SERE training teaches valuable survival skills

by Staff Sgt. Chuck Broadway
4th Fighter Wing Public Affairs

7/19/2012 - SEYMOUR JOHNSON AIR FORCE BASE, N.C. -- Survival, Evasion, Resistance and Escape: those words are the foundation for enduring and defeating adversaries if aircrew members are forced into a life-threatening game of hide and seek.

If an isolation or capture situation ever occurs, aircrew members fall back on the skills they learned during SERE training.

U.S. Air Force Staff Sgt. Justin Pishner, 4th Operations Support Squadron SERE specialist and instructor, has the responsibility of ensuring each member who comes through the training is as prepared as possible for a real-life occurrence.

All aircrew members receive initial SERE training at Fairchild Air Force Base, Wash. The 19-day course teaches students the basics of survival in isolation and capture. Pishner, however, teaches shorter, specialized courses tailored for F-15E Strike Eagle aircrew members.

Students attend the water survival training every 36 months and the combat refresher training annually. A majority of the training involves performing hands-on familiarization and scenario execution.

"We have to figure out the most logical and beneficial information to teach them," he said. "Students are trained on everything from egress from the aircraft to evasion and recovery actions on the ground."

Seymour Johnson's SERE shop is equipped with a model of an F-15E cockpit, a flight simulator and raised parachute harnesses to teach aircrew how to properly egress. A customized computer simulator uses virtual reality to assess students' ability to navigate to the ground following egress.

During the field portion of the annual training Pishner utilizes the base's surrounding terrain and employs augmentees to simulate enemy aggressors in an attempt to provide realistic training to better prepare his students.

"I make them operate under some pressure," Pishner said. "I even get the (F-15E crews) to participate so aircrew members can have direct ground-to-air communication and also play multiple roles during training. There's very little room for error when you're talking about an aircrew's life and it's important to get it right and we make sure the aircrew fulfill their requirements."

Capt. Kyle Meyer, 335th Fighter Squadron assistant director of operations, has taken both the combat refresher training and water survival courses while assigned to the 4th Fighter Wing and said he's more prepared than ever before.

"The hands-on training was good, as were the instructors who made it fun," Meyer said. "The training is a smaller group here and you get more interaction, more hands-on and more time with the instructors to ask questions. It makes it a lot easier because you're almost one-on-one with them. "

Pishner said he measures his success as an instructor through prevention and recovery. He does what he can to prevent an aircrew member from being isolated and the next-best case, someone who can positively affect their recovery.

"If we can prevent a military member from being isolated, we did our job," he said. "If somebody does become isolated, it's my job to make sure that person has the necessary skills to survive and be rescued. That's our ultimate goal at SERE."