play, even the new guys. SEAL platoons are a lot like a professional sports team in that each platoon has a unique chemistry, its own distinct character and personality.
The teams already know about the men in Class 228 and how they performed at BUD/S. Naval Special Warfare is a very small community. Every team has an alumnus or two who are BUD/S instructors. Team commanding officers, command master chiefs, platoon chiefs, and platoon officers have all asked about these new BUD/S graduates. Who are the strong ones? Who are the smart ones? Which officers and petty officers show the most promise as future platoon leaders?
For seven months, Gallagher and company had a collective goal: graduate from BUD/S. The men from 228 will stay in touch and occasionally they may train together in small groups, but never again as a class. A few may even be platoon mates. Probably the next gathering of Class 228 will be at some future UDT/SEAL reunion. For now, each of them has the individual goal of qualifying as a SEAL: earning his Trident. The earliest a man can qualify for his Trident is six months after he reports to his team. During this six-month probationary period, there is a series of schools and team qualifications each must meet before they can wear the Trident. Much of what they have to do will keep them away from their new team—their new home.
One member of Class 228 has a somewhat different path to follow— corpsman striker Marc Luttrell. Luttrell will have to meet the same Trident requirements as his classmates, but he will begin this process after the Eighteen-Delta course. Eighteen-Delta is a twelve-month, intensive medical training course designed for Army Special Forces medics. Eighteen-Delta students get extensive training in combat medicine as well as hands-on training at civilian hospitals. They work in emergency rooms and even deliver babies. SEALs often operate in isolation, far from other friendly forces and without access to medical help or even a timely evacuation. Luttrell and others like him may be responsible for keeping their teammates alive and moving under the most extreme circumstances. The SEAL teams send their corpsmen to this course, but break it up into two six-month blocks. Corpsmen graduating from BUD/S, prior to a team assignment, will take their initial six months of Eighteen-Delta training right after the three-week Army airborne training, or jump school. On graduation from Eighteen-Delta, they will be sent to a team and begin their six-month Trident qualification process.
For the five officers of Class 228, the four-week Junior Officers Training Course starts on the Monday following their BUD/S graduation. The JOTC is one of the advanced courses that is taught at the Naval Special Warfare Center. Over a four-week period, the officers will spend seven hours a day in the classroom studying combat leadership, mission planning, and administrative skills they will need as they prepare for a platoon officer's responsibilities. The program also serves newly commissioned warrant officers and officers in the Special Boat Squadrons and Units.
JOTC approaches leadership through case studies and group discussions. These case studies range from platoon members in a bar fight to a legal order from a superior that could recklessly endanger a platoon officer's men. These are not hypothetical situations; they are drawn from the experience of previous SEAL platoons and deployed Navy Special Warfare (NSW) detachments. The leadership labs also deal with the warrior-monk syndrome. Occasionally, a young officer will think that all SEALs are simply pure warriors—celibate and temperate. The reality is that young SEALs are spirited young men who occasionally need a steady hand from their officers and senior petty officers.
One of the more compelling parts of the JOTC curriculum is the two days devoted to lessons learned—SEAL combat engagements that did or did not succeed, and why. When possible, SEALs and former SEALs come to the Center to address the class. Lieutenant Moki Martin, USN (Ret.), comes in to talk about Vietnam. He was on the failed operation to rescue escaped American POWs in North Vietnam, an operation that cost the life of Lieutenant Spence Dry, the last SEAL killed in the Vietnam War. Captain Bob Gormley, USN (Ret.), who commanded SEALs during the invasion of Grenada, talks about the four SEALs who lost their lives there. And Warrant Officer Randy Beausoleil, whom the 228 officers remember from Hell Week, talks about Panama. Randy conducted successful limpet attacks on two Panamanian gunboats and put them on the bottom. This was one of those rare textbook operations where, in Beausoleil's words, “it went according to plan, exactly as we rehearsed it.” When these SEALs talk about inadequate intelligence, tactical mistakes in the field, or the benefit of good rehearsals, it means something. And when they talk about fighting alongside wounded SEALs and carrying dead comrades from the field, it means even more.
The JOTC students also get an overview of the special operations community from presentations on the Army and Air Force special operations components. They have classes on rules of engagement, laws of war, and career options within the NSW community. There are dry but important lectures on security management issues, naval correspondence, enlisted evaluation reports, and the Uniform Code of Military Justice. These officers will have to command, manage, counsel, and lead their SEALs. This is where they sharpen their basic leadership skill set.
The last two weeks of JOTC are built around mission tasking, mission analysis, and mission planning. The new officers build on and refine what they learned in BUD/S about Warning Orders and Patrol Leader's Orders. As platoon officers, they will be expected to manage the administrative and personnel requirements of their platoon, as well as lead in combat. Computer skills are all but essential in platoon administration and SEAL mission planning. Any SEAL officer who cannot type and does not have good basic computer skills will most certainly struggle in his platoon.
While in JOTC, the new graduates from 228 meet their senior SEAL officer, Rear Admiral Eric Olson, Commander, Naval Special Warfare Command. He warmly welcomes the new men to the community, but is unambiguous about what he expects of them.
“As officers, you will hold different jobs than the enlisted force. Your position is not about rank and power; it is about responsibility and accountability. Use your authority to lead, manage, champion, and nurture the force. As naval commandos, you serve as the maritime arm of the nation's special operations forces and the special operations arm of the Navy-Marine Corps team. This gives you a dual identity and a dual purpose that will pervade all that you do. It means you must be doubly knowledgeable, responsive, and loyal. And it gives you war-fighting responsibilities that can be answered by no one else.”
The admiral gives them his guidelines for a SEAL officer:
· You are not expected to know everything yet, but you are expected to work and lead at the upper levels of your knowledge, skill, and authority.
· Be a teammate. What's good for the team has priority over what's good for you.
· Demonstrate professionalism in all that you do. Be sharp, look sharp.
· Learn the capabilities and limitations of your people and equipment. Acknowledge that the prime measure of your performance is their performance.
· Realize that your people are sharp, motivated, aware, and skilled. Teach, coach, guide, and mentor your force, but don't claim experience you don't have.
· Never sacrifice what you know is right for what is convenient.
· Communicate up, down, and across the force to build maximum situational awareness for leaders at every level.
· Live the life of a leader—one of values, character, courage, and discipline. Use your off-duty time constructively, doing things that make you or others better in some way.
· Realize that what you do and what you tolerate in your presence demonstrate your standards far more than what you say.
· Empower your subordinate leaders to work to the full level of their authority. Cause them to take responsibility for their leadership decisions. Train them, trust them, and hold them to standard.
· Understand that this is not a popularity contest. You don't have to be liked to be effective, but you have to be respected.
· Above all, remember that you serve as a member of a most demanding branch of a most honorable profession. Treat every day in Naval Special Warfare as an opportunity and a privilege.
In closing, the admiral updates the recent BUD/S graduates on new operational concepts and force organization. Then he reminds them of the five core tenets of the naval commando:
1. We commit to the team and its mission.
2. We persevere.
3. We prize victory.
4. We excel in ambiguous environments.
5. We keep one foot in the water.
Admiral Olson tries to meet with his junior officers, or JOs, on a quarterly basis to talk about the community and current events that affect Navy SEALs. This is good management practice on the admiral's part, but it's more than that. At the end of their five- or six-year service obligation, Navy SEAL officers may or may not elect to stay in uniform. Team officers are highly sought after by industry and graduate business schools. Eric Olson wants the best of these young men to stay in the Navy, but the life he offers them comes with long hours, long periods away from home, and barely adequate pay. The qualities that make for a good SEAL leader also make them prized by business. Young ex-SEAL platoon officers often find themselves working half the hours for twice the pay, and they get to be with their families at night. But they pay a price for these opportunities in the business world and the potential for affluence: They are no longer warriors, and they will never again lead other warriors in harm's way. As one former platoon officer put it, “The money's there but not the rush. God help me, but I do miss it.”
While the officers of Class 228 are at the Center completing their JOTC requirement, the fifteen enlisted members of the class are at jump school at Fort Benning, Georgia. For most of the sailors, this is their first taste of an Army school and Army life. Because of the nature of joint-service requirements and standardized air operations, this is a basic but important school. In the Army, it is also a basic school for their new airborne troopers. The short runs and conditioning periods associated with basic airborne training are baby food for the new BUD/S graduates, but they have to conform and do as they are told. They have been warned about showing off or harassing the Army instructors, or Black Hats, but clearly the apprentice SEALs are a breed apart from the Army paratrooper. They know this, as do the Black Hats.
“The guy dropped me for twenty-five push-ups,” one of them scoffs. “Imagine, going down for a lousy twenty-five push-ups.”
John Owens and his men make their five static-line parachute jumps and collect their silver Army Jump Wings. Then they scatter—four of them to the East Coast teams in Little Creek, Virginia, ten of them back to Coronado and the West Coast teams. Shortly after the enlisted component of Class 228 leaves Fort Benning, their officers check in for their three weeks of Army airborne training.
For all their hard work and suffering, the men of Class 228 finally arrive at their team with the distinguished title of “new guy.” Even when they qualify for their Tridents and are looked on by the rest of the Navy as qualified Navy SEALs, they will remain new guys until they complete their first deployment. Ahead of them now is perhaps the most intensive and important block of instruction they will have in their young careers: SEAL Tactical Training, or STT In STT, they continue their professional development, and more importantly, they are more deeply immersed in the culture of the teams:
Never fail the mission.
You fight as you train.
Never leave a Teammate.
Read and learn the history of the Teams—you're not going to get it
from some movie.
Show enthusiasm and passion for all physical and mental endeavors.
Set the highest example.
Remember, no one ever did anything absolutely right. Perfection's
impossible, but striving for perfection is not. You have the power
to do that.
This is not a movie or a video game. This is not adventure training.
There is no second place in a gunfight. Winners kill, losers get killed.
Fight to win; train to fight.
Learn it the right way and you'll do it right for the rest of your life.
Learn it wrong and you'll do it wrong and spend the rest of your
life trying to get it right.
You cannot just aim; you must hit.
A warrior is hard from the inside out.
Your teammates, your team officers, and your team chiefs may not
believe everything you say or everything they hear, but they will
believe everything you do.
Keep that determination to excel—develop your reputation now.
Lose the BUD/S mentality; you're in the teams now. Take full responsibility
and accountability for your conduct and performance.
These are the words of the two men in charge of STT On the East Coast it is Master Chief Bob Tanenholz; on the West Coast, Chief Warrant Officer Mike Loo. These are hard men, committed to the training of Navy SEALs. It's their job to take new BUD/S graduates, among others, and get them ready for platoon duty. They have between them the equivalent of eighteen platoon deployments and close to sixty years of SEAL team experience. STT is the prep school for the teams. Currently, STT on the West Coast is a fourteen-week course; it is slightly shorter on the East Coast. West Coast training takes place in the San Diego area and at Camp Billy Machan, the NSW desert warfare training facility just north of the Mexican border near the Chocolate Mountains—a three-hour drive east of San Diego. The East Coast teams train their STT students at Camp Pickett and Camp A. P. Hill in Virginia, and in the Little Creek area.
In the past, each SEAL team conducted its own advanced training. It was called SEAL cadre training. I went through SEAL cadre training with SEAL Team Two in 1969 on the East Coast and again when I arrived at SEAL Team One on Coronado in 1970. SEALs just back from Vietnam taught us new guys the finer points of small-unit tactics and jungle fighting—and little else. This system of team veterans breaking in the new men carried through to the mid-1990s, when the Naval Special Warfare Groups assumed this training responsibility. Today, STT is conducted by Group Two for the East Coast SEALs and by Group One on the West Coast. This group-sponsored approach allows for a measure of standardization and a more efficient use of training resources. It also frees the individual teams to concentrate on training their platoons for operational deployment. Currently, there are plans for further consolidation of the STT process, placing this advanced training under the direction of the Naval Special Warfare Center.
SEAL Tactical Training is high-risk, high-speed training. It is the most labor- and logistics-intensive course in Naval Special Warfare. Ten to 20 percent of the class are Trident holders returning to the teams from a staff tour or an educational assignment—veterans who need to polish their professional skills before returning to the platoons. For the first time, the new guys from Class 228 will train alongside Navy SEALs. Training is conducted six or seven days a week, up to fourteen hours a day. STT classes average between forty and fifty students and experience one to three failures each class. An STT student must meet certain proficiency and testing standards, or he will never become a Navy SEAL. For those in 228 who doubted their BUD/S instructors when they were told that training is never over, they quickly lose that notion in STT.
STT takes Second and Third Phase BUD/S skills to the next level and then some. The first week is an intensive course in combat first aid and battlefield casualty management. It's an emergency medical technician course, including how to administer IVs and morphine. They learn in the classroom and practice under simulated combat conditions, dragging victims across difficult terrain and treating them while others in the squad return fire. If Third Phase training started these men thinking about what happens when they're shooting, this is where they learn what happens when they're being shot at. Following first aid is a week of field communications. There are nine radios in addition to the intersquad, Saber-type sets in the SEAL inventory. Many have sophisticated encryption and satellite capability. The STT students operate and communicate with each of them, and learn to deploy the standard and field-expedient antennae. Frequencies, ranges, and specific uses of each radio are on their communications test as well as the STT final exam.
The course also includes a week of land navigation and a week of air operations. The new guys from Class 228 make their first water jumps; after completing the five scheduled jumps, they qualify for their gold Navy-Marine Corps jump wings. Each training segment is more sophisticated than the last; each adds to their tactical repertoire.
During weapons training, the STT students spend a great deal of time with their team-issue M-4 rifles. Immediate action drills are more sophisticated and intricate than in BUD/S. The squad fire-and-movement drills are done with live fire and at night. It's still crawl, walk, run—but the running is much faster. One of the most popular evolutions is the combat stress course. It's a timed shooting course that puts a premium on smooth and fast shooting. Shooters begin in full H-gear and run from station to station firing various weapons—shoulder-fired AT-4 rockets, M-79 and M-203 grenade launchers, M-14 and AK-47 rifles, as well as their personal M-4s. There's a grenade toss, a fireman's carry, and a ruck run. They finish by having to shoot a silhouette with a pistol while wearing a gas mask. The score is a combination of elapsed time on the course and accuracy. There is a minimum qualification score, but the real issue is who is the best, the most proficient? Who in the class is earning a reputation as a man who can run and shoot?
The demolitions and tactics taught at STT build on BUD/S Third Phase. The new guys learn more advance patrolling and assault techniques. The range demolitions involve improvised explosives, I-beam and timber cutting, and shaped charges—precision demolition in which explosives are used in a surgical as well as a destructive manner.
The new guys are introduced to outboard motors, piloting, and navigation. They spend days and then nights offshore learning to drive Zodiac boats from over the horizon to a designated point on the shore. For most, it is also their first exposure to global positioning system (GPS) equipment and precision navigation. This skill set will be very important in their future platoon work-ups. Deployed SEAL platoons and squads routinely parachute from combat aircraft with Zodiac-type boats far out to sea. They then rig their boats in the water and come ashore, ready to deploy combat swimmers or cross the beach for a direct action mission.
The longest and most comprehensive portion of STT is the combat-swimmer course. Many of the STT instructors have trained with French frogmen and German Kampfschwimmers, and bring a broad range of experience to the business of underwater-swimmer attack, harbor penetration, and harbor reconnaissance. The students wear wet suits as needed under cammie battle dress, and modified H-gear with their Draeger Lar V scubas. And as they would on a real-world swimmer attack, they carry side arms on their H-gear. Much of the training involves ship attacks. For this, the STT combat swimmers carry practice limpet mines on their backs. Depending on the objective, they could also carry rifles or demolitions. At the beginning of the course, they swim lap after lap with their combat load to establish their pace and time-distance parameters. Then they begin a series of underwater attacks and reconnaissance exercises that culminate in a six-thousand-meter two-ship attack at night. Most training dives last up to four hours. Two dives per day, plus an almost equal amount of time with gear preparation and administration, make for some very long days. But as the new STT students now know, training is never over. The only similarity between the STT combat-swimmer course and Second Phase in BUD/S is the near-religious practice of diver safety.
The most positive aspect of STT for the new guys from Class 228 is the attitude of the instructors. For the first time, they're treated as team guys. Training is still hard and, in many ways, more difficult than BUD/S. The STT instructors can still come down on their students and they do, but it's usually because of an unsafe condition or to emphasize a critical aspect of training. In BUD/S, part of the instructor's job was to see if the trainees had the right stuff to be in the teams. In STT, the instructor's only job is to prepare their students for a seamless integration into a SEAL platoon.
STT is a period in which the new BUD/S graduates begin to absorb the warrior culture of the teams. Over a beer after training or while taking a break on the shooting ranges, the talk runs to platoon deployment and platoon operations, and about combat—about killing. The new men are sponges, wanting to learn all they can about this mystical thing called combat. Occasionally, one of the veteran STT instructors will bring it up.
“I want you guys to become technically proficient, because you fight as you train,” one of the cadre tells them. “When the time comes, you'll react instinctively and there'll be no time to think. But I want you to think about it—now, and when you get to your platoons. Killing a man, even some scumbag terrorist who needs to die, is very serious business.”
SEALs constantly talk about jumping, diving, and shooting. I listened to animated discussions about tactics, demolitions, and weapons. But the business of killing is addressed only obliquely. When the subject does come up, it's always in a measured, serious manner—never cavalierly or with any sense of bravado. It was much the same in my day during SEAL cadre training. I clearly recall one of my cadre instructors at SEAL Team One, a petty officer named Talmadge Bohannon, teaching us how to set a good ambush. “Let's call this what it is, gentlemen,” Bo told us. “An ambush, pure and simple, is premeditated murder. If done properly, there is very little risk to you, and the poor bastards in your kill zone will never know what hit them.” I never forgot Bohannon's words or what they meant, especially when I was sitting on the bank of a canal in the Mekong Delta with a Stoner rifle draped across my lap.
STT classes are made up of graduates from several BUD/S classes. One former member of Class 228 knows something about killing, perhaps more than his STT instructors. Seaman Miguel Yanez, who left 228 on Monday evening of Hell Week with a separated shoulder, graduated with Class 230. Before he joined the Navy and came to BUD/S, he was a police officer working narcotics in Houston. His law-enforcement career lasted only a few years, but they were active ones: Yanny, as his classmates call him, shot and killed three people in the line of duty. His former BUD/S and current STT classmates, some of them qualified SEALs, seek him out. In one way or another, they ask the same thing: What is like to kill someone? I asked Yanny the same question.
“I felt a little nauseous right afterward, but have no regrets. I did what I had to do, and I reacted just as I'd been trained to. Training is everything; you fight as you train. Only it's hard to duplicate the confusion in a combat situation. I got knocked down and had to shoot someone while I was flat on my back.”
STT is also a period of evaluation. Which of these new guys are quick, smart, smooth, and quiet? Which ones are not? Who listens and who doesn't? They all have stamina, but which of them can ruck up the heaviest load and carry it the farthest? Who are the sled dogs—the ones who will run until they drop and never complain? All of them are good in the water, but which ones hit the target ship on time, every time? Who has the strongest will to win? As in BUD/S, the new guys break out by ability; there's separation between the good ones and the really good ones. In a small community where reputation is everything, the team platoon chiefs and platoon officers are trying to find the really good ones. They want them for their platoons. When the new guys from Class 228 report back to their respective SEAL teams, their reputation precedes them.
None in Class 228 were assigned to the SDV teams. Had they been, they would have reported directly from Army Airborne School to Basic SDV School in Panama City, Florida, for their initial training in piloting the underwater SEAL delivery vehicles. Then from SDV School or their assigned SDV team, they are assigned to the next STT course.
With STT behind them, the new men must now qualify at their team to earn their Tridents. Each team does this in its own way. For a perspective on Trident qualification and platoon predeployment training, I went to SEAL Team Three.
“Everybody here? Good. Mister Cremmins, you want to close that door? Thank you, sir.”
Eight men fresh from STT and newly assigned to SEAL Team Three are seated in a small classroom in the Team Three building. SEAL Team Three is located south of the Naval Special Warfare Center next to the obstacle course. SEAL Teams have area specialization and Team Three is assigned responsibilities in Southwest Asia—the Middle East. Team Three SEALs are conspicuous among the West Coast SEALs in that they wear desert camouflage, or “Gulf War” utilities, rather than the green, woodland-patterned cammies. Master Chief Mark Kauber is the command master chief for SEAL Team Three—the team's senior enlisted man. He's a Puget Sound native, having grown up in Everett, Washington. Kauber is a short, solid man with a round, handsome face softened by an Asian influence; he's half Filipino. He has a generous smile that is both disarming and genuine.
“I've met all of you individually, but as a group, I want to again welcome you to SEAL Team Three. As far as I'm concerned, it's the best team on the coast. We've got a good reputation, and it's a well-earned reputation. My purpose in meeting with you this morning is to let you know what we expect of you here at Team Three and to get you in the proper mind-set for your Trident Board that convenes tomorrow. Congratulations again on successfully completing STT. Mike Loo tells me that you all did a great job.”
The eight new guys are from the last STT class but different BUD/S classes. Two of them have reached their six-month probationary time with Team Three. On the successful completion of their Trident Boards, they will be awarded their Tridents. The other six will still have to wait out their six-month probation before they get their Birds, even after they pass the boards. During their non-STT time, new guys are sometimes sent to special schools as they become available. Or they are assigned to work in various departments in the team—airops, subops, the armory. Occasionally, they may be assigned to a newly forming platoon before they get their Tridents. Sometimes a new guy is sent off to a language school, either the Defense Language School at Monterey or to a Berlitz course. At Team Three, the language is Arabic, and the school can last six months to a year—that's six months to a year additional time until the new guy can earn his Trident and get to an operating platoon.
“Every team is different,” the command master chief continues, “but let's talk about what we expect here at Team Three. First of all, I want you to understand that this is the very best job in the military. Consider it a privilege to be here. You've come a long way and gone through hell to get to this point. But it's not over, not by a long shot. Stay focused, ask questions, keep working. Keep a wheel book with you and write things down. Myself and every operator in this team want you to succeed. But it's up to you.
“What we don't have time for are pissy attitudes, whiners, liars, or excuses—things like that. Until a man has been here for at least five years, we consider him a guest. If your priorities are beer, women, or lots of time off to strut your stuff around town, then this is not the place for you. This is a team. The got mine’ or ‘me-first’ attitude does not sit well with me. You show me that you didn't come here to work hard and become a warrior, and I'll see that you get a set of orders back to the fleet. It's happened before. On the other hand, we bend over backward to help the guys who are hard chargers. I'm talking about the guys with great attitudes who volunteer for the hard jobs without bitching or whining. If you're this kind of guy, you'll be rewarded, and you'll go far in this community. Know your priorities; be ready to work hard and to operate hard.
“Alcohol. If you drink, do so responsibly. A DUI is a quick way to lose your Trident and leave the teams. Use the buddy system to look out for each other, and if you're out drinking, have a designated driver. It's not hard. You'd be surprised how many guys here don't drink. We keep a fund on the quarterdeck for cab fare. If you find yourself with too much to drink and no way home, call a cab. They'll bring you here and you'll be okay. Drugs—it's a no-brainer. Fool around with any illegal, nonprescription drugs and you're history. We give urinalysis frequently and with no notice. This is a dangerous business and there's no place for drugs, okay?
“The bottom line is that I expect you to be responsible for your own actions. Don't lie; don't hide anything. Little problems are easier to solve than big problems. If you have any problem, take it to your platoon LPO or your platoon chief. I have an open-door policy here, but I expect you to use the chain of command first. If you end up having to see me, you're either in a heap of trouble or you've done something great. I hope it's for something great. I'm not a headhunter, but I want you to know how it is as long as I'm command master chief of this team.”
Kauber doesn't appear to have any hard edges, but he softens as he continues to address the new men. “Our job keeps us away from home a great deal. If you have a wife or girlfriend, make sure she understands the importance of your job and why you're gone so much. How does she feel about these long separations? Does she support you? These things are important. Our team cares about family members and will happily help them out— drive them to the doctor, help them if a problem comes up while you're gone. We have a pool of money at the team available for this. We keep this low-key so they don't feel uncomfortable in asking for help. Those who support us in what we do are important. Don't neglect them.
“Now, let's talk about your Trident Board tomorrow. For you enlisted guys, the oral Chief's Board is your only board. You officers will still have the Officer's Board after you've completed the Chief's Board. At the Chief's Board, each chief, senior chief, and master chief will ask you about a basic SEAL skill that you have learned or should know at this point in your training. These questions will be about communications, diving, air operations, land nav, medical—things that you know. There are no trick questions, so don't make it hard on yourself or try to read something into it. Just relax and answer the questions. We'll have a few questions that relate to your attitude and mind-set as a new member of this team. Bring your wheel book with you so you can take notes on anything you miss and can get back to us with the answer. Depending on you, the Chief's Board will take no longer than a half hour to forty-five minutes. Once we are finished, we will excuse you for a few minutes, talk among ourselves, and call you back in for the results. If you did well, we will make a recommendation to the commanding officer that you are ready for your Trident. If you did not do well, you'll work on your weak points, and we will reschedule you for another oral board in a few days. The key is to relax, listen carefully, think about the question, and tell us what you know.”
The officers will have a second board conducted by Team Three's commanding officer, executive officer, operations officer, and command master chief. Each officer is given a special operations mission tasking. Much like they did on San Clemente Island during their FTX and at JOTC, they will study the problem and prepare a Courses of Action Brief—how they plan to tackle the mission. Then the officer will stand before the Officers's Board and present his brief, just as a deployed platoon officer would present his alternative courses of action to a task group commander. Navy task group commanders are admirals or senior captains. The Team Three CO wants to see the briefing skills of his new officers as well as their professional knowledge. Then the Board will choose a mission-specific course of action, or ask the new officer which alternative he would recommend. The officer will then work up a detailed plan for executing the mission and present that plan to the Board. But first, all have to pass the Chief's Board.
“Ensign John Cremmins was a pretty strong BUD/S trainee,” Master Chief Kauber tells his fellow chiefs in the CPOs lounge at SEAL Team Three—the goat locker. “He did very well in STT He's a Naval Academy ensign, and he looks like a promising young officer. You guys ready?” There is a volley of murmurs and grunts around the room. Kauber steps to the door and pokes his head into the hall. “Mister Cremmins, you can come in now.”
John Cremmins graduated from Annapolis with the Class of 1998—a class ahead of the Naval Academy ensigns in Class 228. Ensign Cremmins grew up in New York City and seems almost a little too smooth for a team officer—self-assured and even a little cocky. He looks younger than his twenty-three years, but he's smart and tough, and he has a good reputation. Cremmins is dressed in starched desert cammies and brushed sand boots. He has a close haircut and a fresh shave. Arrayed around him are thirteen chief petty officers. Among them are three master chiefs and a sprinkling of senior chiefs—over three hundred years of SEAL Team experience.
“Mister Cremmins?”
“Yes, Chief?”
“Sir?”
“Excuse me. Yes, Senior Chief?”
“Mister Cremmins, you and your swim buddy are making an attack on an enemy ship. You've been in the water for two hours; both of you are on Draegers. You are under the keel and getting ready to attach your limpets to the bottom of the ship. Suddenly there is a tension on your buddy line— it's tending down. This causes you to check your swim buddy. You shine a penlight in his face mask and you see that he is unconscious. What do you do next?”
“Real world, Senior Chief, or training?”
“Real world, Mister Cremmins.”
While John Cremmins sweats out his Trident Board, Lieutenant Gus Kaminski and Chief Petty Officer Joe Quinn are sitting in a two-room office in the platoon spaces at Team Three. This is the home of Foxtrot Platoon. They are dressed in canvas UDT shorts, blue T-shirts, and running shoes. Together, they review projected platoon training schedules. Kaminski is a sturdy officer, just under six feet, with an easy smile. He is from West Virginia and a graduate of the Naval Academy. Since coming from BUD/S to Team Three, he has deployed once to Southwest Asia as a liaison officer with an amphibious ready group and once as Foxtrot Platoon's assistant officer in charge, or AOIC. Joe Quinn is a quiet, affable man from Bainbridge Island, Washington. He has five platoon deployments, all in Southwest Asia and all with SEAL Team Three. During that time, he managed to complete his bachelor's degree in workforce education and development with a 4.0 GPA. Joe Quinn enjoys a very solid reputation at SEAL Team Three. Kaminski, who is twenty-eight years old, is Foxtrot Platoon's OIC. Quinn is thirty-seven and the Foxtrot platoon chief. Fully manned, there are seventeen men and a lot of moving parts in a SEAL platoon, but to a significant degree, Gus Kaminski and Joe Quinn are Foxtrot Platoon.
SEAL platoons live in cycles. They go through an eighteen-month training cycle or work-up, deploy overseas for six months, and stand down for approximately six months. When a platoon comes back from deployment, there are changes. One or two men will leave the platoon because they are leaving the Navy, either through retirement after a career or after a single hitch. Perhaps two or three of them will rotate from the platoon to the Team Three training cell or get orders from the team. They could be going to language school, to BUD/S for instructor duty, or to another team. The platoon OIC, a senior lieutenant, will definitely leave the platoon. The chief could stay for another deployment, but he will usually leave to make room for another platoon chief. More often than not, the AOIC will move up to OIC. Sometimes a platoon first class petty officer, if he is advanced to chief petty officer, will make the next deployment as the platoon chief. Sometimes the platoon chief is a new chief returning from BUD/S or he may come from the team training cell, as did Joe Quinn. Platoon chief petty officers are perhaps the single most important leadership position in the teams. They are selected and assigned with a great deal of care.
Foxtrot's current training-deployment cycle began with Kaminski and Quinn. They will be on deployment in the Middle East for only six months, but they will spend at least half of the remaining eighteen months of platoon work-up away from home at military schools or remote training sites. Some platoons have a number of holdovers from the previous deployments, and some build to platoon strength from a small nucleus of platoon veterans. For Kaminski and Quinn, it was the latter. There was a great deal of attrition from the last deployment, so they will have an unusual number of new men on this deployment. By necessity, the new platoon OIC and his chief had to draft new men, and they decided to draft for youth. Kaminski and Quinn used all their resources and contacts to find the STT students and new team guys with the best reputations. For one or two key roles, they will look for specific veterans, making their case with the Team Three operations officer or command master chief to get this man or that one. The food fights over who gets what in the way of platoon assignments is ferocious. Again, reputation is everything. So is chemistry. Kaminski and Quinn are like a pro basketball franchise—drafting new talent, looking for the right veterans to glue the team together.
Lieutenant Gus Kaminski is typical in that his OIC tour is the apex of a young SEAL officer's operational career—for some officers, their entire career. This is his platoon; he's the boss—the platoon commander. It took him eighteen months to get through BUD/S and get his Trident. He's had four years in the teams on deployment or in training. Now, after more than five years of learning and apprenticeship, he has his own platoon. It will be close to seven years from the day he classed up with Class 198 (he graduated with Class 200) that he will lead a combat-ready platoon on deployment. Not all officers in the teams get this far. There are cuts along the way, and the competition for platoon OIC jobs is intense. It's a matter of experience, deployment requirements, and—above all—reputation. After this tour, Gus Kaminski will decide whether he will stay in the Navy. This means he will have some form of nonoperational tour, such as team operations officer or BUD/S phase officer. He could be assigned overseas to a special operations staff attached to one of the theater commanders. Perhaps the Navy will send him to graduate school. Unlike his enlisted classmates from Class 200, his future operational time will be limited. There are great opportunities ahead for him—perhaps an exchange tour with a foreign special operations component, like the Australian SAS. He could command a SEAL team or a Naval Special Warfare Unit overseas. Later on, he might command a Naval Special Warfare group. But the fact remains that the bulk of his SEAL operational time is behind him, not ahead. When he returns from his OIC deployment, he may never again give a Patrol Order or lead men in harm's way.
There's a saying in the teams: The enlisted men operate too much and the officers don't get to operate enough. The teams lose good men every year—officers because they want more and enlisted men because they've had enough. Joe Quinn has been in the Navy for seventeen years; he'll be one year shy of a twenty-year retirement check when he returns from this deployment. Quinn is typical of his generation of chief petty officers. In the early 1970s, he saw these people called frogmen on TV as they attached floatation collars to Apollo space capsules. He told his father, “That's me.” Now, three decades later, he is at the zenith of his career as a Navy SEAL. Quinn has paid his dues. He's made five deployments during his twelve years in the deployment cycle, and has spent perhaps seven of those twelve away from home. It may be rare for a chief to have had six platoon deployments with the same team, but six or more deployments in twenty years is not uncommon among SEAL team chiefs.
If Joe Quinn elects to stay in the Navy, he could return to the training cell at Team Three, helping other platoons to prepare for deployment. He could go to BUD/S or STT, or serve as a staff officer at one of the two Naval Special Warfare groups or the Naval Special Warfare Command. He will be most welcome wherever he goes; he's smart, talented, and experienced. With staff experience to match his broad operational background, he could reach the top rung of his trade, a command master chief like Mark Kauber. But the SEAL teams keep their senior enlisted men busy. They travel a great deal, even the training cadres and staff officers. Joe Quinn has three young boys at home. If he wants to see more of them as they grow up, he may have to leave the Navy. And all that talent and experience will be lost. Quinn has options. Corporate America pays headhunters quite well to find men with Joe Quinn's experience and leadership ability.
But for now, for the next two years, the future of Gus Kaminski and Joe Quinn is Foxtrot Platoon. They are at the top of their game—the best of their breed. Given the selection process that brought each of them to this point in their career, they are very special, perhaps one in a hundred. If good platoon chemistry is important, then good OlC-platoon chief chemistry is essential. Together with the Team Three training cell, these two SEALs will train and lead the platoon through the deployment cycle. Everything that was taught at BUD/S, STT, and in the many specialized schools will be accelerated in the platoon work-up. With the help of veterans, the new guys’ learning curve will explode. In platoon training, individual skills such as parachuting, diving, shooting, and demolitions will be integrated into multidisciplined operational scenarios. Old SEALs like myself marvel at this training and preparation. In June 1970, I arrived at SEAL Team One in Coronado. I deployed to Vietnam as the platoon OIC of Whiskey Platoon in October, and we were back home by 1 May 1971. My platoon chief, Pat McKnight, came to Whiskey Platoon right out of BUD/S. Lucky for all of us, my LPO, Walt Gustavel, was going back with us on his sixth combat deployment.
The culture of this eighteen-month training cycle is as unique as it is long and difficult. There are special individual and platoon schools to attend. Their training will include search and seizure of ships and oil platforms at sea; long-range, low-light-level photography; working with close air support dropping live ordnance; advanced underwater ship/harbor attack training; extended, long-range patrolling and navigation in desert and mountain terrains. The list goes on. Toward the end of the work-up, the training gets more intense, more high-speed. During platoon IADs, the break-contact drills may consist of running and shooting over miles of open terrain at night, calling in live air strikes from helicopter gunships.
More than half of what makes a Navy SEAL special is his commute to the job site. It's a tough commute—through the air, under the sea, or across the land. As he begins the serious business of platoon training, more time is taken with the job-related skills—how to fight and actions at the objective.
This is especially true for SEAL combat shooting skills. The platoons attend several civilian and military shooting schools that emphasize close-quarter shooting in urban settings. These are scenario-driven exercises with live rounds that require good headwork, good teamwork, and fire discipline. They do this as squads and as a platoon—full tilt, with live fire. Live rounds teach the SEALs how to shoot together safely in close quarters. Simunitions teach them how to kill as a team. Simunitions are a relatively new development that allow opposed, close-quarter shooting. One school that features Simunitions is the Close Quarter Defense School operated by Duane Dieter. Dieter is a highly experienced martial artist and shooting specialist on contract with Naval Special Warfare. The platoons know how to shoot. Duane Dieter teaches them how to fight and win. The SEAL'S MP-5 submachine guns and pistols are modified to shoot 9mm paint-loaded rounds—Simunitions. These are not paint balls from paint-ball guns, but rounds from the SEALs’ personal weapons—automatic or semiautomatic fire with the same cyclic rates and short-range trajectory as the real thing. The platoon SEALs, wearing head and eye protection, are able to attack adversarial role players who physically resist and shoot back. This is full-tilt fighting; losers get shot. These scenarios are built around hostage takings, terrorist activity, and irregular-force opposition. The platoons learn to be gunfighters as well as shooters. In a gunfight, it pays to be a winner.
A new guy in Foxtrot Platoon could find himself doing everything from a lead-line-and-slate hydrographic recon on a beach in Oman to rappelling by fast rope onto an Iraqi freighter in the Straight of Hormuz to look for contraband. If you're a Navy SEAL, this is what you train for and what you live for.
No SEAL platoon is allowed to deploy into an operational theater until it is thoroughly trained and tested. A critical goal of the eighteen-month platoon work-up is the operational readiness evaluation, or ORE. The OREs are conducted by the Naval Special Warfare groups—Group One on the West Coast and Two on the East Coast. The team commanding officers train platoons for deployment; the group commanders certify them as fully combat ready—C-l status. The group ORE cells conduct the platoon OREs, and they are by no means a formality or a free ride. It is not uncommon for a platoon to flunk a portion of the ORE or an entire ORE full-mission profile. A second failure usually results in a change of platoon leadership. Since the group commanders personally sign off that a platoon is combat ready, they usually observe key portions of the operational readiness evaluation. For Gus Kaminski and Joe Quinn, Foxtrot Platoon's ORE is both a test and a validation. As they work their platoon into fighting shape, it's a chance to show their stuff under operational conditions. But if the platoon performs poorly or comes up short, they will be held accountable, personally and professionally. Their reputations are on the line.
The ORE cells at the groups are headed by an experienced officer and a small cadre of very capable chief petty officers. A few months before the date of a platoon's deployment, the ORE cell begins to feed the platoon information on a range of targets. By this time, the platoon is trained and conducting sustainment training to remain current and sharpen their combat and teamwork skills. The platoon knows within a range of mission profiles what they will be asked to do, and approximately when. But what and when are not nearly so important as where. The group's ORE cells go to great lengths to find challenging and unfamiliar terrain over which to evaluate their platoons. Where possible, the OREs use live ordnance. When it happens, it's quick. A platoon is recalled from wherever they happen to be training and placed in isolation, just as they would be on a real mission tasking. Once in isolation and under strict security protocol, they are tasked with the planning and execution of a special operation mission. They will see and talk to no one not connected with the operation until the mission is complete. Much like Bill Gallagher and Eric Oehlerich did on San Clemente Island during their final FTX problems, the platoon commander assigns tasks to members of the platoon, and they begin the planning process. But on a platoon ORE, the targets are far more difficult and the expectation of mission execution is several orders of magnitude greater. The platoon will study and evaluate target folders; they will have to draft a number of mission support requests. The platoon will almost certainly ask for additional intelligence and supplemental rules of engagement. A great deal of expense, effort, and ingenuity goes into reducing the artificiality of the ORE mission taskings and targeting. Moreover, the ORE cell will arrange for some surprises along the way and provide for spirited opposition.
ORE mission scenarios are designed to parallel real-world contingencies, and for that reason they are classified as secret or even top secret. They also reflect real-world targeting in theater. For Team Three and Foxtrot Platoon, the Middle East is their area of operation. SEAL Team One's AO is Southeast Asia. Their OREs often involve jungle warfare. Team Five's area is Korea and the North Pacific. They specialize in cold-water operations and winter warfare. On the East Coast, SEAL Team Two's AO is Europe; Team Eight's, Africa. SEAL Team Four's AO is Central and South America. At Team Four, they need all the Spanish-speaking SEALs they can find, like Sergio Lopez from Class 228 and Miguel Yanez from Class 230.
A typical ORE, like the one that Foxtrot Platoon might be asked to do, could be an over-the-horizon, over-the-beach operation. In this ORE, the platoon, in two squads, parachutes at night into the sea from a C-130. Leaving the aircraft with them are two Zodiacs, each carefully rigged with its own parachute and the squad's equipment. Once in the water, the squads rig their Zodiacs and mount the outboard motors that parachuted with the boats. Then they make a thirty-mile, over-the-horizon transit to the shore. Once they're close to shore, they will conduct an over-the-beach operation, just like they did in Third Phase at BUD/S, with scout swimmers going in first. Once ashore, they patrol inland. Their mission may be a platoon objective or two squad targets. It could be a standoff target such as an infrared photoreconnaissance, disabling an aircraft at long range with a .50-caliber sniper rifle, or illuminating a building with a portable laser for a precision air strike. They may have a direct action mission, such as a demolitions raid. Perhaps their mission will be to storm a building to rescue a hostage. After their actions at the objective, they will have to execute their exfiltration and extraction plans. Along the way, they may lay up for a period of time to establish a satellite communications link and send an encrypted burst transmission with critical intelligence. At any time, the ORE lane graders may change the game, or insert obstacles in the exercise play. Opposition forces may compel the squads to fall back on one of their alternate courses of action. After the mission, Foxtrot Platoon will return to isolation for post-mission briefings and to produce its after-action reports and messages. This is as close as it gets to the real thing. The next time Foxtrot Platoon goes into isolation, it could be an operational mission tasking somewhere in the Persian Gulf.
Each ORE follows the same basic mission-planning and mission-execution format that the platoon SEALs first learned in BUD/S. The art of special operations requires planning and execution that draw on skills and teamwork that take years to develop. A combat-ready platoon not only conducts the mission as a team, but they plan it as a team. Because of the quality and experience of the individual SEALs, and their recent platoon training, they are able to do this quickly and with minimum rehearsal time. This is critical on a time-sensitive operation, and could spell the difference between mission success and mission failure. A combat-ready, C-l SEAL platoon has a broad range of capabilities, so it is very flexible. If the job can't be done one way, the SEALs will find another.
As this book goes to press, Lieutenant Gus Kaminski, Chief Joe Quinn, and Foxtrot Platoon are on deployment somewhere in Southwest Asia. They will operate from the Naval Special Warfare Unit in Bahrain, but they could be just about anywhere in the Middle East.