Air Force F-16 Fighting Falcon aircraft pilots undergo SERE training
Steven Metz, one of the Army War College’s best brains, has scrapped a trip to the British International Studies Association conference in Edinburgh, Scotland, because the U.S. Army’s European Command told him he couldn’t attend unless he took a Survival Evasion Resistance Escape training course first.
This is a chopped-down version of the courses taken by pilots and other troops who might find themselves captured or trapped behind enemy lines (Air Force Captain Scott O’Grady, shot down by the Bosnian Serbs over Bosnia in 1995, is perhaps SERE’s most famous student – the training helped keep him alive for six days in enemy territory).
But a professor on his way to Western Europe for a confab? We asked Metz about what happened, and this is what he emailed back:
It used to be that official travelers going to high risk places had to take SERE training but apparently now it’s a requirement for all official travel, at least to EUCOM and PACOM. It’s about a six to eight hour block of online training. I was supposed to go to Seoul in September to speak at the ROK National Defense University, and was trying to undergo training on things like identifying edible insects, finding water in a forest, and building an ice igloo.
The stupidity of it made me mad from the beginning, but it got even worse–I’ve never been able to play action video games because they give me motion sickness. This is fairly common: some can’t tolerate it when part of their brain thinks they’re moving and another part thinks they’re not. My boss told me a portion of people wash out of aviation training for this (which is called “simulator sickness”).
Anyhow, the SERE training required completing a number of video game style exercises. I tried several times but it kept making me sick. Between the combination of the pure stupidity of the requirement and the fact it was making me sick, I just gave up and cancelled the trip.
Metz, who has a doctorate from the Johns Hopkins University, is chairman of the Regional Strategy and Planning Department and Research Professor of National Security Affairs at the Strategic Studies Institute at the Army War College.
Army War College
He has also been on the faculty of the Air War College, the U.S. Army Command and General Staff College, and several universities. He has been an advisor to political campaigns and elements of the intelligence community; served on national security policy task forces; testified in both houses of Congress; and spoken on military and security issues around the world. He is the author of more than 100 publications including articles in journals such as Washington Quarterly, Joint Force Quarterly, The National Interest, Defence Studies, and Current History.
Maybe he can Skype to Scotland…
h/t Abu Muqawama