Operational Environment
Can you talk generally about a post-Afghanistan operational environment? How has/will that drawdown affect operations tempo (OPTEMPO)/personnel tempo (PERSTEMPO)?
Navy SEALs assigned to a West Coast-based SEAL Team debark a hostile vessel during training off the coast of San Diego, Calif. Naval Special Warfare Boat Team (SBT) 12 assisted in the operation by providing small boat insertion and extraction to and from the boarded vessel. U.S. Navy photo by Mass Communication Specialist 3rd Class Kristopher Kirsop
In February, the president announced that about 34,000 U.S. troops would be leaving Afghanistan by February 2014. At this point, we can expect some number of troops, some likely SOF, to remain through the end of 2014 when the combat mission is set to officially end. How many has yet to be decided, along with whether the U.S. will have an enduring presence there. Regardless, any drawdown of NSW forces in Afghanistan will simply mean that they will be available to deploy to other regions of the world.
NSW operates in 25-plus countries on any given day. We will continue conducting core activities, building alliances, and helping partner nations build capacity to advance security and stability in regions around the world.
There is plenty of work to do, so we won’t see a huge decrease in our OPTEMPO/PERSTEMPO. In 2012, we developed an individual PERSTEMPO tracking and threshold policy and were given approval to use the Navy’s Standard Integrated Personnel System to track and report our metrics. Having this tool at our disposal will provide us with the information to better manage and sustain our force for the long run.
With that post-Afghanistan environment, how critical is the non-SOF support (medical, aviation, logistics, etc.) to SEALs?
I am very appreciative of the support we receive from the Navy. Our success is due, in part, to the work of dedicated sailors, mission specialists skilled in explosive ordnance disposal, intelligence, communications, training, logistics, maintenance, medicine, and other combat support services. We could not do ALL that we do without them.
Does NSW have an adequate training infrastructure to support the future operational environment? If not, what elements would you like to see introduced to facilitate training?
We are in good shape right now, consistently graduating 200-300 SEAL enlisted, 70 SEAL officer candidates a year. Our numbers for SWCC [Special Warfare Combatant-craft Crewmen] (70 per year) are healthy, too. The schoolhouse leadership meets periodically with SEALs and SWCCs who are receiving the graduates and operators returning from advanced training to get feedback and to determine if anything needs to change. BUD/S [Basic Underwater Demolition/SEAL training] graduates are assimilating well with the teams; they seem to have the right characteristics for success and they remain teachable. One area we are focused on is in rebuilding our maritime capability – more specifically, our combat swimming capability. This year, we are running two new courses to train our combat swimmer instructors, who will then go back to the teams as resident experts.
Special warfare operators from a West Coast-based SEAL Team move through a simulated town during urban terrain training using Simunition® rounds. Simunition rounds are paint-tipped training rounds that allow military personnel to conduct safe, realistic live-fire training. U.S. Navy photo by Mass Communication Specialist 2nd Class Scott Raegen
In general, we have great support from Navy and USSOCOM regarding plans to develop the facilities and ranges required as a result of our significant growth in manning, mission expansion, and capability requirements in the last decade. We’ve outgrown many of the World War II-era buildings we occupy; they simply do not meet our current or future needs. That said, we are sensitive to the very real fiscal realities DoD [the Department of Defense] is facing, so our focus at the center and throughout the community is to find the right balance in the man, train, equip, and deploy equation. We’re also looking to be more effective and efficient where and whenever we can. For instance, we’re paying attention to the training-to-travel ratio for the instructor cadre in shore billets. Any training that can be done locally with the same effectiveness improves our efficiency and also helps ensure our personnel [are] getting that very important time at home with their families.
USSOCOM has focused much of its effort on building global SOF partners. Much of that work is done abroad, but one of the initiatives we’re looking at is how the NSW schoolhouse is in a great position to support our part in that larger process by training not only the forces of our allies, which we do now, but to expand that support by helping our partners to further develop their own instructor cadres with CONUS [continental United States]-based training. This “train the trainers” concept would ultimately build capacity to ensure a more ready international security force.