State Partnership Program

Video by Senior Airman Haily Wireman

Special Tactics Pararescuemen Complete Rope, Rescue Training on WWII Battleship

Air Force Special Operations Command

April 15, 2015 | 7:41

Special Tactics pararescuemen, Special Tactics Training Squadron, 24th Special Operations Wing, complete confined space training and high-angle rope training, all common scenarios when doing tactical recovery during combat and humanitarian missions, on the retired U.S.S Alabama battleship, Mobile, Ala. The small spaces on the ship simulate the constrained areas in tightly built villages, collapsed buildings or wrecked vehicles and aircraft. The multiple levels of the ship is ideal for high-angle rope training, used to traverse objects or patients across rugged land, over buildings, and down steep inclines with ropes. Special Tactics pararescueman train to go anywhere, anytime for personnel rescue while embedded with a special operations team, such as Navy SEALs and Army Green Berets. Not only are they tactical experts for rescuing people and objects from life-threatening situations, such as mountainsides, earthquake wreckage or underwater shipwrecks, they are also paramedics, performing life-saving measures for special operations forces in all environments. Approximately forty percent of pararescuemen are within Air Force Special Operations Command.