SEAL Team 6
United States military group
Also known as: DEVGRU, Naval Special Warfare Development Group
Officially: Naval Special Warfare Development Group (DEVGRU)
Areas Of Involvement: amphibious warfare
SEAL Team 6, common name for an elite U.S. military special missions unit consisting of Navy SEALs (Sea, Air, and Land forces). SEAL Team 6 is best known for the 2011 raid that resulted in the death of Osama bin Laden. It is overseen by the Joint Special Operations Command, a component of the United States Special Operations Command, which supervises the planning, training, interoperability, and execution of Army, Navy, Air Force, and Marine Corps special operations.
Purpose and personnel
SEAL Team 6’s official purpose is to test, evaluate, and develop technology and tactics for all naval special warfare forces. Its operations are classified, though it is commonly understood that it engages in dangerous, complicated, and sensitive actions around the world. Highlights of its missions—sometimes exaggerated exploits, sometimes facts—have cemented the unit’s reputation as well as its name, which was retired when the unit was decommissioned in 1987 but continues to be popularly used to refer to the unit’s current iteration, DEVGRU.
Historically, all Navy SEALs have been men. Naval special warfare training was not opened to women until 2016. In 2021 the first female sailor graduated from the naval special warfare pipeline, as a special warfare combatant-craft crewman, one of the specialized small boat operators who insert and extract SEALs and other special forces personnel. Besides the physical requirements, applicants must be 28 years of age or younger (though occasional waivers are granted for qualified candidates slightly older than that age). Individuals with at least five years of experience serving as Navy SEALs may apply to SEAL Team 6. Demographic estimates suggest that most members of SEAL Team 6 are about age 30, and the corps is overwhelmingly white, a 2021 estimate suggesting that 84 percent of enlisted Navy SEALs are white, compared with just 2 percent being Black.
https://www.britannica.com/topic/SEAL-Team-6
