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SOE8-E9

Special Warfare Operator

E-8 to E-9 (Senior NCO) · Navy

E1–E3E-4E-5E-6E-7E8–E9
HEADS UP

SOCS and SOCM are the ranks at which the NSW community's institutional health becomes your responsibility — not just your platoon's, not just your Task Unit's, but the community's. The Force Master Chief NSW advises the NSW Commander on the enlisted force across every SEAL Team, every SDV Team, and every SQT and BUD/S pipeline. That is a different kind of work than the LCPO's platoon. Build toward it deliberately, not by default.

The Honest MOS Read
You are SOCS or SOCM — Senior or Master Chief Special Warfare Operator — and the scope of your responsibility has expanded beyond any single platoon or Task Unit. At SOCS, you may serve as the senior enlisted advisor for a NSW Task Unit with multiple platoons, as a course director or senior enlisted course leader at the Naval Special Warfare Center, as a joint SOF headquarters senior enlisted advisor, or — at the upper end of the SOCS career — as a SEAL Team Command Master Chief candidate. At SOCM, you are in contention for Command Master Chief of a SEAL Team or SDV Team, Force Master Chief NSW, or a senior NSW staff and training command position that shapes the force at the institutional level. The behavioral health dimension of the senior-enlisted NSW role is not diminished at SOCS and SOCM — it is institutionalized. The community's experience with suicide, substance dependence, domestic violence, and moral injury across the post-9/11 generation of NSW operators has produced a body of institutional response: the embedded behavioral health program, the psychological support programs at NSW Command, the shift in how senior enlisted leaders frame mental health care as a combat readiness issue rather than a weakness. The SOCS and SOCM who carry that institutional knowledge and who apply it across the multiple commands and units they are responsible for are performing a function that the NSW community built specifically because senior-enlisted leaders who were not performing it produced predictable outcomes. This is not peripheral to the role. It is central to it. The Command Master Chief function at a SEAL Team is the most visible and most demanding senior-enlisted role in NSW. The CMC advises the commanding officer on the enlisted force across all departments, leads the chief's mess, runs the senior enlisted disciplinary and retention functions, and manages the command's climate assessment at the enlisted level. In a SEAL Team, that means the CMC is the senior enlisted voice for 200-400 operators, support personnel, and administrative staff — a span of responsibility that requires the full integration of operational credibility, administrative competence, and senior-enlisted leadership that the career to this point has been building toward. The Force Master Chief NSW — the most senior enlisted position in Naval Special Warfare Command — advises the NSW Commander on the enlisted force across the entire community: BUD/S attrition rates and pipeline health, NEC programming and community force structure, behavioral health program effectiveness, promotion-board patterns, reenlistment trends, and the institutional culture that produces the kind of operators the Navy needs the NSW community to produce. This is a strategic position, and the SOCM who fills it operates at the intersection of naval special warfare, naval personnel policy, and national security strategy in a way that almost no other senior enlisted position in the military does. The post-Navy plan should be on paper 24-36 months before the projected retirement date. The defense contractor community (program management, training systems, human performance, special programs), the federal law enforcement community (FBI HRT, USMS SOG, DHS special operations), the federal civilian community (SOCOM civilian leadership, OSD special operations positions, NSWC civilian), and the private sector (security consulting, risk management, executive protection) all have specific pipelines that favor the SOCS/SOCM profile. Build the network before you need it. The network the SOCS/SOCM has built across 20-plus years of NSW service is the most valuable career asset leaving the uniform — leverage it deliberately.
Career Arc
  • 01SOCS assignment: Task Unit senior enlisted advisor, NSWC course director, joint SOF headquarters senior enlisted advisor, or SEAL Team CMC candidate.
  • 02Command Master Chief selection (if competitive): CMC of a SEAL Team or SDV Team — the most visible and demanding senior-enlisted NSW assignment.
  • 03Force Master Chief NSW pipeline: SOCM candidates who are competitive for the Force Master Chief position engage the NSW Flag and the NSW CMC community before the formal board cycle.
  • 04Senior Enlisted Academy (SEA) fellowship completion — required for competitive senior-enlisted board consideration.
  • 05Post-Navy transition planning: begin 24-36 months before projected retirement, building the network, the credentials, and the civilian market knowledge in parallel with the final NSW service year.
  • 06Retirement and transition: the SOCS/SOCM who retires with a civilian plan built before the separation date makes a deliberate transition. The one who retires and then starts looking makes a reactive one.
Common Screwups
  • ×Confusing the institutional influence of the senior-enlisted NSW role with the personal authority of the LCPO role. The SOCS who treats the Task Unit senior-enlisted-advisor function as a larger version of the LCPO platoon-control function misunderstands the role. The Task Unit advisor influences through mentorship, through CMC relationships, through the culture he models — not through the daily direct supervision that the LCPO manages. The transition from direct control to institutional influence is the defining leadership transition of the senior-enlisted career.
  • ×Treating the behavioral health accountability as satisfied at the platoon level rather than as an institutional function at SOCS and SOCM. The senior-enlisted NSW leader who is responsible for the behavioral health posture of multiple platoons, multiple commands, or the entire NSW force has a different accountability than the LCPO who owns one platoon's indicators. The SOCS who knows that two of the platoon LCPOs in the Task Unit are not actively using the embedded behavioral health program and does not address it at the senior-enlisted level is performing the function at partial standard.
  • ×Financial mismanagement, domestic incident, or ethics violation at SOCS or SOCM level. The consequences are total and immediate — retirement in lieu of disciplinary action, separation, or involuntary retirement — and the community reads the outcome as a character finding that shapes the institutional memory of the SOCS/SOCM who preceded it.
  • ×Competing for SOCM or Command Master Chief assignments without the breadth the board requires. The SOCS with only operational SEAL Team tours arrives at the SOCM board with a different profile than the one who added NSWC course-director service, joint-staff work, and the Senior Enlisted Academy fellowship. The board selects across the NSW community's SOCS population and the breadth profile matters at this tier more than at any previous one.
  • ×Delaying the post-Navy transition plan until within 12 months of retirement. The defense contractor and federal-civilian programs that recruit at SOCS/SOCM level have lead times of 12-24 months on competitive positions. The SOCS who starts the transition plan at 36 months out builds the option set; the one who starts at 6 months out takes what is available rather than what is right.

A Day in the Life

  • 0600Morning PT: the SOCS or SOCM who trains alongside the force — not necessarily with the junior platoons but visibly, consistently — models the physical standard the senior-enlisted community holds.
  • 0700-0800Senior-enlisted check-in cycle: informal check-ins with platoon LCPOs across the Task Unit or command. These are not supervisory inspections — they are temperature checks on personnel status, training progress, and behavioral health indicators.
  • 0800-0900CO or Task Unit commander brief preparation: the senior-enlisted advisory brief should be built from the morning check-in, not from the previous week's data.
  • 0900-1000CO or Task Unit commander brief: readiness, personnel, behavioral health posture. Brief what is true.
  • 1000-1200Administrative cycle: NJP proceedings, retention counseling at the senior level, eEVAL review for the SOCS-rated Chiefs, Chief board packet review.
  • 1200-1300Chow. One-on-one with an LCPO whose platoon generated a concern during the morning check-in.
  • 1300-1600Training observation, NSWC coordination if applicable, or joint-staff work if in a headquarters billet. The SOCS and SOCM who remain visible on the training floor maintain the operational credibility the advisory authority depends on.
  • 1600-1800Senior-enlisted administrative work: personnel packages, retirement administrative coordination, behavioral health program coordination with the embedded provider.
  • 1800-2000Post-Navy transition work: network outreach, credential documentation, program engagement. Built into the schedule, not added to the end of the day when there is time.
  • 2000-2100SEA reading or professional military education engagement. The SOCM who stays sharp intellectually as well as operationally is the one the Force Master Chief selection board has been watching.

Weekly Cadence

The SOCS and SOCM week is shaped by the multiple commands or units the role is responsible for rather than by a single platoon's training calendar. Mondays involve the senior-enlisted network check-in cycle — informal but systematic — and the CO or Task Unit commander advisory brief. Tuesdays and Wednesdays are the primary administrative and personnel-management days: NJP proceedings, retention counseling, Chief board packet reviews, and the behavioral health program coordination that the role owns at institutional level. Thursdays are training observation and NSWC or joint-headquarters coordination, depending on the billet. Fridays are the weekly closure — equipment accountability at the command level, transition-plan work, and the SEA or senior-PME engagement that builds the intellectual foundation the SOCM board selects for. A deployed SOCS or SOCM on a Task Unit or theater staff runs on the mission cycle's schedule, not the garrison week. The advisory function during a deployment is continuous — the SOCS is present at every mission brief and debrief, is the first point of contact for LCPO concerns about personnel or behavioral health, and is the senior-enlisted voice the Task Unit commander uses for the command-climate check that happens in real time rather than annually.

Key Skills — How to Drill Each

  1. 01
    Run the senior-enlisted advisory function across a Task Unit, a command, or the NSW force — influencing culture, behavioral health posture, and institutional standards through CMC relationships and senior-enlisted modeling rather than direct supervision.
    The advisory function at senior-enlisted level works through the relationships the SOCS has built with the platoon LCPOs and company-grade SOCs across the commands he is responsible for. Check in with LCPOs not to supervise their management but to ask what they are seeing and what they need — and to model the behavioral health conversation, the honest readiness assessment, and the senior-enlisted accountability standard in every check-in. The LCPOs take the standard you model more seriously than the standard you brief.
  2. 02
    Brief the NSW Commander or Task Unit commander on the enlisted force's health — attrition trends, behavioral health posture, reenlistment patterns, personnel management risks — with accuracy and candor.
    The senior-enlisted brief to the commander is the most consequential communication event in the role. It is only valuable if it is honest. The SOCS or SOCM who briefs an optimistic picture of the enlisted force's health — because the negative indicators are uncomfortable to raise, because the commander seems to prefer good news, because the data is ambiguous — is performing a function that sounds like advisory work but is actually institutional risk management by omission. Brief what is true, including the things the commander may not want to hear, with the analysis and the proposed course of action attached.
  3. 03
    Lead the chief's mess at a SEAL Team as Command Master Chief — the institutional culture, the goat locker standards, and the senior-enlisted accountability architecture across all departments.
    The CMC function at a SEAL Team is broader than the LCPO's function in a platoon, but it runs on the same foundation: the standards the CMC holds for himself are the standards the mess holds for its members, and the standards the mess holds are the standards the command holds for its enlisted force. The CMC who enforces integrity, behavioral health accountability, financial responsibility, and professional standards in the goat locker produces a chief's mess that enforces those standards on the deckplate. The CMC who makes exceptions for friends or for operational stars produces the opposite.
  4. 04
    Manage the behavioral health program at the command or Task Unit level — ensuring that the embedded behavioral health provider is actively integrated, that LCPOs are performing the accountability function, and that the program's use is normalized in the command culture.
    At SOCS and SOCM level, the behavioral health management function is institutional rather than individual. The SOCS who monitors whether platoon LCPOs are actively using the embedded behavioral health program — through regular check-ins, through debrief conversations after post-deployment re-integrations, through visibility into the program's appointment patterns — is performing the institutional version of what the LCPO performs at platoon level. If the program is not being used, the senior-enlisted leader asks why and removes the barrier. The program exists because the community made a case for it; use it at institutional scale.

Manuals & References — What Chapters Matter

  • JP 3-05 — Special Operations, SOCOM and NSW Command strategic guidance, and the current NSW Posture Statement
    At SOCS and SOCM level, the strategic framework is the operating environment. The Force Master Chief NSW who briefs the NSW Commander on force health needs to understand how the NSW Commander's strategic priorities shape the force structure, the deployment cycle, the NEC programming, and the attrition tolerance that the senior-enlisted advisory function works inside. This is not optional background reading — it is the context in which every senior-enlisted recommendation the SOCS or SOCM makes is evaluated.
  • NSW psychological health program documentation and DoD Instruction 6490.04 — Mental Health Evaluations of Members of the Military Services
    DoDI 6490.04 governs the fitness-for-duty mental health evaluation process — what triggers a mandatory evaluation, what the chain-of-command reporting requirements are, and what the protections for service members accessing behavioral health care voluntarily look like. The SOCS or SOCM who manages the behavioral health function at institutional scale needs to know the difference between a voluntary referral and a mandatory evaluation referral, and what the command's obligations are in each case.
  • Senior Enlisted Academy (SEA, Naval War College Newport RI) reading list and SOCOM Senior Enlisted Leader symposium materials
    SEA is a PME fellowship for senior enlisted leaders; the reading list shapes the intellectual framework the community applies to strategic-level leadership decisions. The SOCM who has engaged with SEA materials brings an analytical and doctrinal foundation to the Force Master Chief advisory role that is separate from — and complementary to — the operational experience that got him there.
  • MILPERSMAN — senior-enlisted responsibilities, CMC functions, and NJP and separation procedures at the command level
    The CMC at a SEAL Team is involved in NJP proceedings, separation boards, and high-visibility enlisted personnel actions at the command level. MILPERSMAN governs these processes and the CMC who does not know the current articles is operating on institutional memory that may be outdated. The current edition is the standard.
  • Post-service employment resources: SOCOM Transition Assistance, defense-contractor recruiting programs (SAIC, Leidos, Booz Allen, CACI, Parsons), federal civilian USAJOBS pathways for NSW-coded positions, and FBI/USMS special operations application processes
    The SOCS and SOCM who briefs junior operators on the civilian market needs to know it better than the career counselor does. The specific programs that recruit at this level — defense-contractor special programs, federal law enforcement special operations, SOCOM civilian leadership positions — have specific eligibility requirements, lead times, and network-dependent access. Know the market from direct engagement with it, not from general awareness.

Standards — How to Hit Each

  • Command Master Chief function performed at standard — the chief's mess integrity, the behavioral health program implementation, the senior-enlisted readiness brief, and the CO partnership all functioning at the level the NSW community requires.
    There is no partial standard at CMC level. The goat locker either runs with integrity or it does not; the behavioral health program either has the CMC's active support or it has the CMC's nominal endorsement, which is functionally unsupported. The standard is evaluated by the command's performance on inspections, by the retention and advancement rates the CMC can brief with confidence, by the number of behavioral health incidents that were identified early and addressed versus the ones that became command incidents, and by whether the CO and the CMC trust each other enough to say what is actually true in their weekly sync.
  • Senior Enlisted Academy fellowship complete before SOCM board or Command Master Chief slate consideration.
    SEA is a competitive selection and the fellowship is intensive — six months at Newport, RI, covering strategic-level PME. The SOCS who has not attended SEA before the SOCM board is missing a credential the community expects at senior-enlisted selection level. Apply early in the SOCS career, not in the cycle before the board.
  • Post-Navy transition plan built 24-36 months before projected retirement — network identified, credentials mapped, target programs engaged.
    The transition plan is not a retirement paperwork exercise. It is an active process of network engagement, credential documentation, and program outreach that runs in parallel with the final years of NSW service. Use the SOCOM Transition Assistance resources, the SEAL Team CMC network of retired NSW senior enlisted leaders, and the direct outreach to defense programs that the 20-plus years of NSW relationships make possible. The SOCS or SOCM who arrives at separation day with a signed offer has been working the transition for two years.

Technical Mistakes — Concrete Consequences

  • Briefing an optimistic enlisted-force health picture to the NSW Commander or Task Unit commander.
    The senior-enlisted advisory function is only valuable if the assessment is accurate. The SOCS who briefs a positive reenlistment trend when the actual data shows a retention cliff, or who describes the behavioral health program as effective when the LCPOs are not actively using it, is performing an institutional function that produces the wrong outcome at the command level. The NSW Commander who makes force-structure and programming decisions based on an inaccurate senior-enlisted assessment eventually discovers the discrepancy in a casualty, a retention shortfall, or an inspector general finding. The SOCS's name is on the brief.
  • Allowing the chief's mess to make exceptions to integrity standards for operational stars or personal relationships.
    The NSW community's institutional history includes documented patterns of what happens when the goat locker makes exceptions for high-performing operators who violate the standards that govern everyone else. One exception sanctioned by the CMC produces a culture in which the standards are conditional on performance or relationship, not absolute. The deckplate reads that condition within one deployment cycle and builds its behavior accordingly. The Chief's Mess that enforces integrity standards uniformly is the one that produces the command climate that survives the decades of the community's institutional memory.

Career Decisions at This Rank

  • Force Master Chief NSW candidacy versus Command Master Chief service at a SEAL Team followed by retirement.
    The Force Master Chief NSW is the most senior enlisted position in the NSW community — advising the NSW Commander on force health across the entire enterprise. The selection is a formal board process with a small competitive field. The SOCM who is competitive has a record that includes Command Master Chief service, Senior Enlisted Academy completion, joint or interagency experience, and the reputation in the NSW CMC community that makes the advisory role credible at the flag level. Most SOCMs serve as Command Master Chiefs and then retire with that as the capstone. The Force Master Chief path is for the SOCM whose record builds the case for the institutional-level role.
  • Retirement timing — completing the minimum 20 years versus continuing to the SOCM and CMC level.
    The minimum retirement at 20 years produces a different retirement benefit, a different post-service credential, and a different transition market than the 26-28-year retirement of a SOCM or CMC. The SOC who is on a competitive trajectory toward SOCS and SOCM service has a financial and professional incentive to continue. The one who is not on a competitive trajectory has an honest incentive to evaluate whether the operational and personal cost of the additional years produces the value the continuation requires. Have the conversation with the CMC and with a financial planner simultaneously.
  • Post-service employment in defense contracting versus federal civilian versus private sector.
    The three markets have different timelines, different cultures, and different long-term trajectories. Defense contracting (Booz Allen, Leidos, SAIC, CACI, Parsons special programs, smaller NSW-focused firms) offers the highest near-term compensation for the NSW SOCS/SOCM profile, but the market is contingent on cleared government contract availability. Federal civilian (SOCOM civilian, OSD special operations, NSWC civilian, USAJOBS NSW-coded positions) offers stability and a different kind of institutional contribution, with lower compensation but a longer career arc and federal benefits. Private sector (security consulting, risk management, executive protection, financial sector security operations) has the widest range of outcomes and requires the most deliberate network development before the separation date. Know which market you are targeting before the transition window opens.
  • Behavioral health investment in the retirement transition — building the post-service support structure before the uniform comes off.
    The retirement transition for SOCS and SOCM-level operators with 20-28 years of NSW service, including multiple combat deployments, is a transition that the community has documented outcomes for. The loss of structure, purpose, and community that accompanies retirement from a special operations community is real and it is well-documented. The SOCS or SOCM who builds the post-service behavioral health support structure before the separation date — whether through the Veterans Service Organizations, the Headstrong Project, the SEAL-community behavioral health network, or other VA and community resources — makes the transition with a support system in place. The one who discovers the need for that structure after the fact is navigating it without the professional resources available during the transition window.

How the Seat Varies by Unit Type

  • SEAL Team Command Master Chief
    The SEAL Team CMC role is the most visible and most operationally grounded senior-enlisted NSW assignment. The CMC advises the commanding officer, leads the chief's mess, and carries the senior-enlisted accountability for the entire command. This is the assignment most SOCMs are competing for and the one that most directly reflects the full integration of the NSW career.
  • NSW Training Command — senior enlisted course director or NSWC command senior enlisted leader
    NSWC senior-enlisted assignments at the SOCS and SOCM level shape the BUD/S and SQT pipeline at the institutional level. The SOCS or SOCM who serves as a course director or command senior enlisted leader at NSWC influences every BUD/S class that goes through on his watch — the attrition rate, the graduate quality, and the culture of the pipeline that produces the next generation of NSW operators.
  • SOCOM or joint SOF headquarters senior enlisted advisor
    Some SOCS and SOCM billets exist at SOCOM headquarters or joint SOF staffs where the senior-enlisted advisory function operates at the joint-force and strategic level. These billets require the interagency and joint-force fluency that the career has been building through joint-staff assignments and SEA fellowship, and they produce a different kind of institutional experience than the operational SEAL Team tour.
  • Force Master Chief NSW
    The Force Master Chief NSW advises the NSW Commander on the enlisted force across the entire community — BUD/S pipeline health, NEC programming, behavioral health program effectiveness, promotion patterns, reenlistment trends, and the institutional culture of the force. This is a strategic advisory role and the most senior enlisted position in the community. The Force Master Chief's recommendations shape the force structure that every SEAL in the community trains and deploys inside.

What Good Looks Like at This Rank

The good SOCM is the senior enlisted leader the NSW Commander calls when the force health question is not clear from the data — because the SOCM's answer is going to be accurate, specific, and accompanied by a recommendation that was thought through rather than generated on the spot. His senior-enlisted network across the Teams knows he asks the hard questions and acts on the answers, which is why the LCPOs call him before the situation becomes a command incident rather than after. His Command Master Chief record at the SEAL Team where he served produced a chief's mess that held its standards with uniformity and a command climate that the CO could cite at the annual climate assessment without qualification. Two operators who showed early behavioral health indicators in his tenure were referred to the embedded behavioral health provider on his initiative — not the LCPO's, not the CO's, his — and both of them are still operating at SEAL Teams at the SO2 level. He did not consider this an exceptional contribution. He considered it the baseline function of the role. His post-NSW plan was active 30 months before the projected retirement date. The defense-program lead that turned into a position was built on a relationship that started at a SEAL Team debrief six years before the separation date, when the contractor representative asked a question about operator performance assessments and the SOCS gave a real answer instead of a brochure answer. The civilian market did not find him. He built the relationship while he was still doing the work. When he retires, the formation is full — not because attendance was mandatory, but because the people in it know the difference between someone who carried the standard and someone who managed its perception. The two are not the same, and the NSW community's enlisted force can tell which one walked out.

Preview — The Next Rank

There is no next rank in the NSW enlisted structure above SOCM. The SOCM's next phase is the retirement transition — which, for the SOCM who has built it deliberately, is not an ending but a reorientation. The civilian and federal-civilian markets that the SOCM's career built access to are genuinely consequential positions: the defense program that recruits him for its special-operations portfolio, the SOCOM civilian leadership position that applies the institutional knowledge he developed over 26 years to the next generation of force structure decisions, the law enforcement special-operations unit that recruits him for the operational judgment the career produced. The SOCM who retires is also the first generation of NSW senior enlisted leadership that the community produced in the post-9/11 era at full scale. The institutional knowledge he carries — about what sustained combat deployment does to an operator over time, about what the behavioral health program can and cannot do, about what the force structure requires to sustain itself across a generation of operational tempo — is not archived in doctrine or captured in policy. It lives in conversations. Have the conversations. Write down what you know. The next generation of SEAL Chiefs needs the honest version, not the embellished one.
FAQ

SO E8-E9 — Frequently Asked Questions

Q01What does a E8-E9 SO (Special Warfare Operator) actually do?
As SOCS or SOCM you are the FORCM (Force Master Chief), Group MCPO, or Command Master Chief equivalent for a Naval Special Warfare Group (NSWG 1, NSWG 2, NSWG 3, NSWG 10, NSWG 11 — public designations), an NSWC headquarters element, a NSW Development Group (public designation), or a joint special operations command staff.
Q02What's the most important thing to know as a E8-E9 SO?
SOCS and SOCM are the ranks at which the NSW community's institutional health becomes your responsibility — not just your platoon's, not just your Task Unit's, but the community's.
Q03What does a typical day look like for a E8-E9 SO?
Time-blocked day at the E8-E9 SO rank tier: 0600 Morning PT: the SOCS or SOCM who trains alongside the force — not necessarily with the junior platoons but visibly, consistently — models the physical standard the senior-enlisted community holds, 0700-0800 Senior-enlisted check-in cycle: informal check-ins with platoon LCPOs across the Task Unit or command. These are not supervisory inspections — they are temperature checks on personnel status, training progress, and behavioral health indicators,…
Q04What mistakes get E8-E9 SO soldiers fired or relieved?
Confusing the institutional influence of the senior-enlisted NSW role with the personal authority of the LCPO role. The SOCS who treats the Task Unit senior-enlisted-advisor function as a larger version of the LCPO platoon-control function misunderstands the role. The Task Unit advisor influences through mentorship, through CMC relationships, through the culture he models — not through the daily direct supervision that the LCPO manages.…
Q05What career decisions matter most at the E8-E9 SO rank tier?
Force Master Chief NSW candidacy versus Command Master Chief service at a SEAL Team followed by retirement — The Force Master Chief NSW is the most senior enlisted position in the NSW community — advising the NSW Commander on force health across the entire enterprise. The selection is a formal board process with a small competitive field. The SOCM who is competitive has a record that includes Command Master Chief service, Senior Enlisted Academy completion, joint or interagency experience, and the reputation in the NSW CMC community that makes the advisory role credible at the flag level.…
Q06What's next after E8-E9 for a SO (Special Warfare Operator) in the Navy?
There is no next rank in the NSW enlisted structure above SOCM.
Q07What manuals and regulations does a E8-E9 SO need to know cold?
OPNAVINST 8023.15 — Special Warfare (you are now among the authors of the next revision).; JP 3-05 — Special Operations (full unclassified document; you brief from the annex the operators execute).; MILPERSMAN — full familiarity; you are in the room for every high-visibility NJP, separation, and retention case at Group or Command level.

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Published by the Honest MOS Editorial DeskVerified against DoD/.gov sourcesUpdated May 2026Editorial standards