Survival, Evasion, Resistance and Escape
This program was extended to include the Navy and United States Marine Corps and was consolidated within the Air Force during the Korean War (1950–1953) with a greater focus on "resistance training."
These efforts throughout the 1940s laid the foundation for formal SERE programs, which focused on survival, evasion, and resistance, ensuring that military personnel were equipped to perform effectively under potential captivity scenarios.
During WWII, the U.S. Navy discovered that 75% of its pilots who had been shot or forced down came down alive, yet barely 5% of them survived because they could not swim or find sustenance in the water or on remote islands.
[4] The committee's key recommendation was the implementation of a military "Code of Conduct" that embodied traditional American values as moral obligations of soldiers during combat and captivity.
While it was accepted that the Code of Conduct would be taught to all U.S. soldiers at the earliest point of their military training, the Air Force believed more was needed.
At the USAF "Survival School" (Stead AFB), the concepts of evasion, resistance, and escape were expanded and new curricula were developed as "Code of Conduct Training".
The Navy also recognized the need for new training, and by the late 1950s, formal SERE training was initiated at "Detachment SERE" Naval Air Station Brunswick in Maine with a 12-day Code of Conduct course designed to give Navy pilots and aircrew the skills necessary to survive and evade capture, and if captured, resist interrogation and escape.
[10] In 1958, the Marine Corps opened Camp Gonsalves in northern Okinawa, Japan, where jungle warfare and survival training was offered to soldiers headed for Vietnam.
When Stead AFB closed in 1966, the USAF "survival school" was moved to Fairchild Air Force Base in Washington State (where it is centered today).
That level of training was specified for soldiers whose "assignment has a high risk of capture and whose position, rank, or seniority make them vulnerable to greater than average exploitation efforts by a captor".
The required (every 3 years) Level C refresher course is commonly taught by USAF "detachments" (often just one SERE specialist/instructor) stationed at a base or a traveling specialist.
"[16] DoD chose the U.S. Air Force as its Executive Agency for joint escape and evasion in 1952 and it was therefore the candidate to be chosen as the EA for SERE and CoC training in 1979.
[19] JPRA and the PRA now coordinate PR activities and train PR/SERE globally with American allies making extensive use of USAF SERE experts.
"Survival", as a distinct part of modern military training, largely emerges in special environment operations (as shown in "Mountain Operations", FM 3-97.6, "Jungle School",[29][30] the Marine Corps' mountain warfare training center,[31] the Air Force's Desert and Arctic Survival Schools (as above), and the Navy's Naval Special Warfare Cold Weather Detachment Kodiak).
[32] Major militaries spend considerable time and energy preparing for evasion with extensive planning (routes, practices, pick-up points, methods, "friendlies", "chits", weapons, etc.).
This is especially true for "resistance" training where one hopes to prepare those who might be captured for hardship, stress, abuse, torture, interrogation, indoctrination, and exploitation.
It is: Training on how to survive and resist an enemy in the event of capture is generally based on past experiences of captives and prisoners of war.
Intelligence regarding such things is sensitive, but in the modern era, captives are less likely to enjoy the status of "prisoner of war" and so to gain protections under the Geneva Conventions.
Isolation survival has long been part of SERE in the "resistance" portion of training, but has more recently been recognized as worthy of broader attention.
That change has produced one odd outcome – the military has found it difficult to keep their well-trained and highly experienced SERE instructors because of lucrative private sector opportunities.
Because the JPRA has "primary responsibility for DoD-wide personnel recovery matters,"[18] (which specifically includes Level C SERE training), it integrates, coordinates, mandates, and draws from all military branches as needed.
MSGID/GENADMIN/CG MCCDC QUANTICO VA REF/A/DODI O-3002.05//REF/B/CJCSM 3500.09//REF/C/MCO 3460.3| MARADMINS Number: 286/18 23 May 2018 announcing that "Training and Education Command (TECOM) in a joint effort with U.S. Army Forces Command, and with the assistance of the Joint Personal Recovery Agency, has developed a SERE Level A Training Support Package (TSP) that enables deploying units to self-train SERE Level A in an instructor guided group setting."
[91] (As such, a soldier's claim that this was an "unlawful order" would be a difficult defense to establish because the specific legal definition of torture – "intended to inflict severe physical or mental pain or suffering" – remains unresolved in many contexts.
That opposing forces chose to ignore those protections was the very reason for creating the Code of Conduct and the ensuing development of "Resistance Training" (as above).
[94] The article also stated that physical and mental techniques used against some detainees at Abu Ghraib Prison are similar to the ones SERE students are taught to resist.
According to Human Rights First, the interrogation that led to the death of Iraqi Major General Abed Hamed Mowhoush involved the use of techniques used in SERE training.
Human Rights First claimed that "internal FBI memos and press reports have pointed to SERE training as the basis for some of the harshest techniques authorized for use on detainees by the Pentagon in 2002 and 2003.
[97] In written testimony presented in a Senate Armed Forces Committee hearing, Col. Steven Kleinman of the Joint Personnel Recovery Agency (JPRA) said a team of trainers whom he was leading in Iraq were asked to demonstrate SERE techniques on uncooperative prisoners.
"[98] Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice has acknowledged that the use of the SERE program techniques to conduct interrogations in Iraq was discussed by senior White House officials in 2002 and 2003.
Mitchell, Jessen & Associates developed a "menu" of 20 potential enhanced techniques including waterboarding, sleep deprivation and stress positions.
