Listen Up Marines, We Belong at Sea

[ganulv]

I never understood the SEALs.

I guess my understanding is that the Navy had the UDTs which morphed into the SEALs during the U.S. involvement in Vietnam (a couple of Vietnam veterans have made an association between the SEALs and the Mekong Delta to me, I don’t know if that’s historical memory or solid historiography). Perhaps nowadays it is more helpful to think of the SEALs as part of the Navy’s contribution to USSOCOM than as part of the Navy?

There's little infantry competence in the navy (counting USMC as not-navy), so where do they recruit personnel with already basic infantry skill from?

I imagine there are a few sailors who joined the Navy looking to be SEALs, didn’t make it through BUDS (no shame in that), and are now scraping paint somewhere in the Indian Ocean for the duration of their enlistment contracts.