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Navy Seals Disciplined For Revealing Secrets As Consultants On Video Game
Hugh Pickens writes "CBS reports that seven active duty members of SEAL Team Six, best known for killing Osama bin Laden, have been disciplined for revealing secrets working as paid consultants on a video game, Medal of Honor: Warfighter. The game does not recreate the bin Laden raid, but it does portray realistic missions, such as an attack on a pirates' den in Somalia. Electronic Arts boasts that real commandos, both active duty and retired, help make its games as realistic as possible. EA says Medal of Honor Warfighter was 'written by actual U.S. Tier 1 Operators while deployed overseas,' and that it 'features a dotted line to real world events and provides players a view into globally recognized threats and situations letting them experience the action as it might have unfolded.' It is unclear what secrets members of SEAL Team Six gave away, but while serving as consultants for the game, they used classified material which had been given to them by the Navy and also violated the unwritten code that SEALs are silent warriors who shun the spotlight. 'We do not tolerate deviations from the policies that govern who we are and what we do as Sailors in the United States Navy,' says Deputy Commander of Naval Special Warfare, Rear Admiral Garry Bonelli. 'The non-judicial punishment decisions made today send a clear message throughout our Force that we are and will be held to a high standard of accountability.'"
And the EA PR team just shared a collective orgasm. They must already be trying different font settings to display "So real, Navy Seals were disciplined for it!" on the game cover.
In 2012 , a crack commando unit was sent to prison by a military court for a crime they didn't commit. These men promptly escaped from a maximum-security stockade to the Los Angeles underground. Today, still wanted by the government, they survive as soldiers of fortune. If you have a problem...if no one else can help...and if you can find them...maybe you can hire...Seal Team Six.
They just created seven new security contractors the government will hire back for 10 times the cost. All that and a video game, win win.
A quote:
Read more about it here.
...and I only know what he is because we've been friends since grade school.
He normally is very clear - he simply can't talk about what he does, where he was or will be, etc. No big, right?
The last year or so, I've heard him make more SEAL-related comments than I've heard him say in the previous 10. He is particularly bitter and annoyed at the 'prima-donna douchebags' that are writing books and showing up in movies.
He gets it, he does: there are great piles of money and fame and hero-worship to be gained. But he points out: nobody does his job because they want to get rich or famous.
Basically, he's disgusted at the SEALs who have taken the 'public visibility' course, and can't really understand why they aren't immediately let go and firewalled. He said he's recognized things that they've discussed, or shown in movies, that are operational methods that while the bad guys may suspect we can do it if they think about it, it's stupid to wave it in front of them. It's going to get operations blown and SEALs killed.
-Styopa
Military pay is _much_ better than it used to be. Retirement is still amazingly good (until the bean counters decide it should become some sort of 401K).
What drugs are you taking? I was discharged (honorably, mind you) recently and I was getting paid shit. Let me preemptively negate the mitigating arguements to justify the green weenie argument of the pay issue: ~ Free housing: I lived in on-base housing that were either condemned and then re-fitted to shove extra soldiers in, or barracks that when reviewed, the base was allocated several million dollars to build new barracks.There's a reason some of us preferred the field. ~ Free healthcare: Performed by people who are fresh out of school and aren't experienced enough to be jaded. Or performed by people who have the mentality that once they put in their eight hours, their day was over. Their day started with PT, one of the few things that movies get right by showing it before dawn. So, yes, they're out of the office by 2 in the afternoon. Oh yeah, unless there is seriously something out of the norm with you, here's some Advil. Walk it off. Knew a guy that seriously injured his spine. Was back at work about a month later. Almost forgot, he deployed 4 or 5 months later. ~ Free food: Bought at a cost ration of greatest weight per dollar, which translated into cheapest food medically allowed. Joke I heard was: Grade E Beef-substitute, suitable for Americans worst and finest, served to our military and death-row inmates. With the way the Army operates, I was lucky to get two meals a day from cooks. Breakfast usually consisted of coffee and cigarettes, a bagel if I was lucky. Lunch and dinner was at the dining facilities where everything was rationed out using grade school sized portions. I ate the best when I was in the field or on vacation. I knew guys that were in that had a wife and children that qualified for food stamps. ~ Free training, vocational/technical style: They teach the bare minimum and expect the units the service member to go to teach the rest. So yeah, it's awesome if you go into the combat arms jobs because they don't want to write any "Dear Mr. & Mrs. Snuffy" letters. Last I check, the only people hiring these guys are the mafia and possibly law enforcement. The vo-tech jobs are slightly different. They promote and train the people who kiss ass, suck dick, stroke the shaft, gurgle the gravy and ask for seconds. (Looking back at my previous point, at least they were getting additional protein.) Everyone else got ignored unless the spotlight was on the person in charge.
It's a privilege to serve and one should be more concerned about things other than money --- plenty of time for that later (you've more than half your life ahead of you if you retire at age 38).
It's a privilege? The first two ideas which came to mind for that statement are either: A) you're former military who got so high up that you assume everyone has catered food, weekly manicures after golf, and heard that soldiers these days don't know how to dig a trench; or B) you're a civilian and thought Stripes was an actual account of all things military. Let me guess, you'll let us all have tea and crumpets for a mid afternoon snack. And if we retire by age 38, huh? How about if we make to age 38? That's assuming we all enter at age 18. (We don't. One is allowed in the military well into their 30's. Knew those guys to.) And on the topic of retiring, how about the guys who get medically retired because the Advil and water didn't heal running over an bomb? Yeah, it's a real privilege to be a poor, ahem, well payed member of the military. Please keep paying your taxes so elected officials can decide where to send us minions.
it may seem like common sense, but that's after years of work creating it, during which some men probably died before it was figured out. Hell we make revisions to tactics after nearly every big engagement. It's called an After Action Report, and everything, every little stinking thing, is written about and analyzed.
And while it may seem common sense to us, it frequently isnt to many combatants around the world. the majority of the taliban and iraqi insurgents have no training whatsoever, and those that do have very little discipline. many many of them emply spray and pray tactics, full of bravado and give em hell, but little thought, little planning, no tactical sensibilities, etc.
The guy who said the election was rigged won the presidency with the second-most votes.
"we will attack tomorrow at 2am" makes sense to keep that secret. "we had to fight three groups of guards before we got to bin ladin" makes no sense at all.
My orders came through. My squadron ships out tomorrow. We're bombing the storage depots at Daiquiri at 1800 hours. We're coming in from the north, below their radar.
When will you be back?
I can't tell you that. It's classified.
“He’s not deformed, he’s just drunk!”
"These people are human beings, physically fit and specially trained to be sure, but regular human beings with an immense logistical system to support them."
To be fair it's the level of physical fitness and training that matters and makes a large difference as much as anything.
When I was younger I was in the army cadets in the UK, and on an annual camp once we were sent through a fairly small forested area to try and find 5 professional soldiers hidden in there camo'd up. We did find one, hidden up a tree, but still hard to see, he was in the TA and fairly new to it at that though.
When we'd given up we walked to the edge of the forest and they were told to come out of hiding. One guy comes out with his face covered in mud with some pretty clear signs of a boot print on it. It was my boot print, as he'd been led down in a narrow gully deep with leaf litter which I'd walked straight through. The guy was a gurkha, who aren't even really classed as special forces, but it was this experience above all else that made me realise the gap between what we think is realistically possible, and what is actually possible can sometimes be quite large such that we don't even entertain it. When he showed us exactly where he'd been hidden he literally had his face covered in mud with only his eyes showing through and leaf litter on top, the amazing part was how quickly and quietly he was able to disguise himself the way he did- you could be chasing him, lose him from sight for 20 seconds and he'd have all but vanished. I'm glad I was just an army cadet and this wasn't a real war, as otherwise I suspect he may well have chopped my balls off with his kukri, and I'm kind of fond of my balls being left where they are. Between the softness of the deep leaf litter and the thick sole on my boots, I simply hadn't realised I'd walked right over someone's face.
So if this guy, not even selected for the SAS was this talented, I've always wondered what sort of things the special forces themselves get upto, and get away with. Everyone watches war films, and plays Call of Duty or whatever and thinks "Yeah, I could be that badass if I joined the military", but to most of those people you couldn't, you really couldn't. It takes a steely determination and years of practice, exercise to achieve the things they do and these people, the best of the best are the people who if they hadn't gone down the military route and joined the special forces would likely have been Olympic athletes, or other stand out professionals. It's not the sort of thing your average person has the patience and determination for.
What they want to keep secret are the ways in which they do things.
Surprise, they like it. Confusion, they encourage it. These are things that help keep them alive.
In football you of course do not want the opposing team to know what play you are panning on doing next.
But it is also damaging to have the opposing team have your play book.
The seals were giving out pages of the Seal playbook for a fucking video game. I play games. I like em.
Really though. Giving out pages of the Seal playbook so that a fucking video game can be a little better should be punished. Heavily.
Why is it so hard to only have politicians for a few years, then have them go away?
My favorite part of the conspiracy theory is where the government is competent enough to cover this up indefinitely, but not competent enough to come up with a better plan.