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Air Force to increase SERE training for all

It’s a dangerous world out there, and the Air Force wants you to be ready for whatever might be thrown at you. Citing concerns that increasing numbers of airmen face the risk of being captured by the enemy, Chief of Staff Gen. T. Michael Moseley announced Aug. 10 that the service will ramp up the amount of survival, evasion, resistance and escape training provided to all airmen.

The plan for how to provide an appropriate level of SERE training to all 330,000-plus airmen is still in the works, but it is clear everyone will receive some instruction in how to avoid getting captured and what to do in the event it happens.

“We’ve got to start training the total force,” said Chief Master Sgt. John Myers, the SERE career field manager. “It’s a matter of time before we have the airman transporter or ... clerk or personnelist that steps outside the wire for a tour of town and gets grabbed. We’re a target ... out there.”

Moseley has directed Air Education and Training Command to come up with a SERE game plan to present at the Corona leadership meeting in October. He’ll then decide how to proceed.

The most immediate concern, said Maj. Gen. Mark Zamzow, AETC’s director of operations, is to expand training for airmen deploying on assignments that will routinely take them outside the wire — serving, for example, on security forces, provincial reconstruction teams and explosive ordnance disposal teams. Those airmen, Myers said, need exposure to all four elements of SERE and at least some hands-on training — and they need it now.

Beyond those high-risk categories, Zamzow said, a likely first step will be to bring all airmen up to Level B training, which is designed for service members who face “a moderate risk of capture and exploitation,” according to Defense Department policy.

“In this battle space,” Myers said, “our airmen ... are deploying out into those areas of operation [where] there are no battle lines. Every single person is at risk.”

The plan makes sense to retired Lt. Col. Jeff Fox, an A-10 pilot who was shot down in Iraq in 1991 and held for 15 days during the Persian Gulf War.

“I think it would be good for [airmen] to learn that ... something like this can happen,” he said. “It would be good to let them know what has happened to other people in the past and what they can expect to happen to them.”