Coast Guard SEALS

Back when I was writing for the Seattle Post-Intelligencer, I wrote about the first Coast Guardsmen to be admitted as candidates to become Navy SEALS.

Wondered what happened to all that in the year that I was away.


Turns out of 19 selected to what is unarguably the Armed Forces most grueling training, two made it in May after more than 18 months in intense training.

Both men became the first members of any other branch of the armed forces to become Navy SEALS. Three more members of the Coast Guard are in the pipeline to become SEALs.

A Coast Guard notice said:

For more than a year and a half, these Coast Guardsmen endured what many consider to be the most difficult training available in the Armed Forces. This includes, among other things, training in combat diving, demolitions, marksmanship, patrolling, cold weather survival, land warfare and parachute operations.

The two members – whose names are being withheld for security reasons – attended training as part of an historic Memorandum of Understanding signed in 2008 by the Commandant of the Coast Guard, the Chief of Naval Operations, and U.S. Special Operations Command. The MOU is scheduled to last for the next seven years, with the option to extend indefinitely if both services find value in the arrangement.

May be old news but I'm catching up. Like to follow up on what I've previously written.