thedrifter
10-24-06, 02:14 PM
October 30, 2006
SERE school eyes more land for survival training course
By Gidget Fuentes
Staff writer
WARNER SPRINGS, Calif. — Thousands of pilots and crew chiefs, SEALs, recon and other sailors and Marines have marched through this remote training camp for 40 years and learned how to survive in hostile territory.
This site — officially called the Remote Training Site at Warner Springs — is a popular clandestine training ground for SEALs but is best known for the grueling 12-day basic Survival-Evasion-Resistance-Escape course. About 1,680 sailors and Marines complete the survival training each year.
Over the years, however, the wear and tear of training has taken its toll on the land and, to a small degree, on the variety of the training environment.
But that may soon change.
The Navy wants to expand its footprint here — to 12,544 acres — by adding another roughly 10,000 acres of adjacent lands, including rugged parts of the Cleveland National Forest, for the school to use for field training.
Doing so, officials said, would make the training more realistic, support an expected growth in student population to about 2,473 annually, and potentially expand or reshape training.
“It’s something that we’ve needed for a while,” said site facility manager Bob Duncan, during an open house at the site Oct. 19 to get public comments about the proposal. “This will give them some fresh new territory. It’ll help.”
Over his 19 years working here, he’s watched countless classes make their way through the scrubby hills, forests and desert washes on lands borrowed or leased by the Navy.
In short, the land is tired.
Additional parcels of land would shoulder the impact by students and instructors and would give the existing training lands a break so they could recover. It’s like rotating crops.
“This land does rejuvenate itself pretty good,” Duncan said. “It just needs the opportunity to do it.”
Under the plan, the school’s main 60-acre site, which includes offices, classrooms, billeting, a power-generation plant and water wells, would be expanded to 150 acres.
No new roads would be built.
“The impact is minimal,” said Cmdr. Jack Hanzlik, Naval Air Forces Pacific spokesman.
The Navy’s SERE school is the smallest of the four military survival schools that provide Level “C” code-of-conduct training.
The Navy has another SERE school at Naval Air Station Brunswick, Maine, and other schools are at Fort Bragg, N.C., and Fairchild Air Force Base, Wash. Officials had looked at alternatives, including the San Clemente Island Range Complex, the Chocolate Mountains Desert Warfare Training Facility and the Marine bases at Camp Pendleton and Miramar, but none was sufficient to meet the needs.
Environmental impact
Navy officials are preparing an assessment that will weigh the proposal’s impact on the environment, including natural resources, wildlife and the community, and determine whether a broader environmental impact statement will be required. The final report is expected to be completed by July.
SERE students learn to navigate, build shelters and fires, avoid detection, and find water and food, including edible or medicinal plants.
They learn how to avoid capture and resist interrogation, skills helped by a makeshift prisoner-of-war camp.
The expansion land includes rugged areas, with steeper slopes and elevations topping 3,200 feet, flats used at times by grazing cattle herds and thick, abundant forests teeming with wildlife and flora.
Course instructors see a potential windfall in training.
“It’s better terrain to train,” said Aviation Warfare Specialist 1st Class Ryan Johnson, an H-46 Sea Knight crew chief and rescue swimmer who has worked as a survival instructor here for two years.
The added variety of elevation and terrain would enable students to work their survival skills first in the flatter sections, which “gives them practice before they can move up to rougher terrain,” Johnson said.
Sgt. Tad Eckerle, a course instructor, said the new ground will offer more variety in plants, animals, landscape and challenges that will add to the training. “It’s going to give us more natural resources to show the students,” Eckerle said.
The rugged hills and rocky ridges are more akin to the real environments in places like Afghanistan or northern Iraq where the students may end up fighting and operating. “It provides them a tremendous opportunity,” he said. “If we can give them some similar terrain, it will better prepare him. … It provides realism. It’s difficult.”
Ellie
SERE school eyes more land for survival training course
By Gidget Fuentes
Staff writer
WARNER SPRINGS, Calif. — Thousands of pilots and crew chiefs, SEALs, recon and other sailors and Marines have marched through this remote training camp for 40 years and learned how to survive in hostile territory.
This site — officially called the Remote Training Site at Warner Springs — is a popular clandestine training ground for SEALs but is best known for the grueling 12-day basic Survival-Evasion-Resistance-Escape course. About 1,680 sailors and Marines complete the survival training each year.
Over the years, however, the wear and tear of training has taken its toll on the land and, to a small degree, on the variety of the training environment.
But that may soon change.
The Navy wants to expand its footprint here — to 12,544 acres — by adding another roughly 10,000 acres of adjacent lands, including rugged parts of the Cleveland National Forest, for the school to use for field training.
Doing so, officials said, would make the training more realistic, support an expected growth in student population to about 2,473 annually, and potentially expand or reshape training.
“It’s something that we’ve needed for a while,” said site facility manager Bob Duncan, during an open house at the site Oct. 19 to get public comments about the proposal. “This will give them some fresh new territory. It’ll help.”
Over his 19 years working here, he’s watched countless classes make their way through the scrubby hills, forests and desert washes on lands borrowed or leased by the Navy.
In short, the land is tired.
Additional parcels of land would shoulder the impact by students and instructors and would give the existing training lands a break so they could recover. It’s like rotating crops.
“This land does rejuvenate itself pretty good,” Duncan said. “It just needs the opportunity to do it.”
Under the plan, the school’s main 60-acre site, which includes offices, classrooms, billeting, a power-generation plant and water wells, would be expanded to 150 acres.
No new roads would be built.
“The impact is minimal,” said Cmdr. Jack Hanzlik, Naval Air Forces Pacific spokesman.
The Navy’s SERE school is the smallest of the four military survival schools that provide Level “C” code-of-conduct training.
The Navy has another SERE school at Naval Air Station Brunswick, Maine, and other schools are at Fort Bragg, N.C., and Fairchild Air Force Base, Wash. Officials had looked at alternatives, including the San Clemente Island Range Complex, the Chocolate Mountains Desert Warfare Training Facility and the Marine bases at Camp Pendleton and Miramar, but none was sufficient to meet the needs.
Environmental impact
Navy officials are preparing an assessment that will weigh the proposal’s impact on the environment, including natural resources, wildlife and the community, and determine whether a broader environmental impact statement will be required. The final report is expected to be completed by July.
SERE students learn to navigate, build shelters and fires, avoid detection, and find water and food, including edible or medicinal plants.
They learn how to avoid capture and resist interrogation, skills helped by a makeshift prisoner-of-war camp.
The expansion land includes rugged areas, with steeper slopes and elevations topping 3,200 feet, flats used at times by grazing cattle herds and thick, abundant forests teeming with wildlife and flora.
Course instructors see a potential windfall in training.
“It’s better terrain to train,” said Aviation Warfare Specialist 1st Class Ryan Johnson, an H-46 Sea Knight crew chief and rescue swimmer who has worked as a survival instructor here for two years.
The added variety of elevation and terrain would enable students to work their survival skills first in the flatter sections, which “gives them practice before they can move up to rougher terrain,” Johnson said.
Sgt. Tad Eckerle, a course instructor, said the new ground will offer more variety in plants, animals, landscape and challenges that will add to the training. “It’s going to give us more natural resources to show the students,” Eckerle said.
The rugged hills and rocky ridges are more akin to the real environments in places like Afghanistan or northern Iraq where the students may end up fighting and operating. “It provides them a tremendous opportunity,” he said. “If we can give them some similar terrain, it will better prepare him. … It provides realism. It’s difficult.”
Ellie