Inside SEAL Team Six(51)

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During standby, we all met early in the kill house or on the range and fired weapons. We shot a lot—before, during, and after work!

Every morning we’d have something called the head shed meeting, which included officers and boat-crew leaders. During the head shed meeting, we’d discuss the plan of the day—who was going where, and what activities would be taking place. For example, boat crews one and two will conduct over-the-beach training in a.m., boat crews three and four will be at long-gun range in the a.m., the entire assault team will execute a night water jump from a C5 in the p.m. We worked with outstanding air assets, including ■​■​■​■​■​■​■​■​■​■​■​■​■​■​■​■​■​■​■​■​■​■​■​■​■​■​■​■​■​■​■​■​■​■​■​■​■​■​■​■​■​■​■​■​■​■​■​■​■​ ST-6 ■​■​■​■​■​■​■​■​■​■​

Most mornings, the head shed meeting lasted forty-five minutes. Then we’d have individual PT—one to two hours of running, swimming, obstacle course, or circuit work in the weight room.

In the other SEAL teams, the PT was much more structured and mandatory. Running one day, weight training the next, and so on. If you missed PT, you generally had to answer to someone. But at ST-6, PT was the responsibility of each individual operator. All of our operators were always ready physically for battle. We did not train to get big, ripped, or cut—we PTed so we could do our jobs.

During standby, in addition to shooting every day and staging competitions with long guns, MP5s, M4s, shotguns, and handguns, ■​■​■​■​■​■​■​■​■​■​■​■​■​■​■​■​■​■​■​■​■​■​■​■​■​■​■​■​■​■​■​■​■​■​■​■​■​■​■​■​■​■​■​■​■​■​■​■​■​■​■​■​■​■​■​■​■​■​■​■​■​■​■​■​■​■​■​■​■​■​■​■​■​■​■​■​■​■​■​■​■​■​■​■​■​■​■​■​■​■​■​■​■​■​■​■​■​■​■​■​■​■​■​■​■​■​■​■​■​■​■​■​■​■​■​■​■​■​■​■​■​■​■​■​■​■​■​■​■​■​■​■​■​■​■​■​■​■​■​■​■​■​■​■​■​■​■​■​■​■​■​■​■​■​■​■​■​■​■​■​■​■​■​■​■​ rehearsals, and discuss tactics—and that we did all the time.

We also rehearsed recalls. Only the command head shed team would know the time of recall beforehand. Once the signal went out, all members of the team would assemble, listen to the warning order, and then run a full mission profile, in full gear—NVGs, gas masks, live rounds. We changed scenarios constantly, juggling the variables, such as the number of hostages and threats.

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We had to be ready with all bags packed—one bag loaded with jump and air-ops gear, another with dive gear, a third with counterterrorist gear, a fourth with winter-warfare gear, a fifth with desert gear, and a sixth with jungle gear. We were constantly tweaking, trying to make the recall lighter, quieter, and easier to assess.

Recalls occurred at least once a cycle and we never knew when they were coming. More than once, we were all at a party at a team member’s house when our beepers went off. Each time, all the operators straightened up, hurried to their cars, and drove to work as fast as possible.