Navy SEAL Research Articles

War

War Siobhan Phillips (bio) Click for larger view View full resolution U.S. Army photo by Staff Sgt. Isaac A. Graham [End Page 144] I can’t tell what I would think about the Iraq war, now, if I hadn’t long ago slept with a man who happened to go on to be a Navy SEAL. [End Page 145] That’s not right. He didn’t happen to go on to be a Navy SEAL, any more than any of us happen to go on to be anything. Seth is a member of the armed forces. Character determines incident; incident illustrates character: Henry James wrote something like that. What is supposed to be my real work involves such quotations. What is Seth’s real work involves killing people and avoiding being killed. Sleeping with Seth is not something I’ve admitted till now, not something I’m even admitting now; names and details have been changed, though you can of course look up Seth’s real name on the website of the Weatherfield Foundation, since I can’t be bothered to change the name of that—what would be the point? All of our names are there, mine too (I haven’t altered that). The dozen of us, clustered in Washington to take a photo on the steps of the Library of Congress and get on a plane for England. We were the last class of the twentieth century or the first class of the twenty-first. Even the mathematician in our group, a naturalized Russian whose long hair was striped in a purple ombré pattern and who wore ostrich-patterned leggings to the Capitol, shrugged at the technical truth that a century begins with the year one because come on, you don’t start with nothing. (You don’t? But I kept my mouth shut. I studied literature. I didn’t have a credit card. My mother wrote down everything she spent, every day, on a pad clipped to a refrigerator magnet.) In 2000 we didn’t much care about petty distinctions. We were past the end of history, past the need for potential, past everything. Carbon was still 365 parts per million; financial deregulation and humanitarian military intervention still seemed benign. The Weatherfield Foundation was still undissolvable. It was built on sugar; the Weatherfield in the title is the same name on your box of sugar cubes, though our Mr. Weatherfield was a weak son of the company founder. Now we all know that 2000 was really before everything. By September of 2001 we all had a better sense of beginnings and endings. The night before the attacks was the night I slept with Seth. Each name on the Weatherfield website is accompanied by a small photo, then the name of the fellowship winner’s undergraduate school, Oxford course, and “career goals.” In Seth’s case, the first and third items were redundant. He went to the Naval Academy. I long swore to myself that I had written “unknown” for the last question when I filled out my paper form. I kept that knowledge like an IOU to myself folded invisibly into my wallet next to my Social Security card and emergency twenty. But when I began to write this essay I clicked back through the [End Page 146] photos and saw that my third slot was filled with “academics.” I could make excuses. Perhaps we were not allowed to write “unknown,” or perhaps the Foundation filled in something afterward or made me change my entry; who can remember? I likely wrote down “academics” with the proleptic resignation that I’d already figured out at age twenty and that I’ve practiced consistently since: If I agree to what I don’t want, I will be rewarded with what I do. In fact, the reverse is true, or neither is true, and in the meantime you can’t remember what it is you wanted, if you ever did. So I have achieved my career goals, I suppose. I am in “academics,” in a way. I’m writing this on a laptop in an alcove of the Sherman College Library in Sherman, Connecticut, and the Sherman College Library...

Examining U.S. Navy SEALs Through Cognitive Resources Theory (CRT)

Drawing upon Cognitive Resources Theory (CRT), this article examines the collective performance and leadership effectiveness of U.S. Navy SEALs. CRT postulates that stress runs contrary to rationality. It impedes the capacity of a group to operate logically and analytically, and it affects both leadership and group performance. “Cognitive resources” designate the combined skills of group members and the leader's experience and decision-making faculties. An important conclusion is that “cognitive resources” are vital to the Navy SEALs. In addition to being intelligent, experienced, and skilled, SEAL leaders have to be supported by their teams. Indeed, responsible group performance is mirrored in unparalleled selflessness that is observed, for example, in the Navy SEAL Team Six—the one that killed Osama bin Laden. CRT also posits that effective leaders must be able to withstand high stress. Under these circumstances, U.S. Navy SEALs, as a whole, must have adequate “cognitive resources.”

Book Review: The Navy Seal Art of War

Book Review: The Navy Seal Art of War

Unlikely cryptfellows: hospitality, difference, and spectrality at the 9/11 Museum

This paper offers a reading of the National September 11 Memorial and Museum to suggest that the encounter with strangers or strangeness is at the core of cultural and commemorative production in the aftermath of a terrorist attack. Specifically, I engage the museum as a text that has significant implications on how we approach the philosophy of hospitality in a time of terror. I argue that the ways in which objects and artifacts exist in relation to one another in the museum act out hospitality in ways that are both unexpected and unintended. For example, while human remains are stored on site, they are only referred to through symbolic art and digital displays that act as a kind of sleight of hand. In particular, I take up the inclusion of a brick from Osama Bin Laden's Abbottabad compound in Pakistan that has been incorporated into the museum in a fashion that is carefully orchestrated and framed. The brick, however, exceeds the frame in which it is permitted to be included in the exhibit; its visuality and materiality defy—and even contradict—the expected narrative of the museum. The brick appears as juxtaposed next to a Navy SEAL uniform and is meant to draw attention toward the distinction between terrorist and national hero, yet as a physical presence in the museum, it retains a sense of both vulnerability and affect as it bears striking resemblance to the bedrock of the towers themselves. Ultimately, I suggest that while the disjunctures between artifacts may seem initially jarring—these are items, after all, that are meant to produce very different material and mediatized effects; they offer a working-through of a hospitality that is crucial to the museum and all culture produced in response to the attacks.

Block periodization training in Navy Seal Operators: effect of 12 weeks on salivary hormones

We sought to determine the stress response to block periodization training (BPT) in Navy SEAL Operators by measuring salivary hormones over a 12 week period. Eighteen Navy SEAL Operators (31 ± 6 yrs, 86.6 ± 9.0 kg, 176.2 ± 5.9 cm, 17.5 ± 6.5% fat) participated in a 12 week BPT during routine operational training. Salivary free testosterone (FT), dehydroepiandrosterone sulfate (DHEAS), and cortisol (C) were obtained at four time points separated by 4 weeks coincident with changes in rest:work ratio: 1‐ prior to training (T1),2‐ moderate rest:moderate intensity (T2), 3‐ short rest:moderate intensity (T3), 4‐ long rest:high intensity (T4). The ratios of FT:C and DHEAS:C were also calculated. A significant increase in FT was observed at T3 (20.3 ± 31.4%; p < 0.05). DHEAS increased at T2 (23.2 ± 46.6%) with a further increase observed at T3 (57.0 ± 73.7%; p < 0.05). A significant increase in C was observed at T3 (20.8±41.8%; p < 0.05). No significant changes were observed in FT:C ratio. The ratio of DHEAS:C increased at T2 (45.5 ± 88.5%) with a further increase observed at T3 (43.9 ± 82.6%; p < 0.05). These data suggest that despite participation in operational training, a BPT produces acute elevations in anabolic hormones congruent with changes in intensity in SEAL Operators. Supported by ONR #N00014–11‐1–0929.

Powerful Peace: A Navy SEAL's Lesson on Peace from a Lifetime at War. By J. Robert Du Bois. New York Counter Insurgency, N.Y.: Morgan James Publishing, 2012

Powerful Peace: A Navy SEAL's Lesson on Peace from a Lifetime at War. By J. Robert Du Bois. New York Counter Insurgency, N.Y.: Morgan James Publishing, 2012

The Doctor Is in … Love

The Doctor Is in … Love

The China–Pakistan–United States Strategic Triangle: From Cold War to the “War on Terrorism”

The U.S. Navy SEAL raid in Abbottabad, Pakistan, and Islamabad's subsequent turn toward China have highlighted one of the most remarkable legacies of the Cold War: the persistence of a strategic triangle composed of China, Pakistan, and the United States. Throughout much of the Cold War, China and the United States competed to keep Pakistan within their particular sphere of influence, while Pakistan deftly took advantage of the subtle power struggle to improve its security profile vis-à-vis India. Despite persistent competition, the nations of the strategic triangle enjoyed three major convergence points: (1) the 1969–71 period, when Pakistan acted as a conduit for secret talks between Beijing and Washington, which subsequently led to mutual coordination during the 1971 Indo-Pakistan war; (2) the decade following the Soviet Union's invasion of Afghanistan in 1979; and (3) the years following the 9/11 attacks in the United States, when global focus turned to Afghanistan and terrorism. This third convergence around terrorism is particularly salient, as Pakistan is increasingly viewed globally as both a source of terrorist activity and a victim of terrorist violence. In the long term, the strategic triangle may act as a modulating force that may prevent instability within nuclear-capable Pakistan, as well as constrain activities by certain Pakistani state organs that may be linked to the proliferation of weapons of mass destruction and clandestine support for militant organizations.

Phantom Empire: A Feminist Reflection Ten Years After 9/11

On May 1, 2011, close to ten years after Al Qaeda suicide bombers had used jet airplanes to demolish three targets in the eastern United States - most unforgettably blowing the World Trade Center twin towers up in smoke - the United States, having at last managed through its intelligence sources to locate the Pakistani hill refuge where Osama bin Laden had been hiding, secretly dispatched its Navy SEAL team to go there and shoot dead. There are many both tragic and farcical things might remark on about this momentous yet peculiarly anticlimactic event. On the tragic side of course are the hundreds of thousands of Iraqi and Afghani civilian and young U.S. military lives lost, displaced, or permanently maimed, and trillions of dollars of US. public resources squandered, on the murderous path to hunting down Al Qaeda and its leader. Representing the farcical, have U.S. mass cultures schizophrenic response to the announcement that we got him - the hysterical football cheers for Our Side and frat boy street celebrations quickly followed by pious quotations from Proverbs and Facebook posts about doing as Jesus would and forgiving our enemies (Sullivan 2011). And for combined elements of both tragedy and farce, consider the deliberate timing and staging of bin Ladens execution as a racialized and gendered propaganda tactic in the lead-up to the 2012 presidential election and the certification of Barack Obama as a Real (honorary white Christian) Man, whose valor in exterminating the Islamist foe will go down as unassailable. But I prefer to focus on another, less noticed sequel to the US. security apparatus's Top Assassination. Within two weeks, a strange follow-up episode occurred when the government of Pakistan made the gesture of returning to the United States the tail of the damaged stealth helicopter that the navy had used to perform the commando operation. Mainstream U.S. media reported this act in the light of strained US.-Pakistani relations following the killing. Pakistan faced tremendous criticism in the U.S. Congress for, if not deliberately harboring terrorists, then its leaders' apparent ignorance of bin Ladens whereabouts all those years and not doing enough to show support for the U.S.-led War on Terror while receiving billions in U.S. military and economic aid. Internally, President Asif Ali Zardari came under strong attack for abetting the violation of Pakistani sovereignty by, as the Washington Post put it, not having been of the raid in advance (as if being informed of U.S. unilateral action would be any less indicative of imperial fiat). But I propose shift our vantage point to look more closely at what this Return of the Tail signifies, both materially and symbolically, with regard to U.S. positioning in the world and the shape of masculinist militarism ten years after 9/1 1. In so doing, may find that, in ways newly configuring the fall of the twin towers ten years ago, this piece of tail returns as a kind of fetish embodying the decline of American empire in the twenty-first century. In the immediate aftermath of the terrorist attacks in September 2001, I imagined a new geopolitical scenario arising in the smoke clouds through the symbolism of phantom twin towers: the American imperial colossus confronting Al Qaeda and its jihadist partners and counterparts across the globe (Petchesky 2002). My point was to counter the prevailing Manichean Good versus Evil narrative that resounded at the time - certainly among the U.S. right wing and George W. Bush administration but also, in a kind of reverse fashion, among certain elements of the Left; a narrative of either righteous defenders of the Homeland and Christian values versus crazy jihadist terrorists; or, alternatively, resistant anti-imperialists (the chickens coming home to roost) versus arrogant Western oil interests. Rather than opposites, I argued, these two adversaries mirrored each other like fratricidal twins in their capitalist wealth, nationalist imperialist ambitions, manipulation of religion, staunch militarism, masculinism (even if, in the U. …

Central Serous Chorioretinopathy Resulting in Altered Vision and Color Perception After Glenohumeral Corticosteroid Injection

Complications from shoulder corticosteroid injections are uncommon. This article presents a case of altered color perception and visual disturbances in a 29-year-old male active duty Navy SEAL following an intra-articular glenohumeral corticosteroid injection, previously unreported in the orthopedic literature. The corticosteroid injection was administered for the treatment of right-shoulder stiffness occurring approximately 3 months following an arthroscopic superior labrum anterior-posterior (SLAP) repair and subacromial decompression of the ipsilateral shoulder. The patient experienced immediate relief after the injection. Seven days later, however, he began to notice visual disturbances with color and image distortion of his right eye. He also developed a papular, nonpruritic rash on his upper trunk that eventually extended down his legs. He was diagnosed by an ophthalmologist as having central serous chorioretinopathy, a condition in which serous fluid accumulates in the subretinal space of the eye, causing detachment of the retina from the underlying retinal pigment epithelium. The reaction spontaneously resolved within approximately 10 to 12 weeks without treatment. Although intra-articular corticosteroid injections are frequently performed with a low rate of complication, clinicians should be familiar with this rare yet distressing condition. Furthermore, patients with increased production of endogenous corticosteroids (eg, those with Cushing's syndrome, type A personality, hypertension, or obstructive sleep apnea) should be warned of the potential of chorioretinopathy after an intra-articular corticosteroid injection.

The Buccaneer’s Realm: Pirate Life on the Spanish Main, 1674–1688 (review)

Reviewed by: The Buccaneer’s Realm: Pirate Life on the Spanish Main, 1674–1688 Robert H. Berlin The Buccaneer’s Realm: Pirate Life on the Spanish Main, 1674–1688. By Benerson Little. Washington: Potomac Books, 2007. ISBN 978-1-59797-101-0. Maps. Illustrations. Appendixes. Notes. Bibliography. Index. Pp. xv, 342. $29.95. The Peace Treaty of 1674 ended the Third Anglo-Dutch War, brought peace between Spain and England, and turned privateers, legalized pirates operating with a letter of marque, into buccaneers. The name buccaneer has its origins with the boucaniers, originally cattle and pig hunters on the island of Hispaniola, former soldiers who survived the failed English attempt in 1655 to conquer Hispaniola. The name boucanier refers to the boucan, the grate on which meat was cured over a fire. The first boucaniers were essentially men who hunted pigs and cattle to barbecue the meat for immediate consumption or for drying in the sun to make jerky. Should you wish to prepare an authentic Boucanier barbecue, Appendix E in this book gives a detailed account, including the recipe for the rum punch required to accompany the barbecue. Indeed, there is little about the buccaneer’s life that is not covered in this detailed and informative book. The buccaneer’s activities, diet, dress, sex life, health, wealth, and society on the Spanish Main are explained with enthusiasm and excitement. The author reveals the buccaneer’s world through numerous first-person accounts and explains the buccaneer’s social life both on land and sea. The Buccaneer’s Realm is also a naval history, recreating numerous small sea battles between the buccaneers and the primarily Spanish ships, from treasure galleons to sloops, they attacked. Piracy proved far more rewarding than making and selling jerky! The author concurs with the debunkers of pirate myths such as buried treasure and treasure maps (buccaneers had neither time to nor interest in saving any wealth they stole). Little understands and explains the realities of life aboard a buccaneer sailing vessel where crews battled odors, vermin, poor rations, as well as the tempests of the sea and enemy men of war. [End Page 937] The buccaneers sailed the Spanish Main, referred to simply as the Main, which in 1674 ranged from Florida southward along the Central and South American coast until it was interrupted by the bulge of the Portuguese colony of Brazil. In a modern sense, the Main, Benerson points out, refers to the Caribbean, both sea and islands. The book’s geography encompasses both and readers are assisted by eight useful maps. Little claims that the return of war between the great powers in 1688 postponed the rise of unrestrained piracy. When the so-called “Golden Age of Piracy” did take place in the early 1700s the infamous Anglo American pirates like Blackbeard “preyed almost entirely on weak merchantmen at sea” and, unlike the buccaneers of the 1670s and 1680s, avoided attacking cities and men-of-war (p. 220). Benerson Little’s earlier book, The Sea Rover’s Practice: Pirate Tactics and Techniques, 1630–1730, displayed his masterful knowledge of the subject and he brings that perspective to the sea actions of the buccaneers. As a former U.S. Navy SEAL officer and an analyst for the Naval Special Warfare Center Strategy and Tactics Group, he understands maritime life and effectively recreates buccaneer chases and captures. Little relies on published sources, particularly Alexandre Exquemelin’s History of the Bouccaneers of America, first published in Amsterdam in 1678 and still the standard work, and the English buccaneer William Dampier’s three accounts of voyages published in 1697 and 1729, for much of his material. He does not cite in text or bibliography the most readable and authoritative book on pirates, Under the Black Flag: The Romance and Reality of Life Among the Pirates by David Cordingly. Though the writing and organization could be more reader friendly, The Buccaneer’s Realm: Pirate Life on the Spanish Main, 1674–1688 is a valuable source for understanding the buccaneer’s life on land and at sea. Robert H. Berlin Prescott, Arizona Copyright © 2008 The Society for Military History

Melville Birthday Lecture: "What Melville Means to Me": A Panel Discussion with Rinde Eckert and Ricardo Pitts-Wiley

Melville Birthday Lecture “What Melville Means to Me” A PANEL DISCUSSION WITH RINDE ECKERT AND RICARDO PITTS-WILEY ROBERT K. WALLACE, MODERATOR T he fifth annual Herman Melville Birthday Lecture at the New Bedford Whaling Museum, on July 26, 2007, featured two exceptionally talented theatrical artists who wove an elastic monkey-rope of words in response to the question of “What Melville Means To Me.” Rinde Eckert began the program by singing, without accompaniment, Father Mapple’s aria from And God Created Great Whales, Eckert’s chamber opera, which premiered in New York City, in June 2000. Ricardo Pitts-Wiley responded with a performance of Father Mapple’s sermon from Moby-Dick: Then and Now, his adaptation, which premiered with his Mixed Magic Theatre in Pawtucket, RI, in May 2007. Eckert’s song asks, “Shipmates, are we not ourselves hungering to be swallowed and transformed, ingested by a larger and more imposing hunger?” Pitts-Wiley’s sermon answers with, “And God had prepared a great fish to swallow up Jonah.” Thus, the evening got off to an electric start before Anne Brengle of the New Bedford Whaling Museum and Wyn Kelley of the Melville Society Cultural Project stepped forward to welcome the audience and formally introduce the program. After moderator Robert K. Wallace gave a brief summary of the dramatic creations from which the Father Mapple excerpts were drawn— Eckert’s opera is about a piano tuner named Nathan who is composing a MobyDick opera as he is losing his memory; Pitts-Wiley’s play alternates Ahab’s revenge against the White Whale with an inner-city gang’s battle against the cocaine trade—the panel discussion began. Each artist declared what Melville means to him, responded to the moderator’s questions, and answered questions from the audience. The following transcription was prepared by the moderator from a tape recording of the event. What Melville Means to Me Ricardo Pitts-Wiley: Two years ago, I played Babo in a staged reading of Benito Cereno. Even though I was familiar with Moby-Dick, I can’t say that I was C 2007 The Authors Journal compilation C 2007 The Melville Society and Blackwell Publishing Inc L E V I A T H A N A J O U R N A L O F M E L V I L L E S T U D I E S 157 R O B E R T K . W A L L A C E Rinde Eckert, Robert K. Wallace, and Ricardo Pitts-Wiley at the New Bedford Whaling Museum. Photo Wyn Kelley. overly committed to the work of Herman Melville. At that performance I met members of the Melville Cultural Project. They were passionate about Melville and passionate about Moby-Dick. At that time I had an idea that I could make Moby-Dick more relevant in some way to a contemporary audience. But I had to find a contemporary parallel for the White Whale. I had this idea. If you make the international cocaine cartel the White Whale, how would it be pursued? You had to follow the same journey as Ahab. I worked with a group of young people, young men, at a reform school in Providence. I don’t want to in any way romanticize that time. These young men were in jail. On one level, they were a captive audience. On another level, they were an audience that in some ways I could really focus. I gave them the idea, what if the White Whale was cocaine: how would you deal with it? Then I asked them to each write a definition of one of the characters from the novel. And they chose their characters. In the most liberating part of this process, they came back with character descriptions that took me out of convention. One of them described Queequeg as a pimp. He was flamboyant. He was colorful. He dealt in human flesh. He was intensely loyal. Another one described Ishmael as a Navy Seal who was too high strung, so they kicked him out. Well, that allowed me to start thinking about what I was going to do in a different way. In a sense...

A Systems Approach to the Propeller Redesign for the U.S. Navy SEAL Swimmer Delivery Vehicle (SDV)

ABSTRACTThis paper details work undertaken at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) to improve the overall performance of the Navy SEAL swimmer delivery vehicle (SDV Mk VIII Mod 1) through the design of a wake adapted propeller to replace the existing stock propeller. First, an analysis was conducted of the currently installed propeller using a lifting surface vortex lattice propeller code developed at MIT by Kerwin. This gave the performance required for a new propeller. To start the design process, a lifting line propeller design code developed at MIT by Kerwin was used to find the potential efficiency gains possible with a wake‐adapted propeller with minimal hub drag. Then, a circuit model of the propulsion electric motor was derived and coupled with the lifting line program to match the operating point between the redesigned propeller and the motor. The result of this coupled analysis was a numerical prediction for the reduction in battery amperage draw. A prototype propeller was manufactured and tested, resulting in an 8.9 % reduction in battery current discharge.

Editor’s Introduction

The origins of the Social Research conference at which the papers in this issue were first presented are complicated. Its subject was adapted twice in the course of its development. In the winter of 2000, when we began our planning for the tenth conference in the Social Research series, we intended to organize a conference on “Punishment.” We were motivated by a great many issues, including the vastly disproportionate number of AfricanAmerican males incarcerated in United States prisons, the use of the death penalty in the United States—a form of punishment that has disappeared from almost all other countries in the West—and the wish to examine the history of punishment both in the United States and elsewhere as a way of understanding and perhaps even affecting our decision-making processes. Events for which we were unprepared, however, led us to postpone this subject for a future date and replace it with one closer to home. In the spring of 2002 we, and the rest of the country, became aware of the raid in Thanh Phong, Vietnam, led by Bob Kerrey, then a Navy Seal, now president of the New School, that caused the deaths of more than a dozen unarmed civilians, mostly women and children. Our distress at learning of this event caused us to refocus our attention from the broad subject of “Punishment ” to the more specifically timely topic of “International Justice : War Crimes and Atrocities.” We believed that an extended reflection on the United States record in these matters would contribute to the “educational moment” that both Bob Kerrey and we hoped would emerge from what was a very traumatic moment for us all. But events again interfered, this time on September 11, 2001. There was now no way to organize a conference on international justice and war crimes without including acts of terrorism, so the conference focus was once again modified. The program we held at the New School on April 25-27, 2002, was entitled InterEditor ’s Introduction national Justice, War Crimes, and Terrorism: The U.S. Record. Of course we hope, like Bob Kerrey, that the conference and this issue of Social Research will become part of a larger educational moment as we continue to try to come to terms with the United States record in relation to the commission and prosecution of war crimes, especially as our government threatens to wage war on Iraq and we continue to contend with recurring global threats of terrorism. Our intention in convening this conference was to reflect upon and examine how war crimes and acts of terrorism are and ought to be dealt with. The events of September 11 made painfully clear the urgent need not only for a globally accepted code of international human rights and civilized relations among and within nations, but for a globally accepted system of justice in which war crimes would be prosecuted by a variety of international and national jurisdictions. The United States has already made important contributions to this effort, beginning with the Nuremberg Trials and the drafting of the Geneva Conventions. However, prior to September 11, American foreign policy had taken an unsettling anti-internationalist turn that put a variety of actual or potential international agreements and forms of collective self-regulation in danger. Unfortunately, the events of September 11 and those that have followed have not done anything to alter this stance. A crucial consequence of our anti-internationalist posture is the unwillingness of American political actors to support the ratification of the Rome Statute of the International Criminal Court which, for the first time, provides a universal enforcement mechanism for agreements and conventions concerning war crimes, acts of genocide, and human rights violations. This court, whose conventions for its establishment have now been ratified without United States participation, may enable us to leave behind earlier forms of enforcement that were applied exclusively against weak states or those that lost wars or military confrontations. Unfortunately , however unjustly, America’s opposition to the new universal jurisdictions reinforces the views of critics who claim that the VI SOCIAL RESEARCH United States is willing to apply sanctions of international criminal law only to its enemies. If we demand that...

Advice To Graduates

IT'S THE TIME OF YEAR WHEN IT SEEMS that everyone I know has a child graduating from school at some level. My great-nephew Harrison has completed preschool; next fall, hell have to knuckle down to business in kindergarten. For my grandson John, it's on to middle school come September Meanwhile, a legion of offspring of my friends and colleagues—Andy, David, Chris, Sara, and Mary Rose—are heading off to college. I'm delighted to note that David wants to major in chemistry, and Chris is considering mathematics or physics —which is not to say that any other field of study is less satisfying, just that I'm happy that some of the best and the brightest high school graduates are choosing science. Meanwhile, Matt, the son of my oldest friend, graduated from college last month and this summer will fulfill a lifelong dream of becoming a Navy Seal. My congratulations go to all of these young folks! Closer ...

Pain Management in the Special Operations Environment: Regional Anesthetics

Pain relief is an essential component of combat casualty care. For the injured soldier, analgesia is not only a matter of comfort. Alleviating pain may allow the soldier to remain quiet when noise discipline is at a premium. It may also allow that person to continue to move, thus avoiding detection and potentially permitting the mission to carry on. Regional anesthetics provide an alternative to systemic medications and thus may avoid a clouded sensorium, limit narcotic administration, and provide superior pain relief. Standard local anesthetics and newer agents with potential field applicability are discussed along with their side effect profiles. Simple nerve block techniques that can be used by Army Special Forces medics, Navy SEAL and Reconnaissance corpsmen, and Air Force pararescuemen in the far forward environment are described step by step. The advantages of these regional anesthetic methods should make their use a must for every special operations medical care provider.

Training Suggestions for the Navy SEAL Fitness Challenge

Training Suggestions for the Navy SEAL Fitness Challenge

Evaluation of Possible Battlefield Tourniquet Systems for the Far-Forward Setting

A significant number of casualties in previous conflicts died from peripheral vascular wounds. A well-designed tourniquet could possibly have prevented these deaths. The objective of this study was the identification of such a tourniquet. A survey of Special Operations corpsmen established important characteristics necessary in an ideal tourniquet. Because most available devices do not and patented ideas could not meet these criteria, a number of prototypes were developed. Seven potentially satisfactory tourniquets were evaluated by 15 Navy SEAL corpsmen. The success and timing of placement were recorded, and a follow-up questionnaire was completed. Of the several successful tourniquets, two were preferred. Tourniquets incorporating a windlass technique take longer to place and often fail when placed with only one hand. New, relatively simple tourniquet devices incorporating bladder and ratchet mechanisms can significantly improve tourniquet performance.

Tactical Management of Urban Warfare Casualties in Special Operations

CAPT Frank K. Butler CAPT Butler is a Navy ophthalmologist and diving medical officer. For the past 10 years, he has been the Director of Biomedical Research for the Naval Special Warfare Command. CAFT Butler has served previously as a platoon commander in the Navy Underwater Demolition and SEAL (Sea/Air/Land commando) teams. He also spent 5 years as a Diving Medical Research officer at the Navy Experimental Diving Unit. CAPT Butler was the Chief of Ophthalmology at the Naval Hospital Pensacola before assuming his current duties at the Naval Special Warfare Command. He also serves as an ophthalmic consultant to the Divers Alert Network.

Training Suggestions for the Navy SEAL Fitness Challenge

Training Suggestions for the Navy SEAL Fitness Challenge