In order to defend the country’s interests there is a need for underwater reconnaissance, demolition, construction, ordinance disposal, ship maintenance, search and rescue, salvage operations etc which are carried out by the country’s defense forces. They make use of expert divers called combat divers or naval divers or frogmen for these purposes. The typical offensive activities carried out by a naval diver include underwater demolition, infiltration, sabotage of enemy installations and equipments. The defensive activities include clearing of mines underwater, anti sabotage operations against enemy divers etc. SBS and SEAL teams are well experienced in these kinds of operations.
The military divers, in order to remain undetected and also prevent any disasters while handling explosives underwater, use specialized or modified equipments. They use rebreathes to prevent the release of bubbles due to the exhaled air, which may give away their position. The suits and diving gear used by then will be made of non reflective surfaces, with non magnetic components.
World War II saw a lot of action on the part of the US Navy divers which included the efforts by the salvage teams trying to rescue trapped sailors from USS Oklahoma at Pearl Harbor. They were assigned to removal of underwater obstacles during the Okinawa Invasion where they created a record by removing 1200 underwater obstacles in 2 days. The Explosive Ordinance Disposal (EOD) teams defused many explosives and underwater mines during the course of World War II.
The Navy Experimental Diving Unit (NEDU) develops and tests various diving equipments and practices depending upon the requirements of the US Armed Forces. US Navy along with NEDU, Naval Medical Research Institute (NMRI) and Navy Submarine Medical Research Laboratory (NSMRL) have developed and proved the saturating diving techniques in its Sealabs ( Experimental Underwater Habitats) and other research programs.