Seal Team Six Quotes

When the Navy sends their elite, they send the SEALs. When the SEALs send their elite, they send SEAL Team Six.

Thinking too much about what happened and what is about to happen will wear you down. Live in the moment and take it one step at a time.

He was Instructor Reno Alberto, a five-foot-six man-mountain of fitness, discipline, and intelligence. He was ruthless, cruel, unrelenting taskmaster.

What developed in Somalia was things such as hunger and fighting.

Modest, conventional expectations weren't enough to lure Adam Brown away from the power of drug addiction that ensnared him. Instead, the college dropout already in his mid-twenties found only the big, near-impossible dream of being a Navy SEAL captivating enough to consistently draw him to different choices.

There’s a common misunderstanding that SEALs are all huge guys in top physical condition. That last part is generally true—every SEAL in the Teams is in excellent shape. But SEALs come in all sizes. I was in the area of six foot two and 175 pounds; others who would serve with me ranged from five foot seven on up to six foot six. The thing we all had in common wasn’t muscle; it was the will to do whatever it takes.

Oz had been reading No Easy Day, a memoir by a former SEAL Team Six member about the raid to kill Osama bin Laden.

And when you're not partying in Vegas, what do you do?" she asked. "Prepare for your role as the next James Bond?" "No, I don't work alone." She cocked her head as if trying to make sense of his words. "I'm a SEAL in Uncle Sam's Navy. When I'm working, I have a team of guys who could kick James Bond's ass watching my back, covering my six at all times.

And he always stood up for the underdog--never realizing that because of his size he was one himself.

Haz lo correcto aunque signifique morir como un perro cuando no hay nadie ahí para verte morir.   Vicealmirante JAMES STOCKDALE piloto de la Marina

Boat Crew Six had become comfortable with substandard performance. Working under poor leadership and an unending cycle of blame, the team constantly failed. No one took ownership, assumed responsibility, or adopted a winning attitude.

Alex was a historian by education, a translator of centuries-old scripts by training, and a savant when it came to inane trivia, which she tended to offer up without encouragement and much to the annoyance of everyone around her. Three months ago, Bran, LT, Mason, and the other three guys from their SEAL Team - now the owners of the Deep Six Salvage Company - had hired her to translate the historical documents housed in the Spanish Archives that pertained to the hurricane of 1624. They'd hoped she could give them a leg up on their hunt for the Santa Cristina.

Each SEAL even wore desert camouflage matched to the local background. But these were the men you don't see coming. If they properly executed their careful plan there would be no need to hide. By the time daylight arrived they would have attacked unseen and disappeared in the same fashion.

Each one of that small percentage who makes it through six months of well-intended but malicious torture emerges as a true human predator. If removing you from this world becomes his mission, your only hope of escaping a DEVGRU SEAL is to find a hiding place that isn’t on land, on the sea, or in the air.

...[A]s you read opinions and history in school about 2004... I want you to know... that going to this war was right. No matter what you hear 20 years from now by elite media and historians, things get distorted... Just like Vietnam, I fear OIF (Operation Iraqi Freedom) will be abused in the same way. Just as you hear more about American soldiers in Vietnam raping women and children and shooting unarmed men, today the media is focused about this detainee debacle for two weeks solid, in contrast to American Soldiers being dragged in the streets and dismembered, which was covered for less than 72 hours. I am part of the Special Operations Forces elite... We are harder than anyone at these detention centers and let me tell you, we treat these guys with the utmost professionalism. We do not hit them, we don't humiliate them or cause them any bodily harm for the purpose of entertainment. As a Christian, one assumes great compassion... This is WAR and treated very seriously. People are being killed and it is our job to get information... The humanity in me wants me to warm them, tell them their family is okay, feed them, and even embrace them in a loving way... Most, even in my stature, feel the same way. This is the American Soldier.

During mission planning, we had intelligence concerning dogs that might impede our goal and were part of the target’s contingencies. The exact method used to neutralize aggressive dogs in the field is classified information. However, Special Ops has some really incredible dogs. In fact, during the raid to kill Osama bin Laden, the highly trained men of SEAL Team Six had with them a uniquely trained dog as part of the mission. SEAL canines are not your standard bomb-sniffing dogs. The dog on the bin Laden mission was specially trained to jump from planes and rappel from helicopters while attached to its handler. The dog wore ballistic body armor, had a head-mounted infrared (night-vision) camera, and wore earpieces to take commands from the handler. The dog also had reinforced teeth, capped with titanium. I would not want to try the techniques this book recommends on this dog. Thank God he’s on our side.

During the same hours of 1993 when the chopper crews in Somalia were slowly being overpowered and gunned down, there were twenty-four young boys back in the United States who would grow up to be future players in that African struggle. They had no way to know anything yet about the unique fighting group every one of them would eventually strive with all his determination to join. They also couldn’t know, though they would one day find out in person, that this particular battle corps is so elite, the candidate must first be a Navy SEAL just to attempt to get through the training - and even then, three out of four of those superb warrior-athletes fail to qualify. The group has had numerous military names during its long rise from the murky history of the early “frogmen” swimmers, to the black operations of the Underwater Demolition Teams whose only calling card was to render their targets dead, to the latest appellation as the U.S. Naval Special Warfare Development Group - or DEVGRU, for those who prefer names ugly and short. But the group is better known to the general public as the near-mythical warriors of “SEAL Team Six.” Their complex training supports a brilliantly simple task: to be the very last thing their opponents see, if they are ever seen at all.

The whole world knew about the piracy case of the tanker Maersk Alabama, which three Navy SEAL sharpshooters saved the imprisoned ship captain. Those SEALs spent a full day lying in wait with their weapons trained on the pirate boat, waiting for the kill command. When the order came down, they instantly fired their sniper rifles, with their own vessel bobbing at a different rate from the pirates’ boat, having no room for error if the captive was to survive. The snipers took out all three pirates in a single shot while sparing the kidnapped victim. Captain Richard Phillips was freed unharmed from the close quarters of that little boat, while the dead bodies of the three armed pirates slumped around him. Details of DEVGRU training are not available to explain this feat of timing and marksmanship, but the results testify to its deadly effect. SEAL Team Six founder Richard Marcinko has said that his budget for ammunition for his men’s training was greater than that of the entire Marin Corps. The comment might be dismissed as braggadocio if not for undeniable results produced under intense and deadly pressure. Consequently, by the time Jessica Buchanan was being marched into a pitched-black desert to her own mock execution two years later, the same people at the White House who took note of her disappearance had reason to wonder if it might be time for another visit to the region from the men you don’t see coming.

Before Chris passed away, I’d volunteered to coach Angel’s soccer team in our local recreational league. It was a commitment I vowed to keep. I was determined to show those little girls how to succeed on the soccer “pitch,” as the field is sometimes called. I may have gone a little overboard. I mean, how many six-year-old girls have the misfortune of being coached by the wife of a SEAL? Day One: “We start by running!” I shouted enthusiastically. “Everyone run around the park. Let’s go.” “The soccer field, Mrs. Kyle?” asked a player. “No! The entire complex. Come on!” I’m guessing it was maybe five or six times as far as they’d ever run before--or maybe ten or twenty--and a good deal farther than many teams with considerably older players ran. But the girls were good sports about it. We built endurance and worked on drills, and we had fun--you never knew when the coach might grab one the of the players and twirl her around enthusiastically for doing a good job. “I’m taking goal,” I’d say when shooting practice wasn’t going well. “Anyone who can hurt me gets an extra piece of candy!” I gave out a lot of candy that afternoon. We were a young team and a little rough at first, but we got better as we went. It was fun to watch the transition many of the girls made over the length of the season--they not only got in better shape and learned to play soccer better, but they seemed more confident as well. I will guarantee one thing: they slept pretty well the nights after practice.

Matt Espenshade confirmed that in spite of the deaths of so many of the kidnappers, many more are still at large, including their leaders. Those men might hope to be forgotten; they are not. The FBI has continued its investigative interest in those involved with the kidnapping. The leaders, especially, are of prime interest to the Bureau. And now the considerable unseen assets in that region are steadily feeding back information on these targeted individuals to learn their operational methods and their locations and hunt them down. The surviving kidnappers and their colleagues are welcome to sneer at the danger. It may help them pass the time, just as it did for Bin Laden’s henchmen to chuckle at the idea of payback. If the men nobody sees coming are dispatched to capture or kill them, the surviving kidnappers will find themselves dealing with a force of air, sea, and land fighters s obsessed with the work they do that they have trained themselves into the physical and mental toughness of world-class athletes. They will carry the latest in weapons, armor, visual systems, and communication devises. Whether they are Navy SEAL fighters, DEVGRU warriors, Army Delta Force soldiers, Green Berets, or any of the elite soldiers under United States Special Operations Command (SOCOM), they will share the elite warriors’ determination to achieve success in their mission assignment. The news that they are coming for you is the worst you could receive. But nobody gets advance warning from these men. They consider themselves born for this. They have fought like panthers to be part of their team. For most of them, there is a strong sense of pride in succeeding at missions nobody else can get done; in lethal challenges. They actually prefer levels of difficulty so high it seems only a sucker would seek them, the sorts of situations seen more and more often these days. Impossible odds.

By the time Jessica Buchanan was kidnapped in Somalia on October 25, 2011, the twenty-four boys back in America who had been so young during the 1993 attack on the downed American aid support choppers in Mogadishu had since grown to manhood. Now they were between the ages of twenty-three and thirty-five, and each one had become determined to qualify for the elite U.S. Navy unit called DEVGRU. After enlisting in the U.S. Navy and undergoing their essential basic training, every one of them endured the challenges of BUDS (Basic Underwater Demolition/SEAL) training, where the happy goal is to become “drownproofed” via what amounts to repeated semidrowning, while also learning dozens of ways to deliver explosive death and demolition. This was only the starting point. Once qualification was over and the candidates were sworn in, three-fourths of the qualified Navy SEALS who tried to also qualify for DEVGRU dropped out. Those super-warriors were overcome by the challenges, regardless of their peak physical condition and being in the prime of their lives. This happened because of the intensity of the training. Long study and practice went into developing a program specifically designed to seek out and expose any individual’s weakest points. If the same ordeals were imposed on captured terrorists who were known to be guilty of killing innocent civilians, the officers in charge would get thrown in the brig. Still, no matter how many Herculean physical challenges are presented to a DEVGRU candidate, the brutal training is primarily mental. It reveals each soldier’s principal foe to be himself. His mortal fears and deepest survival instinct emerge time after time as the essential demons he must overcome. Each DEVGRU member must reach beyond mere proficiency at dealing death. He must become two fighters combined: one who is trained to a state of robotic muscle memory in specific dark skills, and a second who is fluidly adaptive, using an array of standard SEAL tactics. Only when he can live and work from within this state of mind will he be trusted to pursue black operations in every form of hostile environment. Therefore the minority candidate who passes into DEVGRU becomes a member of the “Tier One” Special Mission Unit. He will be assigned to reconnaissance or assault, but his greatest specialty will always be to remain lethal in spite of rapidly changing conditions. From the day he is accepted into that elite tribe, he embodies what is delicately called “preemptive and proactive counterterrorist operations.” Or as it might be more bluntly described: Hunt them down and kill them wherever they are - and is possible, blow up something. Each one of that small percentage who makes it through six months of well-intended but malicious torture emerges as a true human predator. If removing you from this world becomes his mission, your only hope of escaping a DEVGRU SEAL is to find a hiding place that isn’t on land, on the sea, or in the air.

For the first time, I noticed the work being performed by the rest of the team. No conversation, every face serious. A woman removed wrapping from a tray. At some point, I noticed a sealed bag with a needle in it. By my guess, it was six inches long. Then I saw another device that looked like a giant corkscrew, only straight. “Mom?” I said. She was nearby, behind all the staff dashing about. I assumed she had been asking plenty of questions herself that I hadn’t heard. “Yes, Kurt.” “I want you to leave before they do this.

In love with a former sniper, Seal Team Six member who looks as deadly as he is and was aptly named when they called him Raze Shadow.

Axe was a quiet man, six foot four, with piercing blue eyes and curly hair. He was smart and the best Trivial Pursuit player I ever saw. I loved talking to him because of how much he knew. He would come out with answers that would have defied the learning of a Harvard professor.

if there really is no way you can win, you never say it out loud. You assess why, change strategy, adjust tactics, and keep fighting and pushing till either you’ve gotten a better outcome or you’ve died. Either way, you never quit when your country needs you to succeed. As Team 5 was shutting down the workup and loading up its gear, our task unit’s leadership flew to Ramadi to do what we call a predeployment site survey. Lieutenant Commander Thomas went, and so did both of our platoon officers in charge. It was quite an adventure. They were shot at every day. They were hit by IEDs. When they came home, Lieutenant Commander Thomas got us together in the briefing room and laid out the details. The general reaction from the team was, “Get ready, kids. This is gonna be one hell of a ride.” I remember sitting around the team room talking about it. Morgan had a big smile on his face. Elliott Miller, too, all 240 pounds of him, looked happy. Even Mr. Fantastic seemed at peace and relaxed, in that sober, senior chief way. We turned over in our minds the hard realities of the city. Only a couple weeks from now we would be calling Ramadi home. For six or seven months we’d be living in a hornet’s nest, picking up where Team 3 had left off. It was time for us to roll. In late September, Al Qaeda’s barbaric way of dealing with the local population was stirring some of Iraq’s Sunni tribal leaders to come over to our side. (Stuff like punishing cigarette smokers by cutting off their fingers—can you blame locals for wanting those crazies gone?) Standing up for their own people posed a serious risk, but it was easier to justify when you had five thousand American military personnel backing you up. That’ll boost your courage, for sure. We were putting that vise grip on that city, infiltrating it, and setting up shop, block by block, house by house, inch by inch. On September 29, a Team 3 platoon set out on foot from a combat outpost named Eagle’s Nest on the final operation of their six-month deployment. Located in the dangerous Ma’laab district, it wasn’t much more than a perimeter of concrete walls and concertina wire bundling up a block of residential homes. COP Eagle’s

When a dog gets within a few feet, before he tries to bite, I'll give him a little poke on the nose, just to see how he reacts. Mike Reaver said. It's not hard, doesn't hurt him. but it does put him back on his feet a little bit. That's what we want. We want to see how he responds to that aggression. If he dives right in and bites, that's awesome. If he stands six inches away from my legs, barking, waiting for me to open up or give him a window of opportunity, that's okay too. but if he backs up twenty feet, that's a problem. That means he's not comfortable with this level of aggression. The poke test may not be a perfect gauge of a dog's spirit, but it can be an effective way to measure a dog's fighting instinct.

The SEAL Teams and the U.S. military, much like militaries throughout history, are based around building blocks of four-to-six-man teams with a leader.

When he’d married her years ago she’d known being with the Teams took most of his focus. Missions had taken him away for months at a time. He’d been deployed to Iraq four times and Afghanistan twice, each time for six months or more. Then there were too many individual ops to even count. Though the deployments were hard Cat took care of everything like she’d been doing it all along. And she had, actually. She was literally a single parent. He hadn’t been at Dillon’s birth or Tate’s. Christmases had passed with barely a glance. If she hadn’t have sent him a box of treats every holiday he wouldn’t even have noticed them. But even when he’d been physically home, mentally he hadn’t. In his mind he’d always been preparing for the next op. He was on the range with his rifle every day, rain or shine. Training in the gym every day. Keeping that fine combat ready edge took a lot of grueling work. The only thing he’d been able to do well for his family was leave. And provide for them monetarily. “You

God, I don’t understand this, but I choose to trust you.

Because there were only six SEAL platoons that had received counterterrorism training and because he wanted to fool the Soviets into thinking there were more SEAL teams than there really were, Marcinko named his new command SEAL Team 6. Marcinko

Black Ops also by Steve Stone

range viewer mounted near our ship’s console. Jafar steered for Lucas. After a few more minutes, Lucas signed off and turned to us. “We have a carrier strike group nearby, guys. Denny says they launched two 60H Seahawk helicopters with Seal Teams aboard. We get to clear the Mother Ship’s deck for safe boarding of the Seal teams. I’ll circle the wagons and you guys go rain some death down on the Mother Ship deck until ain’t nothin’ livin’ there. Then we hold shadow position until the Seahawks get here, maintaining a safe landing zone.” Casey and I just smile at each other. Oh yeah! And it’s my turn on the XM307. We jog back into position with Casey manning our Browning fifty while I slipped behind the XM307. We started taking small arms fire from the pirate ship as Lucas passed them to the port side before giving us a clear field of fire. Casey tilted and fired short bursts with tracers. Soon, anything stupid enough to get near the railing was cut in half. I fired 25mm bursts stem to stern. Airburst shells exploded all along the pirate deck, blowing out the view windows on their bridge, and leaving no inch of the vessel untouched above deck. Lucas sped up, passed the pirate bow and angled out on the starboard side. We repeated our dual assault although there really wasn’t anyone alive anyway. Twenty minutes later, we heard the Seahawk helicopters approaching. I fired one more burst as Lucas passed once again on the port side. With the helicopters in sight, Lucas headed for the open sea. Shortly after Casey and I closed up shop, Jafar came to summon us to the bridge. Denny was on speaker. “We’re all here, Captain Blood,” Lucas told him. “The Seals found twenty-six mangled pirates above deck and took no fire from the vessel. Below decks, fourteen more pirates were taken prisoner and eleven of the original ship’s crew rescued. No one spotted you guys so steam for our next baiting area. Once things get wrapped up with the rescued ship the carrier group will get orders to take up a support position within striking distance in case we get this lucky again. Great job! Man, we fucked them up today!” We did our ‘pirate talk’ for a few minutes, including Jafar. Denny cracked up. Who says pirate warfare and cold blooded murder can’t be fun. I had to ask though. “What was the cover story for no live pirates on deck to the carrier group?” “Don’t ask, don’t tell,” Denny adlibbed for our amusement. “The Seals didn’t mind. The official news coverage will be a pirate falling out. The mysterious crater where the pirate den used to be near Mogadishu will be rumored a munitions accident. Those

Wind flags can be used to estimate wind speed by their angle. If a flag is at an 80-degree angle, that number is divided by the constant 4—to get 20 miles per hour. Likewise, if the flag only waves at a 40-degree angle, 40 divided by 4 equals 10 miles per hour. If no flag is available, the sniper can use his observation skills. A wind that is barely felt but causes smoke to drift is less than 3 miles per hour. Light winds are 3 to 5 miles per hour. Wind that constantly blows leaves around is 5 to 8 miles per hour. Dust and trash are blown at 8 to 12 miles per hour. Trees sway at 12 to 15 miles per hour. A

You can accomplish amazing feats of bravery and travel to the farthest reaches of the earth, but you can’t escape yourself.

Some people had determination. Some didn’t. Crocker thought of it as the vital ingredient that lifted an individual above others. Made achievers. Created heroes. He rated it ahead of intelligence and physical ability.

Sweetheart, I just want you to be happy. You decide what you want to do, I’ll support you one hundred percent. I love you more than life itself. You’re a wonderful girl.

Only a fool forgets to live in awe of nature.

The basic difference between an ordinary man and a warrior is that a warrior takes everything as a challenge, while an ordinary man takes everything either as a blessing or as a curse. —Carlos Castaneda

When white men find this land, Indians were running it. No taxes, no debt, plenty buffalo, plenty beaver, clean water, women did all the work, medicine man free. Indian man spend all day hunting and fishing, all night having sex.’ “Then the chief leaned back and smiled. He said: ‘Only white man dumb enough to think he could improve a system like that.

Yeah, daughters are wonderful, but they’re challenging.

you do have to admit SEAL Team Six has the better name. Infinitely more bad ass, right? Green Beret? Really? I get that your little hats are the distinguishing part of your uniform. But did they really have to name the entire unit after them? I mean, was the name Pink Unicorns already taken?” he finished, bursting into laughter at his own joke.

The SEALs represented an inherent contradiction. For all their specialized training and elite capabilities, many struggled with foundational, almost rudimentary, ethical actions: to not steal, to obey authority, to tell the truth. They were ill-equipped to confront failures and the accountability that came with them.

The SEALs represented an inherent contradiction. For all their specialized training and elite capabilities, many struggled with foundational, almost rudimentary, ethical actions: to not steal, to obey authority, to tell the truth. They were ill-equipped to confront failures and the accountability that came with them.

In 2007, for example, a Gold Squadron sniper was pushed out of the unit after he killed three unarmed people—including a child—in at least two different operations. He was, nonetheless, allowed to return to the regular SEAL Teams.

Anti-Network Effects Hit the Google+ Launch A charismatic executive from one of the most powerful technology companies in the world introduces a new product at a conference. This time, it’s June 2011 at the Web 2.0 Summit, where Google vice president Vic Gundotra describes the future of social networking and launches Google+. This was Google’s ambitious strategy to counteract Facebook, which was nearing their IPO. To give their new networked product a leg up, as many companies do, it led with aggressive upsells from their core product. The Google.com homepage linked to Google+, and they also integrated it widely within YouTube, Photos, and the rest of the product ecosystem. This generated huge initial numbers—within months, the company announced it had signed up more than 90 million users. While this might superficially look like a large user base, it actually consisted of many weak networks that weren’t engaged, because most new users showed up and tried out the product as they read about it in the press, rather than hearing from their friends. The high churn in the product was covered up by the incredible fire hose of traffic that the rest of Google’s network generated. Even though it wasn’t working, the numbers kept going up. When unengaged users interact with a networked product that hasn’t yet gelled into a stable, atomic network, then they don’t end up pulling other users into the product. In a Wall Street Journal article by Amir Efrati, Google+ was described as a ghost town even while the executives touted large top-line numbers: To hear Google Inc. Chief Executive Larry Page tell it, Google+ has become a robust competitor in the social networking space, with 90 million users registering since its June launch. But those numbers mask what’s really going on at Google+. It turns out Google+ is a virtual ghost town compared with the site of rival Facebook Inc., which is preparing for a massive initial public offering. New data from research firm comScore Inc. shows that Google+ users are signing up—but then not doing much there. Visitors using personal computers spent an average of about three minutes a month on Google+ between September and January, versus six to seven hours on Facebook each month over the same period, according to comScore, which didn’t have data on mobile usage.86 The fate of Google+ was sealed in their go-to-market strategy. By launching big rather than focusing on small, atomic networks that could grow on their own, the teams fell victim to big vanity metrics. At its peak, Google+ claimed to have 300 million active users—by the top-line metrics, it was on its way to success. But network effects rely on the quality of the growth and not just its quantity

During their brief history the newly formed Special Operations Forces had already achieved a notable record, but they had yet to tackle a major rescue of the magnitude of the Lady Flamborough hijacking. The orphan child of the Pentagon, the Special Operations Forces were not molded into a single command until the fall of 1989. At that time the Army's Delta Force, whose fighters were drawn from the elite Ranger and Green Beret units and a secret aviation unit known as Task Force 160, merged with the top-of-the-line Navy SEAL Team Six and the Air Force's Special Operations Wing. The unified forces cut across service rivalries and boundaries and became a separate command, numbering twelve thousand men, headquartered at a tightly restricted base in southeast Virginia. The crack fighters were heavily trained in guerrilla tactics, parachuting, wilderness survival and scuba diving, with special emphasis on storming buildings, ships and aircraft for rescue missions.

Human beings are generally not capable of managing more than six to ten people, particularly when things go sideways and inevitable contingencies arise. No one senior leader can be expected to manage dozens of individuals, much less hundreds. Teams must be broken down into manageable elements of four to five operators, with a clearly designated leader. Those leaders must understand the overall mission, and the ultimate goal of that mission—the Commander’s Intent.

For those of you who may not understand the enemy we face out here let me remind you that the previous week this group of terrorists took two innocent and unwitting women who had Downs Syndrome, rigged them with explosive vest and detonated them 20 minutes apart in a crowded market causing several deaths and hundreds of injuries... For any of you out there who doubt the validity of this war and the evil that resides in our enemy I ask you to study your history again. Over the last 20+ years dating back to the bombing of the Marine Corps Barracks in Lebanon, various factions of radical Islamic Terrorists have been committing heinous acts of terrorism against the free world. We are fighting the same enemy here... While the American media strives daily to erase the memory of the terrorist attacks of September 11, 2001, and paint this war as an unjust occupation of a sovereign nation, men... are out here hunting down and destroying the enemies of the very freedom that allows our media to try and discredit us. Terrorism is real, evil is real, this war is real and real men and women are in this fight because righteousness and freedom are worth fighting for... Sincerely, The Angry American

From everything I've read, seeing these kids, including girls, playing, tells me we are doing right here. I have not seen a single sour face from any of the locals, and I don't see fear in their eyes. I'm sure I will learn more over time. They are poor; y'all cannot believe what little they have,... but we have restored their dignity and their lives... the Taliban had taken that away. (Read Marri's letter in book "Sewing Circles of Herat".) Kids, I am proud to be here doing what we are doing. - Adam Brown

Human beings are generally not capable of managing more than six to ten people, particularly when things go sideways and inevitable contingencies arise. No one senior leader can be expected to manage dozens of individuals, much less hundreds. Teams must be broken down into manageable elements of four to five operators, with a clearly designated leader. Those leaders must understand the overall mission, and the ultimate goal of that mission—the Commander’s Intent. Junior leaders must be empowered to make decisions on key tasks necessary to accomplish that mission in the most effective and efficient manner possible. Teams within teams are organized for maximum effectiveness for a particular mission, with leaders who have clearly delineated responsibilities. Every tactical-level team leader must understand not just what to do but why they are doing it. If frontline leaders do not understand why, they must ask their boss to clarify the why.

Now, SEALs are known to run to the sound of the guns. But running to the sound of guns is much easier when a SEAL is surrounded by other SEALs; when we know the man covering our “six” (or backside) is someone who has been through the same training, has the same gear, and speaks the same language—someone we trust. For a SEAL to put his life in the hands of someone he doesn’t know—a person he has barely worked with, who is not well trained, undisciplined, speaks a different language, and whose trustworthiness is doubtful—is asking a hell of a lot. In the SEAL Teams, the bond of our brotherhood is our strongest weapon. If you take that away from us, we lose our most important quality as a team.

Chad approached and sat in the offered leather chair across from the couch. “Good times?” he asked, using the SEAL expression that meant the times had been difficult or interesting, not necessarily good.

Man,’ Dave said, ‘I don’t understand how you can do what we do and be religious.’ ‘One, I’m spiritual, not religious,’ Adam replied. ‘And two, I can’t believe you can do what we do and not be.