On Combat

The Air Force Chief of Staff announced on 8/28/07 that the Air Force would expand Survival Evasion Resistance and Escape (SERE) training to more airmen. (see CSAF’s Scope highlights SERE training ) This move is tremendous step to better prepare American Airmen for what could be the gravest challenge of their lives: capture in battle.

American prisoners of war rely on training (for tools to resist coercion), faith in one’s comrades (to come get them), faith in America (that they will not be forgotten and their families will be taken care of), and faith in God (for personal strength). The resistance portion of SERE provides the tools necessary to resist the enemy and return with honor. Today resistance training is taught by the USAF Survival School at Fairchild AFB, WA.

Lt Col Rob Sweet was captured by the Iraqis in Desert Storm after ejecting from a striken A-10. Sweet was a former SERE school instructor and noted “the Iraqis threw everything at me I’d already seen…out of my weeks of captivity, I only saw one trick I wasn’t expecting.” Unfortunately, British Sailors and Marines taken prisoner by Iran had not had resistance training and unwittingly provided propaganda for Iranian regime. One British sailor (mistaken for a US Marine) stated on Iranian TV (click here to watch the streaming video):

To my family, I am sorry. They’re waiting at home worried. To the government, to my boss, I’m sorry for my mistake. To the Iranian people, I am very very sorry for the mistake. It will never happen again. I will never forget this. This has been a very good lesson to me. I will not do it again. I will tell them the same thing: I made a mistake. But the Iranian people are very good people. That is the first time I have met Iranian people. They have been very kind….

Iranian military commanders exploited the opportunity by remarking:

Captain Seifollah Bakhtiarvand: They saw a boat heading toward our territorial waters in the Arvand River. They surrounded it, and led it to our port. When the American [sic] Marines disembarked, one of them peed on himself out of fear.

Admiral Ali Fadavi: The truth is that “Marines” means “defeated man.” When he faces forces of believers and he realizes where he is, he is so scared that he pees on himself.

Admiral Ali-Reza Tanksiri: They raised their hands, and then one of them peed on himself. It was obvious that they were very scared. The cowardice of the enemies was to that extent.

By Contrast, Trained US Gulf War POWs did all within their powers to avert propaganda material for enemy. Lt Jeffrey Zaun hit himself in the face to look worse for the cameras, USAF Major Jeff Tice spoke in a bizarre accent, and Col Dave Eberly gulped down glasses of water set in front of him to avert the appearance that he was being taken care of.

SERE initially trained aircrews with a combination of classroom instruction and field training. The intimidating resistance lab provided each trainee with several days in a simulated prison camp, interrogations, and other physical and mental challenges encountered in captivity. More recently, the Air Force expanded the training to include battlefield airmen.

Today’s battlefield has changed further—airmen no longer operate from bases distant and secure in the rear. Airfields in Iraq and Afghanistan are in the midst of a battlefield against insurgents. As the battlefield has changed, the airmen at risk have changed. USAF security forces, for example, routinely patrol and train Iraqis “outside the wire” of their well defended airbases (see: “Security forces Airmen step outside the wire“). Airmen riding shotgun on supply convoys are part of In-Lieu-Of (Army or Marine) taskings. In August 2007, USAF BG Gibson reported
6,293 of the 25,453 Airmen deployed are filling ILO taskings (see “General testifies on Air Force in-lieu-of strategies“)

All airmen receive a rudimentary lesson on resistance with a short lecture on the Code of Conduct. This short classroom exposure to ideals of what can and cannot be done while in captivity seems very distant from battlefield realities. For many of us, learning comes from doing. In the case of resistance training, learning comes best through the discomfort of a face-to-face confrontation in a training scenario. Resistance training graduates never forget the experience, nor the lessons. When I was interrogated by Iraqi intelligence in 1991, it had been 14 years since my SERE training, but the necessity to resist by all means necessary was clear to me as it had been the day after completing the training.

The devils will be in the details as the AF expands training. How much depth of training, and how wide an audience is the trade space. We will face a capacity problem, the dedicated SERE instructor community is busy training their current flow of students. As we extend training, we’ll need more instructors, which means time and money. We may need to train-up some more instructors with skills more limited than those doing the training today, in a limited training role somewhere above the code of conduct but below the POW compound in the resistance lab today.

Photo: Technical Sgt. Jesse Arnold (left) and Senior Airman Ryan Gaspard practice evasion movements during Exercise Atlantic Rescue at Avon Park, Fla., Nov. 1. They are survivial, evasion, resistance and escape, or SERE, specialists. Sergeant Arnold is stationed at Langley Air Force Base, Va. and Airman Gaspard is at Mountain Home AFB, Idaho. (U.S. Air Force photo/Tech. Sgt. Larry A. Simmons)