US Special Forces can't be produced quickly, says fmr. Navy SEAL O'Neill

As concerns that U.S. Special Forces are being stretched too thin mount, former U.S. Navy SEAL Rob O’Neill said the issue is the rate at which troops with unique skill sets are being produced.

“When I went in to a certain command, the younger guys like me were coming in, the older guys were kinda worn out, but leaving. They’re still doing that, but you can’t just produce special operators that quickly and that’s the problem I think that we’re running into right now,” O’Neill told Lea Gabrielle during an interview on “Making Money” on Wednesday.

According to Micah Zenko, a senior fellow with the Center for Preventive Action at the Council on Foreign Relations, President Trump has expanded the Obama administration’s use of counterterrorism operations in non-battlefield countries. Zenko said the current White House has ordered five times as many missions as the previous administration.

“They’re asking more and more and that’s just because Special Operations—they seem to be the “Easy Button,” that’s actually what President Obama called us, simply because we could do the task that was asked of us on certain no-fail missions,” O’Neill said.