The cruel training of US Navy SEALs: a culture of brutality, cheating and drugs

Kyle Mullen has always had the natural drive and talent that made success seem easy. Until he tried the Navy SEALs.

The 24-year-old arrived off the coast of California in January for the tough SEAL selection course. in the best shape of his lifeeven better than when he was a defensive state champion in high school or captain of the football team at Yale.

But in the middle of the third week of the course, a continual stroke of physical and mental difficulties, lack of sleep and hypothermia that the SEALs call Hell Week, the athlete from Manalapan, New Jersey, was with eyes dead from exhaustionriddled with infections and coughing up blood from fluid-filled lungs, his peers said he looked like he was gargle.

The course started with 210 men. By the middle of Hell Week, 189 had stopped or were injured. But Mullen continued to work hard for days, spitting blood all the time. The instructors and doctors who taught the course, perhaps out of admiration for his courage, they didn’t stop him.

And it succeeds. As he struggled to get out of the cold ocean at the end of Hell Week, the leaders of the SEALs shook his hand, gave him a pizza and told him to get some rest. Then he went back to his quarters and lay down on the ground. A few hours later, his heart stopped beating and he died.

That same afternoon, another man who survived Hell Week had to be intubated. Two others were hospitalized that night.

SEAL teams have faced criticism for decades, both from outsiders and their own Navy leaders, that their selection course, known as Basic Underwater Demolition / SEAL Training, or BUD / S, it’s too hard, too brutal and too often it causes concussions, broken bones, dangerous infections, and near-drowning.

At least 11 men have died since 1953.

At the same time, the SEAL teams, which perform some of the most difficult military missions, including the lightning-fast rescue of hostages and the murder of high-profile terrorists such as Osama bin Laden, have insisted that having an empty-handed rite of passage is vital to producing the kind of unwavering fighters that teams need. Without BUD / S, they argue, there could be no SEAL.

The official cause of Mullen’s death was bacterial pneumonia, but his family says the real cause was the course itselfwhere the instructors took the candidates into dangerous states of exhaustion and injury, and the medical staff got so used to seeing the suffering that they didn’t hospitalize him.

“They killed him,” his mother, Regina Mullen, who is a registered nurse, said in an interview. They say it’s training, but it’s torture. And they haven’t even received adequate medical treatment. They treat these kids worse than they are allowed to treat prisoners of war. “

a new complication

Mullen’s death immediately brought back old questions if the resume doesn’t go too far.

And soon those old questions were complicated by something new.

When the Navy collected Mullen’s personal effects, syringes and doping uncovered in his car. The captain in charge of the BUD / S immediately ordered an investigation and soon around 40 candidates tested positive or admitted using steroids or other drugs in violation of Navy regulations.

The Navy did not link the sailor’s death to drugs. The service is expected to release reports of deaths from training and drug use in the fall. A Navy spokesperson declined to comment on Mullen’s death or allegations of widespread drug use and he said it would be inappropriate to do so before the reports are published and Mullen’s family informed of their findings.

However, the prevalence of drugs in BUD / S has some men in the upper echelons of SEALs deeply perplexed.

Without comprehensive testing, there is no way to assess the full extent of drug use in the program. But more than a dozen current and former candidates described a culture in which drugs have become deeply entrenched during the selection process of the last decade.

SEAL leaders say they do not have the authority to initiate a testing program to address the problem. In June, they formally asked the Navy for permission to begin screening all candidates, but are still awaiting a response.

Meanwhile, the drugs are there.

The Navy has made hundreds of changes over the years aimed at improving safety and increasing graduation rates. But no matter how hard the Navy tried to make BUD / S easier, it just seems to get harder.

In the 80s, about 40% of the candidates have graduated. Over the past 25 years, the average has dropped to 26%. In 2021 it was only 14% and this year in the Mullen class less than 10%.

a second attempt

When Mullen started BUD / S in January, it was his second attempt. His first test was in August 2021 and he spent over a year running, swimming and lifting weights to prepare. It lasted less than a day.

Instructors call the first three weeks of BUD / S the phase of attrition, jaws of punitive exercise, ice water and bullying aimed at eliminating anyone lacking strength, stamina and mental strength, individuals derisively referred to as “points of reference” by instructors.

On that first day, the instructors ran, crawled, squat and push-ups on the hot sand. restlessMullen’s mother said. In the late afternoon, the men were running in teams, leading 170-pound dinghies, when Mullen passed out.

A short time later she called her mother from an ambulance and explained that she hadn’t drunk a drop of water all day. When he fell, she said, an instructor hurled insults at his inert body and told him to get up. When he didn’t answer, the doctors took his temperature and sent him to the hospital for heatstroke.

Mullen was assigned to an internal recovery unit, where he had four months to recover before a second BUD / S attempt.

During his four months of waiting, he recalled his mother, Mullen started talking to him about performance-enhancing drugs.

The men she met in the recovery unit they were using steroids and human growth hormone, he told her, and was evaluating us. He told her that she would have to buy a used car to hide drugs.

“In all his years of sport, he had never touched those things,” he said. “I told him not to. But he ended up buying the car and sharing it with a group of guys. “

Pass the course

In a perverse way, the drug problem in BUD / S it is a natural consequence of the mentality that SEALs seek to cultivateAccording to Benjamin Milligan, a former enlisted SEAL who recently published a history of the force, “The water under the walls”.

SEALs want operators who can find unconventional ways to gain an advantage against the enemy, he said in an interview.

“Do you want guys who can solve problems in war, boys who know how to play dirty, because war is a dirty game, ”he said.

An unofficial adage often heard in SEALs is that “if you’re not cheating, you’re not trying”.

“No one can do everything the instructors ask, so you have to learn to cheat to get through“he said.” Everyone knows what happens. The point is to learn not to get caught. “

“Basically, you’re selecting guys who are willing to cheat,” he added. “So it’s not surprising, the boys will go to drugs ”.

In the months following Mullen’s death, the family pushed for responsibility. The military is protected by law from manslaughter compensation claims. Instead, Mullen’s mother says her goal is for Congress to impose independent oversight on BUD / S.

The officers in charge of BUD / S they have removed some of the more difficult aspects of the camp in recent monthslimiting pre-dawn training and running with heavy backpacks.

Six hours of sleep are now required per night in all weeks except Hell Week; external auditors intervened to observe the instructors; and a higher percentage of seafarers are now making the cut.

But on the beach, the sailors say, the problems continue. A month after Mullen’s death, there was another close call. After a night training in the icy undertow, a marine, cold, wet, hungry and exhausted, began to tremble violently, then went numb as he curled up in another’s arms trying to keep him warm, according to two Marines who were there. . .

They immediately called the BUD / S medical office, ma they said there was no answer. They put their classmate under a hot shower, called 911, and were able to get him civilian medical assistance.

The next morning, the two sailors said, the instructors let the class know that they were not happy. To punish them for calling the emergency health services, they said, the instructors had the class perform long sets of push-ups. Whenever someone fell exhausted, the instructors had the man who had been treated in the hospital for hypothermia sunk in the cold waves.

New York Times