Asked about recruiting and retaining the highest quality personnel, Pybus pointed to “a bit of a sine wave on recruiting more than retention.”

“Retention is extremely strong and has been throughout the war years. Recruiting ebbs and flows with the population coming out of high school in terms of numbers and talent,” he said.

“As far as recruiting numbers, today guys are knocking down the door for the opportunity to go into BUD/S,” he added. “So we have a great opportunity to be selective, maintain our standards, and continue to seek high quality kids coming in ‘the front door’ that will graduate to become SEALs and Combatant-craft Crewmen. And our quality remains extremely high. For example, one third of the graduates of BUD/S and then SEAL Qualification Training have a college degree. So if you are a young officer, that presents a real leadership challenge – but in a very good way. You need to be squared away to lead men with similar levels of education – or in some cases higher levels of education. And with officers, we have some guys coming out of the Naval Academy or ROTC who go to Cambridge for a year before coming into the program. These young men are some of the finest in America. They are all smart and this is what they want to do. I don’t doubt for a minute that our quality is really, really high.”

He continued, “Even though retention is strong right now, you also want to make sure that you are recognizing the efforts of the force through special pay, as an example. These men are working hard. They risk their lives. And they do get some compensation for doing that. Also, the outside economy right now is a pretty tough environment. So, although we are keeping folks at a pretty high rate, we watch those rates pretty closely.

“Another very important thing we do is work very closely with the Navy to try to get those key enablers – like communicators and intel analysts – who make everything work,” he said. “Those numbers tend to be more in flux than our SEAL operator numbers. In fact, I actually have more concern with the numbers for some of the critical enablers than I do with the SEAL operators themselves.”

Expanding on the importance of those enablers, he observed, “They are the glue that holds the force together. They empower the force. For example, they do a lot of the ‘find and fix’ on enemy networks as well as the intelligence analysis – both near term and far term. So they are hugely important. But we get that talent from the U.S. Navy. Some of it ‘passes through’ the NSW community for three or four years and then onto a ship or next station. Some of it will stay in the community for a good period of time. And you have to make sure that peoples’ careers can continue by giving them every opportunity and compensating them properly.

“All of that said, I have a very close and, I think, very professional relationship with the Navy personnel leaders as well as with both the CNO [Chief of Naval Operations] and Vice CNO. They have made commitments to Naval Special Warfare that I deeply appreciate. So I am a big fan of the ‘Big Navy.’ They really support us. I just need to clearly articulate if I need things or what I am concerned about and they have always been responsive. So even though 90 to 95 percent of our resources – money and otherwise – comes through USSOCOM, what we get from the Navy is very important to me,” he said.

“I believe that the Navy will be ‘forward’ over the next 10 years and that we will also be ‘forward,’” he offered. “So it will be even more important to have both professional and personal relationships with the Navy leadership.”

Pybus added, “I think the past 10 years of conflict have actually contributed to bringing everyone together: One Team/One Fight. Quite frankly, we have done well, personally and as a force, deployed around the world, and I think that’s been recognized. And I also think the 50-year anniversary of the SEAL Teams means that we should now be viewed as a ‘mature community.’ We have a reputation of maturity and success and I want to make sure that we continue to live up to that reputation.”

Pybus also pointed to change in some aspects of the individual operator over the past several years, noting, “We have invested a lot in training and there is now very little time that is not spent either improving yourself personally, as part of a tactical element or in a joint headquarters. By contrast, in the ’80s and ’90s the workloads were much more erratic – sometimes you had work and sometimes you didn’t. But for a decade now it’s been very much a constant cycle, with lots of training and lots of experience, and you are left with high-quality folks and a high-quality force. And that force is really exponentially much more capable than it was 20 or 30 years ago.

“It is manned by the same kind of guy who is just as determined and just as well conditioned – the same type of relentless problem-solver who will get things done in unconventional ways. It is the same kind of guy who will do anything to win,” he said. “But he has just been exposed to so much more at every level.

“And I am amazed at how today’s younger force manages all of that technology so well,” he added. “They process it. They multitask. And again a key component of their success is those critical enablers I mentioned.

“To be successful in BUD/S, I think it is important that you take it one day at a time,” he said. “These guys come out of that initial training, learning and retaining all of these different weapon systems, communications, how to do planning, how to brief, how to work with an intel analyst to understand your challenges and to set the terms of engagement. I am very impressed at how they do it individually. And as a Team, it is incredibly powerful. I’m just always amazed at ‘how these guys roll’ – and win.”