Original subtitles

An elite special forces operator,

forged to fight anywhere.

The SEALs are free to do whatever works

to get the mission done.

Improvise, innovate.

Whatever it takes to win.

Built through trials that push the

boundaries of human endurance.

When you want to quit, when you want to give up...

you know that you got to keep going.

Discipline, skill, and violence...

transform him into the ultimate modern warrior.

SEAL Team Six trains on a 1-to-1 scale model

of bin Laden's compound.

A man who's killed 3000 Americans.

And then there he is.

Warriors aren't born...

They're built.

Understanding how reveals the

true nature of their greatness.

From the cradle to the grave,

these are the steps to creating...

History's Greatest Warriors.

A paragon of modern warfare,

an amphibious special forces operative built to strike

with sudden and deadly force...

The Navy SEAL.

The SEALs are the US Navy's

most highly trained special forces teams.

The combination of tactical skills they possess

can't be found anywhere else on the planet.

SEAL stands for "Sea, Air, Land".

And so, as a combat unit, they will always operate

in and around those environments,

which makes them immediately have to be adaptable,

have to be flexible.

Whether it's on skis in the mountains,

whether it's tactical ground mobility operations

in the desert,

or it's operating in or around the water,

the Navy SEALs are your force of choice.

They stand apart from Delta Force,

the army's top tier special forces unit.

It's their ability to get to the target from anywhere.

They're amphibious, they're elite skydivers...

and their stealth attacks by land can be just as shocking.

A Navy SEAL earns his reputation as

an expert in all manner of modern warfare.

It's not traditional combat.

It's behind the lines, it's strategic.

SEALS are masters of uncertainty.

They are individuals and teams that can drop into

deeply complex environment,

and start to figure out and perform.

Built for speed, stealth,

and sudden violence,

the Navy SEALs carry out operations

where no other modern warrior can strike.

Orders come from Naval Special Warfare Command.

You know, the numbers fluctuate,

but generally speaking, each SEAL team is

made up of 8, 16-man platoons.

You have east coast teams in Virginia.

You have west coast teams in San Diego.

The east coast teams are all the even numbered teams.

The west coast teams are the odd number teams.

But perhaps the most exceptional team...

is SEAL Team Six.

SEAL Team Six, A.K.A, "DEVGRU",

is a top tier strike squad...

elite, even among the special forces in

the United States military.

Its mission is counterterrorist operations,

capturing or eliminating high value targets,

and even preventing the spread of

weapons of mass destruction.

On the path to becoming a Navy SEAL,

the warrior will need to endure brutal training...

Master high-tech weaponry...

And complete high-stakes missions using tactics

refined during decades of combat.

It's an elite unit that traces its origins to a time

when a new kind of warrior was needed.

It all started really in World War II,

when the Allied forces realize that to win the war,

they had to get boots on the ground in Europe,

and to do so would require massive amphibious invasion.

The Allies must find a way through

a wall of enemy ramparts, mines, men and

weaponry dug in along the coastline of France.

What this will require is a very specific kind of soldier.

Someone who's a good swimmer,

someone who's resilient, who's well trained.

The United States Navy creates elite teams of

explosives experts, recruited for one purpose...

smash Nazi defenses,

and pave the way for a massive Allied assault.

The NCDUs- Naval Combat Demolition Units-

these were created for a very, very specific reason:

destroy the obstacles on Hitler's Atlantic wall.

Before dawn on D-day,

they deploy to the beaches of Normandy.

They perform this impossibly heroic mission.

They have some of the highest casualties

in the entire invasion.

The World War gives way to the Cold War,

and the persistent threat of nuclear conflict demands

a warrior unlike any other in history.

When Kennedy comes into office,

he invigorates special operations.

Kennedy's background is a PT boat skipper.

President Kennedy understands that

you're going to need a special operations force.

You're going to need to enhance what he saw

in World War II as a Navy veteran.

President Kennedy promotes the Navy's

heroic underwater demolition teams.

They'll now be called the 'SEALs' -

two teams of modern warriors

who fight on sea, air, and land.

Newly created SEALs test their skills in the

ultimate proving ground: the jungles of Vietnam.

They're born in World War II,

but they're forged in Vietnam.

The US is up against a guerrilla fighters

that are giving them all kinds of trouble,

and they're really tough to beat.

Viet Cong guerrillas are some of the

best jungle fighters in history.

The United States' conventional forces

hit the enemy with all of their might,

but are losing crucial battles.

The Navy SEALs are called upon to try a new approach:

extreme guerilla tactics to

knock the enemy off balance.

In 1966, the Navy's newest commandos

deploy to an area southeast of Saigon,

known as the Rung Sat Special Zone.

This dangerous mangrove swamp is

crisscrossed with enemy supply lines,

and a haven for Viet Cong forces.

The Rung Sat Special Zone, loosely translated,

is the 'Forest of Assassins'.

You don't want to be there.

Yet, the SEALS are there all the time.

It's a mangrove swamp in the south part of the country,

and it's filled with Viet Cong.

The SEALSs are built for the 'Forest of Assassins'.

And a lot of the conventional units,

they're out there, they're in the open.

They're really, in many cases, being hunted.

The SEALs show up,

and their primary mission is to hunt bad guys.

This is a real difference in mentality between

the hunter and the hunted.

The amphibious warrior evolves

in the 'Forest of Assassins'.

Night after night, the SEALs hone their skills

as covert and deadly fighters.

The SEALs become known to the Viet Cong

as the 'men with green faces'.

That's if they're lucky to actually see them

before they're neutralized.

The SEALs become what we know them as today,

for this deep, deep penetration,

well behind enemy lines.

Missions that seem improbable,

against a tenacious enemy.

Being that aggressor allows

a mythos to build around the Navy SEALs that was

unlike anything we'd ever seen.

In Vietnam, the SEALs demonstrate the

tactical advantages of having such elite forces.

Stateside, the US Navy refines the selection process

into one of the toughest in military history.

Each year, hundreds of candidates

enter a selection process designed to identify

the best of the best.

It begins with BUD/S:

Basic Underwater Demolition SEAL training.

It's six months of misery...

A three-phase program of extreme

physical and mental tests.

BUD/S is assessment and selection.

There's some narcissism involved in wanting to be a

Navy SEAL, because of the fact that you want to

stand out, you want to be special.

You want to looked at and recognized for doing

something that very few people can do.

As soon as you hit the beaches of BUD/S, day one,

all narcissism goes away, and humility takes its place.

The candidate meets 'The Cadre'.

Get down! In the mud!

And start crawling!

These battle-hardened SEALs

serve as merciless trainers.

They inflict pain and stress to weed out

those who are struggling.

The Cadre is going to tease out these

critical attributes, these qualities as to

whether or not you have inside of you

what it takes to be a Navy SEAL.

You know, it's what's written in the SEAL code.

It's part of the ethos.

I'm gonna keep on getting hit,

but I'm gonna keep on coming.

It's this kind of knocked down seven times,

get up eight philosophy.

First phase.

The Cadre deploy tried and true techniques designed to

push each candidate's body and mind to its limit.

For hundreds of hours, you're running around

with big, heavy boats on your head,

you're exercising with 300 - pound telephone poles.

They wet you down, they make you lay down

until you're nice and cold,

then they make you jump into the cold water again.

It makes you miserable.

It screws with your ability to think.

Can you get pushed down to zero

and still perform?

You know, this is brutal training,

this is sadistic training.

They're gonna find a way

to find your weaknesses.

They're gonna find a way to break you down.

So you feel that mental stress

and that physical stress.

The grind of the selection process

builds day after day.

But there is a simple way to drop out.

You have to go ring the bell.

But what's really interesting is

what hearing that bell does for...

someone who's actually in training.

I remember being in training and, when I heard that bell,

it made me feel better.

I was still going, I hadn't quit yet.

If the candidate survives the first

three weeks of brutal conditioning,

he earns an even more daunting challenge:

Hell Week.

The determined candidate faces

his toughest trial yet. To become a Navy SEAL,

he must survive a week of tests

designed to push his body and mind past their limits.

Hell Week is the crucible.

You're put in these tents, and just after sunset,

all hell breaks loose.

Instructors run in, they have machine guns,

they have simulated grenades.

They hustle you out into 'The Grinder'

where they're spraying you with hoses.

They're making you do push ups.

They're yelling at you.

It is absolute mayhem and chaos.

From there,

Hell Week only gets more demanding.

The grueling gauntlet batters candidates with

icy ocean waves and hypothermia.

On the beach, hours of calisthenics and timed runs

provide their own kind of agony.

It's the ultimate test of a candidate's commitment.

You're not only determining who can survive in an

environment like this, but you're teaching these guys

how to overcome the impossible.

The Cadre use sleep deprivation

to add to the stress.

That whole time, you're only gonna sleep for about

2 and a half hours, 3 hours, the whole time.

Believe it or not, they stop thinking.

Alpha males who have never failed at anything

break down and quit.

Once Hell Week starts,

that's when you get a ton of quitters.

It is every bit as physically exhausting,

as mentally exhausting.

Yet somehow, I build it up in my mind,

and I say to myself, "I can get through this."

Over five and a half days,

the candidate proves himself to The Cadre.

When Hell Week finally ends,

he's reached a warrior milestone.

Day One, you wear a white shirt,

and you're known as a White Shirt.

And you wear that white shirt through Hell Week.

It's only when you graduate Hell Week successfully

that you get to wear a brown shirt.

When you complete Hell Week,

there's a certain amount of feeling like

you have accomplished something,

that you are going to be a Navy SEAL.

Until you realize it just continues to be

as hard as it was before.

And in fact, it gets harder.

That's a low moment.

Week 8.

The candidate moves on to second phase.

Now, he must prove himself in the water.

Second phase is the diving phase.

You have this training so you can figure out who can

handle combat in a maritime environment.

Think about everything that the soldier on dry land

has to accomplish.

And now think about the frogmen being responsible for

doing those same things under 40 feet of surf.

In punishing dive competency tests,

the candidate squares off against

an aggressive underwater attacker.

You're sitting on the bottom of this 15 foot pool.

An instructor dives down and...

attacks you, rips off your mask,

rips your regulator out of your mouth,

turns you around, spins you,

maybe jabs you a couple times,

ties your regulator into knots,

and then leaves you.

The candidate survives combat diving

and graduates to third phase.

He's tested on dry land...

with everything from bullets to bombs.

Third phase is where you learn all of

your land navigation, your patrolling,

your weapons, your demolition.

The instructors are watching you like a hawk to

ensure that you can be trusted to safely handle

explosives, that you can be trusted to handle

your weapons during live fire maneuver,

immediate action drills.

And so you will see guys get dropped.

By now, most candidates have

arrived at a painful realization...

They don't have what it takes

to become a Navy SEAL.

It has about an 85, 90% attrition rate.

So only about 10 or 15% of the guys who start BUD/S

actually make it through.

Fundamentally, you got to know that the

men to the left and right of you can be completely,

fully relied upon to keep pushing, through injury,

through discomfort, through exhaustion.

You need them to be trusted, to be able to do the job,

to get your back.

I've just finished what's arguably the hardest

physical and mental selection process in the world,

and I feel on top of the world.

And I realize, oh, wait, this is not over.

We have a long way to go.

Throughout the selection process,

The Cadre tests the candidate's mind and body.

For the few SEAL candidates still standing,

they now enter more formal training.

They take BUD/S graduates,

and they immediately start SEAL Qualification Training,

SQT, a 26-week course.

You are no longer being assessed on

your attributes, necessarily.

You are now being trained in skills.

On land, in the water, and in the air,

the SEAL candidate constantly practices the best ways of

getting to the fight, quickly and quietly.

Combat's hard.

But so is getting to combat.

Most of SEAL training is just training how to get there.

You do fast roping, which is when you

come out of a helicopter, you're sliding down a rope

with your hands as your brakes.

You also learn rappelling, which is a different way

to come out of a helicopter.

You do freefall, where you jump out of the aircraft

at 12,000, 12,500 feet or higher.

Candidates train for every possibility,

drawing lessons from past missions.

You learn things like close quarter combat, CQC.

You learn more advanced land warfare techniques,

you learn some mobility driving techniques,

all in this course so that when you show up to

your SEAL team, you are better prepared

in terms of training.

They're able to make entry, and clear corners,

and all the rest.

That is the product of thousands of repetitions,

and from having developed a choreography

on how to clear a room, and then honing that,

and refining it,

and then taking lessons learned and adapting it.

Just as important as getting into combat

is getting out of it.

SEALs undergo SERE training.

Search, Evasion, Resistance, and Escape.

You first go through some drills on doing evasion,

escaping, but then also you get captured.

And, you are put in a mock prisoner of war camp,

and you are interrogated.

So you start to learn how that might feel.

SERE training is essential to the SEALs

because the mind controls the body.

The body's gonna give out long before the mind does.

The mind has to keep pushing itself to say,

"You're not out. You're not out. You're not done."

The Navy SEAL, built to strike from the

depths of the sea, is also trained to survive

at the highest altitudes...

And in 2005, the mountains of Afghanistan

push the SEALs past their limits.

During the War on Terror,

the SEALS are deployed abroad to track down

Al Qaeda and the Taliban.

Afghanistan provides a very unique cold, high level,

high altitude- environments that are tough.

Marcus Luttrell is part of a four-man reconnaissance

operation being inserted into the mountains of Afghanistan.

They are overtaken by an overwhelming

enemy Taliban force, and...

a gunfight ensues, and at the end of it,

Marcus Luttrell is the only one left.

He's wounded by shrapnel from an RPG.

His back is broken.

He's able to survive for five days in

hostile territory before he's finally extracted

by US forces.

He evades capture. He fights off the Taliban.

All of this in punishing terrain.

This is what SERE training has taught him to do.

This is an example of why Navy SEAL training is

as hard as it is, because when you want to quit,

when you want to give up, when you want to lie down,

you know that you got to keep going.

Only a select few complete the year-long

journey through SEAL selection and training.

It is then that the candidate officially joins

this brotherhood of elite warriors.

When you think about how SEAL are prepared for combat,

and you compare that to the training of other people that

have gone before, I don't know of anyone

who's been better prepared than a modern SEAL.

Upon completion of SEAL Qualification Training,

you are then awarded the Trident.

I'm given my Trident, thrown in a SEAL platoon.

Nobody cares that I have my Trident.

"Get to work."

Selected, conditioned, and trained-

a new Navy SEAL reports to his unit.

Now, he needs the weapons that will make him

a formidable force on the battlefield.

The Navy SEAL has been forged through a

grueling selection and training process-

on land, in the air, and in the water.

Now, he must be armed.

The weapons that we carry are always going to be

designed for the mission that's actually involved.

You might be doing a combat swimmer underwater mission.

You're not carrying a gun. You're carrying explosives.

You go into close quarter combat,

you're carrying a rifle that can actually

shoot inside buildings.

You're using a level of ammunition that doesn't

necessarily shoot through walls because you might have

friendlies on the other side of those walls.

With lives at stake,

a SEAL's weaponry must function...

everywhere.

A rifle in a special forces context

has to perform in all different environments.

It can't be a weapon that can only be used in

clean, dry environments.

It has to perform well in snow, in dirt, mud, sand.

Unlike other warrior cultures in history where

they would really maintain or develop mastery in sometimes

a singular weapon, the Navy SEALs try to look at

all weapons as fair game.

At times, the SEAL will

enter combat by land or by air...

but his specialty is to strike from the sea.

And he'll need a weapon designed for such an assault.

With the M4 carbine, it can be very dangerous

to fire that rifle and water still being in the barrel

or inside the gas tube.

So much so that it could actually blow the system up.

When H&K develops the 416, they incorporate certain

draining features into the system that allows water

to rapidly drain out of the rifle.

This allows a Navy SEAL or operator to come out of surf,

without having to care that much about how much water

is in the system, to safely fire it.

A SEAL also selects a reliable backup weapon,

tailored to his personal preferences

and shooting style.

Pistol choices are thought through

very carefully.

A .45 caliber hitting anywhere on an opponent

or enemy will knock that opponent down.

But it's a very powerful round.

The 9 millimeter is a less powerful round,

which means you have to be much more accurate.

Every SEAL will choose which caliber of weapon they carry.

It just depends on what you're looking for

and what you need.

Just as important as the type of weapon,

is the ability to use it effectively

in every combat scenario.

We're now going to teach you

how to shoot and move.

Or, not just going to, you know,

set up an ambush.

Now we're going to teach you how to actually

infiltrate an enemy strong point safely.

The SEAL must even be prepared to use his

weapons in the wind and the waves of the open sea.

Somali pirates capture a container ship

off the coast of Somalia.

And they take the captain of that ship hostage,

for ransom.

Any hostage rescue mission in

a maritime environment is automatically going to

go to SEAL Team Six.

Navy destroyers track the hijacked cargo ship.

The SEALs' most skilled marksmen

are summoned to rescue its captain.

A C-17 transports the SEALs,

their weapons and their gear.

Their kit is all loaded into high speed assault craft,

and dropped in the ocean before the SEALS jump in.

They have to get their fast,

so they parachute in.

It's gonna be a low altitude jump

because they have boats and gear,

and the drop zone is in the open ocean.

It's gonna be over the horizon so the enemy

cannot spot their arrival.

This lifeboat is already attached to a US vessel,

and just being towed.

The hijackers hold Captain Phillips in the lifeboat.

Hostage negotiations are going nowhere.

The SEALs have little time to pull off

the rescue of a fellow sailor.

They're all on that fantail...

in the open water.

The complexity of the task that SEALs face

in this moment is enormous.

They are looking at a target which is...

roughly the size of maybe a button or,

at most, a coffee mug.

That's, the size of space they have,

with inside of which they can take a shot.

Three snipers on a shifting platform,

three moving targets...

And no margin for error.

The boat that they're looking at,

the target is bobbing up and down on the seas.

Even though bullets travel fast,

the sea still moves.

So this is an element of understanding exactly

how and when you need to take a shot,

timing your shots in a way that the bullet gets to

exactly where it needs to be in the moment.

The crazy thing is that they all have to take

a perfect shot simultaneously.

All three at once.

They drop the pirates.

They took action and they did what they had to do,

and they did it precisely.

You can just fathom the difficulty of that shot.

The adrenaline, the intensity.

It's an incredible feat.

The mission to rescue Captain Phillips

is incredibly remarkable.

To be able to project that power at sea,

to have them connect with a Navy ship,

to jump out of an airplane and, all the rest,

and to conduct three simultaneous sniper shots.

It's incredible.

We marvel at Captain Phillips,

and what the SEALs do there.

But for them, it's just another day.

The skills demonstrated by the snipers

who rescued Captain Phillips are enhanced

when paired with other state-of-the-art gear,

chief among them, night vision.

The enemy that you cannot see is

far more damaging than the enemy you can see.

In special operations,

it's always an advantage to fight your enemy

in the darkness.

With the invention of night vision,

and laser aiming modules on weapons systems,

fighting your enemy in the dark,

where they don't have access to night vision is gonna be

always better for you in the end.

Night vision goggles affords the SEAL assaulter

increased capability in movement

in detecting the enemy.

However, in order for it to be of real value,

it has to be paired with a weapon system.

And so, that's when we use our infrared lasers,

infrared floodlights.

Instead of a visible red laser,

imagine an infrared laser, that the naked eye can't see.

So an operator would be looking over the top of

a rifle, not using the scope that could be mounted on it,

but using that laser instead.

A great warrior has been built through

an exacting selection and training process.

But his ultimate capabilities will only be revealed

when he squares off against the enemy.

Years of training to master combat

in any environment, prepare the Navy SEAL

for his ultimate purpose:

Meeting the enemy, face to face.

You know, with any soldier that goes to war,

you always wonder, well, how are you gonna show up?

How are you gonna perform the first time that you're tested?

For me, a testament to the effectiveness of the training

is, my first time in combat, I did feel a level...

somehow, that I'd been there before.

America's most elite special forces

operators neutralize the enemy...

through a well-tested combination of

weapons and tactics.

SEALs train to be specialists in CQB.

It's close quarters battle in a building with the enemy.

This is all about your footwork.

It's all about your line of sight.

It's a very difficult, complex dance,

so that you can recognize threats rapidly,

and then bring your situational awareness

back out so you can notice and address

new and emerging threats.

It's a very difficult and very complex way of

moving through a building.

98% of what you do as a Navy SEAL

is figure out how you can get into a position

so that you might take action.

While a Navy SEAL prefers to unleash

a quick and devastating attack,

he will sometimes face more drawn-out encounters.

He will need resilience, stamina,

and high-level hand-to-hand combat skills.

Sometimes you need to be able to capture people,

get a hold of them. I don't want to kill them,

but I want to be able to disable them,

get them under control and take them off target.

As Navy SEALs, we do train combatives

or hand-to-hand combat.

It is possible for somebody, an enemy combatant,

to get their hands on your weapon,

and you have to be able to deliver effective strikes.

If you are down to a point where you are

hand-to-hand, or mano-a-mano,

something's probably gone really bad.

The presence of hostages changes

the approach to an enemy stronghold...

the teams train and prepare for all manner of

chaos and confusion.

In 2012, that preparation pays off.

A SEAL troop is given a very challenging

and difficult hostage rescue mission.

They have to infill down a steep mountain face

to close on a remote target area

in the mountains of Afghanistan.

When an enemy guard reveals his position,

Edward Byers and a fellow SEAL follow him,

infiltrating the compound.

Ed Byers is making entry behind the point man.

Sadly, the point man is

fatally wounded in that doorway.

Ed Byers steps through.

Immediately, he's confronted with an enemy about

20 feet away, who's leveling a weapon at him.

He drops him, and then sees somebody else

on the ground crawling towards a pile of weapons.

He tackles the guy and straddles him.

He can't tell if it's a hostage or a terrorist.

A hostage, though, calls out to Byers,

so Byers knows the guy he's straddling

is a bad guy.

At that point, he kills the enemy

he's on top of, and he immediately

leaps onto the hostage, Dr. Joseph,

as bullets are whipping around the room.

There's also another enemy fighter within arm's reach,

and fortunately, while he's covering Dr. Joseph,

he's able to pin this guy up,

grabbing him by the throat before...

fellow teammates come in and help him out there.

Byers' bravery earns him the

Medal of Honor,

and illustrates the warrior mindset

instilled in each SEAL.

They're being taught as a soldier or a fighter

to go into full combatant mode.

The aggressive state you have to sort of

bring out from yourself.

He's out to kill you.

The prime directive is warfare.

The ultimate goal is to come back a victor.

SEALs are trained to end a fight quickly and effectively.

It's how warriors have trained

through the centuries.

Every warrior culture in some way

use fear as a weapon.

For the SEALs, the mythos helps...

seed uncertainty and seed fear into an enemy.

And this is no different than the Spartans,

and the Vikings,

than the Mongols, or the Samurai,

or any other warrior culture.

Fear gives you the advantage.

A frightened enemy makes mistakes

that the SEAL,

with countless hours of experience in

hand-to-hand combat, can exploit.

It's finishing moves, choke outs...

where they can handcuff them or zip tie them,

capture them and take them away.

Sometimes that could be a rear naked choke

to grab a hold and control the head.

Control the person.

You can tighten down, you can clamp down on those

carotid arteries and make that person pass out.

You get them in cuffs,

and now you've subdued that person.

You've got them under control,

and they've suffered no physical harm.

A Navy SEAL is effective in

one-on-one encounters.

But he's built to fight as part of a team.

Now, he must deploy alongside other SEALs,

in a squad that will go after

America's biggest enemies,

including Osama bin Laden.

A Navy SEAL spends years acquiring skills and

tactics that prepare him for complex battlefield.

And when he's deployed, he will join a team built to

go after America's most elusive enemies.

None is more skilled than the legendary

SEAL Team Six.

The SEAL Team Six mandate is a lot like the Delta Force

mandate, the army's premier special forces unit.

Until the War on Terror, the Navy SEALs distinguished

themselves from Delta as primarily a naval

special warfare unit, attacking from the sea.

But the SEALs are needed in the Middle East and

Afghanistan, so they adapt to become as effective

a land warfare unit as Delta.

When the world's most wanted terrorist

eludes capture, SEAL Team Six

is among those tasked with finding him.

On 9/11, our towers went down,

the Pentagon is hit, and suddenly

the whole world knows who Osama bin Laden is.

He becomes the number one most wanted man in the world.

And the US military are in constant search for him,

It looks to all of us around the world,

we're not gonna find bin Laden.

But then we get this lead...

that he's in Abbottabad.

He is pinpointed and located in Pakistan,

at this compound that no one would have ever expected.

He's right next to a Pakistani military academy.

But knowing where bin Laden is,

isn't the same as knowing how to get him.

SEAL Team Six, along with the

Pentagon's joint special operations command,

devise a plan of attack.

What the real trick has to be is,

how can the operators prepare in the best,

most effective way possible?

So they build a mock compound,

and the operators begin to practice in

that mock compound.

Surveillance photos reveal the target

to be a 38,000 square foot compound

protected by steel security gates.

12 to 18-foot tall concrete walls

are topped by razor-wire.

Its main building is a three-story fortress

with an elaborate security system.

SEAL Team Six trains on a one-to-one

scale model of bin Laden's compound.

That's the kind of training that you need.

All of this is designed to generate

as much certainty as possible, so that they are

even more prepared for uncertainty when it hits.

For 3 weeks, 24 SEALs

train to make entry into the complex.

They practice clearing every corner,

courtyard, and gate of the exterior.

But opaque glass and high walls prompt questions

about what awaits them inside.

Who is actually going to be on that target?

What the actual threat's gonna be-

Is they're gonna be suicide bombers?

What kind of armaments are they gonna have?

No amount of training or intel

can provide total certainty.

The operation plan is locked.

Now it's time to execute.

The order to capture or kill the world's most

notorious terrorist comes from the top.

The stakes are immensely high...

and they know that.

Navy SEALs approach by air

in two stealth Blackhawk helicopters,

an aircraft whose existence isn't

even acknowledged prior to this mission.

You're deep in Pakistan,

who doesn't know you're there.

And you need to be there as fast as possible.

The guys are flying in territory for

a couple hours, undetected.

The plan calls for 12 men to fast rope

from one helicopter to the courtyard.

The second helicopter will drop one team

outside the compound to guard the perimeter,

and another team onto the roof of

the main building.

Everything is speed, speed, speed.

Then, disaster strikes.

The plan doesn't go as expected because a

helicopter, which is supposed to land in the courtyard,

in fact, crashes in the courtyard.

And now, the plan changes.

The second helicopter, which is supposed to

put guys on the top of the building,

now decides to land outside the building.

The operators are immediately dropped into uncertainty.

Infiltration tactics rehearsed and

practiced to perfection...

are abandoned.

This helicopter crash changes everything.

This kind of catastrophe can cause the whole operation

to spin out of control.

The SEALs are forced to fall back

on contingency plans.

3 SEALs from the downed helicopter

enter through a garage.

They're greeted with fire from an AK 47.

The SEALS fired back with silenced weapons,

killing the threat with two shots.

SEALS on the second chopper hit the ground and

link up with the rest of the team.

Near the back of the main house,

there's a stairwell.

Blocking their way to the upper two floors

is a locked metal gate.

The SEALs blast their way through

with breaching materials.

They've got this down.

They sweep the rooms, going floor by floor.

It's like clockwork.

They clear the first floor.

Bin Laden's not there.

Then the SEALs encounter another gunman

on the staircase.

He's shot dead before he can fire.

It's bin Laden's son.

They clear the second floor.

Bin Laden's not there.

Is he gonna be on the third floor?

Infiltrating deep into the compound,

the SEALs seek out their target: Osama bin Laden.

And then, there he is.

A man who's killed 3000 Americans,

and there he finally is.

And, it's done.

'Geronimo' is the codename given to bin Laden.

So the call goes out: "For God and country.

Geronimo, Geronimo, Geronimo."

That's heard across the team's radios.

It means one thing: the SEALs got him.

The uniqueness of that operation,

you're talking about killing the mastermind of 9/11,

the most wanted terrorist in the world.

The weight and pressure on SEAL Team Six...

for that strike must have been huge, and yet,

with the training, it just becomes habit.

An elite special forces unit built and

designed to attack from water,

executes a high-profile mission,

hundreds of miles from the sea.

There was no water around Abbottabad.

But, the SEALs are the ones who go in

and conduct the mission.

This just speaks to the adaptability of

Naval Special Warfare.

The SEALs have been in continuous combat

for decades, but this modern warrior

must now look to the future.

Enemies are planning their attacks,

and the SEAL must be prepared.

For decades, a Navy SEAL has had

an advantage over the enemy, thanks to his superior

training, weapons, and gear.

Now, some of that technological advantage,

that gap is closing, as the enemy starts to

become recipients of better equipment.

There's information and even footage of

our tactics and operations that can be found

all over the Internet.

Now our enemies can see exactly how we operate.

A unit that had hid in plain sight for almost 50 years,

is now literally the most widely known, popular

spec ops unit on the planet

Some of our advantage is lost.

The bin Laden raid, I mean, it's,

it's the Iwo Jima flag raising moment.

The impulse in special operations is to maintain,

you know, operational security.

And yet at the same time, the country had

a right to know, you know, what happened.

SEAL teams have been incredible in the

development of their tactics and procedures

in the global War on Terror.

But now, the equipment,

the tactics that we used in the past,

well, that's not gonna be good enough.

In the coming years,

the SEAL knows he will need to get creative to succeed

against a well-armed, well-prepared enemy.

One of the challenges for Naval Special Warfare

moving forward is, how can we maintain our level of

training, so that we can continue to

conduct operations around the world?

You're trying to understand,

what's the next war going to be like?

What sorts of missions are we going to be going on,

and what are the challenges that will be

associated with those missions?

To answer such questions requires a SEAL to

embrace innovative training, to build more than

just strength and endurance.

In the early 2000s,

I was in charge of assessment selection

for one of our specialized SEAL commands.

And one of the things my leaders asked me to do

was to look at how we could become better as warriors.

But instead of just focusing on

how can we get physically better,

how could we also get mentally better?

So we began to explore and experiment with a bunch of

different technologies in what we were at that time

calling a "Mind Gym."

Things like HRV breathing,

cold plunges, float tanks,

so that we could actually start training

this gray matter between our ears to be better

as warriors moving into the future of combat.

And so we're going to have to continue to be

creative, continue to develop better equipment,

different technology, different tactics and

procedures to be relevant on the battlefield tomorrow.

The SEALs see this as continuing the

decades-long practice of embracing whatever works.

From the first days, the SEALs have always

adapted to what they needed to do to actually execute

the best type of warfare they can.

Use what environment they can.

And this is just the example of the

Navy SEAL mantra and ethos.

Always adapt, always be ready, never quit.

The SEALs are free to do whatever works

to get the mission done. Improvise, innovate.

Whatever it takes to win.

The evolution of an exclusively

maritime focused unit, into a land focused,

go anywhere capture kill unit is

one of the greatest underdog stories

in American military history.

Full stop.

We will always be tasked with doing

difficult things in very harsh environments,

and so we cannot allow those standards

to drop in any way.

The standards are maintained not from the top down.

They're not because the boss says that

you need to do this. It's from within.

At the very lowest levels of that SEAL squad,

that SEAL platoon, that SEAL troop,

those standards are enforced with one another.

We hold each other accountable to

showing up well-trained, well-prepared,

and able to perform at that highest level.

Their relentless drive for constant

improvement, to make "the teams"

the best fighting force possible...

Their adaptability and innovative tactics...

And their dominance on land, in the air, and at sea...

earn the Navy SEALs their rightful place...

among History's Greatest Warriors.