Inside the Special Forces Military Free Fall School

What's wrong with everyone? I'm here in humid Arizona in the

military

free

vault. This is where the US

military

and all other branches said most of their Special Operations people will have a wide variety of riggers and other people here. It's where they prepared to learn how to jump out of planes in

free

fall

it's not satisfied nothing there's something everywhere from 5,000 to 25,000 feet here at the military free

fall

school

there are four different classes that we're going to take a look at there's the Course military skydiver free fall, which this is where they are learning how to get out of the plane for the first time, most of us, very inexperienced or have never done it before, and then we look at the military skydiving master course.

That's where the next level is, you have to have at least 50 jumps to get there, they are learning how to place jumpers on a plane safely and conduct a mission effectively, so from there we will move on to the advanced tactical infiltration course. It is where the real free fall ninjas go, they are learning how to put together a complete mission profile with a focus on large aperture and high altitude navigation techniques, they are using technology, they are taking all the considerations that one would need to consider if we were to do a mission. real-world combat after the Advanced Tactical Infiltration Course, also known as ADAC.

The next level, the final level that someone can take on is the military free fall instructor course. These guys are the most experienced instructors in the world. Three failures absolutely. awesome guys really excited take a look at the arduous process they go through to get the coveted visual rating so I'm really excited about this week hopefully we'll have good weather here in the future and it will increase in the bird. some cool kids doing cool kid physics don't change, sure, falling through the sky is generally falling through the sky, however, when you fall through the sky at night with large pieces of equipment and a number of objects that could potentially inhibit your ability to throw or fly, which makes things very complicated, military free fall is a combat oriented capability where we like to put a lot of weight on a Ranger operator on a Special Forces operator on a Navy SEAL, get them out of the plane in the middle of the night with very little to look at and fly into a drop zone with nothing to guide you.

Skydiving is very different, it is a sport that is generally practiced during the day with a much smaller parachute system and control mechanisms that would prevent any type of accident by other jumpers. or environmental controls or enemy threat the mission of the military free fall

school

is to create a tactical capability that can be used by geographic combatant commanders toward their strategic objectives. We make parachutists here, so we're here with the guys from the basic military free fall course. These are all guys who are new to skydiving. They are preparing their parachutes right now. They just did their first free fall jump and are getting ready to climb back up for the second.

I'm going up with them. get out of the bird, hope it goes well for everyone, it sounds like everyone is in a very good mood. I took some of the instructors in and they said, you know, some of these guys are pretty scared, pretty safe range of emotions, run through overall, it's cool to see all of this. in action and you know this is the next group of sky jumpers heading to the course, so what's going through your head when you're getting ready to go up and jump is like a million things I'm trying to do.

Through it all, so you're nervous when you jump, you know, I feel like the last time I jumped the first time, I just thought you'd be up there and you don't feel like you're that high because you can. I don't realize and then I just say that's probably good this is my first job this is your first um that was my first time this better than my second Serena fasten your seat belts Don helmets water yeah we'll get out real quick okay , so I just went up on the bird with them and they put on a lot of jumpers, they went out with their instructors and very good, they went up to the ramp, there they are going up in these smaller versions of C-130, I think they are called see 27 basically no there's a lot of room to move there, but you definitely have to get out, those things go up, you can really feel the pressure change and it's great to see the confidence of the students, you can definitely tell some of them that they are There they just did their second jump , so you know some of them are definitely nervous, some are more confident than others, but overall, there's a pretty good job first, if you land further away you have to walk back up here, so the goal is pretty much .

Land here, extend your arm a little further. You know, we're still here, on top of our helmet. We want to control this. How we stay on our course. So, bigger, put a bigger control arm or counter. Okay, guys, so we're at it. military free fall jump master course all these guys are already qualified in military free fall this is where they come so they can learn how to safely inspect a jumper make sure they are good at getting out of the plane make sure their equipment is okay make sure of it being a completely safe jump, so all of these are experienced jumpers now going to the next level in their military free fall operation process.

We tell students like you to turn around and look at your jumper. Indicate the profile you have, what the combat team would be. to PDB and they start, I tell them to pick up the TV at both fashion stores, people at the door with their video in their right hand, everyone, the friction adapter, push back the excess capacity of general service, go down to the end of the strap, look at the triangle. look and we are looking for black white red this particular class has 230 students who are doing their JMP exam I today 19 failed that exam last week today is the new exam so they can't have any important work that means they can't miss any thing that could be a life-threatening malfunction or equipment mix-up and my left hand remaining in place, the inspection picks up the mask in the no, in addition, some rumors certainly claim that I have the proper fit throughout the course of the side male.

I'll see how many times I jump, this is kind of a tense thing, obviously jumping out of a plane is an adrenaline-filled experience, this is where they make sure that the people who go out in force to conduct these free fall operations are capable to carry them out safely, is not good, so this is George Banner's vertical wind tunnel. We have a sixty-and-a-half-foot diameter tunnel where we basically conduct smears of militarization type training. Here basic specifications of this, there are four or five. hundred horsepower of fans at the top that suck the air in, we go to a passenger plane, they see the engines in absolute planes up here and they just recirculate the output, both sides come back and reroute through what we call spin names, cool, not fast. here, a column six and a half feet in diameter, we can push at one hundred percent with our fans, we can push about 166 miles per hour with the wind, because for our students in the basic course it is good to teach the fundamentals of the position of the body, the fundamentals of movement, basically, we put them in the proper position of the body, we show them the position, we correct them and then we teach them the six basic axes of movement, where it is up, down, forward, back and then a turn to the right and then to the left, so those are basic skills that they need to know.

Jumping out of planes is not just a kind of fire and forget commission, it's actually a little bit of thinking, managing to control and fly your body in the air and they also get graded for that, so this is a very good tool for that, The nice thing about it is getting a lot of positive feedback, it's almost microscopic to me to a certain extent, but you can show them the basics here and show them exactly what's going on with the recording systems, get live feedback. On two and a half minute rides, which is thirty seconds of free fall, you have a little more time to develop skills, particularly with the relaxed body position in the air, little things like that that add up well, so be prepared to go jump in the vertical wind tunnel.

I am fully equipped. It sounds like it's a little complicated, but I hope they figure it out. We have an amazing instructor there, so we'll see how he goes. you came out of the wind tunnel absolutely amazing it's a totally different feeling what you think you're doing when you're actually doing it you're very different the awareness of your body the position of your body is just everything is totally different totally new respect for what you're doing these guys do at night in combat gear nod their head just amazing good night boy there are currently about 850 military free fall instructors dating back to 1962.

Military free fall instructors come from a variety of origins, all services, such as students, are represented here and many of They have that 10,000 jump area that you can't buy, talent and experience like that, it doesn't exist, you have to build it, so the military instructor qualification free fall is one of the lowest intensity ratings you can get in the Department of Defense. compare it very similar to the number of people who are too many unknown guard soldiers, there are too few, it is a qualification that takes a long time to obtain and is maintained by those who obtained it before them, military free fall instructor is number one. safety mitigating factor here at military free fall school and probably the most serious, so Instructor Cadbury here at military free fall school joins us with at least 50 jumps, most up to about a hundred jumps coming from the task force, once we get them, immediately put them into the military free fall instructor force, it's a bit of a misnomer, what we're really doing is reteaching them how to fly from the instructor perspective versus the military perspective of free fall jumping, so for a period of about nine weeks we will want to jump.

One hundred and fifty to two hundred times riding as an instructor with students who are actually testers playing at being students throwing out the different dynamic body positions that a typical student might pose as a challenge to them. At the end of those nine weeks, we then introduce them to the military called the basic parachutist course where they will become a shadow like a shadow that rides on the reserve side, let's say the passenger seat of a student who helps and learns how a military instructor advanced free fall or a shadow master could teach them. They will do this for a period of three to six months, at the end of those three to six months they will earn the coveted military title for instructor qualification.

This is the jump report for today, if the jump goes into the drop zone we will use. today it will be Philips e27 we are going to do a Wall Locker jump a jeo a jump ok, it's five in the morning, we are at the airfield here and today with the ADA course which means advanced tactical infiltration Of course, basically, these are the guys who They have gone through the basic military free fall course. They have gone through the military free fall jump master course. They are experienced jumpers. Many of them, you know, have been serving on a military drop team in the Special Forces or others.

The places didn't put it on the shorts, probably 2.5 km away, but normally you know we plan a cut right on the drop, we usually have a couple of shorts in the flight path and we will have a long pass, the big emphasis is on high altitude, wide aperture and then navigating under the canopy to reach a target area, these guys can travel over 25 kilometers. It's quite impressive on the west side of the drop zone, you get the power lines on the right side of the drop zone. the Iraqi village in the north is okay and pretty much around all the drop zones like the terrain is uneven okay this definitely has a very different vibe than the basic military free fall course you know they're not jumping you know , an individual student for instructor. ratio here is one instructor climbs with six guys, they'll even have full OTAs that will come through here, it's really cool, they'll do what they call wall locker jumps, they'll have all their gear on and I'm hoping we can go to watching them do their thing in the beautiful, beautiful Arizona sunrise.

Military free fall capabilities are indispensable in the Special Forces arsenal. Having the ability to insert small teams into denied enemy territory provides that flexibility that is unmatchedwith no other infiltration mechanism, whether it be terrain that doesn't allow us to get there or potentially advanced detection capabilities that could detect our

forces

as they enter military free fall, it offers the commander a way to bring in a team of Special operations. Military free fall operations have been used in combat since the beginning. like Vietnam, but more recently in the Global War on Terrorism and, in fact, here at military free fall school we are lucky to have that level of experience and a soldier who carried out one of those operations.

I am a cadet member here at the military free fall school. school and in 2009 I was lucky enough to be in the right place, the right mission to carry out a real world military free fall operation, so I was in Afghanistan and given the skills that my team possessed, we were assigned The task of carrying out a mission at that time gave several courses of action but the most prudent for us, the safest was a clandestine insertion through military free fall, you know, when the hand and arm signals begin to sound, they are 20 minutes you don't really think about it much and ten minutes you start preparing While this is actually going to happen, then you'll know when you get to those last few minutes when you're actually going to get off the plane, obviously we won't have any wind in the DZ, but as we move towards the Rear the rit lilo buddy went to go down the ramp and you know like everything you try to do this happens sometimes things don't always go as planned so the cargo tried to open the ramp and the ramp just opened a few. inches and then he raised it again and then he lowered it again and just a few inches and then we got to the point where we were at a minute and it still wasn't open and we're going down to about 30 seconds. and he looked a little scared but he kept working on the ramp and it finally opened up so we stood still which is the 15 second mark and I walked up to the ramp and I remember looking and seeing it was the blackest shade. thing I've ever seen in my entire life and we were like, wow, we're actually doing this, so when I turned my head forward I saw my teenage substitute/assistant team start to work, I just screamed and we all landed together on DZ and you .

I know the scum didn't come together relatively quickly and I can't say I'm surprised it went so well because we were well trained to do the job to be able to carry out that military free fall mission. It's exactly what it was designed for, but the task they gave us to enter a space that was quite difficult to enter without a signature, clandestinely infiltrating that area was absolutely the military's fault and they should have picked a better time to use you.