Join the Air Force > Pararescue Apprentice

A Pararescueman is a rescue and recovery specialist supporting Air Force and Special Operations Combat Search and Rescue/ Personnel Recovery. He is a precision parachutist capable of penetrating hostile areas to aid survivors. He can parachute fully scuba equipped giving him a unique rescue capability. His parachuting skills include providing specialized aerospace rescue and recovery support for NASA's Space Shuttle flights. He is certified as a SCUBA diver and skilled in surface water operations using both scuba and amphibious procedures. He is trained as a Combat Medic with certification to the Emergency Medical Technician Paramedic (EMT-P). With his in-depth knowledge of emergency medical treatment, he can perform emergency medical procedures in the field to correct life-threatening conditions. Training in survival methods enables the Pararescueman to provide for the survival of others, including escape and evasion in hostile areas. The Pararescueman is an expert with map and compass, capable of overland travel in any environment. He will develop skills in mountain and Arctic regions. An airman volunteering for this program will be considered based on the needs of the Air Force. Day-to-day duties are primarily devoted to training and maintenance of equipment. The Pararescueman is normally required to be on alert status for 24 hours at a time, with the frequency dictated by the number of men assigned to the unit. The Pararescueman's job is to save lives. Pararescue is a very physically, mentally, and technically demanding job. One of the best and most prestigious the Air Force has to offer. For training that transfers exceptionally well to the civilian market, an adventurous mission and an exciting lifestyle this job is it.

Mission Air Force Special Operations Command's pararescuemen, also known as PJs, are the only Department of Defense specialty specifically trained and equipped to conduct conventional or unconventional rescue operations. These Battlefield Airmen are the ideal force for personnel recovery and combat search and rescue. A pararescueman's primary function is as a personnel recovery specialist, with emergency medical capabilities in humanitarian and combat environments. They deploy in any available manner, to include air-land-sea tactics, into restricted environments to authenticate, extract, treat, stabilize and evacuate injured personnel, while acting in an enemy-evading, recovery role. PJs participate in search and rescue, combat search and rescue, recovery support for NASA and conduct other operations as appropriate. Pararescuemen Pararescuemen are among the most highly trained emergency trauma specialists in the U.S. military. They must maintain an emergency medical technician-paramedic qualification throughout their careers. With this medical and rescue expertise, along with their deployment capabilities, PJs are able to perform life-saving missions in the world's most remote areas. Their motto "That Others May Live" reaffirms the pararescueman's commitment to saving lives and self-sacrifice. Without PJs, thousands of service members and civilians would have been unnecessarily lost in past conflicts and natural disasters. Training Pararescuemen endure some of the toughest training offered in the U.S. military. Their training, as well as their unique mission, earns them the right to wear the maroon beret. They complete the same technical training as EMT-Paramedics, plus the following physical and specialized training. Pararescue Preparatory Course, Lackland Air Force Base, Texas -- This two-week course provides physical training under the oversight of sports physiologists and swimming trainers to familiarize and teach the trainees the required skills to succeed in the Indoctrination course to follow. Indoctrination Course, Lackland AFB, Texas -- This 10-week course recruits, selects and trains future PJs through extensive physical conditioning. Training accomplished at this course includes physiological training, obstacle course, marches, dive physics, dive tables, metric manipulations, medical terminology, cardiopulmonary resuscitation, weapons qualifications, PJ history and leadership reaction course. U.S. Army Airborne School, Fort Benning, Ga. -- Trainees learn the basic parachuting skills required to infiltrate an objective area by static line airdrop in a three-week course. U.S. Air Force Combat Diver School, Panama City, Fla. -- Trainees become combat divers, learning to use scuba and closed-circuit diving equipment to covertly infiltrate denied areas, conduct sub-surface searches and basic recovery operations. The six-week course provides training to depths of 130 feet, stressing development of maximum underwater mobility under various operating conditions. U.S. Navy Underwater Egress Training, Pensacola Naval Air Station, Fla. -- This course teaches how to safely escape from an aircraft that has ditched in the water. The one-day instruction includes principles, procedures and techniques necessary to get out of a sinking aircraft. U.S. Air Force Basic Survival School, Fairchild AFB, Wash. -- This two and a half-week course teaches basic survival techniques for remote areas. Instruction includes principles, procedures, equipment and techniques, which enable individuals to survive, regardless of climatic conditions or unfriendly environments and return home. U.S. Army Military Free Fall Parachutist School, Fort Bragg, N.C., and Yuma Proving Grounds, Ariz. -- This course instructs trainees in free fall parachuting procedures. The five-week course provides wind tunnel training, in-air instruction focusing on student stability, aerial maneuvers, air sense and parachute opening procedures. Paramedic Course, Kirtland AFB, N.M. -- This 22-week course teaches how to manage trauma patients prior to evacuation and provide emergency medical treatment. Upon graduation, an EMT-Paramedic certification is awarded through the National Registry. Pararescue Recovery Specialist Course, Kirtland AFB, N.M. -- Qualifies airmen as pararescue recovery specialists for assignment to any pararescue unit worldwide. The 24-week training includes field medical care and extrication basics, field tactics, mountaineering, combat tactics, advanced parachuting and helicopter insertion/extraction. History The first medical corpsmen were airdropped in 1943 to a downed aircrew in a remote location on the China-Burma border. Pararescuemen, known at the time as para-jumpers or PJs, responded to the need for a highly trained rescue force. PJs began to integrate scuba techniques into their tactics, jumping with more than 170 pounds of equipment. PJs proved to be the premier rescue force rescuing downed pilots in the Vietnam War. They also recovered Gemini mission astronauts in the 1960s and San Francisco earthquake victims in 1989. Pararescuemen continue to deploy so "That Others May Live" whenever they are called to help resolve international emergencies and humanitarian relief efforts.

PARARESCUE IN THE NEWS

Superman School “Once you pass out the first time, you get used to it,” said the 24-year-old from Camarillo, Calif. “It’s like - it hurts, it hurts, and boom, you’re asleep. Then you wake up, some-body’s slapping your face, and you’ve got this oxygen mask covering your mouth. It’s really not that bad, no big deal.” Excuse me - No big deal? For most people, drowning ranks pretty high in the “big deal” department, right up there with electrocution, decapitation and being buried alive. But Cunningham isn’t what you’d call most people. He’s going through the toughest school on the planet in hopes of becoming an Air Force pararescueman, also commonly called a “PJ,” which comes from the old symbol on aircrew orders for parachutist. And a PJ is far from being your average Joe Six-pack. Like the Navy’s SEALs, the Marine’s Force Recon and the Army’s Green Berets, Air Force pararescuemen stake claim to being the best of the best in the military. They’re a crack fighting force — lean, lethal and lightning quick. Calling them “elite” may sound like a cliche, yet there’s no other word for it. While SEALs and Green Berets teem in the thousands, the Air Force treasures the mere 300 active-duty pararescuemen they have primed and ready for action. Cunningham, a former Navy petty officer, even considered a hitch with the SEALs, going so far as passing the grueling frogman fitness test, but had a change of heart after his tryout. “I didn’t want to kill people. I want to save them,” said Cunningham, now an airman first class. Unlike other special operators, who search and destroy, PJs “search and save.” Think of them as SEALs with stethoscopes. They’re extreme emergency medical technicians, a kind of cross between Schweitzer and Schwarzenegger. In a pinch, a PJ is a pilot’s best friend, and the bad guy’s worst enemy, just as accurate with a 9mm pistol as he is with a syringe. One minute, you might find these Rambos of resuscitation subduing an enemy patrol and the next, jump-starting a heart with a pair of defibrillator paddles. Most of these ninja paramedics belong to combat search and rescue teams, where they’re charged with locating downed aircrews behind enemy lines, patching them up and spiriting them away to safety. If given a choice, PJs prefer avoiding confrontation. It’s too messy. “We’re not about death and destruction, and blowing stuff up. We want to get in and get out … no fuss, no muss,” said Master Sgt. Craig Guthridge, a veteran PJ and director of operations for the Pararescue School at Kirtland Air Force Base, N.M. “But we’re not going to raise the white flag the first time the enemy says ‘boo!’ either. We’re just as skilled in taking lives as we are at saving them. And sometimes you have to do bad stuff to get the good guy out.” Gaining admittance into this exclusive fraternity (law excludes women from volunteering) demands that pararescue candidates endure a two-year long initiation ritual called the “pipeline” - a gauntlet of coursework and instruction taught at military bases scattered across the country. It’s a killer curriculum; about 90 percent of the applicants wash out. And most don’t even make it past the entrance exam - a physical fitness test that’d have your average jock doubled over wheezing. Pararescuemen shatter the stereotype popular among other services that airmen are cream puffs living a pampered existence and whose idea of roughing it is sharing a room at the Hotel Intercontinental. “I love to see the Army guys gain an appreciation of the Air Force. Most of them think we’re a bunch of wussies, that is, until we pass them in the pool,” said Master Sgt. Steve Sanko, a pararescue instructor at the Army’s combat divers school in Key West, Fla. Well, not all think that way. One Army Special Forces sergeant major, who asked not to be identified, said, “PJs are the best trained special ops forces in the Defense Department - bar none - but you’ll never hear me admit that in public.” The philosophy behind the rigorous regimen boils down to this - the more you sweat in training, the less you bleed in combat. And by the time a PJ pledge finishes plodding through the pipeline, he’s sweated an ocean. In the process, he’s become an expert marksman, accomplished parachutist, mountain climber, scuba diver and a certified emergency medical technician. While riding the pipeline, he’s learned to whoosh down a 30-foot fast rope from a hovering helicopter. He’s scaled sheer rock faces and traversed craggy cliffs at elevations that’d give a mountain goat a nosebleed. He’s parachuted on moonless nights into choppy seas while lugging on his back an 80-pound rucksack containing a portable operating room. And he’s braved a witches’ brew of climates and conditions, surviving in the wild on his wits and own devices. “Although you can never really simulate combat, the pipeline is very adept at preparing you for the real deal. All the training they throw at you, all the ‘PT,’ the stress, both physical and mental, everything you go through is as close as it gets,” said Staff Sgt. Jeremy Hardy, a PJ, who dodged flak and missiles last year during a rescue mission in Bosnia. Pushing the envelope of human endurance emerges as a central theme in pararescue training. At every stage of the pipeline, your body and mind get taxed to its breaking point - to the very brink of total collapse - and you must find somewhere deep within yourself the grit to forge ahead, even when every sinew screams “uncle.” And nothing tests a man’s mettle more than the first hurdle in the pipeline - the 10-week Pararescue/Combat Control Indoctrination Course at Lackland AFB, Texas. Indoc reveals early on who’ll throw in the towel when faced with adversity. But better to find out now that a man’s fainthearted before he’s squirming at the end of a hoist while bullets whistle past. “We want to break the students down, crack them open, and peek inside them to see what they’re made of,” said Sanko, the scuba instructor. “We want to find out how they’ll react after missing 24 hours of sleep, when they’re totally spent, sore and hungry, when they’re humping that rucksack up the side of the mountain in the cold and rain. We want to find out if they’re quitters. Without drive and determination, you’ll fail the mission. If you fail in the pool, no problem, we’ll drag you out and send you home. But fail on a mission and you come home in a body bag. Maybe your whole team comes home in body bags.” Master Sgt. Tim Wilkinson, a PJ who’s landed in more hotspots than a Tom Clancy character, said, “Indoc is a gut check. We want to know if you’re the type of person who’ll stick it out when the chips are down.” Indeed, the course makes workouts at boot camp look like a sixth-grade phys ed class. The pain commences at 4:30 a.m. and doesn’t end until well after sunset. Students double-time through a daily routine of circuit training on weight machines, swimming, running, and huffing and puffing through 50-odd combinations of calisthenics with names like cherry pickers, steam engines and mountain climbers. By the time they reach the end of the second month, trainees must crank out — in perfect form, mind you - 70 push-ups, 75 sit-ups, 13 pull-ups, 14 chin-ups and 85 flutter kicks, each within two minutes and with little rest in between. They must also run six miles within 45 minutes, swim 50 meters underwater on a single breath, and swim 4,000 meters on the surface under 80 minutes. For an extra sock in the solar plexus, the schoolhouse staff convenes frequent “smoke sessions,” which are punishing marathon workouts that make recruits “feel the burn.” Also, committing the most miniscule infraction merits your entire flight “getting dropped” for a set of 50 remedial push-ups plus extra reps dedicated to every instructor in the area and another for the pararescue corps. It’s not unusual for the group to pound out 800 or a thousand push-ups in a day. The administration calls it “teambuilding,” and if they think a class isn’t functioning as a single, motivated unit, they heap on another incentive to bond - lugging around a 450-pound piece of iron railroad track called the “rail” between classrooms and sites. “When I arrived at indoc, I thought I was in shape but found out within the first five minutes I wasn’t in ‘PJ’ shape,” said Airman 1st Class Adrian Durham, a 22-year-old former lifeguard from Hartford, Conn., now in the pipeline. “To keep myself going during the smoke sessions, I told myself the pain’s got to end sometime. Then at some point, your muscles become so numb you just stop caring.” All these drills, however, serve only to warm up recruits for the persecution in the pool. Officials have dubbed the pool sessions “water confidence training,” which is like calling a beating with a baseball bat “hickory familiarization.” The water weeds out more candidates than any other activity. There’s something about inhaling a lung-full of pool water that saps a man’s resolve, prodding him to question his commitment. Between indoc and combat divers school in Key West, students spend more time performing in the pool than Shamu, but without the pleasure of drenching onlookers. Instead, the waterlogged warriors slosh around wearing 16-pound weight belts; tread water; tie knots at the bottom of the pool; and swim and bob with bound feet and hands during an exercise called drownproofing. For many, buddy breathing makes or breaks them. The drill pairs two students, who must share a snorkel for several minutes while instructors splash, harass and dunk them. Surface more than once to gasp for breath and you fail. “To an outsider, the training may look abusive or like hazing,” Sanko said. “But if you panic on a real dive and shoot to the surface, you may explode a lung or get the ‘bends.’ The ocean is very unforgiving, and at least here, we give you two chances.” For those steely and stout enough to survive the first few weeks of indoc, Motivation Week looms. It’s a feared and fabled rite of passage, the Air Force’s version of SEAL Hell Week. During this ultimate test, black-shirted instructors prowl the ranks, dispensing less mercy than the Terminator doing a drive-by, spraying students with icy jets of water from a garden hose and barking orders at the airmen, who all seemed to be named “you.” “Get off that wall, you!” “Hey, you! Keep those legs straight!” “You want to quit, you? Then quit!” Regardless of the circumstances, students answer every question with the same response -“Hoo-yah!” which is a catch-all phrase meaning everything from “yes” and “no” to “You talking to me?” and “Please, make the pain stop!” Said Cunningham: “Motivation week is downright evil. It’s ugly... chaotic. It’s nonstop training, constant screaming, smoke sessions one after the other, and only a couple hours of sleep a night. When you finally get a chance to put your head on a pillow at night, you’re out in seconds. “Thinking of my family motivated me to suck it up and press on. I have a wife, a daughter and another on the way who’ve sacrificed a lot for me to be here,” the airman said. “They’re counting on me, and I’m going to earn it for them. Plus, I’ve had my butt kicked too many times to give up. Anybody who has ever quit regretted it the next day. I don’t want to be that guy.” According to instructors, it’s impossible to predict, at first glance, who’ll stay the course and graduate. Naturally, you’d expect those muscle-bound troglodytes, who dwell in the free weight rooms of gyms, to have a good shot at making the grade, but that’s not usually the case. Because of low body fat, these hulks usually sink faster than a snitch in a cement overcoat. “It doesn’t make a difference if you’re an NCAA swimmer or some big, buff stud. You’ve got to have smarts and a heart - the total package,” Sanko said. “Usually, it’s the mean little dog who makes it through.” Wilkinson agrees that success is often a matter of mind over muscle. “Pararescue is a thinking man’s game. You can’t be ‘strong like bull, smart like tractor,’ ” he said. Nobody back home in Hartford ever pictured Durham as a camouflaged commando. Friends and family thought of him as a bookworm, even nicknaming him the “absent-minded professor,” because he preferred academics to athletics. They figured him for a librarian, schoolteacher or accountant. “I fooled them,” Durham said. “I hate sitting down at a desk so when I saw the pararescue brochure at the recruiter’s office, I said this is the ticket. I can be a high-speed operator - skydiving, scuba diving, rock climbing, ice climbing - all the things I could never do before because I couldn’t afford them. And now they’ll pay me for it.” Although PJs receive extra pay for their special duties, none concede they’re in it for the money. Most admit they’re adrenaline junkies, ‘jonesing’ for challenges, adventures and the “rush” that a 9-to-5 grind couldn’t offer. Others cite compassion for their fellow man, patriotism, and the pararescue corps’ esteemed and legendary heritage for volunteering. Of the 21 Air Force Crosses given to enlisted men for extraordinary heroism, 11 were awarded to para-rescuemen. During the Korean War, PJs plucked pilots out of the frigid Sea of Japan; extricated aircrews from the jungles of Vietnam; rescued Rangers during a bloody firefight on the streets of Mogadishu, Somalia; and saved the skin of several airmen during the most recent conflict in Kosovo. Furthermore, PJs pitched in during the SS Mayaguez rescue mission off Cambodia’s coast in 1975, raided the North Vietnamese Song Tay prison camp in 1970, helped evacuate Saigon, recovered astronauts on Gemini and Apollo missions, and continue to provide support for NASA shuttle launches and landings. Today’s generation of pararescuemen share much with their PJ patriarchs. They both possess a tight-jawed tenacity, a stubborn will to never surrender, and a competitive spirit that’d turn a game of solitaire violent. You see the same fire burning brightly in the eyes of the new breed of PJs like Staff Sgt. Doug Isaacks. The 25-year-old native of Anaheim, Calif., just wrapped up his two-year trial through the pipeline last September. When he initially applied for retraining into the pararescue field while a cop at Dyess Air Force Base, Texas, more than a few of his contemporaries at the security forces squadron scoffed at him, telling him he’d most certainly fail and betting he’d be back patrolling the perimeter within weeks. “All I heard were the statistics, the high washout rates, like only one in a hundred makes it. Nobody gave me much of chance,” said Isaacks, who looks as strong as a Clydesdale. “But I did it, and it’s one of the greatest moments of my life. It feels great to be part of something special - a brotherhood. It’s also changed me as a person, boosting my self-esteem and my confidence. I know now that I’ll never quit no matter what.” Last September, Isaacks left for his first pararescue assignment at a special tactics unit at Hurlburt Field, Fla., but a pressing matter delayed him. He first had to drop by Dyess so he could strut through his old squadron sporting his new maroon beret. It’s not that he wants to rub it in that everybody underestimated him, but he told you so. And who’s going to argue with a PJ?

Special Forces Move in, Rescue Hurricane Katrina Victims Nearly 3,000 people have been airlifted out of the New Orleans area and taken to local care centers in the arms of 374th Expeditionary Rescue Group pararescuemen. Pararescuemen from three rescue squadrons nationwide are deployed here participating in what has been described as the largest search-and-rescue mission in the history of the Air Force. Their role in the search-and-rescue mission is crucial because some victims are not aware of the serious condition in their own city and do not want to leave, saying they can just "ride out the storm," said Senior Airman Jack Earnshaw, a 347th ERG pararescueman deployed from Nellis Air Force Base, Nev. "What they don't know are the dangers of staying behind," Airman Earnshaw said. "After we explained the dangers of the pollutants in the water and the overall condition of the city, several families finally got on the helo. They don't know how bad it is out there because they've been without TV or radio for several days." Just hours after Hurricane Katrina slammed the Gulf Coast, crews worked around the clock to airlift victims to safety, taking several hundred a day to local medical facilities and care centers. "Luckily, the majority of people ... have only been a little dehydrated," said Lt. Col. Matthew Shozda, the 347th ERG pararescue commanding officer from Davis-Monthan AFB, Ariz. "But it's very hard to determine what state people are in by looking at them." A week into the mission, the number of victims dropped, allowing crews to switch from 24-hour operations to daylight missions. "Spending eight or nine hours in the air totally wipes you out at the end of the day," Airman Earnshaw said. "And when you think about all the obstacles we're taking on with each mission, it really gets hard." Pararescuemen are encountering scenarios much different than those in Southwest Asia, he said. Crews are dodging power lines, trees and confined spaces to get to victims and extract them safely. "The search-and-rescue possibilities are endless," Airman Earnshaw said. "I've been taken out three times by flying debris alone." But they would not have it any other way. "There's nothing more rewarding than giving back to our own country," Airman Earnshaw said. "You really feel like you're giving back and serving Americans."