Thoughts On SERE and Survival Schools

Because of my Aircrew status I was required to go through SERE school (Survival, Evasion, Resistance, and Escape) before I attained a certain rank. So I chose to go to SERE as soon as possible. I went right after jump school. It was amazing! It was pretty difficult but I was told by someone who had attended a year before that it is a big mental mind game. It was. And a physical one too. One of the first things they do is have you sign a non-disclosure agreement (NDA). The NDA is so that no one will tell the world about what happens in SERE. Operational security. Also there’s insurance you have to have in case you get hurt so you won’t sue the government. What I want to talk about is things you can do to train like SERE without disclosing what actually happens. Each branch of the military has their own SERE school. They are not all exactly the same, but they are very close.
SERE School is a training program to teach military members, Department of Defense civilians and military contractors survival skills, training in evading capture and the military’s Code of Conduct.
1. Code of conduct applications in wartime, peacetime, governmental and/or hostage detention environments
2. General survival skills
3. Evasion planning
4. Resistance to exploitation & political indoctrination
5. Escape planning
To tell you the truth about this school, because there is a lot of fiction out there, we were mistreated in this school, but never tortured. There is always a medical team standing by in case someone can’t handle it.
Sere training is broken down into three levels.
Level-A is initial-entry-level training that all soldiers, enlisted and officers receive upon entering the service. It provides a minimum level of understanding of the Code of Conduct.
Level-B is designed for personnel whose “jobs, specialties or assignments entail moderate risk of capture and exploitation.” DoD 1300.21 lists as examples, “members of ground combat units, security forces for high threat targets and anyone in the immediate vicinity of the forward edge of the battle area or the forward line of troops.” Current combat operations have shown that practically everyone deployed in theater falls under this category. Consequently, demand for Level-B training has proliferated exponentially, and it has become mandatory for most deploying forces. Level-B is conducted at the unit level, through the use of training-support packets containing a series of standardized lesson plans and videos.
Level-C is designed for personnel whose “jobs, specialties or assignments entail a significant or high risk of capture and exploitation.” AR 350-30 supports DoD 1300.21’s mandate: “As a minimum, the following categories of personnel shall receive formal Level-C training at least once in their careers: combat aircrews, special operations forces (e.g., Navy special warfare combat swimmers and special boat units, Army Special Forces and Rangers, Marine Corps Special Operations and force reconnaissance units, Air Force special tactics teams, and psychological operations units) and military attaché.”
The SERE Level-C There are only five facilities within the DoD that is authorized to conduct Level-C training. The Air Force conducts training at Fairchild AFB, Wash., and the Navy has facilities in Brunswick, Maine, and at North Island, Calif. The Army Aviation Center at Fort Rucker, Ala., has their own another Level-C facility for aviation pilots in the Army.
SERE was developed by LTC Nick Rowe because, during his five years in captivity as a POW of the Viet Cong, he saw difficulties in how the troops were being trained. It used to be “The Big Three” (Name, Rank and Serial Number) and nothing more. But while a captive, Rowe saw that he had to change that outlook and approach things in a different manner or else he’d suffer the fate of CPT Rocky Versace, who fought the Viet Cong at every turn and so incensed his captors, that he was executed by the Cong. And with minor tweaks, the course has remained largely the way he envisioned it.
The SERE course spans three weeks with three phases of instruction, with the first phase consisting of approximately 10 days of academic instruction on the Code of Conduct and in SERE techniques that incorporate both classroom learning and hands-on field craft.
The second phase is a five-day field training exercise in which the students practice their survival and evasion skills by procuring food and water, constructing small evasion fires and shelters and evading tracker dogs and aggressor forces for long distances. This was by far the best part of the course.
The final phase takes place in the resistance training laboratory, a mock prisoner-of-war camp, where students are tested on their individual and collective abilities to resist interrogation and exploitation and to properly apply the six articles of the Code of Conduct in a realistic captivity scenario. That’s all I can say about that phase, as there some strict rules on that.
The course finishes with a day of debriefings in which the students receive individual and group feedback from the cadre. These critiques help students process everything they have been through to solidify the skills they applied properly and to correct areas using constructive criticism.
Civilian schools have now adopted similar teaching methods on SERE training, such as Sigma Survival School and Northwest Survival School.
SERE is an excellent course that each of the services has tailored to meet the needs of their particular mission. From a civilian standpoint it is great training for a variety of security and survival reasons. If you have the chance, take this training. It will also teach you something about yourself.

For those of you who know “Boots, boots…”

Sigma III Survival School https://survivalschool.us/
Northwest Survival School http://www.northwestsurvivalschool.com/

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