This is how Navy SEALs conduct ‘over-the-beach’ operations

One of the Navy SEALs’ most characteristic missions are “over-the-beach” (OTB) operations, and the elite unit regularly practices them.

OTB operations generally fall into the category of amphibious warfare, or military operations in which armed forces launch an attack from the ocean onto an enemy shore. The U.S. Marines are of course justly recognized as the preeminent lethal instrument used by the U.S. military to carry out large scale amphibious assaults. The U.S. Navy SEALs, however, also play a key role: reflecting their more surgical SOF mission set, the SEALs’ style of amphibious warfare is often more focused and clandestine. It is, in fact, one of the bread-and-butter capabilities of naval special warfare (NSW) units such as the SEALs.

OTB operations should probably more accurately be called “OTB insertions,” since their point is not simply making it from the sea onto the land, but rather, to accomplish some objective onshore. In other words, a SEAL unit will make its way from the safety and security of the water, via inserting over-the-beach, where they will then complete whatever mission they are assigned on the enemy’s terrain. The SEALs will then either return to the sea by traversing back over-the-beach, or exfiltrate from the area via some other means.

Phase 1: Maritime movement

The first part of any OTB operation is by definition a movement from an uncontested, neutral, or “friendly” maritime area to a targeted enemy shoreline. This movement can be carried out in a number of ways, including via a “duck” drop of SEALs and rubber boats from a helicopter, a free fall drop of a SEAL or SWCC unit with their rigid hull boats, a launch of SEALs and boats from a naval vessel far from the enemy shore, or a launch of SEALs and small NSW submersible craft from an undersea naval platform (submarine).

The chosen initial insertion technique is only limited by mission requirements, time constraints, capabilities, training, gear, and imagination.

Phase 2: Movement to the enemy coast

SEAL Qualification Training students ride an inflatable boat in San Diego Bay during the twelve-day maritime operations segment of their training program. SEALs are maritime special operations forces operating from sea, air and land. Students are trained to operate from fixed-wing aircraft, helicopters, Navy surface ships, submarines, and combatant-craft. (Photo by Kyle Gahlau/U.S. Navy)

The second part of the operation is moving either over or under the surface of the water from the initial launch point far offshore to the point where the SEALs are close enough to the enemy shoreline to be theoretically detectable by a vigilant enemy force onshore. This move will be accomplished by a combat swim (if the distance permits), or in rubber boats, rigid hull boats, or via one of the other methods described above.

Depending on how well-defended and surveilled the enemy beach is, the SEALs will then prepare to make their move from the water over-the-beach onto the land.

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Phase 3: Crossing from maritime to land environment

Marines serving with Bravo Company, 1st Reconnaissance Battalion, provide security as their teams beach their rubber reconnaissance crafts, also known as Zodiacs, during a reconnaissance patrol here, June 26, 2013. The Zodiac, which is often used by Navy SEALs and reconnaissance Marines, can be used for over the horizon transportation of lightly armed raiding parties or reconnaissance teams onto beaches, larger vessels, piers and offshore facilities. The boat is inflated by eight individual air chambers to prevent a single leak from deflating the entire boat. (Photo by Sgt. Joseph Scanlan/1st Marine Division)

Once they’ve arrived in the enemy’s littoral environment – the area of water and land interface found at any stretch of shoreline – the SEALs will then execute the movement from the safety of the water to the enemy’s shore. This final insertion technique will have been decided during pre-mission planning. The decision will have taken into account all of the intelligence gathered on how well-defended that particular stretch of beach appeared to be, and a mission commander can always call an audible just before going ashore. He can change up the plan mid-mission as long as some decision-point was pre-briefed and a mechanism put into place to communicate the desired change.

The SEALs will generally either motor ashore in the rubber boats, if the beach is remote enough to allow that method; they will paddle ashore in the boats if a quieter approach is required; or, for maximum stealth, they will swim ashore. In the latter case, the SEALs can leave members behind with the boats, to loiter them farther offshore once the SEALs depart.

Once the SEALs have made it ashore, they must then cache their boats and/or swimming and diving gear before they can carry out their land-based operation. It is simply a matter of making oneself “slick” enough to be able to shoot, move, and communicate during the direct action, reconnaissance, or other mission type being executed on land. Once that critical phase of the operation is complete, the SEALs are then ready to exfiltrate the area.

Phase 4: Exfiltration

Returning to friendly-held maritime territory upon completing their mission can be accomplished in any manner deemed operationally feasible.

If stealth is no longer a concern because the SEALs have noisily and violently attacked a fixed target, then perhaps evacuation helicopters can swoop in and grab the unit, getting them out of there quickly. If that is not doable because of air superiority concerns, then the SEALs might exfiltrate in the exact reverse manner in which they infiltrated. Again, mission requirements and operational thinking/planning are the limiting factors.

And that, in a nutshell, is the concept of over-the-beach operations.

Editor’s Note: This article was originally published in March 2025. It has been edited for republication.

Feature Image: East Coast-based U.S. Naval Special Warfare Operators (SEALs) conduct over the beach movement to simulate clandestine infiltration as part of a training scenario during Exercise Trident 23-2 in Virginia Beach, Virginia, November 14, 2022. (U.S. Navy photo by Petty Officer 1st Class Katie Cox)

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