The CBS action-adventure drama series SEAL Team centered around an elite U.S. Navy SEAL unit known as Bravo Team, as they trained, planned, and carried out dangerous missions around the world for the honor and safety of the United States. The show also explored the members’ personal lives and how their high-risk jobs impacted their families — especially when they were called away on short notice to undertake perilous operations.
By the time SEAL Team ended with its seventh and final season, fans had spent years watching these soldiers balance duty and personal sacrifice. Over the course of the show, the female characters portrayed were intelligent, strong, and confident women who made their own sacrifices to serve. They all played essential roles in every high-stakes mission — but they weren’t actually U.S. Navy SEALs. Their presence on the show often led viewers to wonder: Were there ever any real female U.S. Navy SEALs?
There have been no real female Navy SEALs
Until January 2016, women weren’t permitted to serve in combat roles, including elite special operations forces such as the Special Warfare Combatant Craft Crewmen (SWCC) and the Navy’s Sea, Air, and Land Teams (SEALs). About 18 months later, two women made history when they enlisted as the first female candidates seeking to join the Navy’s special operations community — one training to become a SEAL and the other to become an SWCC.
Their identities were kept private, and while the details of their training weren’t made public, it was confirmed that neither completed the program.
Nearly two years later, another woman enlisted and made headlines as the first female candidate to reach the end of the grueling two-week SEAL Officer Assessment and Selection (SOAS). According to Military.com, she was not ultimately selected for a SEAL contract. A Navy spokesperson, Capt. Tamara Lawrence, explained that the candidate’s top-choice warfighting community was not the SEALs, and she was assigned to her preferred field.
The odds were never in their favor
Becoming a Navy SEAL has always been notoriously difficult. According to Chron, about 1,000 recruits entered SEAL training each year, but only around 250 made it through — roughly one in four. Candidates had to endure some of the most demanding physical and mental challenges in the military.
Training began with two months of intense physical preparation, followed by a rigorous physical screening. Those who passed moved on to stages involving combat diving, basic conditioning, and land warfare. During the conditioning phase came the infamous Hell Week, described by the SEALs’ own website as “the ultimate test of a man’s will.”
After 24 exhausting weeks, candidates who survived received their SEAL Qualification Training diploma. In total, the full Navy SEAL training program spanned 58 weeks and was divided into six segments.
The future may still hold a first
While SEAL Team never featured a true female SEAL, it often celebrated the courage and resilience of women serving alongside these warriors. And although, as of now, no woman has officially become a Navy SEAL, many still believe it’s only a matter of time before history is made.
Just as SEAL Team showed the evolving face of modern warfare, perhaps the real Navy SEALs will one day welcome their first female operator — proving that courage and grit know no gender.
