Refreshing survival skills in Tokyo's 'jungle'

  • Published
  • By Staff Sgt. Veronica Pierce
  • 374th Airlift Wing
YOKOTA AIR BASE, Japan --  Tokyo is known for its concrete jungles -- but tucked away among the skyscrapers and high-rise buildings is a patch of forest -- the Tama Hills Recreation Area. 

The lush terrain recently hosted the 374th Operational Support Squadron Survival, Evasion, Resistance and Escape refresher combat survival training course required for Yokota aircrew members to maintain combat mission-ready status. 

All Air Force aircrew members must attend combat survival training, a 19-day course taught primarily at Fairchild Air Force Base, Wash. Six days of the course are spent in the mountains of the Colville and Kaniksu National Forests, approximately 70 miles north of Fairchild. 

The course begins with classroom training on the physical and psychological stresses of survival. This is followed by hands-on training in post ejection procedures and parachute landing falls, various life supports of equipment procedures, survival medicine, and recovery device training.

Students then transition to the mountains where they receive additional training including shelter construction, food procurement and preparation, day and night land navigation techniques, evasion travel and camouflage techniques, ground-to-air signals, and aircraft vectoring procedures. Finally, students are returned to Fairchild and given training in conduct after capture.

Aircrew members must receive the refresher combat survival training course taught here every three years following initial training at Fairchild. The 374th OSS SERE section ensures aircrew members receive this training, according to Staff Sgt. Benjamin Rosciglione, 374th OSS SERE specialist. 

"The training consists of roughly six hours of academic and ground training and includes; pre-mission planning, evasion techniques, recovery actions and procedures, radio use, camouflage techniques, and signaling device training," he said. "After the ground training is complete aircrew will go through a three-to-four hour scenario where they will be in a simulated hostile country and have to evade capture and link up with a recovery asset." 

Aircrew members from the 374th Airlift Wing travel throughout the Pacific, crossing thousands of miles of open ocean and crossing over numerous nations. Even though the likelihood of an aircraft from Yokota falling into enemy hands is slim, SERE specialist ensure aircrew have the most current, tailored training for the region. 

"In general, Air Force SERE instructors are the best in the world at maintaining a working knowledge of the requirements to survive, evade and return with honor, and they have to be the best, because the folks they are training are at the greatest risk of being placed in some incredibly harsh natural and cultural environments," said Capt. Brett Cassidy, 374th Operations Group executive officer.

Despite facing challenges such as a lack of open areas for field training scenarios in Japan's urban environment, the 374th SERE specialists have made the refresher training as realistic as possible.

"The SERE instructors at Yokota are preeminent in their career field, because they have taken the initiative to become seasoned experts, diving into opportunities to broaden their understanding of what it takes to survive in any and all environments beyond the foundational teachings of the Fairchild program," said Captain Cassidy. "Yokota aircrew couldn't ask for a better SERE team than the exceptional instructors we have backing us up here."

When the mission requires travel to distant locations around the world, the refresher training held by the 374th SERE specialists provides aircrew with the confidence to know they could return with honor in the event of enemy capture.
 
"This training gives them the confidence and knowledge to successfully evade enemy capture and re-join friendly forces in what is an extremely stressful situation," said Sergeant Rosciglione. "Though it is training we hope no one will ever have to utilize, it's something we want to ensure they are ready for."