Talked to my Band Director a while ago (He's WO-2 in charge of the Army band in my area) and he always tells us stories about his time training in the army, and at one point he told us about the Navy SEALS, which is why I'm posting this here, but the people he talked about, he saw crossing the road just completely ripped and vicious looking, and he said that everything they can do on land they can do underwater, fight and everything.
The main thing I found interesting from my talk with him was when I asked him about how Air Force pararescue people were trained, since I didn't know a whole lot about them, so I'm posting this here for others who also may not know.
Air Force Pararescue training involves a lot of training to withstand torture, in the instance that they are captured while, rescuing someone, as it is their job to go into hostile territory etc. and so my band director has told me that as part of their training they get kidnapped, in the middle of the night and taken out of the base, and tortured, literally, and they have no idea where they are or what's going on, my band director said that one guy he talked to said that in their mind they know it's training but it feels real like they're in another country and could possibly die.
I hope that this kind of helps to maybe give more depth to different groups in the game you're making, if you wanted to make pararescue people for the game.
My last six years in the Air Force was in a CSAR maintenance unit (HH-60G Pave Hawks). Still just a maintenance guy, but I've spent a bit of time in proximity with PJ's (I've also watched a few documentaries about them, and I stayed at a Holiday Inn Express last night...
). The physical and mental conditioning/training that PJ's go through is very similiar to what SEAL's endure. They learn similiar swimming skills, airdrop skills (minus HALO proficiency), similiar individual and squad level combat training, etc. The major differences would be where SEAL's go on to BUDS and other more advanced training (more weapons, diving, explosives, etc.), PJ's instead get indepth paramedic training. A lot of them try to find ways to volunteer in metropolitan emergency rooms to get real world GSW experience. They are even trained in performing trecheotomies! The easiest way to describe a PJ is that they have the medical skills of a Navy Corpsmen, with the shooting/fighting skill of a SEAL. It's a pretty cool combination.
CSAR = Combat Search and Rescue (emphasis on the
Combat, as opposed to just standard SAR)
PJ = Pararescue Jumpman (or just Pararescueman)
CSAR teams are a combination of the PJ's and aircrew. The primary aircraft is an HH-60G Pave Hawk - not much different than a slick-60 like the Army uses - but with the addition of some very advanced avionics and navigation equipment. Army Special Operations has some 60's equipped in a relatively similiar manner for some of their missions. Each helicopter team consists of a Pilot and Co-Pilot (both officers), Flight Engineer (FE) and Gunner (both Enlisted), and two PJ's (usually enlisted but there are PJ Officers). PJ's also occasionally work as part of other units and teams as required, such as other SOF units (SEAL's, etc.), and sometimes even with foriegn ally units. For example, when a Pararescueman from my last base (Moody AFB), SrA Jason Cunningham, was killed in action during the Battle of Roberts Ridge, he was serving with a Navy SEAL unit that had been inserted using Army special ops helicopters (MH-47 Chinooks). (An Air Force Combat Controller was also part of the team, and killed during the battle.)
Technically, CSAR is not specifically part of Special Operations. It was originally a subordinate unit/mission of TAC (Tactical Air Command), and had the primary mission of rescuing downed pilots. In practice though, not a lot of pilots actually get shot down anymore - and PJ/CSAR skills are very SOF oriented (owing to the OSS background of many of the Air Rescue Service founders - the predecessor of CSAR). It's kind of a waste to just have them sitting around waiting for a plane to get shot down or a standard SAR mission to materialize. So, for a time, CSAR units were actually a part of Air Force Special Operations Command (late 90's - early 2000's). Problem was that ACC (Air Combat Command - the successor to TAC) still wanted CSAR's services for Pilot Rescue (having pilot's know that there was a unit or service specifically responsible for and ready to rescue them in case of a shootdown or ejection, was considered a priority morale element of air support missions), and AF Special Ops didn't quite know what to do with CSAR or how to integrate them into their Special Tactics missions/culture. So, CSAR is now once again part of ACC, but works a bit independently within it and in coordination with most special ops forces. For example, my CSAR unit at Moody AFB was part of AFSOC when I was originally assigned (which was cool with me, since my last assignment was also with AFSOC in Korea, working on MH-53J PaveLows). But a couple of years later, we were switched to ACC. Our base was still primarily a Rescue Wing (347th Rescue Wing). However, in 2006/7, with a consolidation of forces within the Air Force, the 23rd Fighter Wing (A-10's -
The Flying Tigers) was moved from Pope AFB to Moody and took over the base. The CSAR unit there is now a subordinate unit of the 23rd Wing. Not all bad though, as now there's a coordinated team in place on one base with full capability: C-130's for airdrop, refueling, and spotting; HH-60G's for insertion and cover fire; PJ's; and A-10's for close air support, kind of like the Sandy role from Vietnam - a pretty lethal package! But in a real combat AOR (like Iraq or Afghanistan), they're more or less on call with everybody, and PJ's farm out to other units and teams as needed.
Speaking of the torture and survival training that Gandalf mentioned, I was part of a multi-service special ops exercise once, involving SEAL's, Marine Recon, Army Rangers, and AFSOC C-130's and MH-53J's, and concerning a hostage rescue scenario (kind of an Iran Hostages/Eagle-1 type of scenario). However, during the course of the training deployment, we had some of our Air Force troops that found themselves with some extra time - and you know what they say about idle hands and all... This group decided to go to the base golf course in the middle of the night, with a cooler of beer, and party a bit (3 guys, 4 girls). As the party progressed, and with the hopes of maybe progressing to more private/individual parties, somebody suggested taking turns streaking across the golf course. Anyways, a radar-eared, off-duty, base cop heard a commotion out on the golf course, investigated it, and found our magnificent seven taking turns streaking (it was my immediate subordinate he specifically saw in his full glory as he came running out of the trees between fairways, in full moonlight). So, he rounded them up and took them to jail (though to the sevens credit, they were respectful and obediant throughout this). Another one of our unit members who was also drunk, but hadn't gone with the group out to the course, found out that they were in jail and decided to go down to the LE desk to
"fix" the problem. Of course though, being drunk, he was less than eloquent in his arguments and ended up also being arrested (probably because of the yelling and cursing at the cops). Together we'll call them all
The Magnificent Seven and
Wonder Boy. Our squadron commander, who also happened to have immediate command of the exercise (but was directly subordinate to a Navy fleet admiral), had to deal with the situation. Not wanting to disrupt the exercise, the commander gave them all minor paperwork (LOC's and LOR's - depending on their rank) so they could stay for the exercise, but moved the seven to less than stellar accommodations (from a air conditioned 20 person dorm room to a non-A/C tent city). For Wonderboy however, he was given the choice of pursuing an Article-15, or taking an LOR and "volunteering" for the SEAL's POW camp (which is where the "hostages" were being rescued from). He took the POW camp option. Three days later when he returned back to our unit - sunburned, hungry, tired, bug and snake-bitten (non-poisonous) - he was the quietest, most respectful airman I'd ever met.
). But I went through a helicopter battle damage repair course once, where we got to learn cool things like repairing aircraft skin with soda cans, etc. Our tech manuals for BDR also had procedures for destroying an aircraft in place if necessary, involving attaching a thermite charge to the helicopter gearbox (basically a 9000 lb chunk of magnesium alloy). Pretty Cool! I once saw the remains of a helicopter that had a gearbox fire (nobody was hurt, thankfully). If the gearbox cathes fire, virtually nothing will put it out until it burns to dust. At that temperature the rest of the aircraft will just melt or burn to ash also. The whole aircraft ends up as a pile of metallic ash with bits of partially melted and twisted hydraulic lines dispersed throughout. You definitely don't have to worry about leaving any classified equipment behind.
