The sleep deprivation and endurace exercises I've done have been excruciating. Your brain goes fuzzy, you get blank spots in your short term memory, you feel like you've got no strength at all. It gets to a point where it is pouring rain at 5am in the morning and they give you a chance to catch some sleep but you don't care, you just lie on the ground without even taking pack or webbing off and get soaked. Then as soon as you're asleep the bastards wake you up and tell you that your being hit by inderect fire and you've gotta bug out. It just keeps going on and on like this. And this is just a sample of what the SAS do, it doesn't even touch on the difficulty of interogation training, so I have nothing but massive respect for what is without a doubt some of the worlds hardest training.

I think the Pscological Warfare Corps helps with this mentality, see, if all these things are happening to you so fast, so suddenly, your not going to be thinking, they are not going to kill me, they will be thinking they may kill, I'll do anything to stop the pain.
If they do remember it is a training exercise, they will be worried about becoming a fatal training accident staistic, and will do anything to make the exercise stop, or at least the dangerous part. That's my view on it, as i said earlier, those blokes know exactly what they are doing

Well obviously i agree that there is no training that can fully prepare you for the horrors of torture and interrogation - but the training they're doing is about as good as you can get without actually torturing the person.

Rich.

I certainly agree

Did i miss something, or has noone touched on the fact that the SAS will never be captured. I'm an engineer, and our regiment is full of ex-grunts including ex 3RAR and 4RAR, and they've all said they'd never allow themselves to be captured. If everyday infantry would rather eat a bullet then face interrogation then i would assume the only way to take a Special Air Superman alive would be an elephant tranquiliser.

Originally Posted by Craftsman

Did i miss something, or has noone touched on the fact that the SAS will never be captured. I'm an engineer, and our regiment is full of ex-grunts including ex 3RAR and 4RAR, and they've all said they'd never allow themselves to be captured. If everyday infantry would rather eat a bullet then face interrogation then i would assume the only way to take a Special Air Superman alive would be an elephant tranquiliser.

No such thing as supermen - and one doesn't always have complete control of every situation. This is a rather silly claim.

This sort of training has been going on for as long as I have been around. Its just that it has never hit the papers. Plus with the stuff that has gone on in the past with mis-treatment of PWs makes this very topical at the moment. Especially with mention of the dogs, it puts a picture in the mind of the reader, like the ones we have all seen coming out of Iraq. There are far more greater issues out there other than this. for example crimes against children, welfare cheats and so on.

Originally Posted by Craftsman

Did i miss something, or has noone touched on the fact that the SAS will never be captured. I'm an engineer, and our regiment is full of ex-grunts including ex 3RAR and 4RAR, and they've all said they'd never allow themselves to be captured. If everyday infantry would rather eat a bullet then face interrogation then i would assume the only way to take a Special Air Superman alive would be an elephant tranquiliser.

rather stupid claim
these men are professional soldiers, while capture is not a nice option, it may end sometime, death however, does not

Yeah, i don't think that was a very solid claim. They run out of ammo, or lose their weapons or something, they'll be captured. If the instructors didn't think there was a chance of them getting captured then they wouldn't bother doing the training or anything then would they? They could spend all of the money on some pretty new guns or something like that.

Rich.

The E&E resistance to interorgation training used to be conducted near Evans Head in the 60's and 70's.
Run by the naval intelligence mob and was in its heights during the Vietnam war. From all accounts it was pretty brutal but needed.
Todays training in this touchy feely, OH&S worldis more strictly run and scientific in its approach.
The bottom line is the training is needed.
All serving members get the basic briefs if they deploy o'seas. The heavy stuff is reserved for those in specailty corps and musterings.
Only time will tell if it is worth the drama of it being beat up by the media and the backstabbing bleeding hearts.
Who by the way don't seem to keen in taking in or sponsering any asylum seekers??????
Just my 2 cents worth.