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

The U.S. Army and U.S. Marine conventional commanders took the
debrief points as lessons learned and moved on. Having fought in
Ramadi for an extended period of time, they understood something we
SEALs did not: blue-on-blue was a risk that had to be mitigated as much
as possible in an urban environment, but that risk could not be
eliminated. This was urban combat, the most complex and difficult of all
warfare, and it was simply impossible to conduct operations without
some risk of blue-on-blue. But for SEALs accustomed to working in
small groups against point targets, fratricide should never happen.
A very senior and highly respected SEAL officer, who before joining
the Navy had been a U.S. Marine Corps platoon commander in Vietnam
at the historic Battle of Hue City, came to visit our task unit shortly after
the incident. He told me that many of the Marine casualties in Hue were
friendly fire, part of the brutal reality of urban combat. He understood
what we had experienced and just how easily it could happen.
But, while a blue-on-blue incident in an environment like Ramadi
might be likely, if not expected, we vowed to never let it happen again.
We analyzed what had happened and implemented the lessons learned.
We revised our standard operating procedures and planning methodology
to better mitigate risk. As a result of this tragic incident, we undoubtedly
saved lives going forward. While we were mistakenly engaged by
friendly elements again many times during the rest of the deployment,
we never let it escalate and were always able to regain control quickly.
But the tactical avoidance of fratricide was only part of what I
learned. When I returned home from deployment, I took over Training
Detachment One, which managed all training for West Coast SEAL
platoons and task units in preparation for combat deployments. I set up
scenarios where blue-on-blue shootings were almost guaranteed to