Two Virginia-based SEALs face disciplinary action against racist behavior, and several of their platoons and team leaders are being subject to disciplinary action by leadership failures, a defense official said.

The official said two enlisted team 4 members were punished for developing racist memes against black sailors and circulated them in group chats with other team members who had chatted with other team members anonymously to provide details of the ongoing investigation. According to the visuals viewed by the Associated Press, the meme portrays sailors as slaves.

According to the official, the target is events this year, but they happened in 2022, with memes emitting for years. The sailor was on a ranking list of the SEALs 4 platoons, but his qualifications and SEALs were revoked last year. He claimed his failure to keep the seal was due to racist treatment.

He will be paid back his salary due to an investigation conducted by the Navy Special War Team, which is reinstating the sailor's seal qualification. The group oversees Seal Team 4 and the platoon that forms the team, located in the Little Creek-Fort story on Hampton Road, Virginia

The investigation found that the platoon and seal team 4 leaders did not adequately address the sailors' concerns about racist behavior and that the decision to revoke their qualifications was flawed.

"This is a very shocking case, a clear and repetitive racist meme targeting our clients," said Timothy Parlatore, a sailor attorney. "They modified his face in the photo to look like a monkey and portrayed him as a chain slave on a slave ship."

The two enlisted sailors in charge of the meme will face non-judicial punishment and punitive letters in the archives. Both actions can be career endings and can also lead to downgrades or pay losses. Other actions are still waiting.

The platoon and team leaders also face administrative actions, including disciplinary books in the archives, which can determine whether they continue to serve as seals.

In a statement, the Navy Special War Command acknowledged an investigation into “serious allegations of unprofessional conduct in one of our orders” and said “the responsibility action is underway.”

It added: “We are committed to fostering a atmosphere of dignity and respect and after a thorough and equitable investigation, we will make anyone found responsible for misconduct.”

Parlatore praised NSW chief Jamie Sands and his staff for taking swift action to “investigate, reverse the negative impact our clients receive and hold people accountable”.

This is just the latest important investigation into the behavioral issues and the failure of the orders in the Navy’s special war orders. It highlights the racial issues that special war leaders are no strangers to.

Commando units across the troops (especially officers) are often far less diverse than the entire army. In recent years, leaders have tried to attract more recruits to develop more diverse forces.

However, as Trump administration and Defense Department leaders believe ending diversity and inclusion programs across the military and the administration is a priority, it may be threatened now. This could exacerbate the racism problem in smaller, white teams.

According to the Navy Special Warfare statistics provided to the Associated Press, 95% of all seals and combatants were white as of March 2021, and only 2% were black. The enlistment levels are only slightly diversified.

These figures are very different from the overall naval population, which has about 40% of force and 24% of officers are non-white.

According to defense officials, sailors filed more than a dozen specific complaints about racist behavior, about half of which have been confirmed.

As Group 2 leaders began investigating the complaints, the second was that white sailors also complained about bullying by other platoon members. This expanded wider attention to the command atmosphere and later leadership failure discoveries.

Other recent investigations have also identified training and command issues.

Last October, a highly critical comment found two Navy SEALs attempted to climb a ship carrying illegal Iran-made weapons on board because of huge training failures and lack of what to do after falling into deep, turbulent waters.

The investigation of the death of a seal candidate a year ago concluded that the training program was plagued by health care, poor supervision, and the general failure of performance-enhancing drugs that increased the risk of injury and death for those seeking to become elite commandos.