Land Navigation and the Three Rules of SFAS
– Dr. David Walton
- Always look cool.
- Never get lost.
- If you get lost, look cool.
These three rules, while often used as a tongue-in-cheek mantra of life in Special Operations, might be some of the best advice for aspiring operators. But what makes this seemingly jocular maxim so valuable? Always looking cool should be seen in both the outward physical and inward interpersonal senses. Look like you know what you are doing and actually know what you are doing. Never getting lost is a bit obvious. Knowing how to use a lensatic compass is an apparent asset, but so too is having a strong moral compass. And no matter how good you are, you will get lost (in both the physical and metaphysical sense). So, knowing how to get unlost is a critical SOF skill.
The Three Rules are played out every day at Special Forces Assessment and Selection (SFAS), and they are most prescient during Land Navigation Week.
SFAS is divided into three fundamental weeks of assessment: Gate Week, Land Nav Week, and Team Week. Individual physical and cognitive assessments punctuate Gate Week. A Physical Fitness Assessment, timed rucks and runs, the Nasty Nick Obstacle Course, a combat readiness assessment, and various tests of general academic and psychological fitness. Team Week, the last week of SFAS, is widely understood as the cornerstone of Selection, with some of the most difficult physical feats and exquisite interpersonal assessments you could imagine. Those who survive Team Week often cite the experience as the hardest thing they’ve ever done. But, the second week of SFAS, Land Nav Week, is quickly becoming the largest hurdle in the SFAS race. Never get lost has never been so important.
SFAS is deliberately shrouded in mystery. However, significant studies and reports on the process have been conducted over the years. As such, we do know quite a bit, and because the research has been endorsed and vetted by the Special Warfare Center and School, we can confidently discuss it without violating non-disclosure agreements.
Historically, Land Nav failures accounted for about 25% of SFAS drops. Starting about 2 years ago, we began a steady rise in Land Nav failures, and as of the summer of 2024, the Land Nav failure rates sit at around 50%, double what they were just a few years ago. That’s right; Land Navigation accounts for the largest chunk of SFAS drops at nearly half. And curiously, the standards have not changed at all. No change in standards, but double the failure rate? How is this possible? Let’s break it down.
Land Nav can be divided into three functional components: confidence (looking cool), competence (never get lost), and discipline (if you get lost, look cool). There are the Three Rules.
There seems to be some misguided notion that land navigation, particularly at SFAS, requires some advanced knowledge or skill set. To be clear, for SFAS, the basic skills for land navigation are the advanced skills. Know where you are, where you are going, and how to get there. Distance, direction, develop a route. Plot a grid, identify key terrain, recognize obstacles, and design a viable pathway to get there. There is no celestial navigation, no sextant and horizon, no stick and sun tracking, and no moss on the North side of trees (or is it South side?). Basics build champions, and simple is always better. If it’s not the advanced skills, then what is it about Land Nav at SFAS that is so challenging?
The first thing about SFAS Land Nav that makes it unique is that it’s one of the very few training venues where you do Land Nav with a ruck on. A big ruck. The average weight of a Land Nav Week rucksack sits right around 70 pounds. That’s a significant load. And you will average between 12 and 20 miles, depending on the routes you plan, every day. So you are likely looking at 100+ miles under load for the week. And it’s not just straight mileage. It’s overland mileage. You are breaking brush, walking on a slope, fording water, and living a “hard routine.” When you finish each day of training, you stay in the field. No hot showers and a comfy rack to sleep on. So, recovery becomes critical, and the recovery environment is suboptimal.
Most aspiring candidates correctly identify rucking as a rigorous physical evolution. Nobody is likely to go bang out a 15-20 mile, 8-hour, 70-pound rucking session without some significant movement prep, physiological recovery, and in-event nutrition and hydration. During their prep training, most guys carry a bandolier of energy gels, electrolyte powders, and nutrition bars and track their performance data meticulously. But when they do a Land Nav event, they seem to forget that it is fundamentally a ruck event, with the added challenge of overland movement and a significant cognitive load (more on this in a moment).
This physical element indicates that many SFAS candidates are less physically prepared.
We know definitively that rucking performance is the number one predictor of success at SFAS, up to six times more predictive than the next metric. Land navigation is just rucking with a self-directed route, so if you can’t ruck well, then you can’t land nav well at SFAS. So, the first tip to high-performing land navigation is high-performing physical fitness. Faster than the strongest lifter and stronger than the fastest runner. However, how you train that physical component is critical to your success.
If you are like most aspiring operators, you view ruck training as a necessary evil. You accept that it must be done, but you usually seek to insulate yourself from the misery of a rucking session. You dutifully do your movement prep and stretching, and you diligently load and prep your ruck to standard, but the moment you actually strap on the ruck, you likely pop in your earbuds and attempt to distract yourself with a podcast, some music, or an audiobook. If this is what you are doing, then you are literally conditioning yourself to disconnect your brain while you ruck. This is bad. At SFAS, every important decision you make will be made with a ruck on your back. So, if you are training yourself to stop thinking whenever you have a ruck on your back, how well do you think you will be able to engage deliberately with your environment whilst rucking? Most, if not all, of your ruck training should include a deliberate and specific cognitive component. You must train to think under load.
As such, the physical fitness component becomes an obvious contributor to the cognitive load component. And this is the secret to SFAS. Everyone thinks that Selection is a physical test. To be clear, it is a significant physical test. But SFAS is really about testing your cognitive dimensions. The physical load is meant to tax your cognitive load so much that you can’t mask your true self. The Cadre are assessing you, and they want to assess the “truest” version of you. So, they are assigning you nearly insurmountable physical tasks so they can assess your interpersonal qualities without any obfuscation. When you are getting crushed under a heavy ruck on mile 18 of your movement, you don’t really have the capacity to hide your true self. And they add to that cognitive load with seemingly arbitrary rules. There are very specific parameters that govern your movement during the land nav practical exercises: your distance from roads, the angle at which you can cross linear danger areas, and the manner in which you negotiate obstacles are strictly scripted.
Take, for example, your weapon. You are issued a ‘rubber duck’ weapon for which you are accountable during the duration of SFAS. Losing accountability of your weapon is a serious violation and grounds for immediate dismissal. But you are not allowed to use a dummy cord to tie off your weapon to your person or equipment. Why is this? If the primary concern is not losing the weapon, then a dummy cord is an obvious solution. But that’s not the primary concern. The primary concern is creating a load on your cognition so you can’t obfuscate your true self. You aren’t allowed to tie down your weapon because they want you to think about that weapon all the time. So, there are a bunch of arbitrary rules that are designed to add to your cognitive load. The same arbitrary rules as your distance from roads, the angle at which you can cross linear danger areas, and the manner in which you negotiate obstacles. It’s all about cognitive load management.
Increased physical fitness capacity is an obvious tactic to manage cognitive load, but so too is developing systems and processes to keep your cognitive load at a manageable level.
Less need to wring the sponge dry if you can keep it from being saturated in the first place. Simple tactics like mnemonics for basic skills can go a long way, especially in the aggregate. I still say (often out loud), “Read right, then up” every single time that I plot a grid on a map. Every single time. I don’t even think about it. It’s just something that I do. There is no cognitive load, and I have made routine a critical action. So, I never misplot points because I’ve developed a system (albeit a weird one) that prevents me from misplotting points. It’s the same for my pace count. I count every time that my left foot hits the ground. Every single time. If I’m walking through the hardware store, I’m counting my paces. Not because I’m worried about establishing an attack point near the pressure-treated lumber, but I’m always counting, so when I do Land Nav, keeping my pace is just something I do. I don’t even consciously think about it. There is no cognitive load because I have made routine this critical task. That’s the key to this process. Make routine critical tasks so that they become just that…routine. If you can develop routines and execute them consistently, you can create the cognitive capacity to engage deliberately in the assessment environment. You don’t think about routine and mundane (yet critical tasks), so you are free to think about what the Cadre just asked you or the activity that you are seeking to negotiate successfully.
Injury also likely plays a significant role. Forty-four percent of candidates seeking medical attention during SFAS do so during Land Nav week; the most common complaint is blisters and abrasions. Imagine how even a small blister might impact your cognitive load. Every time your boot rubs that tender spot, it adds stimuli that your brain is forced to reckon with. It also makes that blister a tiny bit worse. So, even small injuries can quickly overwhelm the mind and cascade into Selection-ending injuries. Imagine what a twisted ankle or a compromised knee will do to your cognitive load. It can alter your gate, change your pace count, force azimuth drift, and make a tenuous situation untenable. You simply will not recover under these conditions. You would do well to prep your feet for the assessment environment.
What does this systems thinking (making critical tasks routine) look like in practice, especially during Land Nav Week?
We discussed earlier the competence (never get lost) component of land nav and that there is no requirement for any “advanced skills.” Basic build champions. Distance, direction, and route management. The confidence (always look cool) component comes with repetition. Land Navigation is a perishable skill, and it is built through repeated exposure to varying scenarios and developing a sense of assurance about which option will produce which results. However, the final component is entirely intrinsic. Discipline. If you get lost, look cool. And make no mistake about getting lost. At SFAS, you will navigate…solo, day and night, hot and cold, rain or shine…for mile after mile. You will get lost at some point, so make certain you can get un-lost, and look cool doing it.
When you get physically lost, you must be disciplined enough to stop moving, execute your contingency or recovery plan, and get yourself un-lost. If you plotted your route correctly with the appropriate control measures and features, then getting un-lost is a simple matter. Nothing looks less cool than a Candidate thrashing about in the woods with no idea how far they’ve come or how far they have to go. You knew exactly where you were when you started the route, so if you keep track of your position along that route, it should be a routine task to simply return to your last known point — if you are disciplined.
The same is true, if not more so, in the abstract. One of those arbitrary rules that we discussed earlier is no walking on the roads. There is zero question about the permissiveness of walking on the roads. Yet, it happens in every single SFAS class. This is such a common occurrence that there is a name for those who get caught on the roads – Road Kills. Everyone knows you’re not allowed to do it, but it happens so often that we have a special name for it. Is this a skills issue? Is it a confidence issue? No, it is a discipline issue. The wayward Candidate is out navigating, and he believes that he has no option but to get on the road in order to find his point, make his time hack, or avoid an obstacle. In that moment, he is lost and must be disciplined enough to keep his head. In that moment, you must learn to be cool. Recognize the vulnerability of the situation and be disciplined enough to do the right thing. Competence, confidence, and discipline.
So, how does an aspiring operator put all of this into action?
First, get fit. Faster than the strongest lifter and stronger than the fastest runner. Get especially fit with a ruck on your back. Not just the fitness element but also the technique and misery management that are incumbent in rucking. Every important decision that you make at SFAS, you will make with a ruck on your back. Develop a comprehensive fitness prep program or hire a coach — or both. We just published the ultimate sofa-to-selection performance guide and journal that includes all of the elements that you need to prepare for SFAS. Shut Up and Ruck gives you 8 months of daily workouts that will have you selection ready with no guesswork. Open the book, turn the page, and do exactly what that day’s workout tells you to do. Combined with Ruck Up Or Shut Up, our best-selling comprehensive SFAS guide, you will have everything you need to prep like a pro.
Next, train Land Nav as much as you can. You may recall that we described the criticality of repetition: “repeated exposure to varying scenarios and developing a sense of assurance about which option will produce which results.” So you need to train. We recognize that there is a near crisis of incompetence (or, at the very least, inexperience) in land nav knowledge in the operational force.
A recent social media post highlighted the experience of an 8-year time-in-service Staff Sergeant. He was, admittedly, in a soft-skill MOS. But in his 8 years of active-duty military service, he has never once found a land navigation point. Not a single point. Ever. During Basic Training, the land nav course was flooded, so his unit couldn’t conduct field training. They just skipped it. They simply didn’t schedule it for the soft-skill guys during his professional military education opportunities. He did one of his schools during COVID, so it was entirely online. His unit never trained in this basic skill. Not once. So, this Non-Commissioned Officer, ostensibly an Army leader, charged with training his squad has never once found a land nav point. How can we expect him to train others? This is obviously an extreme example, but I talk with prospective candidates every day who share similar situations. They simply can’t find anyone in their unit that can train them. Even for 11 series OSUT, the training is hit or miss depending on the unit, the cadre, and the timing. It is common for an Infantryman (and, by default, an 18X Special Forces Candidate) to arrive at their unit with only 3 or 4 land navigation runs. It’s possible for a young Soldier never to have trained solo night land nav until they do so at SFAS. This is not an optimal situation.
So you need to train on your own. If you are lucky enough to be in a unit with a cadre of willing (and able) trainers, then train as much as you can. If that’s not available, join a local orienteering club, make your own land nav course with training partners, or find a class.
We offer tailored advanced SFAS Land Navigation Prep courses every month. In one 10-to-12-hour training session, we provide tips, tricks, techniques, and opportunities to teach students everything we know. We have carefully crafted a custom prep curriculum, and our graduates report that the experience has been massively beneficial for SFAS. You can learn more by visiting us at TFVooDoo.com for details and dates. We also offer a Red Light Night Series that can really give you the edge.
And finally, you need to learn to manage your cognitive functioning. You can be fit and skilled, but if you are also “dumb,” then you’re not going to make it. You are human, so you are subject to all of the eccentricities all humans are subject to. You will not rise to the occasion; you will default to the level of your training. So, if you aren’t deliberately training yourself to properly modulate your attention, manage your energy, and prioritize cognition, you will simply be a fast, strong, cerebrally overwhelmed Land Nav failure. Make cognition, self-awareness, and reflection an integral part of your prep. In Shut Up and Ruck, our 8-month prep plan, we integrate specific mindfulness exercises into every ruck workout we program. We give extra mindfulness sessions that you can use in your own programming. Experienced SFAS performance enhancement specialists designed these prompts to help train you for the specific conditions you need to excel in during Selection.
There is nothing advanced about SFAS Land Navigation. Follow the Three Rules. Know where you are, know where you’re going, and know how you’re going to get there. And don’t count on good luck to get you to Team Week.
Train like your Green Beret depends on it.
SFAS will not lower the standards.
We never have.