How to become an Air Force Special Warfare SERE Specialist

As I have had the pleasure of doing many times, I recently met with a young man looking to start a career in U.S. military special operations. While I almost always have at least some bit of useful insight to offer aspiring SOF operators, such as the mindset required to make it through a SOF selection process, or the physical and mental preparation required, on this particular occasion I am pretty sure I learned more from the meeting than I imparted to the young man.

The reason for this unique role reversal was that this person was looking to enter into the little-known and somewhat shadowy world of Air Force SERE Specialists. SERE stands for Survival, Evasion, Resistance, and Escape, and all SOF personnel are intimately familiar with the program as a training curriculum. In other words, SOF operators (along with other personnel in the military, such as pilots, for example) attend SERE school at some point to learn how to handle the circumstances of battlefield isolation, evasion, and/or capture by an enemy.

SERE school teaches U.S. servicemembers how to handle being isolated behind enemy lines. This may have resulted from a raid gone wrong, an aircraft crash, or some other unforeseen circumstance. While it is a statistically rare occurrence for any individual to face these circumstances, such isolation, survival, evasion, and even capture does happen and the U.S. military wants its members prepared for it.

That is where an Air Force SERE Specialist comes in. Unbeknownst to me, there is an enlisted career field within Air Force Special Warfare that is wholly dedicated to SERE. According to the Air Force, SERE Specialists “prepare air crew and other high-risk-of-isolation personnel to return from any type of survival situation.” Enlisted Air Force SERE Specialists are essentially highly-capable instructors who train and prepare personnel, develop, test, and evaluate rescue equipment, and operate in support of combat operations in theater.

U.S. Air Force Senior Airman Max Fuller, 15th Operations Support Squadron survival, evasion, resistance and escape specialist, teaches F-22 Raptor pilots tactics for lighting a fire with equipment in their emergency kits and items from the wilderness on Bellows Air Force Station, Hawaii, May 22, 2025. In the event that pilots find themselves on the ground, SERE specialists are tasked with preparing Air Force aircrew with the essential skills to survive in the wild and in enemy territory. (U.S. Air Force photo by Senior Airman Aden Brown)

To become an Air Force SERE Specialist you first need to attend seven and a half weeks of Basic Military Training in Texas, where you learn how to be an Airman. Next up is the SERE Specialist Training Orientation Course (SST-OC). This 15-day course is also in Texas and is essentially a pre-selection course in which they evaluate one’s potential success in the SERE pipeline. A candidate is evaluated based on physical fitness, leadership (and followership) abilities, and overall commitment to becoming a SERE Specialist. Between 60 and 85% of candidates who enroll do not manage to complete SST-OC.

If you make it through SST-OC, then you’re off to the SERE Specialist Training Apprentice Course (SST-AC) in Washington state. This is the meat of SERE Specialist training, where you will spend five and a half months becoming a subject matter expert in all things SERE. Broken down into 17 phases, in this course you will learn survival techniques applicable to nearly every environment, including the arctic, desert, forest, coastal, tropical, and open-water. You will also be trained in parachute operations, water survival, evacuation techniques, field medicine, combatives (hand-to-hand fighting), and the full range of personnel recovery operations. Roughly 40% of candidates who reach SST-AC fail to complete it.

After completing the apprentice course, the content of the rest of the roughly 12-18 months of training becomes more close-hold, as SERE training itself is a sensitive area that requires a certain level of protection in order to fully preserve its effectiveness. Suffice it to say, a SERE Specialist is an expert in not only survival, but in instructing other personnel on how to survive isolated circumstances, evade capture, and, if captured, to return home with honor following either escape or rescue.

Feature Image: A U.S. Air Force Survival, Evasion, Resistance, and Escape (SERE) Airman and a 3d Air Support Operations Group Tactical Air Control Party (TACP) Airman stand at the Alpena Combat Readiness Training Center, Apr. 10, 2025, during exercise Capri Sun. Throughout the exercise, blue force TACP and Survival, Evasion, Resistance, and Escape specialists conducted surveillance and targeting operations while being hunted by 820th Base Defense Group opposing forces. (U.S. Air Force photo by Capt. Christian Little)

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