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

officer informs you there are IEDs buried in the yard and bunkered
machine gun positions in the house. What do you do?”
There were varying degrees of combat experience among the
participants in the room.
“Don’t go,” said one SEAL officer. “It’s not worth the risk.” Some in
the room agreed.
A platoon chief said, “Replan the mission.” Several others agreed
with him.
I paused for a few moments to let them consider the options.
“Let me ask you a question,” I said to the class. “On what capture/kill
direct-action raid can you be certain there are no IEDs buried in the yard
or bunkered machine gun positions in the house?”
Heads shook around the room. The answer was obvious: none. You
could never assume that such hazards weren’t waiting for you on a
target. You had to assume they were, and you had to plan for them on
every operation and mitigate the risk of those threats as much as
possible. To assume otherwise was a failure of leadership. That was what
mission planning was all about: never taking anything for granted,
preparing for likely contingencies, and maximizing the chance of
mission success while minimizing the risk to the troops executing the
operation.
In Task Unit Bruiser, we were able to launch that hostage rescue
operation, despite the new intel of deadly threats, because we had
already taken those things into account and planned accordingly. We had
implemented specific steps to mitigate the risk of potential IEDs in and
around the target building. We had carefully planned our operation to
maintain the element of surprise, so that even if the bad guys were
manning bunkered machine gun positions, they wouldn’t know we were