Secrets of the Navy SEALs


By Kalee Thompson, Sharon Weinberger and Joe Pappalardo
Navy SEALs in Desert Patrol Vehicles were the first U.S. troops in Kuwait in 1991.


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3. Land

Since sept. 11, Navy SEals have become elite manhunters. They find, identify and track individuals—priority work in counterinsurgency campaigns in iraq and afghanistan, where a single person's death can be the goal of months of surveillance. What the Pentagon once called the "global war on terror" is a personal business.

The SEALs have experienced this kind of fight before, in the Vietnam War. There, SEALs recruited by the CIA advised reconnaissance units that sometimes executed supporters of Viet Cong guerrillas—but the effort was plagued by misidentification. Winning hearts and minds is difficult when detaining innocent bystanders.

These days, targeting is a priority mission, backed by high technology. The SEALs carry sophisticated kits that would be more familiar to a police forensics expert than to a soldier: DNA swabs, digital fingerprint scanners and iris imagers. These instruments can provide a team with a match within minutes, if the subject has previously been fingerprinted.

But SEALs are most often used to find terrorist or insurgent leaders, dubbed high-value individuals, who typically have no prints or other biometrics on file. These targets require DNA for identification, but the Pentagon doesn't have a system for digitizing results of genetic scans performed in the field, as it does for fingerprints.

Instead, paper results are sent by courier to a properly equipped base to make a match. It took the Pentagon 4 hours to identify the bin Laden DNA collected by the SEALs—the fastest genetic identification it has ever performed, according to SOCOM. The ability to use digital DNA results to immediately verify identity could be crucial to a SEAL team that needs to exfiltrate as quickly as ­possible once it confirms the identity of its target—dead or alive.

High-value individuals often switch cars or use body doubles to throw off surveillance from agents on the ground and UAVs flying overhead. To counter this cat-and-mouse game, the SEALs employ taggants, tiny devices that emit electromagnetic signals. But how to persistently follow these signals? The answer might be nanosatellites. Earlier this year, SOCOM officials revealed last year's launch of four satellites, each of which could fit in the palm of a hand, that can be used to track targets from orbit. They will not say whether the satellites are being used operationally. "We sent them up to demonstrate the exchange of tagging, tracking and locating data," says Doug Richardson, a SOCOM official responsible for the program. "They worked."

SEALs prize new equipment, but know it goes only so far. Vice Adm. William McRaven, the commander who planned the bin Laden raid, states in his 1995 book on special operations that "the men must be inspired with a sense of personal dedication that knows no limitations... In an age of high tech­nology we often overlook the need for personal involvement, but we do so at our own risk."

McRaven knows that the SEALs' most potent weapons, what makes them elite, are their brains and dedication. The rest are just tools.

Conceptual Operation: Band Leader

Mission: Kill or capture an insurgent leader in a remote village.
Challenge: Intelligence indicates the presence of shoulder-fired antiaircraft missiles in the compound, making a helicopter insertion too dangerous. The nocturnal mission depends on a quiet ingress and smooth exit to where U.S. aircraft are waiting, miles away.

(A) Drive In
A Mark V Special Operations Craft launches a ScanEagle UAV to scout the target. CV-22 Ospreys set down five SEALs and three all-terrain vehicles. The SEALs drive to the target, using night-vision goggles (NVG) to keep the trip clandestine.

(B) Throw bots
The SEALs dismount; two guard the ATVs while the others creep to the target building. One SEAL throws a robot, a soda-can-size cylinder with wheels and an infrared camera, through a window. It finds the enemy; the SEALs enter and, met with ­resistance, kill the target.

(C) Exit
No well-planned operation starts and ends from the same place. The SEALs will rendezvous with the Ospreys at a new spot, but enemy troops are waking and landmarks are few. The ScanEagle guides the SEALs by designating waypoints along the route with a targeting laser visible only with NVG. The ATVs are designed to fit inside the Ospreys—the SEALs drive on board and fly to base.

Future Tech

Good Directions
ScanEagle is a combat-tested surveillance UAV equipped with day or night cameras. The Pentagon plans to rig UAVs with targeting beams visible to troops using NVG, as shown in the scenario above.

Robotic Squadmate
The Navy is working on a new throw-bot with magnetized wheels that can climb metal walls and hulls. Manufacturer ReconRobotics is also building a mobile "marsupial" system to launch the robot.

May 2011: The bin Laden Raid >>>

This Is A Developing Story

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