The Most Underrated Skill in the SEAL Teams

About this video

A former Special Forces warrant officer recounts his career progression through multiple deployments, focusing on his experience with the military mountain training program. He explains that he became a mountain warfare instructor after his Africa deployment, teaching specialized climbing and technical rope skills to small numbers of operators. The guest describes his subsequent Afghanistan deployment as a team leader conducting counter-ISIS operations in mountainous terrain, where his mountain expertise helped predict enemy movement and protect his team.

Key takeaways

• The guest explains that the Special Forces mountain training program graduates very few operators annually (approximately 48 for summer and 20 for winter courses), creating a highly specialized but underutilized skill set that enables movement through technical terrain otherwise inaccessible.
• The guest argues that mountain warfare skills differ from other insertion methods like HALO/HAHO because they constitute a full-time operational capability rather than just an infiltration platform, useful for setting up observation posts, egress routes, and understanding terrain.
• The guest recounts that his counter-ISIS deployment in Afghanistan was particularly effective because his team’s mountain knowledge allowed them to predict enemy movement corridors, while their small footprint and close relationships with villagers provided security in an environment where they operated on ATVs and razors rather than armored vehicles.

Episode details: published January 10, 2026 · 21.4K views · 24:57 long. Summary written by Self Growth Videos from the episode itself. Stories told by Mike Ritland’s podcast guests are the guests’ own accounts, attributed to them — not independently verified. Commentary is Ritland’s, presented as his analysis.

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