Video

Video by Airman 1st Class Matthew Greiner

OPS Survival Training

152nd Airlift Wing

Aug. 6, 2017 | 4:13

Early Sunday morning, aircrew from the 192nd Airlift Squadron, and support assets from the 152d Medical and Operations Intel units boarded a Chinook helicopter bound for dog valley to conduct combat survival training.

Eerily this training fell on the anniversary of the infamous “extortion 17 mission,” when the United States military experienced an enormous loss of special operations personnel when the same type of helicopter was shot down by taliban fighters.

Both of these events “extortion 17 and combat survival training” are sobering reminders of the very real possibility of a military member finding themselves downed behind enemy lines. As a survivor of this, your only blessing will be running from the enemy.

Yet, the military provides a built in “up the sleeve ace of spades” for all members with the potential of facing this dark and dire situation. SV80-a combat survival or “sere” training is the first in a number of schools to prepare Air Force Aircrew, special operations or direct support personnel in understanding survival in a non-permissive environment. It also helps you understand the limits of yourself and the “will to survive” and above all “to return with honor.” Making it through and graduating does mean the end, because skill sets like these are perishable and not at the forefront of everyday air force training.

Combat survival/sere training is an every three-year recertification course instructed by sere specialists and top tier aircrew life equipment specialist continuation training instructor teams. The training is meant to dust off previous perishable skillsets learned by the airmen in sere as well as adjust old tactics against new courses of action.

So on this day in August, 2017, the Nevada Air Guardsmen would find themselves shortly after dust off, linking up with the 152nd Operations Support Squadron aircrew life equipment instructors and a sere specialist from Travis AFB. With no time for standing around and waiting, officers and enlisted from the highest to the lowest were divided up into teams, given two instructors and immediately expected to start assessing and adapting.

Instructors passed down expectations and lessons and the more experienced mentored the less experienced. The pace for survival is not only a strategy of skills but of time. After the students performed assessments of medical, area and gear they moved to an area of cover and concealment to determine their location. These lessons would continue for the next several hours with land navigation through military tool and natural means, shelter building both natural and artificial, food and water procurement and fire crafting, all while on the move performing escape and evasion tactics.

As the heat of the day crept in, students returned to their starting point and were able to get some good morale in the form of a hot meal from brother's BBQ.

With renewed energy, students were then introduced by the 152nd medics to austere field care and ditch medicine techniques to keep themselves and their wingmen alive until rescue. Thunderheads rolled in and muffled the sound of the Chinook rotors as it passed low and landed signaling the end of the training.

The students began the procession to the loading zone but they would leave this valley different than when they came: American Airmen empowered with self-sufficiency and self-reliance to meet the worst-case scenario, survive it and "return with honor."

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