SERE: The most feared military training

Imagine yourself stuck behind enemy lines. You hear voices shouting as they get closer to your position. You hear the crack of gunshots all around you. You try to hide frantically covering yourself in a pile of leaves. You hear the pounding of boots coming closer and closer. Then the unthinkable happens and you're captured. Taken to prison where you’re forced into an isolated cell with a bag over your head while loud terrifying psychological warfare music is played at full volume. This is a taste of what the US Military’s Survival Evasion Resistance and Escape Course is like.

SERE prepares soldiers for several realities. How to avoid capture. How to navigate and live off the land. How to build makeshift shelters. What to do if you’re captured. In this video I want to find out everything we need to know about SERE. In order to get to the bottom of this I’ve read through a recently declassified 35 page document written by a former SERE instructor that outlines how they operate. As always none of the information I present is sensitive it is all publicly available I’m not breaking OPSEC here don’t worry.

The outline makes it clear the instructors are to be harsh and realistic with the training. Their goal is to put students through sleep deprivation, hunger, boredom, exhaustion, isolation, its one of the only schools where they use physical abuse but throughout the document they provide safety regulations to prevent students from being seriously injured. The goal isn’t to fail students but to give them the tools needed to succeed in a POW situation. So while they will put black bags over peoples heads and handcuff them the instructors are told not to march them in circles or have them walk over dangerous obstacles with a hood over their head.

Even if you’ve been to SERE school there’s a good chance you haven’t been through the top tier levels. Even this declassified document does not go into the top secret portions of the class that is reserved for high level SF operators and CIA types. There is mention in the document to instructors avoiding discussing Shadow Level techniques. Savvy Shadow is the codename that appears to denote students who are given just enough information to accomplish their job. Basically there are all kinds of clearance levels for information in this course.

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Written by: Chris Cappy
Edited Co Produced by: Rebecca Rosen

Sources:
https://www.documentcloud.org/documents/338917-pre-academic-laboratory-preal-operating.html

https://fas.org/irp/doddir/army/ar350-30.pdf

https://static.e-publishing.af.mil/production/1/af_a3/publication/afh10-644/afh10-644.pdf

https://www.army.mil/article/138765/sere_training_develops_leaders_for_complex_environment