Strange Things Everyone Ignores About SEAL Team Six

Few military units are as elite as the Navy's SEAL Team Six. They're the best of the best, it's said. They walk on air and snipe nickels from 1,000 yards. They emerge from the watery depths to garrote minotaurs and karate chop the wings off hummingbirds. They also shot Osama bin Laden dead in 2011 and had a movie made about the operation in 2013's "Zero Dark Thirty." The flick saw Chris Pratt transform from Andy Dwyer in "Parks and Recreation" to Starlord from "Guardians of the Galaxy." Are we missing anything? Lots of rules, some of which are obvious and some of which are completely not.  

Much of what's known about the unit won't surprise anyone. First off: SEAL Team Six, aka the Naval Special Warfare Development Group (DEVGRU), isn't exactly easy to get into. As The National Interest explains, you've got to be an active-duty NAVY Seal, have five years of experience, have served two deployments, and be male. Then there's three phases of Basic Underwater Demolition/SEAL Training (BUD/S) that weed out 75% of candidates, then Hell Week, then SEAL Qualification Training (SQT), which involves loads of swimming and running. 

Officially formed in 1980 as a rapid counterterrorism strike force, SEAL Team Six now encompasses seven squadrons: gold, silver, red, blue (assault), black (recon and surveillance), gray (transportation and support), and green (training). They're taught how to kill enemy combatants, rescue hostages, climb on board ships from the sea, skydive into enemy territory, and much more. Also, they don't officially exist, aren't technically a Navy outfit, work under limited legal oversight, contain way more than six guys, and even use dogs in the field.

Given all the articles, books, news stories, and yes, "Zero Dark Thirty," it's strange to think that SEAL Team Six doesn't officially exist. And by this we mean that the U.S. Department of State has never come out and publicly said, "There is this crack team of SEALS called SEAL Team Six that engages in blah blah covert military activities," etc. In fact, as 2014's "Navy SEALS: Their Untold Story" says, "Naval Special Warfare Development Group (DEVGRU)" is a cover name for the unit's real name, which is the one we all know: SEAL Team Six.

Thinking back, SEAL Team Six wasn't all that well-known amongst the public until 2011. This is the year successfully conducted Operation Neptune Spear and killed Al-Qeada leader and 9/11 architect Osama bin Laden in his compound in Abbottabad, Pakistan in 2011. But even then, when President Obama announced his death, the the head of state never once said "Navy," "SEALs," or anything of the like. It was just "counterterrorism professionals," "a small team of Americans," and so forth. Later on, sites like the BBC started calling out "SEAL Team Six" by name.

There's no public SEAL Team Six recruitment site. There's just a regular SEAL webpage containing requirements like candidates needing to be under 29 years old, having good eyesight, passing some mental aptitude tests, swimming 500 yards, etc. We do, however, have SEAL Team Six testimonials and public figures like Robert O'Neill, who claimed to be the one who shot bin Laden dead. 

Even though we've been saying "Navy" SEAL Team Six, SEAL Team Six isn't actually a unit within the U.S. Navy. They recruit from Navy Seals, yes, and represent the Navy, yes. But, SEAL Team Six operates under the Joint Special Command Operations (JSOC), which, "prepares assigned, attached and augmentation forces and, when directed, conducts special operations against threats to protect the Homeland and U.S. interests abroad." It's a division of the United States Special Operations Command (USSOCOM), a joint military venture incorporating representatives from the Army, Air Force, Marines, and Navy. As far as we can see, that is, because details aren't exactly forthcoming.  

This means that SEAL Team Six is the Navy's contribution to the JSOC special forces stew. Military.com says that other representatives include the Army's Delta Force (which itself is so elite that it recruits from SEAL Team Six), the Air Force's 24th Special Tactics Squadron, and an ultra-secretive division called Intelligence Support Activity (ISA), about which we know next to nothing besides being involved in intelligence gathering and analysis. 

The ins and outs of who reports to who, whether or not JSOC leadership has greater oversight into special forces outfits than individual military branches, or anything else about the complexities of hierarchy: We've got no clue. To complicate matters further, JSOC itself has a Joint Special Operations Command Intelligence Brigade (JIB) that conducts its own intelligence operations.

Speaking of office workers: SEAL Team Six isn't just six burly dudes who prowl the globe like a baddie-beating superhero squad. But if you thought so, then congratulations to SEAL Team Six founder Richard Marcinko. He coined the name in the early '80s to confuse the Soviet Union into thinking that there were a lot more SEAL Team Six teams than there were (there were only two at that time. We don't know how many SEALS those teams contained, but there were definitely less SEALs than now. Per the Navy SEAL website, there's currently about 2,450 SEALs, or about 1% of all Navy personnel.

But what percentage of those SEALs have gone on to join the elite, JSOC-directed SEAL Team Six? Numbers vary a bit depending on the source, like Radio Free Europe in 2011 saying that there were about 200 to 300 SEAL Team Six members. Looking at a 2015 Report to Congressional Committees from the United States Government Accountability Office (GAO) about U.S. Special Forces budgetary spending, we can see exact numbers on the Naval Special Warfare Development Group, aka DEVGRU, aka SEAL Team Six. Back then, DEVGRU contained 8,985 military positions and 1,181 civilian positions in its "headquarters" (if there's another location, we don't know). While it's highly unlikely that all of those 8,985 individuals were some of the aforementioned globe-prowling, burly dudes, those numbers are probably higher than you'd expect for an ultra-secret military operation that doesn't officially exist. 

Now we come to an unexpected point about SEAL Team Six that's gotten a lot more press than other points: They had a dog. Not just any dog, but a super special good boy Belgian Malinois named Cairo. Malinois are a "smaller, leaner, more agile version" of a German Shepherd, as Cairo's trainer and former SEAL Wil Chesney wrote in 2020's, "No Ordinary Dog: My Partner from the Seal Teams to the Bin Laden Raid." The book stresses not only the importance of combat dogs in general, but how different and unique Cairo was. 

Speaking to the U.S. War Dogs Association, Chesney said the dog "absolutely loved to work" and was the literal pick of the litter along with eight puppies because of his "determination, strength and cool head." And yes, as The New Yorker reported, Cairo was there on an MH-60 Black Hawk helicopter during the bin Laden raid. He was there if the terrorist got crafty during the raid and vanished behind a false panel or door. By the time of the operation, Cairo was already a veteran and had been shot twice on a mission in 2009. For his service, Cairo was awarded the Animals in War and Peace Medal of Bravery. Cairo died in 2015 to cancer, prompting the opening lines to Chesney's 2020 book, "Cairo was my dog. And I was his dad."

When SEAL Team Six came to notoriety after killing Osama bin Laden in 2011, lots of folks did what you'd expect when a murderous terrorist leader dies: They cheered. A few, however, scratched their heads and muttered, "Hey, is that strictly legal?" In his original "We killed bin Laden" speech, President Barack Obama injected a bit of justification aimed at this kind of question by saying things like, "It's important to note that our counterterrorism cooperation with Pakistan helped lead us to bin Laden." After all, Operation Neptune Spear was essentially an assassination on foreign soil, one that curtailed any opportunity for legal recourse under international or regional law.

This is not to criticize the decision to kill bin Laden — only to say that such an operation raises the point that plenty of other outlets have raised about SEAL Team Six: Where does the legal oversight for their actions begin and end? Sites like The Intercept straight-up talk about "the crimes" of SEAL Team Six, including "revenge ops," stories of mutilations of enemy combatants, unwarranted killings, and so forth. Along the same vein, Politico describes how the Supreme Court's 2024 decision regarding presidential immunity for Donald Trump could extend to protection from legal consequences related to military orders. 

At the same time, let's not be naive about the final function of military personnel. Patriot Wood talks about SEAL Team Six's "kill house training," designed to do what you'd expect soldiers to do: kill the enemy as efficiently as possible. But where does the legal oversight begin and end, as we asked? That's anyone's guess.