This release from Navy News proves the SEAL “only easy day was yes­ter­day” motto applies to train­ing envi­ron­ments too.

Here’s part of the release:

SAN DIEGO — A San Diego-​​based Navy SEAL died Jan. 30 from gun­shot wounds suf­fered dur­ing a live-​​fire close quar­ters com­bat train­ing exer­cise at a train­ing facil­ity near the city of Lake Cormorant, Miss.

The inci­dent occurred at approx­i­mately 2 p.m. CST and is cur­rently under investigation.

The SEAL, whose name is being with­held pend­ing noti­fi­ca­tion of next of kin, was a Special Warfare Operator assigned to a San Diego-​​based SEAL Team.

“This is a ter­ri­ble loss for the Naval Special Warfare com­mu­nity and his fam­ily,” said Capt. Thomas L. Brown, com­mand­ing offi­cer, Naval Special Warfare Group 1.

“I extend my deep­est con­do­lences and heart­felt sym­pa­thy to his fam­ily and friends.”

– Ward

Spec ops guys love their toys, and SEALs espe­cially love the idea of a new, smoother-​​riding boat. Here’s some of the gouge cur­rently run­ning at Military​.com:

Navy SEALs are tough by nature, but they take a beat­ing from their patrol boats: bruises, bumps and sore backs, even sprained ankles and chipped teeth.

An all-​​composite ver­sion of the alu­minum Mark V patrol boat con­structed by lux­ury boat builder Hodgdon Yachts Inc. is aimed at reduc­ing the wear and tear on boat oper­a­tors and SEALs by absorb­ing the impact as the ves­sel crashes through the waves at 50-​​plus knots.

The goal is to deliver up to 16 combat-​​ready Navy SEALS in shape to carry out their mis­sions and to reduce the boat oper­a­tors’ neck, back and joint injuries.

“The idea is to build a boat out of the best carbon-​​Kevlar com­pos­ite that we can build to reduce those slam­ming forces,” said David Packhem Jr., pres­i­dent and chief exec­u­tive offi­cer of Maine Marine Manufacturing LLC, a mil­i­tary spin­off of Hodgdon Yachts.

Read the whole arti­cle here.
– Ward

I caught a seg­ment dur­ing this morning’s “Today Show” that doc­u­mented this jump and was blown away by the flight path con­trol these jumpers have. The bald jumper went on to say that he’s shoot­ing for a “no para­chute” capa­bil­ity with wing suits. Now, as any stu­dent pilot knows, a flared land­ing takes some prac­tice, so you can imag­ine how tricky arrest­ing a gigan­tic rate of descent with a wing suit would be — not to men­tion, unlike pow­ered flight, if you mis­man­age your energy, you are totally hosed.

But if dare­dev­ils can stan­dard­ize the move, the impli­ca­tions for spe­cial oper­a­tions are tremen­dous. HALO is sneaky, but it still has a finite vul win­dow. If you never slow down until the end of your land­ing skid (not roll­out), your vul win­dow is basi­cally nil.

Here’s a quick look at these dudes play­ing chicken with Christ. Check it out …

– Ward

America’s under­wa­ter spe­cial forces ops might not like it at first, but this dol­phin­like device, PowerSwim, will let them reach tar­gets fast — and with­out hav­ing to catch their breath. The device is com­pat­i­ble with stan­dard scuba gear, as well as the front-​​mounted rebreathers (artist sketch, above) used by spe­cial oper­a­tions per­son­nel to avoid tell­tale bub­ble trails.

Humans are ter­ri­ble swim­mers, con­vert­ing roughly 3 per­cent of their kicks, strokes and gen­eral under­wa­ter exer­tions into for­ward motion. We can boost our effi­ciency to 10 per­cent by adding fins, but dol­phins, by com­par­i­son, can turn 80 per­cent of their energy into thrust. Not to be out­done, the Pentagon’s research wing, DARPA, is devel­op­ing a con­trap­tion that lets Navy SEALs and other com­bat divers swim faster, and with less effort.

Instead of kick­ing, PowerSwim calls for a kind of undu­la­tion as its hinged foils pivot up and down. Similar to the way a dol­phin or tor­toise pumps its fins, this motion gen­er­ates both lift and thrust. And while arti­fi­cial fins oper­ate within the swimmer’s own wake (they form a kind of expand­ing cone, start­ing at a swimmer’s shoul­ders), the PowerSwim’s lead foil — or propul­sor foil — sweeps through the water just out­side that wake.

See how the PowerSwim works at Military​.com.

– Christian

While the first Marine Osprey squadron floats its way to the Persian Gulf for a deploy­ment to Iraq, Air Force Special Ops pilots are in the mid­dle of a test, eval­u­a­tion and train­ing period to get their own CV-​​22s into the fight. 

With all the pre­vi­ous dis­as­ters in the pro­gram, it’s good to see the plane finally seems to be some­what out of the woods. I know a clutch of defense reporters who have their pen­cils sharp­ened for the day an Osprey crashes in Iraq — that “see, we told you so” theme run­ning through the story won’t be hard to miss. 

But after fly­ing in it myself — and fly­ing in a lot of dif­fer­ent heli­copters as well — let’s just say it’s good to see a bit of “nor­malcy” descend­ing on a pro­gram that is going to take ver­ti­cal take-​​off and land­ing flight tac­tics to a whole new level. 

Military​.com reported today…

“There are a cou­ple of routes out there,” said Lt. Col. Todd Lovell, com­man­der of the 71st Special Operations Squadron at Kirtland Air Force Base. “On the route from Clovis to Albuquerque, Moriarty is right under the route.“ 

The Ospreys prac­tice land­ings and take­offs at the local air­port as they fly the routes. 

Lovell, who started train­ing at Kirtland in the sum­mer of 2006, is the head of the train­ing force for the CV-​​22 Osprey. 

“Anyone who will fly an Osprey comes through here,” Lovell said in a phone interview. 

The CV-​​22 is an Air Force mod­i­fied ver­sion of the U.S. Marine Corps MV-​​22 Osprey. The Air Force first tested the air­craft at Edwards Air Force Base in California in September 2000. Lovell was part of that team. 

(more…)

The U.S. Special Operations Command was cre­ated in the wake of the the failed hostage res­cue attempt in Iran in 1980, com­monly known as “Desert One.” Analysis after the fact revealed that the ser­vices were unable to effec­tively inter­act to fight low inte­sity conflicts.

Here’s how Paulette Risher describes SOCOM in the 1st Quarter 2006 issue of JFQ:

“Established by Congress in 1987, USSOCOM was envi­sioned as a uni­fied com­mand with service-​​like respon­si­bil­i­ties to over­see all Special Operations Forces. Designated respon­si­bil­i­ties out­lined in Title 10 of the United States Code included resource allo­ca­tion and bud­get man­age­ment, osten­si­bly to bol­ster spe­cial oper­a­tions capa­bil­i­ties in such areas as joint doc­trine and train­ing, per­son­nel man­age­ment, and mis­sion plan­ning. The law also man­dated that, should the President or Secretary of Defense direct, the com­man­der of USSOCOM would exer­cise com­mand of a selected spe­cial oper­a­tions mis­sion. Thus, although most of the com­mands effort would sup­port the other com­bat­ant com­mands, under cer­tain cir­cum­stances it could become a sup­ported command.”

The GWOT has given SOCOM myr­iad oppor­tu­ni­ties to be the sup­ported com­mand. Special oper­a­tors tra­di­tion­ally com­plained that reg­u­lar forces were too “heavy handed” when deal­ing with the locals in a counter insur­gency envi­ron­ment, but in the sup­ported com­mand role over the years has the dis­tinc­tion between spe­cial oper­a­tions and the reg­u­lar forces eroded? And fur­ther, has what made each service’s spe­cial ops capa­bil­ity unique gone away in the face of counter insur­gency war­fare? Is mis­sion task­ing sim­ply plug and play with lit­tle con­cern regard­ing the dif­fer­ence between, say, SEALs and Green Berets? Is there a dif­fer­ence? Does it mat­ter anymore?

(Note: The DT staff is fly­ing back from San Francisco, so we’ll be post light for the bal­ance of today. We’ll hit it hard once we get through secu­rity and find an over­head bin for our carry-​​ons and fin­ish fight­ing rush hour on the Beltway, etc., etc.)

– Ward