4-yr Army SERE Contract to L-3: 2011-2105

Each of the US military services runs Survival, Evasion, Resistance and Escape (SERE) courses for its people, at 3 escalating levels of severity. They aim to teach soldiers the code of conduct they’re obliged to follow if captured; how to survive in the wild for brief periods, while evading capture and losing weight; and sometimes how to cope if evasion fails. L3 MPRI in Alexandria, VA recently won a $42 million firm-fixed-price contract to provide the US Army with full-spectrum SERE courses at Fort Rucker, AL, until Sept 31/15. The bid was solicited through the Internet, with 5 bids received by the Mission Contracting Office in Fort Bragg, NC (W91247-11-C-0039).

The Fort Rucker, AL school primarily serves Army flight crews, who generally get SERE-B training that includes 3 weeks of all aspects, with a focus on survival, plus resistance after initial capture. SERE-C training is the full special forces/ high ranking version, with a week-long prison camp stay, and techniques like waterboarding that have drawn controversy when they were also used on a handful of high-ranking al-Qaeda terrorists. As a former Army SF vet points out, just about everybody in SERE-C ends up signing the false “war crimes” confession – but it’s possible to beat the system on rare occasions. The 6-pack of Budweiser was a nice touch, Jimbo.