The grim toll of SEAL training
A 47-page list of BUD/S injuries from 2000-2022 raises questions about whether the first weeks of training are worth the risk.
The Navy recently sent me a list of all the major injuries that have occurred during SEAL training, known as Basic Underwater Demolition/SEAL Training or BUDS.
There have been 11 deaths in the training that all Navy SEALs must undergo to earn a spot in the teams, but there have been vastly more injuries that required medical intervention. To give you an idea of just how high-risk SEAL training is, the list the Navy sent me under a FOIA request is 47 pages long. (You can read it here.)
Kyle Mullen’s death last year is the seventh item on the list. Mullen’s death and the upheaval it continues to cause at Naval Special Warfare Command was the subject of my Rolling Stone article that ran last week. Two senior officers who oversaw SEAL training and a third who ran the medical center for candidates were recently recommended for non-judicial punishment on charges of negligent dereliction of duty.
As long as the list the Navy sent me is, it almost certainly undercounts the true number of injuries. Five former trainees told me that the BUD/S medical staff showed negligence that bordered on recklessness by sending hurt and sick young men back to training with what they learned later were broken bones, torn cartilage, an inability to swallow food and other ailments. Many of these injuries were not recorded even though several trainees endured pain and disability that lasted years.
SEAL training continued to send people to the hospital after Mullen’s death. The most recent entries on the list were the hospitalizations of three trainees after Hell Week in July 2022. One of those three spent nine days in the hospital for “significant chafing and abrasions and associated pain and functional limitations.” The others had sepsis and “extreme chafing.”
Chafing is common in Hell Week, five days of extreme physical exertion on a total of four hours of sleep that pushes the would-be SEALs to the brink of mental and physical collapse. Anyone who has run a long-distance race has to deal with chafing. SEAL trainees run as many as 125 miles or more over Hell Week in wet and sandy military fatigues. Their skin looks like raw hamburger by the end of it.
Most of the injuries occur during the first phase of BUD/S, which culminates in Hell Week. This phase consists mostly of running, running and more running, hoisting heavy logs, navigating an obstacle course, paddling and carrying inflatable boats, and trainees dragging themselves and their teammates through the sand.
Injuries from the first phase include broken bones, lacerations, dislocated shoulders, and strained ankles and knees. Some of those injuries occurred on the BUD/S obstacle course from falls from heights of as much as 30 feet. Running with boats on their heads is another frequent source of injury.
The trainees’ bodies are also subjected to extreme limits of endurance in the first few weeks of training. Heat stroke is a common cause of mishaps. There were five heat-related injuries over four days in August 2021, including one in which a trainee’s core temperature reached a remarkable 109 degrees. Hypothermia is also a risk as the trainees spend long periods shivering in the Pacific Ocean. The SEAL instructors call it “surf immersion;” trainees call it “surf torture.”
Two trainees suffered hypothermia on the same day in March 2017. Here’s one:
“Member was participating in surf immersion when he started showing signs of hypothermia. At first, he kept picking up his torso which brought the attention of the instructors. After staff questioned him he could not provide answers, lost consciousness, and was pulled from evolution. It was determined that his core temp was 91 degrees. Probable causes: Cold Stress Impairs Performance. Fatigue. Loss of Consciousness. Inadequate Real-time Risk Assessment.”
It’s telling that the first phase of training is more dangerous than the arms and explosives training which occurs later in BUD/S. There were a total of 16 injuries recorded over 22 years of arms and explosives training. One trainee was shot by another in 2009.
This disparity can partially be explained by the fact that most of the trainees who start BUD/S don’t make it through first phase. As a result, there are fewer trainees in the second and third phases of BUD/S.
But it raises the question of whether this risky training in the first few weeks of training is necessary. SEALs must know how to use weapons and explosives and they must know how to parachute, to cite a few of the many high-risk skills these operators learn over their careers.
Do they need to know how to hold a heavy log for long periods? What purpose is served by crossing a rock jetty in the dark amid pounding surf while carrying a 110-pound inflatable boat? Is the risk of injury worth it?
All military training carries some risk. Weapons training is risky. Flight training, like BUD/S, is high-risk. But you can’t be a soldier unless you know how to shoot. You can’t be a pilot unless you know how to fly. The risk of the training must be commensurate with the skills gained.
What is the Navy doing to protect trainees who are putting their lives on the line to wear the Trident pin that all SEALs proudly wear?
As I reported in Rolling Stone last week, Rep. Chris Smith, a Republican from New Jersey, has been pushing to make the program safer. Smith inserted an amendment in last year’s defense bill that required the Secretary of Defense to recommend steps to make high-risk training for SEALs and others safer. To that end, the Naval Special Warfare announced in June that trainees are now closely monitored during Hell Week and for 24 hours after. Other reforms include advanced heart screens, increased steps to prevent or treat swimming-induced pulmonary edema and pneumonia, and random urine tests for steroids.
The goal of these reforms, a senior Navy officer told Regina Mullen, Kyle’s mom, is not just that no more young men die in training. It’s also that they don’t get “maimed.”
Looking at the injury list, it’s clear that people did get maimed in BUD/S.
The list of SEAL training injuries begins in May 2000 when a trainee sustained a “closed head injury” during night surf training at SEAL headquarters in Coronado, California. The incident is listed as a Class B Mishap, suggesting that it resulted in permanent partial disability.
The next item on the list was even worse, a Class A mishap. In March 2001, Lt. John Anthony Skop Jr. died during a Hell Week swimming exercise.
One entry from 2006 refers obliquely to a “shattered knee,” a Class C injury, albeit one with potentially life-long impacts.
It’s evident from looking at the list that injury reporting at BUD/S has improved over time. From 2000 through 2005, only eight injuries were reported.
Around 2009, reporting became much more frequent and more detailed. That year, a trainee sustained a “brachial plexopathy,” an injury usually caused by trauma to the system of nerves that enervates hands and arms. There was a “femoral neck stress fracture,” a potentially serious hip fracture, and a “femoral artery laceration” affecting the largest blood vessel in the body.
It’s tough reading but it’s important to think about the SEAL training that has produced some of the nation’s finest warriors. As the list shows, it’s also produced legions of maimed and broken young men.
Until the SEALs rethink their training, the grim toll of injuries will continue.