BUD/S Orientation (NSWO)
BUD/S orientation, which the Navy calls Naval Special Warfare Orientation (NSWO), is the seven-week course candidates complete before BUD/S begins. The Navy describes its purpose as building the conditioning base and the water competency that the pipeline then demands.
What the Course Puts a Candidate Through
MILPERSMAN 1306-1016 (10 December 2024) describes a physical conditioning programme of running, swimming, aquatic skills, calisthenics, the obstacle course, and an introduction to the inflatable boat, small boats, and logs or hawsers. For many candidates it is the first time they handle a boat and a log as a crew, and the first graded look at how they swim and move in the water. The coursework is conditioning, not selection: the point is to arrive at BUD/S with something to build on.
Where It Sits in the Pipeline
The Naval Special Warfare assessment, selection and training pipeline is 60 weeks long, and orientation is its first course, ahead of BUD/S. The course also moved: it ran at Naval Station Great Lakes, and on 7 January 2021 the commander of Naval Special Warfare directed that the preparatory school relocate to San Diego under Basic Training Command, with the first class there beginning in November 2021. Enlisted candidates now go from boot camp to Coronado rather than staying in Illinois.
How to Arrive Ready for It
Orientation is the conditioning base the next 21 weeks are built on, and seven weeks is a long training block if a candidate plans it. Arriving able to swim continuously, hold a plank, and run several miles at a conversational pace turns the course into improvement rather than catch-up work. Taking the Physical Screening Test again at the end of the seven weeks is the honest way to measure what the block bought.
Use the seven weeks the way they are meant to be used: build the base, learn the strokes and the boat, and retake the PST at the end of it. It is the last block with room to build.
Related Terms
First Phase is the seven-week opening block of BUD/S, the phase that selects and prepares candidates physically and psychologically for the rest of the pipeline. It holds Hell Week, and it is where most of a BUD/S class is lost.
Naval Special Warfare (NSW) is the United States Navy component responsible for SEAL teams and Special Warfare Combatant-craft Crewmen (SWCC). NSW publishes the Physical Training Guide that forms the basis of BUD/S preparation programs, establishing the standards and training methodologies candidates should follow before entering the selection pipeline.
The obstacle course, known at BUD/S as the O-course, is the timed route candidates run repeatedly against set standards. It appears in the orientation course, in Second Phase's course content, and among the graded events of First Phase.
Navy PST standards set two score lines for each of the five Physical Screening Test events. Minimum gets you in the door. Competitive has you prepared. The gap between the two scores is the target of the 26-week preparation program.
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