The US Navy SEAL Teams Can Bring the Heat in the New Cold War, And I Saw the Spark
“Where do we start?”
I checked in as the intelligence officer for a US Navy special warfare unit in March 2020. My arrival coincided with the start of the command’s scheduled counter-ISIL deployment to Iraq under OPERATION INHERENT RESOLVE, the latest international counterterrorism campaign in the Middle East.
But circumstances larger than us threw that deployment out the window. In the face of a more aggressive Iran, the United States hastened an agreement that returned bases to Iraqi forces. Simultaneously, the COVID-19 pandemic wrecked itineraries and replaced them with quarantines. The deployment we anticipated was no longer.
In line with SEAL ethos, senior leaders under Rear Admiral Hugh Wyman Howard III made our circumstances an opportunity. They implemented a standing strategy to realign SEAL Teams away from degrading ISIL networks and toward confronting rising regimes challenging US superiority. On the slate to deploy, our unit was going to actualize the strategy. Instead of make-shift tents north of Baghdad, we settled into air-conditioned trailers in one of the safest places on earth: the United Arab Emirates. Against a backdrop of buildings made from marble and glass, the SEALs turned to me and said: “Intel, where do we start?”
None of us realized it at the time, but we were about to set the foundations for the community’s shift from counterterrorism to strategic competition.
Their Hot Wars in the Cold War
This shift to strategic competition led commentators both inside and outside the special operations community to argue that the SEAL Teams were racing for relevance. Embracing this shift to strategic competition meant combat-ready SEALs were “back to the drawing board” in coming up with new ways to execute traditional core mission activities, like Direct Action raids, that they had mastered over the last 20 years fighting terrorists on land. Others indicated the SEAL Teams had to wargame innovations that would transform their roots as maritime commandos. Some commentators more recently advocated for US special forces to consider new roles as virtual cyber operators or as US intelligence activity enablers under the titles of foreign area experts.
But the SEAL Teams have not needed to invent new operational concepts. Not only should tactics from the counterterrorism era actually remain familiar, this shift just represents the next chapter in the SEAL Teams’ long-running history against strategic competitors and their proxies.
Look at their hot wars in the Cold War.
The Underwater Demolition Teams, the predecessors of today’s SEAL Team structure, were dispatched in 1950 to Korea. They embarked from US Navy vessels to conduct seaborne raids against inshore critical infrastructure targets like ports, harbor facilities, tunnels, and bridges.
Platoons of the newly formed SEAL Team ONE and SEAL Team TWO, created under late President John F. Kennedy, deployed in 1962 to Vietnam, where they conducted reconnaissance patrols, hit-and-run raids, and sabotage missions from river patrol boats and shallow-draft SEAL Team assault boats, or STABs.
Multiple SEAL Teams deployed in 1983 to Grenada, where they supported OPERATION URGENT FURY. The SEALs performed pre-assault reconnaissance operations from US Navy vessels that led to their rescue of Grenada’s British Commonwealth governor-general, Sir Paul Scoon.
The SEAL Teams know how to be a strategic competition force.
Staying Hot in the New Cold War
The SEAL Teams can prioritize preparing for a potential hot war in today’s New Cold War with China and Russia by taking pages from the Cold War.
In fact, they can copy those pages and paste them onto newer ones.
The SEAL Teams should replicate their reconnaissance operations. The US Navy just validated over-the-horizon strike operations from vessels like destroyers during a strategic competition exercise. When China and Russia presumably jam the targeting methods needed to enable these strike operations during a hot war, the SEAL Teams are an effective substitution, given their ability to mask infiltration and exfiltration missions. Aboard assault boats, the SEAL Teams could run reconnaissance patrols to get eyes on a target and relay that information back to the destroyer. That communications path would make the destroyer’s strike operation successful.
The SEAL Teams should also mirror their raid and sabotage operations from the Cold War. Given that China and Russia can track and identify US Navy vessels without difficulty, the vessels will avoid actioning targets in contested or denied areas during a hot war. And their strike operations are not only inappropriate in proportionality but in expenditures against newer technologies like Chinese and Russian smaller unmanned maritime vehicles. The lower profile of the SEAL Teams is well-suited to mitigate these limitations. The SEAL Teams maintain combat swimmers who can launch from friendly shores or from a vessel to these targets, big or small, and destroy them before exfiltrating and preparing for their next mission.
Let the SEAL Teams Bring the Heat
The SEALs did not have to ask me where to start. In this era of strategic competition, the relevance of the SEAL Teams lies in what they have always done. They are and have been relevant strategic competitors. Should tensions manifest into conflict, the SEAL Teams can still bring the heat in this New Cold War.
Save as PDF
