Navy Seals

Check out the magnetic system Navy SEALs use to climb ships like Spider-Man

America’s special operations units have seen a dramatic uptick in the missions sets they’ve been tasked with throughout nearly two straight decades of the War on Terror, but despite some overlap in combat operations, each specialized unit has a specific area of expertise to draw from. The Navy SEALs, as most could assume from their name alone, specialize in water-born operations, and as such, they have a long list of specialized tools in their team rooms for just that sort of work.

While SEALs are often seen in Defense Department footage fast roping down onto the deck of ships from aloft helicopters, the reality of modern combat dictates that such an insertion isn’t always possible. That’s why SEALs don’t only employ quiet, stealthy watercraft — they’ve also got some loud, angry, souped up boats that are perfect for rapidly closing with enemy vessels. The problem is, once you’ve whipped your supercharged jet ski up alongside an oil tanker full of terrorists… how do you get on board? That’s where the incredible tech in the REBS Magnetic Climbing System comes in.

The REBS system is made up of four high-powered magnetic grips, with two designed to capture feet and two intended for use with your hands. The lever operated system is entirely waterproof and dive capable, meaning SEALs and other combat divers can actually engage the system from beneath the waterline to begin their climb up the ship’s hull to the deck.

SEALs put this system on display during a demonstration in Greece two years ago during a joint Special Operations exercise, in which SEALs used specially modified Yamaha FX Cruiser SHO jet skis to approach the USS Porter (an Arleigh Burke-class guided missile destroyer). Once they reached the ship, the SEALS then produced their Magnetic Climbing Systems (MCS’s) and used them to scale the external hull of the vessel, ultimately climbing onto the ship’s deck.

The REBS MCS is actually only one of a number of superhero-like devices American special operations troops have at their disposal. One company called Batelle is hard at work at Batman-style grappling gun, and equipment that literally pulls operators up their ropes already has a place in SOCOM’s tool box.

Here I am testing a similar device in Las Vegas.

America’s special operations forces may have to do some of the heaviest fighting once they reach their destinations, but the truth is, there’s just as much time, thought, effort, and expense put into determining the best possible ways to get them there and back again as well. If this is the stuff that’s shown off in demonstrations, one’s left to wonder just how superhero-like the classified equipment in operational use today may be.

Check out this underwater pistol Heckler & Koch built for the Navy SEALs

One of the things movies always get wrong about firearms is how water will affect the way a bullet travels. Even in the otherwise-almost-too-real “Saving Private Ryan,” bullets are shown flying through water almost exactly as they do in the air: on a straight trajectory and with a lethal amount of kinetic energy. The truth of the matter is, bullets just don’t move through the water all that well. In fact, with many firearms, all it takes is a few inches of water to strip a moving bullet of the speed necessary to penetrate the human body. In most cases, water just knocks bullets off their course, but in some, hitting the water is enough to break the round apart completely. While some firearms can function under water, they tend not to function as you’d need them to if you were in a fight for your life.

This scene from John Wick 3 actually does a really good job of demonstrating how water affects bullets.

(Warning: graphic content)

For most folks, a weapon’s ability to take a life while completely submerged in water isn’t a pressing concern, but for some very specific groups of war fighters, this presents a serious issue. Navy SEALs are known for conducting clandestine operations in and around the water, and Navy Frogmen are often tasked with preventing the foreign equivalent of our SEALs from doing the same near American shores. Because most standard issue firearms would be all but useless in an underwater engagement, these undersea war fighters needed something with a bit more reach than their diving knives that actually worked beneath the waves.

That’s where Heckler & Koch stepped in. Back in 1976, they secretly developed the P11: a five-barrel module-arrangement pistol that’s capable of firing 4-inch long steel darts. Its effective range underwater was between 30 and 50 feet (depending on depth) and they could even be fired in the dry air with an effective range of just shy of 100 feet (though accuracy was said to be questionable at such distances).

Heckler & Koch P11 with test-device (WikiMedia Commons)

H&K didn’t even acknowledge producing the pistol until 1997, giving their select customer list a solid two decades of use before letting the cat out of the bag. According to some sources, hundreds of these pistols were issues to Naval special warfare units, though it’s unclear how many are still in service. It stands to reason that the Navy may now be operating more effective underwater weapons.

Instead of using traditional rounds, each of the five barrels came sealed from the manufacturer with what was effectively a mini-rocket propelled missile stored inside. The projectiles were actually tiny solid-fuel rockets with fins to stabilize their path as they sailed through the water. When the operator pulls the trigger, an internal battery actually sends a current to ignite the fuel and launch the projectile through its barrel. Once all five rounds had been expended, there was no way to reload the pistol — it had to be sent back to Heckler & Koch to have a new sealed five-round chamber installed.

Feature image screen captured from YouTube

Why do Navy SEALs hate the SCAR?

For many of us from the conventional side of the military (or who never served at all) the FN Scar tends to carry with it a certain appeal. As a rifle designed specifically for Special Operations troops (SCAR actually stands for Special Operations Forces Combat Assault Rifle), it’s hard not to look at the jagged angles of the rifle and bulky 7.62×51 magazines with a sense of envy. There we were carrying around our M4s (or often in my era, M16 A4s) chambered solely in 5.56, baby faced and feeling awfully standard issue, when a group of Special Operations bubbas came strolling by with slung SCARs and the sort of beards that could intimidate a bear. In our minds, everything about that life just seemed better. Better training, better grooming standards, and of course, better guns.

But maybe that’s not the case after all. If you’ve spent some time rolling rounds through a SCAR, you might have responded like I did my first few times firing one: by assuming your issues with the platform must have been operator error. Try as I might, I just couldn’t get to liking the SCAR chambered in 7.62 or 5.56, but because I’d seen it in the hands of so many prolific war fighters, I figured any issues I had with the platform must have been a result on my lack of familiarity with it. Sure, it occasionally misfeeds, it’s loud enough to hurt your ears through cheap ear protection at an indoor range, and I would hate to try to clear a house with such a long weapon (standard barrel)… but it’s hard to shake the assumption that it’s not the rifle that’s the problem, it’s got to be the shooter.

Over the years, I’ve spoken to a fair number of special operations veterans that shared my distaste for the SCAR (but with operational experience to pull from, rather than just being a range cowboy with it like I was), and I came to appreciate that despite lacking in the high speed training allotted to SOCOM’s best, a bad feed is still a bad feed, and provided you’re not putting pressure on the magazine or otherwise mishandling the weapon, the fault tends to fall squarely on the platform, not the shooter, when it tries to cram two rounds into the chamber at once.

So, maybe that’s why I enjoyed this video from Vigilance Elite so much — because it features shooters more qualified than myself nit picking the SCAR in much the same way I have in the past. In the video, former SEALs Shawn Ryan and Jeff Reid put a SCAR through its paces, discuss some of its strengths, and then break down exactly why they do not like the platform. Reid goes into detail about his experiences on deployment with the SCAR and how he (as well as many other SEALs) suffered through repeated malfunctions until he finally decided to switch back to the M4 despite often finding himself in 1,000 meter engagements. In his mind, the added range and accuracy of the 7.62 chambered SCAR simply wasn’t worth the headaches.

Check out the video below:

Feature image courtesy of WikiMedia Commons

These are the elite warfighting units throughout history that inspired modern American special operations

It can be said that the need to band together in groups is intrinsic to what makes us human beings. Long before the dawn of civilization, humans gathered together in like-minded groups in order to offer one another protection, defend resources, and share the mental and physical challenges of survival. Forming a cooperative group, or herd, may have been one of the earliest human advancements that would one day lead to the complex societies we live in today. But like today, whenever groups gather, conflict is never far behind.

Warfare, it would seem, was the inevitable result of humans living in groups. When one group had something another needed (or wanted), they sought to take it by force. What started as small skirmishes between tribes eventually grew into major battles between city-states, religions, and eventually, nations. The drive to fight and win wars led to countless technological developments throughout human history, but new and advanced weapons have never been the only element necessary to secure victory in a tribal spat or global conflict. Instead, finding and training the most capable war-fighters has always been a key element influencing who would go home the victor and who wouldn’t make it home at all.

Although modern special operations are, as the phrase implies, very much modern, the roots of America’s most elite war-fighting institutions can be traced back as far as warfare itself. In the Marine Corps, we would often liken the lessons we learned in combat training to those first established by the Spartans. Though our modern lineage might be more comparable to that of the British Royal Marines, our ideological ancestors hailed from another time entirely. The mindset employed by Spartan warriors, perhaps as much as their tactical expertise, set them apart from other militaries of the day—something many could attribute to the Marine Corps of today as well. Similarly, one could draw historical parallels between SOCOM’s specialized units and some of the most impressive, capable, and downright frightening warriors throughout human history.

Helmet plate depicting a dancing warrior and a bear warrior (Norse berserker)

Viking berserkers, recounted in Norse legend as men who would fight with a fury that seemed inhuman, often chose to forgo the chain mail armor of their day, instead adorning themselves with the pelts of predators such as bears and wolves or, often, wearing nothing at all. The bloodlust demonstrated by berserkers in combat granted them a far-reaching reputation, allowing them to sometimes skip the battle completely and instead simply accept an opponent’s surrender based on nothing more than their presence.

Courtesy of dynamosquito via WikiMedia Commons

The Immortals who fought for the Achaemenid Empire of Persia, depicted in the stylized movie “300,” were the special operations forces of Persia’s multinational military machine. The Immortals were designated as such, according to Herodotus, not only because they were the most fearsome and well-equipped soldiers in King Xerxes’ army, but also because their 10,000-strong unit would immediately field replacements for any Immortal who fell to battle or sickness, ensuring the mighty Immortals retained their 10,000-strong moniker at all times.

Rembrandt chose to illustrate the moment of the oath of the Batavia in the sacred grove, as described by Tacitus, Histories IV, 14. Civilis, with crown and sword. (WikiMedia Commons)

The Batavi were a warrior people who served with the Roman military (when not rebelling against Roman rule). Like modern American Navy SEALs, the Batavi gained a reputation not only for being fearsome and brutally barbaric warriors, but for possessing an incredible strength that allowed them to swim across rivers others saw as impassable, all while wearing their armor and carrying their weapons. This tactic enabled the Batavi to attack enemy armies that had used swift waterways as a natural barrier against attack, taking them utterly by surprise.

The classic cliché of black-adorned ninjas sprinting across rooftops may not have been accurate, but the ninja’s reputation for stealth, reconnaissance gathering, and guerrilla warfare tactics is well deserved. Often disguising themselves to blend in with the civilian populace, ninjas trained with a myriad of weapons and prized adaptability in their training regimens. Ninjas were most effectively employed in specialized missions, not unlike modern special operations units.

All of these elite warriors, and countless others, helped form a common fabric of tactics, strategy, and mindset that would one day be employed by America’s elite special operators. Considering that, to a large extent, one can truly credit the breadth of warfare throughout human history with planting the seeds that would later become our modern special operations infrastructure.

Feature photo courtesy of MaxPixel.net

The time my Special Forces team accidentally burned down a Korean forest (Pt.1)

I was a grunt, a ground-pounder, a door-kicker, a knuckle-dragger, a dog face, and a devil dog. I’ve been dogged-out and dog-tired, I’ve rucked until my dogs were barkin’ while it rained cats and dogs. I’ve had a dog in the fight, lived a dog’s life, gone to the dogs, been in the doghouse, and doggone it I’ve seen the tail wag the dog. I’ve seen a barking dog bite, dogged-shut a submarine escape hatch, had a dog as a best friend, ‘cause every dog has its day. I’ve experienced the dog days of summer, listened to Three Dog Night, and I’ve seen a dog that won’t hunt in this dog-eat-dog world. You feel me, dog?

When I was a regular Army grunt, I was in a mechanized infantry unit. The only time I ever had to carry a rucksack of any appreciable weight was in some of the professional development courses I attended in hopes of catching a timely promotion. Still, occasionally I found myself at a grassroots level of basic Army life, living in tin huts in the Rocky Mountains and living out of a rucksack for days on end. For a young soldier of my intellect and experience, it was a praiseworthy undertaking, but I would not know what a truly heavy ruck or long march was until I transitioned to the ranks of the Green Berets.

U.S. Army Rangers are the daddies of heavy rucksacks; there is no disputing that. Having a former 2/75 Ranger as a team sergeant ensured that we Green Beanies would never wander too far away from appropriate respect for the very pinnacle of light infantry—Army Rangers.

Our team sergeant was not even an average Ranger, but rather a cut-above Ranger who had fallen on tough luck with physical injury during tryouts for Delta selection in West Virginia. Ironically, Sergeant First Class (SFC) Mark B.—who just went by “Buck”—was not even technically our team sergeant. Buck was just an SFC—team sergeants were master sergeants (MSG). We had MSGs on our team who came and went, but we always regarded Buck as our de facto senior sergeant. He was the voice of common sense and authority. Once the MSG of the team had finished spewing edicts, all eyes would shift to Buck for the earthly version of what had just been said. We ultimately would do what Buck told us to do.

Most of my time overseas in my years with the First Special Forces Group (Airborne) was spent in the cold-weather months in the Republic of Korea (ROK)—land of the little PX, land of rotting cabbage and burning tires in winter, land of Reebok tennis shoes and women with flat buttocks, land of endless rice fields and animal manure, land of one-eye buffalo and Kiamaster trucks. It was the land of Soju, Maekju, Bulgogi, Pibimpap, and the KATUSA.

The flights

Deployments to Korea were cheap. As long as we conducted a tactical airborne drop in-country, the Air Force would regard it as training for them and not charge the Army for the use of their aircraft. That meant a 16-hour non-stop flight with multiple in-flight refuels, and in-flight rigging for the jump. An hour or so prior to a tactical drop, an aircraft will drop to a very low altitude and fly a nap of earth (NOE) profile. That is, it will fly at a fixed low altitude above the contour of the ground in an attempt to avoid being ‘painted’ by enemy radar, so the aircraft is in a perpetual state of rising and falling.

Just prior to an in-flight parachute rigging under an NOE profile, paratroopers are required to consume monstrous amounts of Twinkies and vinegar. I’m just kidding, but for those of you who have never experienced the trauma of this event, let me paint the picture: Ambient temperature inside the aircraft climbs to around 98° F. No room to sit turns into no room to stand. Projectile vomiting seems to become some sort of morbid competition. No room to stand turns into no room to set down your barf bag.

Men stumble and stagger in place as parachutes and rucksacks are passed at treetop level over the stacks of (jump) sticks. No room to lay your barf bag down turns into no room to think or change your mind. The deck of the aircraft becomes moderately slick with the accumulation of sweat beads, spilled stomach linings, and water as men try to drink to stave off heat exhaustion. The temperature nudges up to around 105°. A slow death awaits the fool who suddenly realizes he has to pee. God spare the jumpmasters who have to inspect this load of paratroopers. Don’t bother declaring jump refusal; any of those would be sucked out of the belly of this beast when the green light illuminates.

Finally, you are doing that awkward quick-step waddle and falling head-first out the jump door. Once under canopy, the broad Nakdong Gang river becomes horrifyingly apparent. Water wing flotation devices were worn by us all due to the prominence of the expansive Nakdong Gang “water obstacle.” The distinct essence of an amalgam of feces and burning rubber wafts by. “My God, is that dinner cooking or a garage burning?” comes to mind. “Which rice paddy shall I land in?” comes as well.

We get a ride from this rice paddy to our forward operating base (FOB). At least it isn’t a forced ruck march with everything we own. FOBs were typically tent cities on the parade fields of Korean special forces (Tuk Su Bu Dae) compounds. The personnel activity associated with a tent city will immediately render the ground muddy. I don’t care if you are in the Gobi Desert, a tent city will produce a mud hole. The more affluent tent cities will have floors of wooden pallets in the tents, as well as along the walkways that connect the network of tents. It actually can become bearable in such a place.

On one rare occasion, the Korean special forces troops vacated their entire open-bay team room to allow us to stay indoors, while they subjected themselves to life in the tent city. That was a commander’s decision, not the enlisted men’s choice. As Green Berets, we understood the importance of establishing rapport. We would not be winning over any friends this way. We would have to affect the rapport thing some other way.

Playing catch with a football was one way. Have you ever seen a Korean person try to throw a football? It simply can’t be done. They would watch us, mesmerized as we sent the ol’ pigskin whizzing through the air, stable and spinning like a bullet. They tried and tried to throw it; we tried and tried to teach them. We would eventually use this technique to root out North Korean spies trying to infiltrate our lines: “OK, Mister…John Smith, is it? Take this football and hit me, I’m going long!”

The food of Korea

Our commander, being the skinflint that he was, recognized the frugality of these deployments, and furthermore the tranquility of sending us a few weeks early to Korea to live in tent cities and eat for free in the Korean military institutes of culinary grandeur. There was no cognitive separation between the three daily meals: It was rotten cabbage, rotten turnips, and rotten something else, washed down with “barley tea,” which was essentially tepid water with some dirt in it to give it that barley flavor.

“There sure isn’t an abundance of meat around here,” Buck observed one day.

“Yes, it will be great when HQ gets here and we can finally have MREs (military field rations),” another chimed in.

On one particular afternoon, walking back to the tent city from Bob’s Big Boy of Korea, our senior medic shouted to a couple of Korean soldiers cutting across the chow hall lawn, “Hey, stop walking across our dinner!” It paid to have a sense of humor. GBs are good at that.

The language of Korea

Green Berets are all required to be qualified in at least one foreign language by the Department of the Army’s Defense Language Institute in Monterey, California. I was qualified in six, none of which were Korean. In fact, none of the men on my team spoke Korean. Riddle me that, Joker! Still, I scrambled to pick up as much as I could.

My senior communications sergeant, Guy L., and I decided to go for a run to the back gate of the compound and back one evening. As we approached the gate, the two Korean guards exited the guard shack and stood at port arms facing us. “Here goes…,” I prepped. “An yong ha, shimnika?” I politely greeted.

“How do you dooo?” a guard replied. As we turned away and continued on our path, Guy pondered out loud, “I wonder if we sound as retarded to them trying to speaking Korean as they do to us trying to speaking English. How do you do…who the fuck even says that anymore?”

Another quip before I curtail: I was entering the compound one night with a brother GB. As we approached the Korean guard post, I fished my ID card from my breast pocket, ready to present, wondering why my bud was not doing the same. Within easy earshot, my bud gestured a lazy salute and proudly announced, “Cheap thrill,” and continued walking without pause. The guards chin-dipped to bid us entry. Out of earshot, I asked him, “What the hell was that? What was that all about…cheap thrill?”

He replied, “Oh, they know me. Cheap thrill is my badge number.”

“How so? What is your badge number?”

“Seventeen,” he replied.

I mentally counted up from zero to 17 in my head in Korean, and 17 is pronounced, “Sheep chill.”

And this, my friends, you cannot make up!

Geo sends.

The US Navy releases new SEAL selection and training video

In an apparent move to attract more candidates, the Navy has released a new recruiting video about the Navy SEAL selection and training process.

Many people don’t realize that shiny military career fields in special operations—such as SEALs, Green Berets, Rangers, Pararescuemen, and Marine Recon—serve as a great way to recruit quality people for the big Navy, Army, Air Force, or Marine Corps. The high attrition rates of selection and training programs for any special operations unit mean that most people who enter the military with the dream of becoming a hard-charging pipe-hitter end up failing and serving out their enlistment in a comparatively unremarkable military occupational specialty (MOS). Recruiters and their commands, of course, understand that SOF is a recruiting gem—as should any aspiring commando—and thus place added emphasis on them. Enter a Navy recruiting office, and chances are you’ll be greeted by a huge poster of a tough SEAL challenging you with his gaze rather than a poster of a mass communications specialist.

This video was released at a moment when the reputation of the Naval Special Warfare Command (NSWC) isn’t at its best. With the legal affairs of Chief Gallagher and numerous other incidents—such as the murder of Green Beret Sergeant Logan Melgar, in which two SEAL Team 6 operators were involved—fresh in mind, the Navy seems to wish to divert attention to the positive aspects of the SEAL community.

As the video states, Special Warfare Operators (SOs) are a collective group of Navy SEALs trained in everything from clandestine underwater operations to High Altitude Low Opening (HALO) or High Altitude High Opening (HAHO) free-fall parachuting.

The video goes over the equipment that SEALs might use downrange (it mentions only the very basic stuff, such as M4 rifles, Sig Sauer and Glock pistols, etc., without exploring the more high-speed options available to a SEAL operator once he’s in a SEAL platoon).

The video also covers some of the different environmental training that SEALs undergo. It specifically mentions the arctic warfare portion of SEAL training that takes place in Kodiak, Alaska. SEAL candidates are plunged into freezing-cold water for carefully calculated lengths of time (wind, water, air temperature, and the physical state of the candidates determine the duration of the forced ice bath).

A great point that the video makes is that foreknowledge about the selection process isn’t going to help an aspiring SEAL succeed. The fame of the SEAL teams, which has swelled to absurd levels since Operation Neptune Spear (the mission to kill Osama bin Laden), means their selection and training process has been studied and scrutinized relentlessly. Even before the Global War on Terror began there were documentaries about Basic Underwater Demolition/SEAL (BUD/S) training. As a result, candidates enter the pipeline better prepared than any of their predecessors. But it matters not if one knows when Hell Week is coming or how many log PT sessions per week he will be doing. It’s the mental stamina and grit that will make or break a candidate. It has always been and will always be.

This article was written by Stavros Atlamazoglou at NEWSREP

Feature image courtesy of WikiMedia Commons via the U.S. Navy