This is Jockel Podcast number 361 with Echo Charles and me, Jockel Willink. Good evening, echo.

In March of 1969, the Rand Corporation, a semi-private think tank that specialized in research and analysis for the Department of Defense,

published a report titled The Navy Seal Commandos, a case study of military decision-making and organizational change.

As far as I know, the first academic level study of the seal teams.

The report's author was Francis J. Bing West, a former force recon Marine and Vietnam war veteran whose investigation had begun a year earlier,

and whose research had produced a raft of documents, dozens of interviews, and the first-hand observation of several seal missions into the Rung Sat and Meikong Delta.

For this research, West had produced an 18-page report whose introduction provided a brief description of seal training, training he estimated at a cost of around $14,000 per man,

plus an overview of the Seals commitment to Vietnam at its height, a commitment that never exceeded 150 seals, or roughly 1,150 fewer than the in-country height of the Green Berets total complement.

It was a commitment that stood out in even starker relief when placed next to the author's obvious admiration for the Seals' progression from lackluster coastal raiders to the war's most aggressive direct-action commandos.

Admittedly, commandos who had had no business becoming such, and thus had drawn the interest of the same preeminent think tank that it created the US military's nuclear defense strategy.

Intended as a study on organizational change, the report's true purpose had been to discover how the Navy could have possibly succeeded in creating a land-focused commando force,

a force that even the Viet Cong had reportedly dubbed the Men with Green Faces, a color not normally associated with the Navy's traditional medium.

It was a puzzle of personal importance to the author, as the Marine Corps, the far more likely branch of service, had never succeeded in creating anything similar.

Ultimately, the author decided the most important factor in the Seals infringement was owing to the Seals themselves and the culture that weighed upon them.

Drawn from a notorious, least selective training program that produced few qualified candidates, the Seals naturally had had to find a mission that kept casualties low,

a circumstance that might have pushed them, like the Lurps or the Force reconmarines, into a reconnaissance role.

Had they had anyone to pass the intelligence, too? They hadn't.

Nor had there been any great pressure from the River Enforce to engage in any sort of Green Beret style advisory, duty, or civic action.

Organizational orphans, with no larger force to support or control them, and possessing no love or admiration for the Vietnamese, the Seals had set out into the swamps.

Not to prove themselves, though training had already done that, said the author, but because not to go would have been inexcusable to the others.

They had developed a collective value system which emphasized physical hardiness and courage, and they liked to fight.

So when the tactics of patrol and ambush had proved unproductive, nobody not a seal, meaning no blue water superior officer had ordered them to try something else. They had just done it.

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