Ten cases of special forces in action

special forces in action

The US assault on Osama Bin Laden's compound in Pakistan has been hailed as a brilliant example of its kind. By taking big risks, special forces operations can achieve goals that few would have believed possible - or they can turn into bloody disasters.

Here are 10 notable examples from the last four decades.

Operation Thunderbolt - Uganda, July 1976

All but four hostages returned home safely

A hundred elite Israeli commandos flew undetected 2,500 miles to Entebbe airport, outside the Ugandan capital, Kampala, to rescue 105 hostages being held after the hijacking of an Air France airliner (non-Jewish passengers had been released). They landed at night and stormed the terminal, taking nearly all the hostages to safety, and killing the hijackers - members of the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine and two German revolutionaries. A squadron of Ugandan fighter aircraft was blown up, to stop them giving chase. Three hostages were killed, and one Israeli soldier - Commander Yonatan Netanyahu, brother of future PM Binyamin Netanyahu.

Operation Eagle Claw - Iran, April 1980

The fixed-wing aircraft used were reportedly fitted with equipment to help them land on a short airstrip

The plan was for US special forces to rescue 52 hostages held in the US embassy in Tehran, by landing aircraft and helicopters in two remote desert locations. The next night a rescue team would have been driven to the embassy, to free the hostages and take them to a nearby stadium, where helicopters would have picked them up and flown them away. Technical problems with helicopters, aggravated by a sandstorm, led to the operation being aborted at an early stage. But in the process of refuelling, one helicopter flew into a transporter aircraft and exploded, killing eight servicemen. A hurried evacuation followed. The debacle did nothing for the prestige of the US military and may have contributed to President Jimmy Carter's election defeat a few months later.

Operation Nimrod - London, May 1980

Hostages scrambled to safety as the SAS burst into the embassy

This was the first special forces operation to be shown live on television. On 30 April, a group of Iranian Arab separatists stormed the Iranian embassy in London, taking 26 hostages. Five hostages were released in the following days, but on the sixth day of the siege, the hostage-takers killed a diplomat and threw his body out on to the street. This was the cue for the Special Air Service (SAS) to launch an assault. Five four-man teams broke into the building from different directions, using stun grenades to disorientate the gunmen. Five of the six militants were killed and 19 of the 20 remaining hostages were rescued, while one was shot dead by the hostage-takers during the SAS assault.

Loughgall ambush - Northern Ireland, May 1987

An Irish Republican Army gang had already destroyed two Royal Ulster Constabulary police stations when intelligence was received that they were planning an attack on a third - the police station at Loughgall, in County Tyrone. A predecessor of the British Special Reconnaissance Regiment (SRR) operating in Northern Ireland, 14 Intelligence Company, closely followed their preparations. When they arrived at the station on the evening of 8 May with a 200lb bomb in a digger, the station was empty apart from one SAS officer - but 24 others were in hiding outside. As the bomb was detonated, the SAS opened fire. Eight IRA men and one passer-by died. It was the IRA's biggest loss of life in a single incident.

Assassination of Abu Jihad - Tunis, April 1988

Khalil al-Wazir, or Abu Jihad, a key ally of Palestine Liberation Organisation leader Yasser Arafat, planned numerous attacks on Israeli civilians, but the final straw was the 1988 hijacking of a bus en route to Israel's secret nuclear-weapons installation at Dimona in the Negev desert. A month later, 30 Israeli commandos landed on a Tunisian beach before linking up with Mossad agents already in the country. One commando team shot and killed Abu Jihad's driver outside his villa while another broke down the door and fired 70 bullets at Abu Jihad. The operation, allegedly ordered by Defence Minister Yitzhak Rabin and co-ordinated by future prime minister Ehud Barak, was condemned by the US as an act of political assassination.

The Battle of Mogadishu - Somalia, October 1993

The battle became the subject of the book (and the film) Black Hawk Down

A large contingent of US special forces - including Rangers, Seals and the army's Delta Force - set out on 3 October from their compound on the outskirts of Mogadishu to seize leading lieutenants of warlord Mohammed Farah Aideed. They accomplished their goal, but at tremendous cost. First one Black Hawk helicopter was shot down by rocket-propelled grenades. Then, as the assault team waited for orders to move out, another crashed. A battle raged for hours at the first crash site until an international relief force arrived to help. Two Delta Force snipers courageously volunteered to defend the second crash site, but, after a fierce firefight, were over-run by a militia mob. Eighteen US servicemen, three Italians and one Malaysian were killed. The bodies of several US casualties were dragged through the streets of Mogadishu.

Operation Chavin de Huantar - Peru, April 1997

Peruvian commandos kept the residence under close observation for four months

Some 70 guests at a party held by the Japanese ambassador to Peru were held hostage for 126 days at the ambassador's residence by 14 members of the Tupac Amaru Revolutionary Movement (MRTA), a Marxist group dedicated to the creation of a socialist state. President Alberto Fujimori's mother and younger brother, and his eventual successor as president, Alejandro Toledo, were among those held. Peruvian security forces smuggled listening devices into the residence in order to study the hostage-takers' routine. They also tunnelled into the back garden. On 22 April commandos attacked the building in force, using ladders and explosives, surprising some of the militants during one of their regular afternoon football games. All the hostages except one were rescued. One hostage, two commandos, and all the MRTA militants were killed.

Operation Barras - Sierra Leone, September 2000

Eleven men of the British Army's Royal Irish Regiment were taken hostage on patrol in the Occra Hills, by armed rebels - the West Side Boys, led by 24-year-old Foday Kallay. Five were released a few days later. But when Kallay threatened to kill the remaining six, and the Sierra Leonean liaison officer captured with them, members of the Parachute Regiment, the SAS and the Special Boat Service (SBS) carried out an early-morning raid. Arriving in force, in six helicopters, the hostages were extracted in 20 minutes. Foday Kallay was captured and the patrol's Land Rovers were recovered. One SAS member was killed.

Moscow Theatre siege - October, 2002

Anaesthetic gas was responsible for most of the 129 deaths among the hostages

Armed militants took a Moscow theatre audience of 800 people hostage, demanding the withdrawal of Russian forces from Chechnya. With explosives strapped to their bodies, they threatened to start killing hostages after a week. Early on the third day of the siege, Russian special forces began pumping the theatre with an anaesthetic gas, possibly using the air conditioning system, and stormed it 30 minutes later. Some 40 of the hostage takers were killed and 129 hostages died - nearly all of them from the effects of the gas. Then-president Vladimir Putin thanked the special forces for their bravery and asked forgiveness for not having saved more of the hostages.

Operation Jaque - Colombia, July 2008

Ingrid Betancourt was held hostage for six-and-a-half years

Colombian soldiers are reported to have taken acting classes to prepare themselves for their role in this operation to rescue former presidential candidate Ingrid Betancourt, three US military contractors and 11 members of the Colombian security services. Some pretended to be members of the rebel group holding the hostages - the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (Farc) - others pretended to be members of an non-governmental organisation, or television journalists. The Farc commander holding the hostages fell for the trick. He allowed the hostages to be led on to a helicopter - to be taken, supposedly, to meet Farc leader Alfonso Cano - and he boarded it himself, with one other genuine rebel. Both were immediately disarmed and handcuffed. The name Operation Jaque comes from the Spanish word for "checkmate" in chess.

Stealth Drone’s First Flight

Boeing announced Tuesday that its stealthy killer drone — the “Phantom Ray” — had flown for the first time. The flight, from Edwards Air Force Base, California, lasted just 17 minutes.

The drone only reached 7,500 feet in altitude. But if these tests proceed as planned, the 36,500-pound, 36-foot-long drone will soar up to 40,000 feet and dash at nearly the speed of sound.

The Boeing Phantom Ray unmanned airborne system (UAS) successfully completed its first flight April 27 at NASA's Dryden Flight Research Center at Edwards Air Force Base, Calif.

The 17-minute flight took place following a series of high-speed taxi tests in March that validated ground guidance, navigation and control and verified mission planning, pilot interface and operational procedures. Phantom Ray flew to 7,500 feet and reached a speed of 178 knots.

"This day has been two-and-a-half years in the making," said Darryl Davis, president, Boeing Phantom Works.

"It's the beginning of providing our customers with a test bed to develop future unmanned systems technology, and a testament to the capabilities resident within Boeing. Just as follow-on tests will expand Phantom Ray's flight envelope, they also will help Boeing expand its presence in the unmanned systems market."

The flight demonstrated Phantom Ray's basic airworthiness, setting the stage for additional flights in the next few weeks.

These company-funded flights will prepare Phantom Ray to support potential missions that may include intelligence, surveillance and reconnaissance; suppression of enemy air defenses; electronic attack; strike; and autonomous air refueling.

"The first flight moves us farther into the next phase of unmanned aircraft," said Craig Brown, Phantom Ray program manager for Boeing. "Autonomous, fighter-sized unmanned aircraft are real, and the UAS bar has been raised. Now I'm eager to see how high that bar will go."

Phantom Ray is one of several programs in Phantom Works, including Phantom Eye, that is part of a rapid prototyping initiative to design, develop and build advanced aircraft and then demonstrate their capabilities.

Boeing's portfolio of UAS solutions also includes the A160T Hummingbird, Integrator, ScanEagle and SolarEagle.

Top Secret Stealth Helicopter Program Revealed in Osama Bin Laden Raid: Experts

CGI of Potential Helicopter used in Operation against Osama bin Ladin

Before an elite team of U.S. Navy SEALs executed a daring raid that took down Osama bin Laden, the commandos were able to silently sneak up on their elusive target thanks to what aviation analysts said were top secret, never-before-seen stealth-modified helicopters.

In the course of the operation that cost the al Qaeda leader his life, one of the two Blackhawk helicopters that carried the SEALs into bin Laden's Pakistani compound grazed one of the compound's wall and was forced to make a hard landing. With the chopper inoperable, at the end of the mission the SEALs destroyed it with explosives.

But photos of what survived the explosion -- the tail section of the craft with curious modifications -- has sent military analysts buzzing about a stealth helicopter program that was only rumored to exist. From a modified tail boom to a noise reducing covering on the rear rotors and a special high-tech material similar to that used in stealth fighters, former Department of Defense official and vice president of the Lexington Institute Dan Goure said the bird is like nothing he's ever seen before.

"This is a first," he said. "You wouldn't know that it was coming right at you. And that's what's important, because these are coming in fast and low, and if they aren't sounding like they're coming right at you, you might not even react until it's too late... That was clearly part of the success."

In addition to the noise-reducing modifications, a former special operations aviator told The Army Times the general shape of what was left of the craft -- the harsh angles and flat surfaces more common to stealth jets -- was further evidence it was a modified variant of the Blackhawk.

Top Secret Stealth Helicopter Program Revealed in

Osama Bin Laden Raid: Experts

Osama Bin Laden Dead: SEALs' Stealth Helicopter

A senior Pentagon official told ABC News the Defense Department would "absolutely not" comment on anything relating to the destroyed bird.

Neighbors of bin Laden in Abbottabad, Pakistan, told ABC News they didn't hear the helicopters the night of the Sunday raid until they were directly overhead. The rotor covering, along with a special rotor design, suppressed the choppers noise while inbound, Bill Sweetman, editor and chief of Defense Technology International, said.

"Helicopters make a very distinctive percussive rotor sound which is caused by their rotor blades and if you can blend that down, of course that makes a noise that is much less likely to be heard and much more likely to blend into any background noise that there is," Sweetman said.

Parts of Helicopter Taken From Crash Site

The U.S. has attempted to use stealth helicopters before. In the mid-90s, the Army developed several prototypes of the Comanche helicopter, a reconnaissance helicopter that was at the time a revolutionary step in stealth technology. But in 2004 the Department of Defense scrapped the program and promised to used technology developed for the Comanche on other crafts.

Since, the government has been working to silence the Army's Blackhawk helicopters but an official program for the stealth choppers was never publicized. The wreckage, Sweetman said, is the first the public has ever seen of an operational stealth-modified helicopter.

Goure said he believes the stealthy Blackhawks have been in use for years without the public's knowledge.

"We probably have been running hundreds of missions with these helicopters over the last half dozen years, and the fact is, they've all been successful -- or at least the helicopters have all come back," he said.

But now that one went down and photographs emerged of large sections being taken from the crash site under a tarp, former White House counterterrorism advisor and ABC News consultant Richard Clarke said U.S. officials may have reason to worry about where those parts end up.

"There are probably people in the Pentagon tonight who are very concerned that pieces of the helicopter may be, even now, on their way to China, because we know that China is trying to make stealth aircraft," he said. The Chinese military is known to have a close relationship with the Pakistani military.

The May 2 raid on Osama bin Laden’s luxury compound in Abbottabad, Pakistan, had it all: painstakingintelligence-gathering, a heroic Navy SEAL assault team, satellite and drone surveillance, and biometric forensics.

And now this: a possible super-secret, stealthy helicopter, unknown to the wider world before one crashed during the assault.

Aviation specialists are picking apart pixel-by-pixel the dozen-or-so photos of the copter that have appeared online. They’re assembling digital mock-ups of the aircraft and comparing them to lost stealth designs of the 1980s and ’90s. Speculation abounds, and so far no one from the government is commenting. But depending on what the copter turns out to be, it could shed new light on everything from the abilities of U.S. commandos to the relationship between the United States and Pakistan.

Opinions about the copter seem to fall into three basic camps. The most-cautious observers believe the wreckage is from a conventional chopper that got so badly mangled during the crash that it became unrecognizable. In the center, there are those who think the helicopter is an Army MH-60 Blackhawk tweaked to make it quieter and more stealthy. On the fringes, the true believers are talking about a brand-new, radar-evading helicopter design.

Considering the proliferation of bewildering photos from the crash site, the conservative viewpoint seems unlikely. Equally, the notion of a brand-new “black” helicopter seems far-fetched, especially considering the Army’s long history of heavily modifying existing rotorcraft for secret missions.

That leaves an upgraded, stealth-optimized MH-60 as the most likely candidate — a conclusion that jibes with CIA director Leon Panetta’s assertion Tuesday that the 25-man strike team was “carried in two Blackhawk helicopters that went in.”

A story by ace reporter Sean Naylor in Army Times, published just minutes after the initial version of this post, supports this conclusion. Naylor quotes a retired Special Forces aviator saying the special Blackhawk, modified by Lockheed Martin, has “hard edges, sort of like an … F-117″ stealth fighter from the same company.

According to a source who spoke to our own Spencer Ackerman, the modifications might have taken place with the help of a mysterious Army organization called the “Technology Applications Program Office,” located at Fort Eustis, Virginia.

Mission helo was secret stealth Black Hawk

By Sean D. Naylor - Staff writer

The helicopters that flew the Navy SEALs on the mission to kill Osama bin Laden were a radar-evading variant of the special operations MH-60 Black Hawk, according to a retired special operations aviator.

The helicopter’s low-observable technology is similar to that of the F-117 Stealth Fighter the retired special operations aviator said. “It really didn’t look like a traditional Black Hawk,” he said. It had “hard edges, sort of like an … F-117, you know how they have those distinctive edges and angles — that’s what they had on this one.”

In addition, “in order to keep the radar cross-section down, you have to do something to treat the windshield,” he said. If a special coating was applied to the windshield it is “very plausible” that would make the helicopter more difficult to fly for pilots wearing night-vision goggles, he said. The helicopters carrying the SEALs arrived over the bin Laden compound at about 1 a.m. Monday local time. One crash-landed in the courtyard and was so badly damaged it was unable to take off again.

That crash landing might have been caused by a phenomenon known as “settling with power,” which occurs when a helicopter descends too quickly because its rotors cannot get the lift required from the turbulent air of their own downwash. “It’s hard to settle with power in a Black Hawk, but then again, if they were using one of these [low-observable helicopters], working at max gross weight, it’s certainly plausible that they could have because they would have been flying so heavy,” the retired special operations aviator said, noting that low-observable modifications added “several hundred pounds” to the weight of the MH-60, which already weighs about 500 to 1000 pounds more than a regular UH-60 Black Hawk.

The special operations troops on the bin Laden mission destroyed the stricken aircraft — most likely using thermite grenades — but the resultant fire left the helicopter’s tail boom, tail rotor assembly and horizontal stabilizers intact in the compound’s courtyard.

Photographs of the wreckage taken the next day raced around the Internet, creating a firestorm of speculation among military aviation enthusiasts because the tail of the helicopter did not resemble any officially acknowledged U.S. military airframe.

This was to be expected, the retired special operations aviator said. “Certain parts of the fuselage, the nose and the tail had these various almost like snap-on parts to them that gave it the very unique appearance,” he said. He and another source referred to the disc-shaped device that is seen covering the tail rotor in the photographs as a “hubcap.”

If the radar-evading technology worked, it “would be a true statement” to say that the use of the low-observable Black Hawks was evidence that the United States gave Pakistani authorities no advance warning of the mission, the retired special operations aviator added.

The low-observable program started with AH-6 Little Bird special operations attack helicopters in the 1980s, said the aviator. During the 1990s U.S. Special Operations Command worked with the Lockheed-Martin Skunk Works division, which also designed the F-117, to refine the radar-evading technology and apply it to the 160th Special Operations Aviation Regiment’s MH-60s, he said. USSOCOM awarded a contract to Boeing to modify several MH-60s to the low-observable design “in the ’99 to 2000 timeframe,” he said.

Initial plans called for the low-observable Black Hawks to be formed into a new unit commanded by a lieutenant colonel and located at a military facility in Nevada, the retired special operations aviator said. “The intent was always to move it out west where it could be kept in a covered capability,” he said.

USSOCOM planned to assign about 35 to 50 personnel to the unit, the retired special operations aviator said. “There were going to be four [low-observable] aircraft, they were going to have a couple of ‘slick’ unmodified Black Hawks, and that was going to be their job was to fly the low-observables.”

SOCOM canceled those plans “within the last two years,” but not before at least some of the low-observable helicopters had been delivered to the Nevada facility, the retired aviator said. “I don’t know if it was for money or if it was because the technology was not achieving the reduction in the radar cross-section that they were hoping for,” he said. In the meantime, MH-60 Black Hawk crews from the 160th’s 1st Battalion, headquartered at Fort Campbell, Ky., would rotate to Nevada to train on the stealthy aircraft, he said.

The low-observable MH-60s were armed with the same sort of door mini-guns as standard MH-60s, he said. “There was not a DAP conversion,” he added, referring to the MH-60 variant known as the Direct Action Penetrator, which is equipped with stub wings upon which can be fitted a variety of armaments.

The early versions of the low-observable Black Hawks were not fitted with air-to-air refueling probes, the retired special operations aviator said. “The probe would disrupt the ability to reduce the radar cross-section,” he added. “There was no way to put some kind of a hub or cowling over the probe that would make it stealthy.” However, he said he did not know whether the models that flew the bin Laden mission had been equipped with such probes.

USSOCOM spokesman Army Col. Tim Nye said his command had no comment for this story.

Marcus Weisgerber contributed to this story.

The secret stealth drone that helped kill Bin Laden

Justin Hyde — All details of how the U.S. government found and killed Osama Bin Laden will likely never be known, but reports this morning indicate the squad of U.S. Navy SEALS which ran the attack had two helicopters and this drone, known as the "Beast of Kandahar."

The Lockheed Martin RQ-170 Sentinel is a fighter-sized aircraft with a 65-foot wingspan whose existence has only been official since 2009, despite being used throughout the war in Afghanistan and spotted by aviation enthusiasts. Based in Nevada and a Kandahar airfield — where its nickname as "the beast of Kandahar" derives — the RQ-170s main assignment has been reconnaissance and surveillance for ground troops.

Given the location of Bin Laden's fortified compound — steps from a Pakistani military training center — the RQ-170 was likely the eyes and ears of the operation, streaming live feeds back to command centers. It's one video involving Bin Laden the world may never see.

Edited : Mohd Ezli Mashut

Osama death boosts Obama popularity

Obama's ratings have gone up but Americans are still unhappy about the state of the economy [White House] After being on the decline for a while, US president's popularity has got a strong boost following the killing of Osama bin Laden. Two surveys, conducted a day after US forces tracked down and killed the al-Qaeda chief in a hideout in Pakistan, found Barack Obama's approval ratings at 56 per cent - a 9-point improvement over last month. The results released on Tuesday were reported by The Washington Post/Pew Research Center and USA Today/Gallup Poll. While the killing of bin Laden seized world attention, such events can prove short-lived, particularly after a brutal presidential campaign. But Republicans lining up to challenge Obama in next year's election will be banking on pressing domestic issues to turn the tables on him. The Washington Post/Pew Research Center poll showed that only 40 per cent of those surveyed approved of the president's handling of the economy. Other polls last week found that about 70 per cent of Americans felt the country was on the wrong track. Even though the economy is slowly recovering from the Great Recession, unemployment remains near 9 per cent and gasoline prices have shot up. While Obama has received generally broad bipartisan and international backing for the killing of bin Laden, Americans at the same time report increased fears about retaliatory al-Qaeda attacks. The USA Today/Gallup Poll survey found that more than six in 10 of those contacted said a reprisal attack was likely in the coming weeks. That, the pollsters said, was "the highest rate of public nervousness in eight years". The polls surveyed randomly selected adults by telephone on May 2 and have a margin of sampling error of plus or minus five percentage points.

US Navy SEALS Team Six (ST6) Who Killed Osama

The men assigned to capture or kill Osama Bin Laden were part of the US Navy's legendary special forces unit, the Seals. Who are they?

It was years in the planning but took just 40 minutes to execute.

More than a dozen members of the US military were dropped near the high-walled, three-storey compound on the outskirts of Abbottabad in north-west Pakistan.

After a brief firefight, five people were killed, including Osama Bin Laden, who reportedly received a shot above his left eye.

All the US forces escaped unharmed, despite technical problems with one helicopter that they had to leave behind.

It says everything about their presence of mind that despite the dangers, they collected hard drives, DVDs and documents from the building before they left.

From the US point of view, the mission, codenamed Geronimo, could hardly have gone any better, a reflection on the preparation and skills of the men who carried it out.

Continue reading the main story

Steve KingstoneBBC News, Virginia Beach

"Discreet pride" is the best way to sum up the mood. Local people are delighted that the men who faced down Bin Laden were from the Seal base at Virginia Beach, but they also understand that absolute secrecy is the foundation of Seal achievements.

The town's mayor is politely declining interviews - having earlier floated the idea of a public tribute to the special forces. And at the base which is understood to house Team Six, the Military Police were courteous but tight-lipped.

At CP Shuckers, a bustling late-night bar, I heard a surprisingly nuanced range of views on Bin Laden's death. Everyone welcomed the killing, and many were proud of the local connection. But there was no consensus as to whether the terror threat to America would now ease.

Separately, I spoke to a serving Seal, who did not want to be identified. He was mildly sceptical about the US government's account of the raid. "I'll only form a true view on this," he said, "when I hear about it directly - from the guys who were there."

Although there has been no official confirmation which team was involved, it is widely thought that it was the Seal Team Six (ST6), officially known as the Naval Special Warfare Development Group, but more commonly known as DevGru.

They are the all-star, elite group of Seals, a team of military personnel trained to carry out top secret operations.

The Seals are part of the Navy Special Warfare Command, and are also the maritime component of the US Special Operations Command, continually deployed throughout the world in operations to protect US interests.

There are 2,500 Seals in total, and they take their name from the environments in which they are trained to work - sea, air and land. But it is their highly specialised training to operate in water that they are best known for.

Their missions can be enormously varied in nature, involving combat, anti-terrorism and hostage rescues.

These guys are America's thoroughbreds, says Don Shipley, from Virginia, who spent two decades in the Navy as a Seal.

"They're the finest guys America has. Your average guy walking down the street just doesn't have it.

"The guys that become Seals have gifted eyesight, above average intelligence, and are genetically built to withstand a lot of punishment, being pounded a lot. Those are the guys that are qualified to get in but the guys that ultimately come out are thoroughbreds, they're racehorses."

Continue reading the main story

“Start Quote

I never thought about dropping out”

Stew Smith, former Seal on the gruelling training

It is often described as the toughest training available to any special forces anywhere in the world. The drop-out rate is 80-85%.

Stew Smith, a Seal for eight years, now runs fitness training courses in Maryland for people who are thinking of joining up.

He says the first six months of Seal training, known as Basic Underwater Demolition (Buds) is the toughest. It includes one period which lasts a continuous 120 hours, and involves swimming, running, obstacle courses, scuba diving and navigation.

The current Buds training course has already lost 190 recruits out of 245, and is only three weeks in, he says.

"I never thought about dropping out. People ask me why not, and I say that you have to go there in a mindset of competing, not just surviving.

Continue reading the main story

Seal Team Six (ST6)

• Elite force of Seals, based near Virginia Beach
• Selected from all the units, to carry out the most demanding missions
• Usually have five years of experience already
• The unit belongs to the Joint Special Operations Command (JSOC) which is run at a cost of more than $1bn a year
• Involved in Yemen, Somalia and Afghanistan in recent years
• Existence shrouded in mystery
• They reportedly train around the clock and can spend 300 days a year away from home

"If you're running your first marathon, your goal is just to finish the thing, you're in a survival mode. But when you're stretching out before, you look across and see a Kenyan who is trying to drop a minute off his best time.

"There is a different mindset. For me, every day in training was a competition."

After Buds, you are officially a Seal and assigned to a team but you need to have another 12 months of training with your new colleagues before you are deployed, says Mr Smith.

He believes what makes Seals special is their versatility.

"Also, having a strong confidence with the boat, and a relationship with the Navy, we have a way of respecting Mother Nature because we realise that when you're out there in the middle of the ocean, you're just a speck."

This familiarity with the vagaries of the weather teaches Seals to always have a Plan B, he says. "There's a saying in the Seals that two is one and one is nothing."

Seal training is gruelling, and many recruits drop out

The origins of the Seals can be traced to World War II, and its predecessors like the Naval Combat Demolition Unit, which was involved in the invasion of North Africa in 1942.

Their formation came out of a $100m (£61m) package by President John F Kennedy to strengthen the US special forces capability.

They were later involved in Vietnam, Grenada and in Panama, where four Seals were killed as they tried to prevent leader Manuel Noriega escaping by destroying his jet and boat.

The episode was also renowned for an incident a few days later, in which loud rock music was played all day and night to force him out of his refuge in Panama City.

In more recent years, the Seals have been heavily involved in missions in Afghanistan and Iraq.

But their role in the death of Osama Bin Laden writes another chapter in their history.

Bin Laden 'was unarmed' when shot dead

CIA chief says a photo showing bin Laden dead will ultimately be released. Last Modified: 04 May 2011 02:53 Email Print Share Send Feedback

US forces swept through the massive compound, handcuffing those they encountered with plastic zip ties [AFP] Osama bin Laden was unarmed when he was confronted and shot dead by US forces at his Pakistani hideout, a White House spokesman has said. Jay Carney said that the US was considering whether to release photos of bin Laden after he was killed on Sunday but that the photos were "gruesome" and could be inflammatory. The director of the CIA told NBC News on Tuesday that the a photo showing bin Laden dead will ultimately be released. "The government obviously has been talking about how best to do this, but I don't think there was any question that ultimately a photograph would be presented to the public," Leon Panetta, the head of the US spy agency, said according to a transcript of the television interview. Carney said one of bin Laden's wives had tried to rush the US forces and was shot in the leg. He said Bin Laden had resisted capture and was shot and killed. He did not explain how bin Laden had resisted. The White House spokesman said high temperatures had caused one of the helicopters carrying the US forces to make a hard landing at the compound in Abbottabad, a town about two hours north of Islamabad, the capital. The US commandos swept through the massive compound, handcuffing those they encountered with plastic zip ties and pressed on in pursuit of their target, code-named 'Geronimo'. Barack Obama, the US president, and a small team of his officials watched the operation in real time from the White House, but the mission was not run from there, Carney said. After killing bin Laden, the US team quickly swept the compound for useful intelligence, making off with a cache of computer equipment and documents. All of that is now in Washington and the analysis has begun. The US commandos also confiscated phone numbers from bin Laden's body, and those might provide new leads for investigators. Taliban demand proof The Taliban in Afghanistan said on Tuesday that they questioned whether bin Laden was actually dead. "As the Americans did not provide any acceptable evidence to back up their claim, and as the other aides close to Osama bin Laden have not confirmed or denied the death ... the Islamic Emirate considers any assertion premature," Zabihullah Mujahid, a Taliban spokesman, said. The United Nations' top human rights official called on the US on Tuesday to give the UN details about bin Laden's killing and said that all counter-terrorism operations must respect international law. "This was a complex operation and it would be helpful if we knew the precise facts surrounding his killing," Navi Pillay, the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights, said in a statement to the Reuters news agency. It was always clear that taking bin Laden alive was likely to be difficult, Pillay said, noting that US authorities had stated that they intended to arrest him if possible. "If he was captured and brought before a court, I have no doubt he would have been charged with the most serious crimes, including the mass murder of civilians that took place on 9/11, which were planned and systematic and in my view amounted to crime against humanity," she said. Eric Holder, the US attorney general, defended the US operation against bin Laden as lawful. But some in Europe said bin Laden should have been captured and put on trial. "It was quite clearly a violation of international law," former West German Chancellor Helmut Schmidt told German TV. "The operation could also have incalculable consequences in the Arab world in light of all the unrest." Pakistan's foreign ministry also expressed "deep concerns" about what it called an "unauthorised unilateral action".