Jetcareers UPT Student Journal

Here's my last post a couple years ago about my personal mis-steps with my Air Force career and the internet. These posts from '07 were in response to an earlier statement about blogs or journals during UPT, but it bears just as much relevance to this as it does that.

http://forums.jetcareers.com/694248-post3.html

With respect to your personal info on the internet and the impact on SV-80-A and, more importantly, the real world, there's this:

http://forums.jetcareers.com/696524-post5.html

REMEMBER...blogs and myspace and even forums like this are an intelligence gatherer's DREAM!! Intelligence agents used to have to put a lot of time, effort, and money into gathering information about people. Why do they even need to waste their time, when people seem so intent on GIVING away personal information about themselves?

Why even worry about "name, rank, and serial number" when your captor can simply Google you, find your MySpace page, and know who your family members are, what your favorite song is, and what squadron you trained in?

Even worse...there are things BIGGER than you that can be compromised by your own vain MySpacing or Facebooking. I had a guy in my squadron who, after our inital deployment briefings, went home and wrote a big blog entry about the whole thing...including mentioning my Squadron Commander's name, talking about where we were deploying to, and all kinds of other stuff that didn't seem like a big problem for him personally...but was just another bit of information for the intelligence gatherers.

As I mentioned in my previous posts quoted above...I'm a lost cause, personally. I put so much information about myself out there without really understanding that I can't take it back. My hope is that I can educate guys just coming in to the military to cool it off...that on a daily basis you won't have any negative affects on your career or life, but when you're in an orange jumpsuit, on your knees in front of a big black flag, and there are a bunch of guys holding AK-47s and machetes behind you....you will wish you hadn't put all the details of your life out there for anyone to see on the internet. When they email a copy of your beheading video to your wife, whose email address is right there on your blog, you won't be happy about that.

It's a big deal, seriously. Again, it's becoming more "socially" acceptable, and that's exactly what makes it dangerous. My recommendation is to not do it.
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And, FWIW, I'm in UPT, too....just on the other side of the door before formal brief. :)
 
MikeD said:
That's when you know you're screwed. When they do something like that.

Same with LtCol "Gabby" Gabreski, when he was shot down and captured by the Germans, and the first Luftwaffe officer he ran into greeted him with: "Hello Gabby, we've been waiting for you for a long time."

You just know you're screwed then.
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I think the same thing happened to Robbie Risner with this Time magazine cover when he was captured:

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ppragman said:
How does SERE work for you guys, do you get "captured" and interned, then monkeyed with by guys for awhile, can you escape? Out of curiosity. Seems like it'd be a heck of an ordeal in general.
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What they said......the what's, how's and why's within SERE's aren't for public dissemination.
 
Hacker15e said:
Here's my last post a couple years ago about my personal mis-steps with my Air Force career and the internet. These posts from '07 were in response to an earlier statement about blogs or journals during UPT, but it bears just as much relevance to this as it does that.

http://forums.jetcareers.com/694248-post3.html
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And it was Alphaone (the OP!) you were addressing back then too. Alpha!!! You disappoint me! :D

With respect to your personal info on the internet and the impact on SV-80-A and, more importantly, the real world, there's this:

http://forums.jetcareers.com/696524-post5.html

And, FWIW, I'm in UPT, too....just on the other side of the door before formal brief. :)
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I'd forgotten about Risner and the Time magazine cover.......and yes it indeed did affect him, as the NVA now had an Amercian "celebrity" in their hands. And PR value that was.
 
ppragman said:
No kidding? That's crazy.
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Not sure why that's crazy....nobody goes on the internet and discusses the specific tactics we are using in Iraq and Afghanistan (at least they shouldn't be); this isn't any different.

If you really are curious, there is a pretty interesting overview of it in Nathaniel Fick's book "One Bullet Away". That's probably about as much info as anyone is going to put out there.
 
///AMG said:
Not sure why that's crazy....nobody goes on the internet and discusses the specific tactics we are using in Iraq and Afghanistan (at least they shouldn't be); this isn't any different.

If you really are curious, there is a pretty interesting overview of it in Nathaniel Fick's book "One Bullet Away". That's probably about as much info as anyone is going to put out there.
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Well, a lot of the tactics and information about what we're doing in A-stan or Iraq is available online if you take the time to look, I was just too lazy to look up SERE, didn't know it was secret squirrel stuff. Regardless, I'll have to look up that book, sounds like it would be an intense experience. Thanks.
 
ppragman said:
Well, a lot of the tactics and information about what we're doing in A-stan or Iraq is available online if you take the time to look, I was just too lazy to look up SERE, didn't know it was secret squirrel stuff. Regardless, I'll have to look up that book, sounds like it would be an intense experience. Thanks.
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Here's the basic outline from somebody who has NOT gone through it. The basic info is all out there in the public record.

Survival Evasion Resistance Escape, just like it sounds.

Learn to survive in the woods.

Learn how to not get captured (hopefully) while bad guys chase you.

When you get captured, spend time in a mock POW camp.

Escape (hopefully).



The reason you do not want the instructors to get their hands on your private info is they will use that against you in the POW camp. If your facebook says you're afraid of dogs, you can expect to have a German Shepard in your face while you are being interogated. Afraid of snakes, you might get locked in a box with some rat snakes.

The "prison guards" are carefully screened and trained. There is constant oversight so things don't get out of hand. However, all the "torture" methods everyone complained about at Gitmo are approved for students at SERE.
 
Apparently doing well in the Evasion phase won't get you too far. I heard if you're not captured by a certain point, you have to turn yourself in.
 
BCTAv8r said:
Apparently doing well in the Evasion phase won't get you too far. I heard if you're not captured by a certain point, you have to turn yourself in.
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Sorta.

You *can* successfully navigate to the rescue point without being captured. But, everyone who makes it to the rescue point is later captured when the bus taking you back 'home' is hijacked and everyone on board is kidnapped.
 
Hacker15e said:
You *can* successfully navigate to the rescue point without being captured. But, everyone who makes it to the rescue point is later captured when the bus taking you back 'home' is hijacked and everyone on board is kidnapped.
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Ours started off badly when we overpowered the guards and took them prisoner. It was not the best way to start the exercise. We embarrassed them and they made us pay for it. It was in JAN and Spokane was butt deep in snow.
 
Hacker15e said:
Sorta.

You *can* successfully navigate to the rescue point without being captured. But, everyone who makes it to the rescue point is later captured when the bus taking you back 'home' is hijacked and everyone on board is kidnapped.
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I'm not going into detail but that is not how it works anymore.
 
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