The Navy SEALs

Commissioned In 1962, Forged Long Before

President Kennedy commissioned the first two SEAL Teams in January 1962, one on each coast, drawing directly from the Underwater Demolition Teams.

The concept was straightforward and demanding. Take men already expert in the water, then train them to operate on land and arrive by air. The result was a force that could reach almost anywhere and work in small numbers far from support.

In 1983 the surviving Underwater Demolition Teams were redesignated, folding the last of the frogman lineage directly into the SEAL and SEAL Delivery Vehicle Teams.

Selection Is the Point

Basic Underwater Demolition and SEAL training runs at the Naval Special Warfare Center in Coronado. It is deliberately brutal, not to break men but to find the ones who keep functioning after the point where willpower normally runs out.

• First Phase builds physical conditioning, water competency and teamwork, and includes the five and a half days known as Hell Week.
• Second Phase is combat diving, where candidates learn to work underwater with closed circuit systems in near total darkness.
• Third Phase covers land warfare, demolitions, weapons and small unit tactics.

Graduates continue to SEAL Qualification Training before they are awarded the Special Warfare insignia, the Trident, and report to an operational Team. Attrition across the pipeline is severe and always has been.

What This Means Later

A culture that measures a man by whether he can be relied on in the worst conditions does not prepare him for a civilian workplace that measures different things. Many operators leave with extraordinary capability and no clear way to describe it on paper.

That translation problem is one of the first things a Foundation mentor helps solve, along with the harder work of finding purpose that does not depend on a next deployment.