Mr.Shipley,
I just want to go on record stating I am not now, nor have I ever been, nor do I intend to in the future, be a Navy SEAL or claim membership to the Navy SEAL Fraternity.
Nothing against those who really are, but it's just not in the cards for me and I have other avenues I would like to pursue.
Thanks.

I posed once to try and get laid. I said I was Brendan Shanahan, and my buddy claimed to be Joey Kocur. Detroit area bar, laaaaaate at night. It worked. Somewhere 2 strippers are still talking about the night they banged 2 NHL allstars in the parking lot...

My senator Dick Blumenthal for years spoke about being a Vietnam Vet.  He lied the libtards in my state still elected him.

An LT in War College? I thought that was typically senior O4s.

One of the guys I know went to med school and was in my intern class... Along with an F-14 pilot, a former USAF Major and a bunch of young new docs that never held a real job.  I worked at Little Creek for a while and rarely met any NSW guys. A few EOD or Seabees, and I know two SF guys, but sorry...I don't know as many as the.rest of GD does.

That's amazing,out of all the active duty SEALS,the Navy had to pull those two from your class for that mission.

This has been my experience as well and I spent over 20 years in Virginia beach and had many in my circle. My buddy who just retired after 24 years with the teams used to say "How do you know when a SEAL walks into a bar? Easy, he tells everyone"

I heard that an adult got mauled a few states over by a vicious attack dog.... this was around the same time where my Shih-Tzu disappeared but returned later with messed up hair.

I thought Frank Castle was a Force Recon Marine?

The ones I drank heavily around at the Oceanfront used to be much quieter back in the day, pre 9/11 when Bosnia-Serbia was happening.   Most people who lived in VB all of their lives had no idea they were operating there (except maybe the ones who drank heavily at the bar with them).  

They'd drink for a couple weeks, then go off on a mission for a couple weeks, then return to the bar on their choppers.  

One time the bar owners put up a big banner saying Welcome Home **** Team or something like that.  Their Commander got wind of it and told them they had to avoid going to the bar for a little while.

LMFAO +1

 

I met a seal last week, served with Chris Kyle, different platoon though. He opened a liquor store right by my office.

 
 

Tag

Navy EOD is NSW, if I remember right.

I know several sewer pipe sailors and 80% talk like a drunken parrot. Constellation loves hiring those guys.

Am I the only person here who hasn't met a real SEAL?

+1

Nope.  Well, I had a retired SEAL help teach a military training course several years ago.  That's as close to a SEAL as I've ever gotten.

You should try to find one, you are really missing out.  They glow, like a golden aura, and for days after you you leave their presence, you just feel so happy and content, like nothing can go wrong in the world.  It's pure bliss man, pure bliss.

The closet I come, is a relative of mine had a TV Series called 'Sea Hunt'. Where he played a retired Frogman.





Ed



 

I loved that show when I was a kid.

Lol, the one's I've met I had no idea till someone told me after they left. One of my HS classmates was one of the seals in the chinook crash several years ago.

Worked with a pretty good number of them. The only ones that I knew to be braggarts were with the Leapfrogs. The operational guys were quiet.

SEALs are love.



SEALs are life.



 

 

The SEALs bring a lot of this on themselves, since they are by far the most capable, best of the best, uber super duper advertisers of themselves compared to any other unit in the world.

Count the numbers of books written, movies made, and most well-known "commandos" and "Navy SEALs" is going to pop up.

Disregard the fact that within the SOF community, hell even the regular light infantry community, they are a laughing stock in terms of dismounted small unit tactics, individual tasks, and anything resembling military discipline.....which is EXACTLY what the Navy wants and needs from them.

Here's the deal with the SEALs:  With the Army and Marines, a young hard charger walks into the recruiter station and sees several opportunities to actually deploy overseas and meet an enemy face to face, or at least within small arms range.  If you sign up for 11B in the Army, or land 0311 and 03 series in the Marines, you know you are going to be running with the pack, and will have further opportunities to try out for special operations or reconnaissance units that have very rewarding adventures awaiting you.

In the Navy office, you can only sell aircraft carrier deckhands and radar techs so far.  Hot-racking with 6 other dudes in the cubicle buried deep in the belly of a ship on a 6 month float isn't going to get the kids lining up.



But.......if you hang this little opportunity in their faces....





Then the kids will flock to the recruiter station and sign up for 5 and 6 year enlistment terms, vs. the Army' and Marines' 4yr terms.  Then you may say, the SEALs are the best because BUDS is so hard, and weeds out more people than others.  No, BUDS is designed to weed out as many of those poor saps so they can end up in the fleet doing jobs the Navy actually needs them to.

The Navy has had more than ample Maritime Commando capabilities all along.  They're called Marine Force Recon, or even Battalion Recon, who are way more capable than the SEALs when it comes to littoral commando operations.  The Navy doesn't care, and lets the SEALs basically do whatever they want, so that there is a Hollywood sensation about NAVSPECWAR that attracts young men looking for something truly different, that sets them apart from the Army and Marines.  Doesn't matter that it equates to chest pounders who roid up and face little or no consequences for violating every tenet of basic soldiering discipline, conduct, and weapons or sensitive items accountability, because it sells the Navy, and the Navy needs sailors.

This is why so many books are written, and why the Navy immediately signed off on Robinson's Lone Survivor book, with no real fact-checking, since he was already known for being a military fiction writer with an air for sensationalism.  The bigger the lie, the more recruits will show to BUDs, fail, and go to the fleet.  

At a fundamental subconscious level, these poseurs understand what everyone else doesn't.  Being a Navy SEAL makes up for some type of inadequacy.

For the Navy, that means being able to sell itself with a false label that is powerful enough to suck young men into a long enough enlisted contract that will result in a 5 to 6 year term, which is what the Navy needs to fulfill technical training and deployment stats that are adequate enough to keep the fleet doing its highly critical jobs.

For the poseurs, it makes up for the failure they see themselves as deep inside.  The Navy and the posers understand the SEAL mission better than all those looking at them from the outside, trying to figure it all out.

'90.  Late Jan or early Feb as I recall.

The non-resident course in Norfolk... it was a pretty good deal.

Non-resident course... we all had day jobs, and theirs were on Teams.  My apologies, I should have been more clear on that.

Interesting...

http://articles.orlandosentinel.com/1990-03-20/news/9003203521_1_libya-shalgam-chemical-plant

Just wondering...
Is this much different in his eyes than playing Santa Claus?

From a man with street cred!

 

A lot of truth in all that.  It is crazy how many kids I run into who are enlisting in the Navy because they are going SEALs.  They are ALL gonna be SEALS.  Of course, I try to mitigate their expectations, because I'm looking at these kids, they aren't training beforehand, or they are 5 foot nothing, 100 and nothing, and I'm just thinking to myself how the whole SEAL lore and Call of Duty thing has made these kids expect that they're all gonna be specops.  Gotta hand it to them, the Navy recognized it as a recruiting tool before anybody else did and went hog wild with it.  It clearly works.

Funny offshoot, I played hockey with a kid this year who is going into the Air Force.  And of course, he is gonna be a PJ.  His recruiter told him he has a guaranteed slot at their indoc or whatever their pipeline is.  He is definitely gonna make it, his recruiter says so.  Kid is probably 5'4".  Probably weighs about a buck 20.  Is he running to prepare?  No.  Is he swimming?  No.  Is he in the gym lifting?  No.  Has he gone on a hike with a pack?  No.  Did I tell him repeatedly he needs to start doing all that sort of shit now before he embarrasses himself on whatever exam or indoc they do and gets shoved into some random ass MOS?  Yep.  But of course, he's gonna be a PJ.  

I once worked with a guy who was a SEAL and went the office cubicle way of life.  Like all professions, there's dicks in all of them and this guy was it.  His cube looked like a recruiters office and would introduce himself as "Mike the Navy Seal."  Everywhere he went, he always said, "Nice to meet you, I'm Mike, I was a Seal."

It got so old, management finally asked him to either go be a SEAL or just be Mike, the cube dweller.  And yeah, he really was a SEAL.  We verified it, cuase he was so fucking annoying.

I met a SEAL once, His name was Andre, he lived in Boothbay Habor Maine during the summer!!!


 

bait stealing bastards!

That's hilarious.  Yep, I've met more than one SEAL who meets that description.

I never brought any of my love-me wall stuff into work for over 15 years.  I just didn't see the point of it.  When we moved into our offices a couple years ago my business partner badgered me into hanging something on my wall; since we deal with so many prior .mil folks at my office when talking deals and such it made sense.  Otherwise that stuff was in a folder somewhere down in my basement, LOL.

Still, as out and proud as a lot of SEALS can be (see what I did there) IMO when you're in the office the guys who let you know about it the most were the guys who were attached to units but not actually operators or whatnot.  I.e. the guy with the company elsewhere in the building at my last job who loved to talk specops with everybody, even the accounting ladies who didn't understand a word of what he was talking about.  Naturally, he was like a supply clerk or something attached to some specops unit.  Which pretty much made him specops you know.  Those guys ALWAYS let you know how cool they are.

I know one SEAL (recently retired), who in a discussion about the latest books and movies about SEALS, told me, "I wish all these guys would just shut up."