Wikipedia:WikiProject Military history/Peer review/United States Navy SEALs

United States Navy SEALs

This article needs more than a peer review. There are to many people trying to edit and alter this article. It has been stuck at "Start-class" because many people add little bits of false info instead valid information that would actually improve the article. — Preceding unsigned comment added by Outdawg (talk • contribs)

Nick Dowling

I agree that this article needs a lot of work. Some suggestions:

• Provide an inline citation for everything. I've been able to greatly reduce the number of bad edits to Australian Special Air Service Regiment by adding inline citations - they seem to deter special forces-cruft to some extent.
• Much of the wording is sloppy and confusing. For instance the training section states that "Anyone can volunteer" but then goes on to list a number of restrictions on potential SEAL candidates (eg, they have to be in the Navy, male and under 28). The section later gives a list of 'PST' (term not defined) criteria which candidates need to meet, before going on to say that candidates are actually expected to do better than meet these criteria. This is a bit confusing.
• The history section seems to be rather brief and the prose is choppy. This should be re-written to be a more comprehensive history of the SEALS organisation and deployments.
• The article would benefit from a section which spells out what roles the SEALS fill - this is briefly mentioned in the lead para, but never referred to again. What do the SEALS do to justify their existence? Why do Navy units operate hundreds of kilometres from the sea?
• The article is full of military jargon and unnecessary acronyms.
• Most of the external links should be removed as few seem to be in line with Wikipedia:External links (eg, Navy SEALS fan sites and individuals photo sites are pretty useless as links)
• The 'Area of Operations' section is written in an odd tone, and doesn't seem to cover anything worthwhile - it basically states that SEALS are required to operate in all terrains and then describes how they survive in different terrains, which doesn't seem to differ from how anyone else would survive in harsh areas.
• The 'Notable Navy SEALs' should be cited and be limited to people who became notable for being a SEAL rather than notable people who were once a SEAL. --Nick Dowling (talk) 23:53, 4 January 2008 (UTC)

Howard Berkowitz

Nick gave a good starting list. I'd go a little further on "notable SEALS" (and predecessors); the idea that they are notable as SEALs, or at least special warfare operators, is a good point.

• If someone is notable as a SEAL, it may be that the things for which they were notable belong in the body of the article. For example, I was surprised not to see Draper Kaufmann (the younger of the father and son admirals) not even in the list, much less the lead of the article. Many will call him the creator of UDT starting in 1943, and the SEAL Program would never have happened without him.
• Other people key in the development, like Phil Bucklew, aren't there, and again, their role is part of the mainline history. One starting place is http://www.globalsecurity.org/military/agency/navy/navspecwarcom-hist.htm
• I'd like to suggest you look at Special reconnaissance and Direct action (military), since they both refer to SEALs, UK Special Boat Service, etc., and it would be well to have them use consistent language and be appropriately wikilinked.
• What about technological enablers of the SEALs? Christian Lambertsen developed the first US Navy rebreather, but really is one of the first physicians who specialized in diving medicine. There are foreign contributors; the Italians are quite likely the inspiration for most swimmer delivery vehicles.
• Nick brings out a good point: SEALs are treated as general-purpose special operators, which is why you find them on the oceans of Afghanistan :-). I believe it important to bring out that they can be used in some, but not other, roles. The article on Operation Nifty Package is stubby, but there are some interesting starting points. The SEALs assigned to disable his boats had a classic SEAL mission and carried it out perfectly. The attack on Punta Paitilla Airport was a fiasco. When that part of the mission was first given to the SEAL planners, they wanted to infiltrate SEALs, before the invasion, to an apartment that had a line of sight on the aircraft, and destroy it with a Barrett .50 caliber rifle or heavier direct fire weapon. For military political reasons, that covert form of operation was rejected, and they were combined into a larger unit than SEALs typically used, and were given a light infantry, hi-diddle-diddle-right-up-the-middle light infantry mission to make a direct assault on the airport. Light infantry raids, and especially seizing or disabling airfields, is one of the specialties of Army Rangers (75th Ranger Regiment). The lesson was "don't use SEALs on Ranger missions, and vice versa."
• There is a certain political aspect to using SEALs as special operators far inland, but they do have some of the qualifications. Still, their use in Afghanistan allowed the Navy a role in a landlocked country. There probably is value in cross-training among special operators. There were a few SEALs in Operation Gothic Serpent (first battle of Mogadishu), and, since at least some of the A-teams in a Special Forces Group are expected to be SCUBA-qualified, some mixing is probably useful. All US special operations organizations have specialties, and a SEAL might learn something from how a Ranger would approach something, while a Ranger could learn from an Air Force Combat Controller. Howard C. Berkowitz (talk) 17:36, 6 January 2008 (UTC)