oldsalt
Active Member
- Jun 10, 2011
- 994
- 61
- 28
According to Luttrell Seals keep their own identity regardless of the overall commander. SEALS are trained like no other Military unit. Their basic training is specific for water related missions and it it is outmoded. Why go through the expense of training Sailors to paddle rubber boats while unconcious while they wash out otherwise qualified personnel who can't endure extreme hypothermia?
Did you ring the bell at BUDS?
When I was in the Marines they were still called UDT. According to Luttrell's book, a lot of good men washed out of BUDS because they couldn't take the constant hypothermia. Those men had skills which would have been valuable to SEALS but they were discarded in favor of people who might have permanent mental impairment from the abusive training. Fair enough if SEALS mission involved only constant cold water imersion but the mission that Luttrell refered to in his book failed because a SEAL recon patrol couldn't seem to navigate in the Afghanistan mountains in fog and found themselves surrounded by the enemy they were supposed to recon. The SEAL elitism caused a SEAL leader to compound the failure of the mission by jumping on a helicopter without a realistic plan and land in a Taliban ambush which killed every member of the rescue team. It took an Army Ranger patrol to rescue Luttrell.
Ok, then based on your info, there must be another reason for your obsession with outdating the SEAL program. Interservice rivalry, perhaps? Pecker envy? You tell me. Their mission success ratio necessitates their existence.