The US Navy SEAL Teams Can Bring the Heat in the New Cold War, And I Saw the Spark

June 9, 2025

“Where do we start?”

I checked in as the intelligence officer for a US Navy special warfare unit in March 2020. My arrival coincided with the start of the command’s scheduled counter-ISIL deployment to Iraq under OPERATION INHERENT RESOLVE, the latest international counterterrorism campaign in the Middle East.

But circumstances larger than us threw that deployment out the window. In the face of a more aggressive Iran, the United States hastened an agreement that returned bases to Iraqi forces. Simultaneously, the COVID-19 pandemic wrecked itineraries and replaced them with quarantines. The deployment we anticipated was no longer.

In line with SEAL ethos, senior leaders under Rear Admiral Hugh Wyman Howard III made our circumstances an opportunity. They implemented a standing strategy to realign SEAL Teams away from degrading ISIL networks and toward confronting rising regimes challenging US superiority. On the slate to deploy, our unit was going to actualize the strategy. Instead of make-shift tents north of Baghdad, we settled into air-conditioned trailers in one of the safest places on earth: the United Arab Emirates. Against a backdrop of buildings made from marble and glass, the SEALs turned to me and said: “Intel, where do we start?”

None of us realized it at the time, but we were about to set the foundations for the community’s shift from counterterrorism to strategic competition.

Their Hot Wars in the Cold War

This shift to strategic competition led commentators both inside and outside the special operations community to argue that the SEAL Teams were racing for relevance. Embracing this shift to strategic competition meant combat-ready SEALs were “back to the drawing board” in coming up with new ways to execute traditional core mission activities, like Direct Action raids, that they had mastered over the last 20 years fighting terrorists on land. Others indicated the SEAL Teams had to wargame innovations that would transform their roots as maritime commandos. Some commentators more recently advocated for US special forces to consider new roles as virtual cyber operators or as US intelligence activity enablers under the titles of foreign area experts.

But the SEAL Teams have not needed to invent new operational concepts. Not only should tactics from the counterterrorism era actually remain familiar, this shift just represents the next chapter in the SEAL Teams’ long-running history against strategic competitors and their proxies.

Look at their hot wars in the Cold War.

The Underwater Demolition Teams, the predecessors of today’s SEAL Team structure, were dispatched in 1950 to Korea. They embarked from US Navy vessels to conduct seaborne raids against inshore critical infrastructure targets like ports, harbor facilities, tunnels, and bridges.

Platoons of the newly formed SEAL Team ONE and SEAL Team TWO, created under late President John F. Kennedy, deployed in 1962 to Vietnam, where they conducted reconnaissance patrols, hit-and-run raids, and sabotage missions from river patrol boats and shallow-draft SEAL Team assault boats, or STABs.

Multiple SEAL Teams deployed in 1983 to Grenada, where they supported OPERATION URGENT FURY. The SEALs performed pre-assault reconnaissance operations from US Navy vessels that led to their rescue of Grenada’s British Commonwealth governor-general, Sir Paul Scoon.

The SEAL Teams know how to be a strategic competition force.

Staying Hot in the New Cold War

The SEAL Teams can prioritize preparing for a potential hot war in today’s New Cold War with China and Russia by taking pages from the Cold War.

In fact, they can copy those pages and paste them onto newer ones.

The SEAL Teams should replicate their reconnaissance operations. The US Navy just validated over-the-horizon strike operations from vessels like destroyers during a strategic competition exercise. When China and Russia presumably jam the targeting methods needed to enable these strike operations during a hot war, the SEAL Teams are an effective substitution, given their ability to mask infiltration and exfiltration missions. Aboard assault boats, the SEAL Teams could run reconnaissance patrols to get eyes on a target and relay that information back to the destroyer. That communications path would make the destroyer’s strike operation successful.

The SEAL Teams should also mirror their raid and sabotage operations from the Cold War. Given that China and Russia can track and identify US Navy vessels without difficulty, the vessels will avoid actioning targets in contested or denied areas during a hot war. And their strike operations are not only inappropriate in proportionality but in expenditures against newer technologies like Chinese and Russian smaller unmanned maritime vehicles. The lower profile of the SEAL Teams is well-suited to mitigate these limitations. The SEAL Teams maintain combat swimmers who can launch from friendly shores or from a vessel to these targets, big or small, and destroy them before exfiltrating and preparing for their next mission.

Let the SEAL Teams Bring the Heat

The SEALs did not have to ask me where to start. In this era of strategic competition, the relevance of the SEAL Teams lies in what they have always done. They are and have been relevant strategic competitors. Should tensions manifest into conflict, the SEAL Teams can still bring the heat in this New Cold War.

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by Patty Nieberg

A day of training with the Carl Gustaf rifle, according to one soldier with significant experience with it, can be like a full-contact football practice.

“I would equate it to getting a concussion in football, where you have headaches, nausea,” a senior non-commissioned officer told Task & Purpose. “I mean, I’ve literally seen people throw up after so many rounds.”

Long-term brain and head injuries have long been a concern for soldiers who absorb repeated shock waves in routine training with powerful weapons. A new Army study will examine how different exposures to firing .50 caliber rifles, the Carl Gustaf recoilless rifle and howitzer cannons impact soldier health. Researchers will also try to determine if factors like the type of job, medical history or sleep patterns put soldiers at higher risk for chronic health issues like those common among football players.

The research differs from previous studies in that it will not consider single, severe head injuries but instead examine the effects of many small ones over time.

“There’s been a lot of research on impacts following moderate to severe TBI and even mild TBI because that’s so common in the military,” Megan Douglas, clinical research psychologist for the Walter Reed Institute of Army Research, told Task & Purpose. “But things like repetitive head injuries, those subclinical groups, I don’t think we’ve looked as much about them.”

TBIs are among the most common injuries for soldiers

More than half a million troops have suffered traumatic brain injuries, TBIs, since 2000, according to Department of Defense estimates. Nearly 82% of those service members have been diagnosed with mild TBIs, which are diagnosed with confused, disoriented states or memory loss lasting less than 24 hours or a loss of consciousness for up to 30 minutes.

The congressionally funded Army studies will help researchers better understand “dose-specific effects of exposure to weapons” and how blast overpressure impacts the risk of long-term health issues. The findings could help add to existing Department of Defense guidelines that lay out safe distances and considerations for troops exposed to blast overpressures and help develop prognostic tools for more serious head and brain injuries, according to Douglas.

“The goals can be across many different potential intervention points, whether we prevent exposure because of risk factors or we mitigate exposure through safety measures,” she said.

One study will examine the effects of chronic repetitive head injuries and mild TBI from ‘tier 1’ weapons, which include shoulder-mounted weapons that launch rockets and grenades, .50 caliber sniper rifles and machine guns, howitzers and mortars, and specific explosive weights for breaching wall and door charges. To do this, researchers will compare soldiers in jobs like special operations, infantry and field artillery, who have more training around tier 1 weapons to others with limited exposure like combat medics.

Understanding blast overpressure

The blast overpressure exposure for infantry, artillery or special operations soldiers can vary widely because of different units’ training frequencies, soldiers told Task & Purpose on the condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to speak with the press.

Special operations soldiers overall get more training by the nature of their missions and smaller unit sizes, a senior enlisted soldier in charge of weapons training said.

“There were days that we would get dozens and dozens of Carl Gustaf rounds and then at the end of it, you’re ‘like my head hurts,’” the soldier said.

And with more frequent training comes more blast exposures. A special operations soldier might be required to train on wall and door breaches 21 days every quarter, with five to 10 charges each day. But regular armed forces might train with just 10 charges annually, according to a former special forces engineer who was an instructor at a demolitions range.

Using training rounds versus live ammo can also make a huge difference, an active duty artillery officer said. “For the mortar and artillery rounds, it’s 90% concrete with a small flash so on the shooting end of the mortar and artillery systems, it doesn’t make a difference because it’s the same propelling charge. But on the receiving end, it’s a lot different,” he said. “For the shooting of the shoulder-fired weapons, that’s where you get the best difference because you’re basically shooting a pistol as opposed to shooting an explosive rocket.”

The artillery officer said he’s noticed a cultural shift in considering how all troops experience blast overpressure, including fire supporters or forward observers who are farther away from the weapons or explosions. The artillery officer also noted that training ranges vary and have different layouts, which could also be a factor in blast exposures.

“Although an artillery section will only fire 30 rounds in a batch of training, the people observing the explosions, albeit a mile away, are observing dozens of guns, and so it’s hundreds of rounds that they’re exposed to,” he said.

Drilling down into the individual

Existing research has shown long-term exposure to low-level blasts from breaching and shoulder-fired weapons can lead to higher rates of concussion and post-concussion symptoms. But with these new studies, Douglas said they’re hoping to drill down to the level of individuals and find out if certain people are at higher risk or are predisposed to brain or head injuries.

“In the past, the Army has implemented guidelines based on testing to be like, maybe this is the kind of person we want to keep out of certain roles because they might have a risk or predisposition towards these aspects,” Douglas said. “The goals can be across many different potential intervention points, whether we prevent exposure because of risk factors or we mitigate exposure through safety measures, or maybe even have potential therapeutic targets based on our data.”

Investigators will then take the data and determine if certain individuals are at higher risk for long-term health issues like traumatic encephalopathy syndrome, also known as chronic traumatic encephalopathy, or CTE — a common degenerative brain disease affecting professional football players.

“It’s similar to what we’ve seen with TBI or sports concussion research where we know that they’re at risk for these neurodegenerative issues later down the road, but they will actually be doing a blinded adjudication where they are looking at these aspects and saying whether they think they would be at risk.”

The artillery officer who spoke with Task & Purpose was previously assigned to special operations and said he noticed a difference in the health outcomes because of the communities’ emphasis on holistic health.

“There were people in special operations with multiple IED hits, severe TBI, multiple Purple Hearts that were in far better mental shape simply because they prioritize sleep for their two-decade career or eating right,” he said. “Whereas you’ll see conventional soldiers say they’re burned out after a short amount of time because they’re not probably as healthy.”

Mental health privacy

Despite ongoing efforts across the military services to combat the stigma, there are existing privacy concerns around troops’ mental health records and its impact on their careers.

Douglas acknowledged that soldiers might be worried about sharing personal information on these subjects but emphasized that the data is coded and kept private to protect research integrity. Soldiers’ mental health information will not be shared with commanders, except in situations with immediate safety concerns.

“What you say is not gonna be shared with others outside of very specific safety issues like if they intend to take their life or something like that. It will not be documented in their medical chart,” she said. “This is not for clinical purposes. It’s not for career decision purposes.”

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