The Perfect Soldier: Special Operations, Commandos, and the Future of Us Warfare by James F. Dunnigan
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Dirty Little Secrets
Secret SEAL Standards Revealed
by James Dunnigan
December 10, 2004
Discussion Board on this DLS topic
No one really noticed, but the pass rate of those in training to be U.S. Navy
SEAL commandos has gone way up. But the navy isn’t worried about the quality
slipping. One of the rarely discussed, or even mentioned, aspects of the SEAL
training was that the number passing in each class depended more on how many
SEALs the navy needed, than on the quality of the candidates. The final cut was
not made randomly. Increasingly difficult (like sitting in the cold California
surf at night until enough people passed out) tasks would be assigned to the
students until enough "failed" to leave the magic number of candidates the navy
had jobs for. One could say that this was simply a way to get the best of the
best, or grading on the curve. And many SEALs accepted it as a reasonable way to
select elite fighters. But the fact remains that many qualified trainees were
flunked. Now, everyone that qualifies, gets to be a SEAL. The navy is expanding
the SEAL force and needs all the qualified people it can get. It’s doubtful that
there will be any noticeable decline in the quality of SEAL commandos.
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