The leader of the Navy’s special forces, Rear Adm. Collin P. Green, has told his command in a strongly worded letter that “we have a problem” with breakdowns in discipline among Navy SEALs “that must be addressed immediately.”

The letter, dated July 25 and obtained on Thursday by The New York Times, appeared to be prompted by a series of recent reports of serious misconduct involving SEALs, including two that recently surfaced.

Some units “have failed to maintain good order and discipline, and as a result and for good reason, our N.S.W. culture is being questioned,” Admiral Green wrote in his letter, referring to his command, Naval Special Warfare.

The admiral instructed the officers beneath him to report back by next Wednesday with plans to eliminate the problem.

“Good order and discipline is the foundation for every military organization, and it is a leadership responsibility,” he wrote. “As Commander, I own it. As Commodores, you also own it. We must now take a proactive approach to prevent the next breach of ethical and professional behavior.”

The admiral told his officers to get the urgency of his message across to everyone in Naval Special Warfare. “I want all hands to understand that we have a problem, and that this is our main effort and my top priority,” he wrote.

On Wednesday, Vice Adm. Michael Gilday, President Trump’s choice to be the next chief of naval operations, said the Navy SEAL incidents are being investigated, and he would deal with the root causes behind them and hold people accountable.

“If there is a problem with the culture of the community,” Admiral Gilday told senators at his confirmation hearing to be the Navy’s top officer, it will be “addressed very quickly and very firmly.”

In the week before Adm. Green wrote his letter, an entire SEAL platoon was abruptly pulled out of a deployment in Iraq over reports of an alcohol-fueled party and an allegation that a senior enlisted member had raped a female service member attached to the platoon. Navy Times reported widespread cocaine use among members of a Virginia-based SEAL team, who were said to consider the Navy’s drug testing efforts “a joke.”

Accounts of drug use among senior enlisted SEALs also emerged in the high-profile war-crimes trial of Special Operations Chief Edward Gallagher, who has since been demoted. He was acquitted in early July of charges that he had shot unarmed civilians and stabbed a wounded captive to death while leading a platoon in Iraq in 2017. He was convicted of posing for photographs with the teenage captive’s corpse.

Chief Gallagher had a reputation within the SEALs as one of the commando force’s “pirates” — operators more interested in fighting terrorists than in adhering to the rules and making rank. The investigation of his case revealed fissures in the polished image of the SEALs and the unwritten code of silence among members of the secretive force, who see themselves as a brotherhood.

Earlier this year, in response to repeated reports of misconduct, including the charges in the Gallagher case, Admiral Green took steps intended to clean up SEAL culture with a focus on accountability, character, and what he called “ethical compliance.”

His letter of July 25 suggested that those efforts had not yet yielded all the results he was seeking. “I don’t know yet if we have a culture problem,” Admiral Green wrote. “I do know that we have a good order and discipline problem.”

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