Extreme Ownership: How U.S. Navy SEALs Lead and Win

scenarios.
The MOUT facility was a multiblock mock city of concrete
structures, ranging from simulated one-room houses to large and
complex multistory buildings built to prepare military units for the
challenges of urban combat—exactly the environment in which U.S.
forces were then heavily engaged in Iraq. The SEAL training
detachment, or TRADET (which I would later command), was tasked
with preparing SEAL platoons and task units for deployments to Iraq and
Afghanistan, and we knew they would put us through the ringer. The
TRADET instructor cadre constructed training scenarios to confuse,
disorient, physically and mentally stress and overwhelm the
participating SEAL units, particularly the leaders. The instructor cadre
would “mud-suck”^1 us at every turn. Their role players acting as “enemy
forces” in the training scenarios often wouldn’t follow the rules of play.
Some SEALs scoffed at this, thinking the training was unrealistically
challenging, and accused TRADET of cheating.
I disagreed. The enemy we would face in Iraq had no rules. They
didn’t care about collateral damage. They didn’t care about fratricide or
friendly fire. Iraqi insurgents were experts at analyzing and exploiting
our weaknesses. They were brutal savages, and their method of operation
was to think of the most horrific, cowardly, and effective ways to kill us.
So we actually needed TRADET to do the same thing to us.
During the first few days of Task Unit Bruiser’s MOUT training, my
SEAL leaders tried to control everything and everyone themselves. They
tried to direct every maneuver, control every position, and personally
attempted to manage each one of their men—up to thirty-five
individuals in Task Unit Bruiser. It did not work. In a striking realization
that military units throughout history have come to understand by