SAN DIEGO — The leader of the Navy SEALs — the elite special operators who most famously led the raid that killed Osama bin Laden — says the units are pivoting away from being a counterterrorism force to supporting other elements of the Navy.
“For 20-plus years, I think we’ve gotten used to being the supported effort,” Rear Adm. Keith Davids, the head of Naval Special Warfare Command, told a crowd of attendees at the annual naval WEST 2024 conference.
“We still need character and competence; we still need problem solvers; we need people that don’t quit,” Davids said. “We need them to not just do point target raids, we need that now to work in support of the fleet joint force.”
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A brief survey of the most recent announcements of SEAL exercises and activities bears that out. Many of the exercises that the operators have conducted lately have focused on concepts such as maritime interdiction or search and seizure of other ships and have been conducted off of Navy platforms.
Davids said that integration and cooperation is happening “to the degree I’ve not seen in my 33-plus years of commissioned service.”
“I feel like I’m back in the Navy in a big way,” he added.
While Davids did not break the trend of the typically secretive command and offer specifics on what that integration looks like, he did say that, broadly it could be something…
