Navy Officer Applies To Become The First Ever Woman To Join The Elite SEALs
Source: Caravan Pictures/First Independent Films/Hollywood Pictures
Original Article | Author: Matthew Wright
A woman is making history training with other potential officers this summer to hopefully become the first female Navy Seal.
The candidate is a midshipman - a Navy officer cadet - and she is joined by another woman who hope to be the first to join the Navy's special operations teams.
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The second woman is training for the Special Warfare Combatant-Craft Crewman program (SWCC).
While they've already marked a momentous occasion, the women still have many roadblocks and tests to overcome before things are official.
Women just recently in January 2016 were allowed to serve in combat roles.
The women's identities have been protected to ensure their personal safety and security along with 'career viability as future special operator,' claimed Lieutenant Commander Mark Walton, a spokesman for Naval Special Command, to CNN.
According to a Naval Special Warfare Center briefing last month for the Defense Advisory Committee on Women in the Services, eight SEAL and seven SWCC classes made entirely out of males have graduated since March 2016.
Walton said that the SWCC candidate will undergo months of Navy training and screening evaluations.
The potential SEAL will undergo three weeks at a SEAL Officer Assessment and Selection process in California before moving to a SEAL Officer Selection Panel in September.
Aspiring SEALs and SWCC candidates also have to withstand rigorous Basic Underwater Demolition/SEAL training.
It is both physically and mentally challenging, beginning with two months of brutal training in Illinois. If candidates don't pass a physical screening test, then they risk being kicked out.
Afterwards is basic conditioning, combat diving and land warfare training. According to the SEALs website, this culminates with what is known as Hell Week - 'the ultimate test of man's will.'
The training aims to 'weed out the weak' and considering 73 and 63 per cent of SEALs and SWCC candidates don't meet the mark, the description is accurate. This was according to the Naval Special Warfare briefing in June.
Walton said there are about 1000 SEAL candidates but only 200 to 250 make it through.
