David Smyth

US ARMY GREEN BERET

Dave Smyth is a retired US Army Special Forces Officer with over 20 years of Active Duty service, including one combat tour to Iraq during the invasion, four combat tours to Afghanistan, and numerous operational deployments to Colombia, Jordan, Korea, and Thailand. Dave is the graduate of several military schools, most notably the Combat Diver Qualification Course in Key West, Florida (2006), and the SEAL Dive Supervisor Course in Little Creek, Virginia (2008). Dave was the Commander of ODA 715/ 7115 and was the Primary Dive Supervisor for 1st Battalion, 7th Special Forces Group (Airborne). Following retirement from the Army in 2015, Dave worked as a Supply Chain Improvement Project Manager for Gulstream Aerospace in Savannah, Georgia; as a Senior Project Manager for CACI-Wexford Group in Reston, Virginia; as the Program Manager for Feature Languages in Tyson’s Corner, Virginia; and as the Regional Expertise and Culture Instructor for the 3rd Special Forces Group (Airborne) at Fort Bragg, North Carolina. Dave currently provides consulting and management services through his company, Bull Shark, LLC.

Dave became a PADI Divemaster and Assistant Instructor while deployed to Jordan in 2013, logging 54 dives in six months in the Red Sea. Dave became a PADI Open Water Instructor in Miami, Florida and has been working with Grove Scuba (Miami) and the Silent World Dive Center (Key Largo) since 2019. In 2025, Dave became an Instructor with the Carolina Dive Center in Raleigh. Dave has completed dives on six of the seven continents; most recently logging dives in Antarctica in January 2025, and dives in Portugal in May 2025. He plans to complete dives in Australia in the next few years to close out all seven continents.

Dave is fluent in Spanish, and currently resides in North Carolina where he is a single father of four children.