Is there reason enough to vastly alter one of our most successful military institutions?
Stop the drug abuse and lapses in medical care. Keep the training as rigorous as possible.
L ast Tuesday, the New York Times published a report detailing “brutality, cheating, and drugs” in the U.S. Navy’s SEALs, focusing on the issue of recruits using performance enhancers (PEDs) such as steroids to overcome the course. Kyle Mullen, a phenomenal athlete and student, died at Basic Underwater Demolition/SEAL training (BUD/S) after days of coughing up blood. It was only after his death that the Navy discovered his PED use. The article’s author employs Mullen’s death to highlight the SEAL teams’ ethically gray training program and its excesses.
Dave Philipps reports for the Times:
The course began with 210 men. By the middle of Hell Week, 189 had quit or been brought down by injury. But Seaman Mullen kept on slogging for days, spitting blood all the while. The instructors and medics conducting the course, perhaps out of admiration for his grit, did not stop him.
And he made it. When he struggled out of the cold ocean at the end of Hell Week, SEAL leaders shook his hand, gave him a pizza and told him to get some rest. Then he went back to his barracks and lay down on the floor. A few hours later, his heart stopped beating and he died.
. . .
When the Navy gathered Seaman Mullen’s belongings, they discovered syringes and performance enhancing drugs in his car. The captain in charge of BUD/S immediately ordered an investigation, and soon about 40 candidates had either tested positive or had admitted using steroids or other drugs in violation of Navy regulations.
. . .
Seaman Mullen was coughing so much that he soon filled a 32-ounce Gatorade bottle with bloody sputum, according to his autopsy, but by then there was no one with medical training present to notice. The medical staff had gone home after Hell Week finished. Instead, according to the candidate and Ms. Mullen, who spoke to several of her son’s classmates who were there, the men were watched by newly arrived BUD/S candidates, called white shirts.
A few hours later, one of the white shirts called the medical staff phone to report an emergency, the candidate said, but no one picked up, so the white shirt called 911. When a civilian ambulance arrived, the medics found Seaman Mullen with no pulse, according to the autopsy.
There are several impulses at odds with one another here. First, yes, we want tough fighters, not quitters. Second, we want as-safe-as-possible training for dangerous work (which might mean round-the-clock medical personnel or monitoring after certain training evolutions). Third, we want men who will do anything to succeed in the field, except use chemical assistance to push through an unrelenting training program. Fourth, the SEALs are an extremely successful organization but, if there are reported problems, their reputation and mystique shouldn’t make them immune to oversight and review.
What the American public expects of its elite military teams is grossly contradictory, as is the messaging the Navy provides these young men. We ask the SEALs to do the impossible routinely, from their deployment schedules to the missions. Instead of carping and asking for a reprieve, the SEAL teams get to work. If that means they feel it necessary to use steroids, I’d rather the Navy waive their use and have physicians help administer such things rather than have guys self-medicating in the parking lot.
The Navy’s drug guidance makes sense applied to MM2 Abel, who works in a cryogenic plant. He gets six to eight hours of sleep and eats three semi-nutritious meals daily. MM2 Abel has no excuse for why he can’t do his job of sweeping, planned maintenance (PMS), and plant watch. The guidance does not apply so readily to those in combat where basic physical necessities like sleep and food are placed well behind the mission’s success in order of priority. We use up SEALs now as it is. Broken limbs, bad backs, and psychological damage are all expected in the career. Ugly truths need to be inspected in the light.
But training is not combat, and there should be frequent, randomized testing to ensure candidates do not have undue advantages over one another. Furthermore, it is unconscionable that medical staff is not watching recruits at all times during training. I get it, SEALs are used to seeing physical discomfort and damage, so their view of “hurt” is slightly different from Johnny Civilian’s, but let’s keep a corpsman around on duty. However, once through training, I see no issue with performance enhancement. The men are then tools in the hands of the State, and effect its will abroad. They should be at their absolute peak, but only after sacrificing whatever advantage chemicals may provide for the course of their training: We need to know what each man is capable of, devoid of anything except what God saw fit to give him.
That said, the worst revelation in the Times piece is that of deferred health care. Part of this is on the recruit (he decides to continue through pain — we want that in our elite forces), and there’s rarely a redemption story for medical drops. If you, a candidate, had the choice between popping pills for a few weeks and spitting blood, or having to spend the next five and a half years slapping haze gray on a destroyer, pills all the way.
The best way to alleviate the urgency to push through serious injury may be to reduce the cost of dropping. Med drops should be allowed healing and a second shot — a practice that is already implemented but could use reinforcement. Those who quit for other reasons should be placed somewhere that can make use of their still prodigious physical gifts. An option to transfer to the Navy’s little brother, the Marines, makes sense.
Something the Navy could do to alleviate unnecessary pressure on BUD/S recruits is to continue developing its pre-BUD/S program. The two-month pre-BUD/S in Great Lakes, Ill., should be removing almost all of the chaff from the applicant pool. This lessens the drop rate in San Diego and reduces the reclassification load that would be best done in Great Lakes, where getting a guy into an A-school (alternative training program) is much more convenient. Drops in San Diego are much more expensive than in Great Lakes.
Another option for the Navy is to bring back its policy of sending SEAL applicants to BUD/S with a fleet rating — a job besides the Special Operator (SO) rate they saddle guys with. That way, should someone wash out, he has a job as, say, an Aviation Electronics Technician (AT) waiting for him in the fleet that he voluntarily signed for, instead of getting hit with the randomized “Needs of the Navy” paddle and then scraping paint as an undesignated seaman for the remainder of his extended contract.
Failure to pass BUD/S should not derail a career; the program is punishment enough. Instead, we should applaud the attempt and get those sailors to positions that most benefit our armed forces. Fear-of-failure’s consequences shouldn’t be the reason for a guy’s staying in BUD/S; it should be his near monomaniacal desire to be a SEAL, and that alone.
Injuries will happen, and the rare death may occur. We’ve yet to see enough of either to vastly alter what is one of our most successful military institutions.