Lt. Bryan Gunkel and Lt. Travis Inouye volunteered to attend advanced survival school in the California desert.

The unclassified course designed to provide advanced survival and evasion skills to Navy, Marine Corps and other DoD personnel in knowledge and skills necessary to find and acquire food, water and shelter, along with evasion, self aid, travel and signal for rescue in a desert environment.

The Fleet Aviation Specialized Operational Training Group, Pacific, which also runs the Survival Evasion Resistance and Escape (SERE) training all Navy and Marine Corps aviators are required to attend, operates the course.

DEST class 05-04 convened on Monday, Oct. 4 at Naval Air Station North Island in San Diego. The first morning was spent in the classroom for refresher training in survival medicine, evasion and land navigation.

That afternoon, the 29 students were transported by bus to the vicinity of NAF El Centro in the Mojave Desert for the remainder of the course and split into six fire teams. Each fire team began the day with classes in the field in the morning, addressing such issues as food and water procurement and shelter building and ended with night exercises in navigation and evasion; the hot afternoons were spent in shelters that the students built themselves to avoid the oppressive heat.

Inouye was impressed by DEST and would recommend the training to others.

Gunkel said, “DEST provided refresher training on things I’ve learned at SERE school but I also learned much more about desert survival. Aces to FASO!”