Former SEAL Team 6 Operator DJ Shipley Details Intense Combat Standards

SEAL Team 6, known internally as DEVGRU, serves as the Navy's Tier One counterterrorism, direct action and hostage rescue unit. It stands as the Navy counterpart to the Army's Delta Force.

The unit handles some of the nation's most sensitive missions, where failure carries unacceptable risk. Operators from SEAL Team 6 killed Usama bin Laden in a 2011 raid deep inside Pakistan.

The path to join the Tier One unit proves grueling, and the standards for operators remain unrelenting.

Former SEAL Team 6 operator DJ Shipley described those standards in a recent interview. He said combat offers no do-overs or second chances. The team gets one shot and stays ready to execute.

"I'm just trying to be the best I can because at the end of the day when your number gets called, you're going to have to perform on demand right now. There's no warm up. There's no mulligan. There's no, 'Hey, run back to the helo. Okay, we'll shake it out. Okay, we'll hit it again.' There is no hit it again. There's just one. Like, how serious you taking it? I'm playing this like it's the last game I'll ever play in my life. And I'm not a unicorn. It's a product of the culture. Everybody was better than me as far as I see it," Shipley said in a YouTube video from Mulligan Brothers Interviews.

Shipley explained how SEAL Team 6 operators perform in extreme combat. They anticipate decisions without spoken words.

"I have to be able to predict your future, where you're going to go, what your thought process is without you ever saying a word. I have to do it just off body language. In the middle of the night, grenades are going off, people are getting shot, people are screaming, dogs are barking, the whole thing. You got to be able to scrub all that out and I have to be able to look at you from 30 feet down the hallway and know exactly what you're about to do," he added.

Tier One units demand excellence across all job aspects. The nation's security relies on them. SEAL Team 6 carried out the bin Laden raid, while Delta Force handled an operation against Nicolás Maduro in Venezuela. Operators in these units operate in a class by themselves for direct action and hostage rescue.

A former Delta Force operator once said targets stand no chance against a Tier One unit. The training reaches an unrivaled level.