“SWCC is a community of elite operators.” That’s all you need to know to decide if it’s for you or not. The Special Warfare Combatant-craft training program creates Combatant-craft Crewmen who operate a variety of small craft in support of Special Operations missions around the world.

SOFREP got the heads up on this new promotional video from the Public Affairs Officer at the Naval Special Warfare Command in San Diego and we want to share it with you.

In this four-minute video, these SWCC guys probably expend more small arms ammo than the Marine Corps did at Iwo Jima.

Just kidding, but these small-craft have a frightful amount of firepower on board that this video puts on full display.

SOFREP is a big fan of SWCC because the occupation provides one of the rare occasions where a ton of hard work in training pays off with a job that is fun as hell to do in the fleet. Former SOFREP writer Jonathan Weiss, who was a former SWCC and Special Operations Combat Medic, had written about the path to becoming an SWCC and its unique challenges.

 

Not going to bore you with too much verbiage here. This story is about the video itself which is a hoot to watch and pulls no punches about what it takes for the aspiring sailors to become Special Warfare Combatant-craft Crewmen. If it reminds you at all of Navy SEAL training, good, because it’s a slightly less insane version of the physical training regiment the SEALs undergo — it even has a 72-hour version of “Hell Week” called “The Tour.”

The Tour serves the function of finding out if a candidate has the will to exceed the limits of physical and mental endurance.  It is a very dangerous part of the SWCC selection and requires the instructors to keep a close eye on the candidates because, at that point, the candidates will keep going until they die if a watchful instructor doesn’t tell them to stop.

Recently, the school graduated its first female candidate, which the command did not identify for reasons of security. Only 17 sailors graduated in her class as the Special Warfare Combatant-craft Crewmen selection course has an attrition rate of nearly 80 percent.

 

This article was originally published in July 2021.