Combat Diving - Types of Frogman Operations

Types of Frogman Operations

• Amphibious assault: stealthy deployment of land or boarding forces. The vast majority of combat swimmer missions are simply to get "from here to there" and arrive suitably equipped and in sufficient physical condition to fight on arrival. The deployment of tactical forces using the arrival by water to assault land targets, oil platforms, or surface ship targets (as in boardings for seizure of evidence) is a major driver behind the equipping and training of combat swimmers. The purposes are many, but include feint and deception, counter-drug, law enforcement, counter-terrorism, and counter-proliferation missions.
• Sabotage: This includes putting limpet mines on ships.
• Clandestine surveying: Surveying a beach before a troop landing, or other forms of unauthorized underwater surveying in denied waters. The article "Riding on Proton" by Afonchenko (in Russian) may describe in passing a Soviet Bloc frogman infiltration into South Korean sea.
• Clandestine underwater work, e.g.:
  • Recovering underwater objects.
  • Clandestine fitting of monitoring devices on submarine communications cables in enemy waters.
• Investigating unidentified divers, or a sonar echo that may be unidentified divers. Diving sea-police work may be included here. See anti-frogman techniques.
• Checking ships, boats, structures, and harbors for limpet mines and other sabotage; and ordinary routine maintenance in war conditions. If the inspection divers during this find attacking frogmen laying mines, this category may merge into the previous category.
• Underwater mine clearance and bomb disposal.