The commander of America's most elite fighting forces — responding to a groundswell of complaints raised by Navy SEALs, Army Special Forces and Marine and Air Force commandos — is promising to improve the quality of their personal lives, suffering in the wake of continuous fighting over 10 years.
"This pace has robbed you and your families of any sense of predictability and 'white space' (free time together)," Adm. William McRaven, the head of U.S.Special Operations Command, wrote to his 66,000 troops last month after an internal "sensing" study of the force last year uncovered quality-of-life concerns.
"I want you to know that I hear you! I am aware of the strain placed on you and I am personally committed to alleviating the pressure you and your families are dealing with in these difficult times," McRaven wrote in an e-mail obtained by USA TODAY.
Commanders of the elite troops report upticks in suicide and divorce rates and marriages that exist only in name, with commandos too busy at war to go through the process of filing papers. "We see a lot of separations short of divorce, people too busy to get divorced," McRaven's predecessor, Adm. Eric Olson, said last year.
McRaven — who commanded the raid that killed Osama bin Laden last year — told an audience in Washington, D.C., last week that he and his wife, Georgeann, are visiting troops to hear more about their concerns.
He acknowledged in a brief interview afterward that a key worry is how seasoned troops, rather than staying through retirement, are leaving after about 10 years because of the all-consuming nature of their work.
The rare concession about strain on this elite force comes at a time when the Obama administration intends to rely on special operations units even more as the drawdown of overall U.S. forces in Afghanistan continues.
Last week, McRaven said his troops would likely be the last to leave Afghanistan. But he added, "I think we can help the force from fraying any further and still meet our obligations in Afghanistan and around the world."
Combat tours by special operations troops are typically three to seven months long. Although shorter in duration, their deployments are far more frequent than for other servicemembers, with commandos deploying a dozen or more times since 9/11.
Late last year, the new commander of the Navy SEALs, Rear Adm. Sean Pybus, told his troops in an in-house publication that mounting pressures on them is his top concern.
"The pressure is real and it's manifesting itself in different ways. We're seeing discipline, performance, health and family issues negatively affecting our force," Pybus wrote.
Olson commissioned a special task force led by the Special Operations Command chaplain who visited with 7,000 troops and a thousand spouses in 2011, hearing concerns about stresses on individual troops, their families and their marriages.
The task force, McRaven wrote in his e-mail, "confirmed that a decade of continuous combat operations, coupled with an insatiable demand for SOF (special operations forces) around the globe, have increased the physical and emotional stress on our force and families."
In addition to frequent combat deployments and training missions for these troops, their families complained about long working days even when they were home, says Jim Lorraine, who ran special operations support programs and took part in the task force.
Investigators were told, "Is this the quality of life we want?" Lorraine said. "If you're going to keep my pace up and my wife's not going to be happy, my family's not going to be happy, I'm leaving," he added.
McRaven said he is developing a comprehensive plan to ensure troops have more predictable time with their families. He also plans improved counseling and medical, psychological and rehabilitative services. He is urging troops to seek help when necessary.
That's difficult, McRaven said last week. "When you have a force of A++ personalities who came in because they are hard, tough men and women, and now you want them to come forward and … expose their fears to you, that's not easy to do," he said.
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