The Navy’s New Tack Aimed at Better Commando Training

Still recovering from a six-mile run down the beach and a 1 1/2-mile swim in the cold Pacific surf, the 33 crew-cut young men in Class 144 at the Naval Special Warfare Center lined up in the sand for the kind of exercise only the military could dream up--”log physical training.”

First, calisthenics: sit-ups, push-ups and bench presses, performed by teams of six or seven men weighed down by 200- and 300-pound logs.

Then it was time for a few races. The trainees were ordered to carry the logs down the beach and over a sand barrier to the ocean, drop them in the water, flop in the surf themselves and lug the logs back. They were commanded to lift the logs end over end for 100 yards, like Marines raising the flag at Iwo Jima, and haul them back between their legs.

Ninety minutes later, these candidates for the Navy’s elite Sea Air Land (SEAL) commando teams were drenched in sweat and seawater, caked in sand and panting from exhaustion.

‘We’ll Give You Pain’

“Listen up, ladies,” an instructor barked when one of the teams faltered. “If you don’t start working together, we’ll just keep doing these.”

“You like pain?” another asked. “We’ll give you pain.”

History shows that 60% of the candidates will tire of such abuse--which is minimal compared to the mental and physical torture of the Hell Week that would follow--and quit the program or drop out after a serious injury.

But the Navy, spurred by a Pentagon directive to turn out more commandos and conscious of the cost to taxpayers for each man who washes out of the 26-week course, is embarking on an unprecedented effort to lower its attrition rate by better preparing recruits and choosing them more wisely.

Four separate research projects are being conducted to determine the personality, diet and physical capabilities a man needs to survive a training program that the Navy calls the toughest of any offered to the free world’s fighting forces.

“We’re happy with the product we’re getting,” said a veteran SEAL instructor, who like all his colleagues declined to give his name for security reasons. “The only problem is that they say we need more people. We’re trying to squeeze that extra 2% to 3% more people out of here.”

“We’re trying to train smarter, not harder,” said Capt. Larry Bailey, commanding officer of the Naval Special Warfare Center. “The program is hard enough.”

Specialists have been brought in to develop tests that will help the Navy screen out potential failures because of either inadequate physical conditioning or personalities unsuited to the rigors of the program.

Another researcher is developing a conditioning program that may be sent out to candidates before they arrive at the Special Warfare Center to help them make the adjustment to the program’s level of activity less shocking. Still another is tinkering with the students’ diets to help them endure the course.

“You have to have a certain personality to be one of these guys, and if you don’t have that and you go into BUD/S (Basic Underwater Demolition/SEAL) training, you’ll find BUD/S training unpleasant and difficult and you’re probably going to leave,” said physiologist James Hodgdon of the Naval Health Research Center on Point Loma. “Now, if we can identify these people up front, you don’t have have to go through it, and the Navy doesn’t have to spend time and money training you,” he said.

In 1983, a Pentagon directive ordered an increase in the number of small, mobile teams of highly trained commandos that can be dispatched quickly for “unconventional warfare” in any part of the world.

Versatile Troops

The Navy’s special forces are the SEALs, a 44-year-old detachment currently numbering more than 1,000 men trained to destroy enemy shipping and harbor facilities, clear obstacles from beaches and shorelines, infiltrate guerrilla forces, gather intelligence and conduct counter-insurgency activities. Versatile troops, they are expert in deep-sea diving and demolition and are able paratroopers.

But the road to placement in a SEAL team is paved with the kind of obstacles that a demolitions expert cannot remove. While the underwater demolition course is admittedly a punishing trial of physical prowess, it is much more a test of discipline and spirit. The rugged, powerful sailors attracted by the SEAL mystique, men whom Bailey calls collectively “Rambo,” often fail.

“We get so many kids with 22-inch biceps . . .,” he said. “They can run all day, do pull-ups all day, and they come in to BUD/S and they quit the first week. It’s 2% physical and 98% attitudinal.

“Rambo doesn’t have the fire in the gut. You’ve got to have the fire in the gut or you’re lost.”

The BUD/S course begins with a series of physical trials during the two-week indoctrination and the seven-week first phase. Recruits quickly find themselves running 30 miles per week in jungle boots and “greens,” including to and from chow hall. They take long, chilling swims in San Diego Bay. In drown-proofing exercises, their arms and legs are tied and they are thrown into a pool to swim like dolphins to the other end.

With classes, practice dives and the other minutiae of military life added on, 12-hour days are not uncommon.

To graduate from the first phase, they must complete a two-mile ocean swim with fins in 95 minutes, a four-mile run in 32 minutes and numerous other physical tests.

In phases two and three, the distances will be longer and the times shorter. They will concentrate on swimming and diving techniques, ambush tactics, land navigation, small-unit tactics and

explosives techniques, among other skills. Upon graduation, they are sent to jump school at Ft. Benning, Ga., before a six-month probationary placement with a SEAL team.

But before the first phase draws to a close, they must survive week four, Hell Week.

For six harrowing days, BUD/S students run the beaches, crawl in the sand and flop in the mud, swim for miles unprotected in the surf, traverse the obstacle course, pilot small rubber boats and haul them over the rocks on Coronado’s shore--all on three to four hours’ sleep for the entire week.

“If they’re used to being cold, wet and miserable, they’ll be able to stand being in an ambush position for hours, maybe days, at a time,” one instructor said. “This is our way of getting them ready for that. If they can’t stand that, we don’t need them.”

“Hell Week is designed not necessarily to simulate combat, but the stress that kids goes through in combat,” Bailey said.

To quit BUD/S, a recruit must walk to the school’s main courtyard and ring the big brass bell that is tethered to a post there. It is a public display, one designed to make a student think one last time before quitting.

Departing Comrades

But during Hell Week, instructors carry the bell with them, making it available to anyone who loses his will. Many do, and some classes have adopted the tradition of stopping whatever they are doing to sing “Happy Trails” to a departing comrade.

Some veterans still recall Class 78, which vanished in the face of injuries and wash-outs. At the other extreme is Class 114, which lost no one during Hell Week. Class 144, seeking an edge during Hell Week earlier this month, stole and hid the bell in an effort to head off quitters.

“I don’t think you really know what you’re capable of until you face it in Hell Week,” said Joe Quinn, 22, a member of Class 142. “If the mind says go, the body won’t say no. . . . I’ve learned that my body is capable of a lot more than I ever imagined.”

“Nothing I’ve done here has been easy,” said 21-year-old Jeff Prechel, a member of Class 143. “It’s all a lot of hard work. It’s how much you want it.”

Motivation is important, but instructors are also looking for men who cooperate under pressure, who pull together despite crushing fatigue and unbearable conditions. Instructors are ready to drop a man who is not a team player.

“You may get so cold one night that you can’t crawl away because you’re so numb. Your buddy lies on top of you and gets you warm,” the instructor said. “You may get hypothermia in the water, and your only hope is your swim buddy. Nobody gets through training by himself. Nobody.”

For all the bravado, times are changing. Instructors, whose predecessors reveled in the number of students they could wash out, are taught to take a different approach today.

“Instructors used to take pride in pushing through classes with the biggest attrition rate,” Bailey said. “That was really stupid. We’re reaping the rewards of that philosophy, even now.”

Today, the approach is “positive: ‘You can do it, and we’re going to show you how to do it,’ ” Bailey said.

“Like (during) Hell Week, we’re not even using the word quit now,” Bailey said. “Whereas in the past, the students were invited on a minute-by-minute basis to quit--’here’s the bell, here’s the truck. We’ll take you back for a nice, warm shower.’ ”

Over the past 12 months, BUD/S has washed out 57% of its students, just about equal to its historical attrition rate of 60%, according to Bailey. While it is impossible to calculate the cost of each failure, the Defense Department says that the Navy spends $77,700 in training costs on each man who successfully completes the course.

With the Defense Department requesting a 60% increase in the number of SEALs and their support personnel, BUD/S must improve its graduation rate to 55% by 1990 to meet its goals, even though the yearly number of classes has been increased from five to eight this year, Bailey said. The exact number of SEALs is not released for security reasons.

Time for Recuperation

Injuries are a major part of the problem. Classes 136 to 143, which averaged 111 candidates per class, dropped an average of six men for medical reasons, and reassigned an average of 21.5 more to subsequent classes to allow them to recuperate from injuries.

Bailey knows that about two-thirds of these “medical rollbacks” will never make it through BUD/S; forcing a candidate to start the program again tends to sap his motivation, he said.

Dr. Stephen Giebner, a lieutenant commander who oversees the medical program at BUD/S, has grown accustomed to the tendinitis, ligament damage and stress fractures that ultimately send recruits to sick bay. He also treats hypothermia and exhaustion, and bodies chafed and swollen by the strain of Hell Week.

Giebner does not like to roll a man back more than two classes. Injuries that set a candidate back farther than that greatly decrease his chances of making it through, he said.

In addition to the actual injuries, Giebner sees men who have lost their desire to become SEALs, but cannot cope with the shame of quitting. To keep their records clean and ease the transition back to their former posts, some are listed as medical dropouts.

“We’ll send him out of here as a medical drop instead of a quit,” Giebner said. “It’s better for him, easier for us.”

An Elusive Quality

BUD/S leaders know that the stuff a SEAL is made of is still an elusive quality. “You see all kinds make it,” Giebner said, “(even) the skinny little guy who you think is going to freeze to death in this water.”

As “log physical training” drew to a close on a cold, gray afternoon, 32 of the 33 men who had begun the exercise remained. One faced a medical rollback because of a knee injury.

But no one rang the bell. If anything, the indignities dished out by the instructors seemed to pull them together. They had learned something about strength and teamwork.

“That’s what we’re trying to do, is develop that camaraderie before they get to Hell Week, because they need it,” the veteran instructor said. “The boat crews are starting to come together in the last few days, because they’ve started to see the dark at the beginning of the tunnel.”