What to Wear

[SR-25]

Choose the best personal underwater gear when swimming with special operations. Water is a harsh environment where a strong character is not enough - it takes the right equipment.
By Mickey McCarter

Special operations divers throughout all branches of the military turn to the U.S. Navy for guidance in all matters, including what to wear when conducting underwater operations. The Navy, as the service that sets diving standards, publishes the U.S. Navy Diving Manual for divers in the Navy, Army, Air Force and Coast Guard, all of which conduct diving operations for specialized purposes.

Air Force Special Operations Command employs pararescuemen primarily to recover personnel. These underwater operatives are trained in emergency medical techniques to render combat and humanitarian care to injured personnel. Pararescuemen are trained to deploy from Air Force aircraft into hostile situations to conduct search and rescue, combat search and rescue, and general personnel recovery operations for the Air Force and the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA).

Pararescuemen often have gear in common with combat controllers and combat weathermen, with whom they team up to form Special Tactics Teams. "Special tactics officers provide terminal air control, recovery, combat weather forecasting, airfield assessment and combat search and rescue," said Second Lieutenant Rodger Jennrich, a combat controller with the 720th Special Tactics Group, Hurlburt Field, FL. Jennrich discussed the underwater gear commonly worn by Air Force special operations personnel, emphasizing that the delicate nature of special operations prevented him from disclosing potentially sensitive information.

"In a typical training mission, it's just an infiltration method," Jennrich said. "That's just how we get to work. Just like if you drive a car to work and you have to go to your job. That's just to put it into perspective. We dive or swim just to get to shore. Usually from there, we are going to have to go by foot or steal a vehicle and then move on to wherever we are going to do our work."

As such, Air Force special operations personnel wear gear that will carry them through on land as well as on sea. This necessity often involves wearing hard-soled boots that allow fins to slip over them. Once the divers are ashore, they can engage in combat operations safely with the protection provided by combat footwear rather than specialized diving footwear.

"The fins that we have vary depending on each guy because everybody has his own personal preference. They vary quite a bit," Jennrich said. "Typically, we might have rocket-type fins or mares. Some even have dolphin-type fins, where they just wear their boots and just slip them over the top and tie into them. I probably could not even count how many different types of fins out there that the guys are using.

"I have a size 13 foot, so I'm pretty limited on which fins I wear. If I wear a hard-soled boot, then I cannot generally use some of the other types because my foot doesn't fit in it," he added.

Air Force versus Navy

Of course, when thinking of special operations divers, people think of the high-profile Navy SEALs, assigned to the U.S. Navy Special Warfare Command. The Navy Diving Manual prescribes all diving equipment worn and utilized by both special operations commands.

The Naval Sea Systems Command (NAVSEA), promulgates the Navy Diving Manual. The latest version, Revision 4 with Change A, dated March 1, 2001, is available for download free of charge at (http://www.supsalv.org/00c3_publications.asp), a Web site of the Office of Ocean Engineering, Supervisor of Salvage and Diving (SUPSALV), which is a component of NAVSEA.

"The Navy is the proponent for diving in all of the services. They are in charge of all diving in all of the services," Jennrich said. "We have former Navy divemasters in each of our units. They are retired, and they run our shops."

Jennrich said that the special operations divers must attend the Combat Diver Qualification Course (CDQC) at the U.S. Army Combat Divers School in Key West, FL. The Navy also runs the U.S. Army Combat Divers School, which the Army established to train divers to infiltrate enemy territory undetected. The four-week course helps divers to develop underwater mobility under different operating conditions. Underwater gear becomes an essential part of that equation.

"Obviously, as we get into different mission areas, these things change," Jennrich said.

Wet suits versus Dry suits

Still, many elements of underwater gear are common to most operations. Like all divers, special operations divers must protect themselves against uncomfortable temperatures. To do so, they rely upon a form-fitting suit designed to help them swim and retain their body temperature. In cold temperatures, divers rely upon dry suits to keep them warm, while in warm temperatures, they may use common wet suits.

"It depends on the water environment," Jennrich said. "If you are going to Hawaii, you don't need a wet suit, definitely not a dry suit. That's something else that varies depending on location. If you are up in Iceland, you have to have a dry suit or you will freeze to death. If you are somewhere like, say, North Carolina, you could use a wet suit, depending on what time of year it is."

Jennrich said Air Force special operations divers may dive without a wet suit or a dry suit if the temperature is comfortable enough. In typical waters, divers use rubber wet suits to protect them. The rubber in the wet suits is compressed during the manufacture of the suits to create an extra-strong material. Wet suits vary a great deal by size and thickness to provide various levels of protection for different environments. Typical wet suits are one, two or three millimeters thick to provide various levels of protection for different parts of the body.

"They could use quarter-inch rubber somewhere further up like Maine," Jennrich added. "Once you get too cold, you have to have a dry suit. It could be as simple as having a dive skin, which is just something to protect you from the environment, maybe jellyfish, or BDUs just over the top of it."

Wet suits generally require a weight belt also. Divers who wear a lot of rubber become buoyant, thus they generally require a weight belt to compensate for any tendency to float, Jennrich said. SUPSALV maintains a list of diving equipment authorized for U.S. Navy use (ANU) that adds buoyancy compensators to the mix in order to keep divers afloat if necessary. The ANU list, which is not a Navy endorsement, reveals that manufacturers such as Aqualung and ScubaPro meet Navy specifications.

Diving Unlimited International Inc. (DUI), based in San Diego, has sold diving gear for about 40 years. About 20 years ago, the company began to specialize in dry suits rather than selling generalized scuba diving gear, according to Carol Heaton, DUI government sales manager.

"We have sold to the military since we were a scuba gear retailer," Heaton said. "We sold to UDT [underwater demolition teams] teams in Coronado before there were SEALs."

Dry suits were a young technology 20 years ago when DUI began to specialize in them. The dry suit is a shell that keeps a diver dry, while the undergarments worn beneath it keep the diver warm, Heaton explained. DUI sells the dry suits in three ways. First, it has a large number of suits in stock, so that divers can buy "off the rack." Second, DUI will tailor a suit specifically to the diver's measurements, using one of more than 150 patterns. Finally, DUI's signature series takes the tailored suit one step further by adding popular accessories, including Kevlar, knee pads, pockets and a neck hood.

The dry suits are made of crushed neoprene material, which undergoes a patented process combining pressure, temperature and time. DUI advertises the material as superior to compressed neoprene, which it says can rupture over time and with regular use. DUI produces dry suits for a range of military divers, including SEALs and Coast Guard helicopter rescue swimmers. Heaton said that divers from different military services generally do not require many big differences in the configuration of their suits.

"You can make them breathable or not breathable depending on what they want. It's little things you have to incorporate to try to make them happy. They all need to be dry," Heaton noted. "Their main differences come from pocket configuration and placement and where they need extra protection. In a helicopter, for example, you need extra protection in the hips so that when you drag your fanny along the copter, it doesn't tear the suit."

Heaton said DUI pays close attention to the feedback they receive from the military community and incorporates that feedback into their product offerings and specialized designs.

"It requires flexibility from the manufacturer to do that," Heaton said. "That's primarily how our waterproof bags evolved for weapons, outboard motors and radios."

Knives and Watches

A waterproof bag could hold a flare, which special operations divers typically carry to generate smoke or to aid them during an emergency at night. However, it could also hold a specialized weapon or a dive tool if a diver has nowhere else to hold it.

"They will always have a dive tool for whatever they need it for - cutting or prying," Jennrich said. "They will always have that accessible. It's generally a waterproof titanium knife with a blunt edge so that it does not poke a hole in rubber boats, but it could also be used for prying or screwing."

Top knife manufacturers such as SOG and Boker make dive knives designed for SEALs and other special operations divers.

Many of the top watch manufacturers, including Citizen, Casio and Hamilton, make diving watches, which are specialized to tolerate the pressures of deep water. Perhaps the most visible watchmaker for special operations diving, however, is Luminox, which has created a line of Navy SEAL Dive Watches. A typical watch in the Navy SEAL Dive Series has a black strap made of polyurethane with a stainless steel buckle. The watchcase is composed of fiberglass-reinforced polyester with a stainless steel back. They are scratch resistant and their double gasket crown/stem resists water pressure in depths up to 660 feet.

Masks and Underwater Breathing Apparatus

The one piece of gear that even the casual diver knows to buy is a mask.

"Masks are like fins in that there are a whole bunch of different types of fins out there," Jennrich said. "We actually get masks with prescriptions in the glass itself for the guys who have glasses."

Jennrich said that special operations divers have wide latitude in obtaining masks, but they probably won't be walking into a commercial swimwear store to obtain them. Jennrich's shop, the 720th Special Tactics Group, generally obtains the equipment for special operations divers. That equipment is then distributed at each squadron.

Generally, divers use masks from Draeger Safety AG & Co., the German safety equipment manufacturer with U.S. headquarters in Pittsburgh. Otherwise, divers might use other open-circuit aluminum masks. They can acquire masks personally then receive permission from their unit to use them rather than use the Air Force supply system. Divers generally do not use full-faced masks in Air Force special operations.

Draeger Safety is also the only company listed on the SUPSALV ANU list for underwater breathing apparatuses (UBA) used to provide oxygen to divers on extended underwater missions. The MK-25 Mode 2 UBA is a self-contained, closed-circuit system. Draeger designed it for use by special operations forces and the Marine Corps for tasks in shallow water. Divers wear the UBA to conceal surface exhaust bubbles and thus avoid detection by hostile forces.

A diver wears the MK-25 UBA over his chest, aligning the breathing bag of the device over the position of his lungs. The breathing bag feeds oxygen to the diver, who then exhales into a canister that serves as a scrubber. The scrubber removes carbon dioxide from the exhaled gas and returns it to the breathing bag.

Narrow Field

Jennrich said the equipment has become fairly standardized over many years of diving and that generally little change occurs in diving gear today.

"If they have a piece of equipment that they like, they give us a call and tell us this is something we want to check out. Then we go out and we work with 18th Test Flight in getting that tested," he said.

Hurlburt Field houses a test unit on base to determine if suggested gear is suitable for use by Air Force special operations personnel, said Captain Denise Boyd, a public affairs officer at Hurlburt Field.

"We have our own test unit that can look at these things and evaluate it to determine if it is something that might be more useful or more cost-effective or anything else like that," Boyd said. "We always take the ideas that people have and at least look at them and evaluate them. Any of these guys that might

be normal social divers could take these ideas and bring them into the office and evaluate them and maybe even be able to use that."

However, sweeping changes rarely ever occur, Jennrich noted.

"It's really a narrow field," he concluded. "Generally, if it's a mask or something, they can just get their unit to buy it if it's a guys' preference and it's tactically sound and meets the requirements outlined in the U.S. Navy Diving Manual."