Has Navy SEAL training become too difficult?
The Navy finds "a near-perfect storm" of factors led to the death of a 24-year-old SEAL trainee.
It’s not easy to become a Navy SEAL. It’s not supposed to be easy.
Historically, only three out of 10 make it through the brutal selection course held several times a year at Naval Special Warfare Command in Coronado, California.
But the results of a long-awaited Navy investigation raise a question: Has it become too tough?
David Phillips of The New York Times reports:
The notoriously grueling Navy SEAL selection course grew so tough in recent years that to attempt it became dangerous, even deadly. With little oversight, instructors pushed their classes to exhaustion. Students began dropping out in large numbers, or turning to illegal drugs to try to keep up.
Unprepared medical personnel often failed to step in when needed. And when the graduation rates plummeted, the commander in charge at the time blamed students, saying that the current generation was too soft.
The Navy’s investigation found “a near-perfect storm” of factors led to death of 24-year-old SEAL trainee Kyle Mullen in February 2022.
“This investigation revealed what is correctly described as an individual and community tragedy and found failures across multiple systems that led to a number of candidates being at a high risk of serious injury,” the 172-page report by the Naval Education and Training Command found.
Basic Underwater Demolition/SEAL Training in Coronado, California or BUD/S, as it's known, puts candidates through extreme mental and physical stresses designed to simulate the demands of SEAL combat missions. But the investigation found that the risk the candidates were exposed to were unacceptable.
The risks to Mullen and his classmates “accumulated as the result of inadequate oversight, insufficient risk management, poor medical command and control, and undetected performance-enhancing drug use,” the report concluded. (Steroids did not play a role in Mullen’s death, the investigation found.)
The problems were medical and SEAL culture.
The report was especially tough on the BUD/S Medical Department, formerly led by Dr. Erik Ramey. BUD/S Medical “was poorly organized, poorly integrated, and poorly led.”
Mullen died of pneumonia hours after successfully completing Hell Week—five days of nearly non-stop exertion and little sleep that are designed to push trainees to the brink of mental and physical collapse. Mullen had told family and friends he would die before he quit.
Mullen had been having respiratory issues throughout Hell Week. He had been coughing up bloody fluid and struggling to keep up. He had “rales and ronchi”—bubbling and snoring sounds—in both lungs. Oxygen was administered several times and he staggered to the finish line. Mullen was driven to the Hell Week graduation ceremony in an ambulance and returned to his barracks in a wheelchair. But staff at the BUD/S Medical Clinic cleared him in the final medical check.
Most candidates require some medical care during the first phase of SEAL training. “At this point during Hell Week, every candidate demonstrates a significant degree of exhaustion and difficulty with physical mobility,” the report states. “The physical appearance of these candidates could be surprising to those who do not have association or familiarity with BUD/S candidates and Hell Week evolutions.”
Mullen's death, however, “was not a singular, unforeseeable event,” the report states.
Four candidates in Mullen’s class either got pneumonia or were sent to the hospital to be treated for potential pneumonia. Two of Mullen’s classmates were admitted to the hospital the same night as Mullen, with one requiring intubation. In both cases, the candidates were cleared by the final medical check. They only received treatment because another BUD/S trainee “persisted against [redacted], the duty medical provider and … called an ambulance.”
The other problem identified in the report involves the SEAL culture.
The investigation found that insufficient oversight allowed instructors to substitute “unofficial practices” that soon became the unofficial standard. Lightly-supervised, inexperienced BUD/S instructors focused less on building future SEALs and more on “weeding out” candidates perceived as weaker and “hunting the back of the pack.”
The report points to something called “organizational behavioral drift.” This is a phenomenon that occurs in prisons and other settings where there is poor supervision of individuals who have control or power of others’ activities of daily living.1 The Abu Ghraib prison scandal was an example of behavioral drift. The torture techniques that Charlie Wise brought into the CIA interrogation program is an another example.
There was a perception among those in charge of SEAL training that students had grown too soft. The report cited “generational differences, with candidates being physically better prepared and with higher emotional intelligence but less familiar with physical discomfort.” (emphasis added)
A remark by the top SEAL, Rear Admiral Hugh Howard—“Zero [BUD/S graduates] is an okay number; hold the standard”—was seen by some instructors as encouraging attrition. (The admiral said his intent was to relieve pressure to produce a certain number of SEALs and maintain focus on character.)
Students were given little rest or “slack” before Hell Week. An example cited in the report was the hours-long “burnout” physical training to complete exhaustion conducted the week before Hell Week. In the past, the report states, training intensity had been tapered down to allow candidates to rest and heal minor injuries.
Not surprisingly, attrition was well above normal. Typically, slightly less half of candidates drop out of the program before Hell Week. Class 353, the first class after Mullen’s death started with 131 candidates. Only 28 were left when Hell Week began.
As I wrote previously, many students came to see that they could not complete BUD/S without help of steroids and other performance-enhancing drugs. Tests of urine collected from 1,461 students found 62 candidates had elevated levels of testosterone—a 4.2 percent positive rate. (A sample is collected from each student during each phase of training.)
Regina Mullen, Kyle’s mother, tells me she was gratified that the Navy finally admitted to the lapses that led to her son’s death, but she continued to demand accountability. “I’m very upset that a year a half later, the people involved in the death of my son are still in the same position,” she told me. “Heads need to roll.”
No other mother should have to go through the pain she has endured.
“I’m not stopping here,” she says.