Shadow Warriors: Navy SEALS and the Rise in American Society

Navy SEALs;military history;Special Forces;College of Arts and Sciences: Liberal Studies

Butzin, CoryFlint ;

University of Michigan

关键词: Navy SEALs;    military history;    Special Forces;    College of Arts and Sciences: Liberal Studies;   

Others  :  https://deepblue.lib.umich.edu/bitstream/handle/2027.42/117682/Butzin.pdf?sequence=1&isAllowed=y

瑞士|英语

来源: The Illinois Digital Environment for Access to Learning and Scholarship

【 摘 要 】

The recent wars in Afghanistan and Iraq are very important to American history. They were the first wars that the United States fought using, primarily, Special Forces soldiers. General Tommy Franks, commanding officer of Central Command (CENTCOM) from 2000-2003, based his military strategy on making full use of the United States military;;s Special Forces capabilities. One group that took a substantial role in those events was the United States elite maritime Special Forces, the Navy SEALs. The acronym SEAL stands for the elements in which they are experts at operating in: SEa, Air, and Land. That versatility allowed them to benefit from the new military strategy, being able to work in every evnironment that the military may encounter. Among the first soldiers in the region, they were given some of the most dangerous missions and were able to mkae a significant impace on the region in the early stages of war. Navy SEALs have a long, storied history dating back to World War II. The SEAL Teams were not officially created until 1962, but the history of Navy combat divers goes back to the Navy Combat Demolition Units (NCDU) who went onto the beaches of Normandy in the D-day invasion to clear obstacles preventing American armor from reaching the beach. In the Pacific, Underwater Demolition Teams (UDT) performed hydrographic reconnaissance of enemy held beaches, gathering information to make charts of the harbors, as well as clearing the area of obstacles (mines, coral reef, etc.)