SAN DIEGO — The chief of the Navy SEALs — the elite particular operators who most famously led the raid that killed Osama bin Laden — says the items are pivoting away from being a counterterrorism power to supporting different parts of the Navy.
“For 20-plus years, I feel we have gotten used to being the supported effort,” Rear Adm. Keith Davids, the top of Naval Particular Warfare Command, instructed a crowd of attendees on the annual naval WEST 2024 convention.
“We nonetheless want character and competence; we nonetheless want downside solvers; we want folks that do not stop,” Davids mentioned. “We’d like them to not simply do level goal raids, we want that now to work in help of the fleet joint power.”
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A short survey of the latest bulletins of SEAL workouts and actions bears that out. Most of the workouts that the operators have carried out recently have targeted on ideas equivalent to maritime interdiction or search and seizure of different ships and have been carried out off of Navy platforms.
Davids mentioned that integration and cooperation is going on “to the diploma I’ve not seen in my 33-plus years of commissioned service.”
“I really feel like I am again within the Navy in a giant means,” he added.
Whereas Davids didn’t break the pattern of the sometimes secretive command and supply specifics on what that integration seems to be like, he did say that, broadly it might be one thing like figuring out targets for a ship missile strike or offering electromagnetic jamming in help of airstrikes.
The latest dying of two Navy SEALs a month in the past additionally provides extra perception into the sort of work the operators at the moment are engaged in.
The 2 SEALs who perished after falling into the water amid a boarding in heavy seas had been a part of a staff that was working off of the expeditionary cellular base USS Lewis B. Puller and looking out ships within the Crimson Sea in search of Iranian weapons.
The seizure wherein the pair of operators perished additionally led to the invention of Iranian-made missile parts, together with “propulsion, steering and warheads for Houthi medium-range ballistic missiles and anti-ship cruise missiles, in addition to air defense-associated parts,” an announcement from U.S. Central Command mentioned.
Davids additionally famous that the SEALs are “actually good at searching folks and terrorist networks,” and it “seems these methodologies truly apply … to techniques, not simply folks.”
The shift Davids describes — particularly the transfer from being the power that calls for help to 1 that gives it — is a seismic one for the neighborhood. Nevertheless, the two-star admiral instructed the gang that there are few complaints from contained in the groups.
“What I discovered is that if they see function, and also you’re a part of the high-performing staff, they’re all for it,” Davids mentioned, including that “retention is nice.”
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