Rappelling and fast-roping have been taught for decades.
I took lessons in rappelling at a summer Outward Bound back packing course in college. It’s a very useful skill in back packing and climbing. I enjoyed basic rock climbing for several years. I was always with a small group of climbers.
Isn’t basic rappelling taught in boot camp?
The military’s elite troops fast-rope.
I wonder what could have gone wrong? Equipment failure? Patterson was an instructor.
This was a demonstration for the public. It wasn’t a extreme stunt. Imho
Usually, airmen don’t receive Infantry training at any fort, because they’re not soldiers. But it’s been literally 45 years since my brief sojourn at Lackland AFB, so who knows what the Air Force Basic Military Training course looks like now.
My nephew is a fairly new airman. If I have the chance and remember, I’ll ask.
Still, my suspicion is that rapelling isn’t part of standard Air Force basic training, but may be part of occupation-based technical school training for certain specialities, and this team of airmen may have been part of one of those career fields.
As briefly mentioned in the CBS article the OP cited, these folks live and work directly with the Army and (occasionally) USMC. Here’s the rest of the story. …
They serve as a real-time embedded liaison between Army troops in the field in combat and the air support assets who’re available to watch over and assist the Army in accomplishing their mission. Which assistance usually consists of promptly and thoroughly blowing up whatever / whoever is shooting at our people.
As such, they get a lot of Army-style training too. Since helicopters are part of everyday Army grunt life now, they all get the same helo-related training Army infantry does. Which includes fast-rope rappel and fixed rope extraction. Depending on the era and the unit they’re assigned to, they’ll also operate Army-style ground vehicles like jeeps, trucks, and APCs modified to carry their specialized commo gear. The ones who work with Airborne units go through Fort Benning parachute school alongside the Army folks.
Back in my era a TACP included a pilot- or navigator-rated officer with tactical jet experience, a senior Sergeant like Patterson, and a junior enlisted assistant / apprentice. I did that job for 3 years. The three of us lived and worked w the Army and did whatever shit they did. Be that fun, dangerous, or just boring and uncomfortable. In my case my team did not work with any Airborne or SF (Green Beret) units so we missed out on that fun training. But we did everything else just like the grunts.
A number of years ago (1990s?) USAF quit assigning pilots / navs to TACPs. Ever since then the senior sergeant is the team leader. Patterson was an instructor at the TACP school. But if he hadn’t been an instructor, he’d have been, and doubtless was for some years, a TACP team leader.
There are a bunch of ways something could have failed him. There will of course be an investigation, but USAF is unlikely to bother publicizing the results.
We may well know in a couple / few days. We may never know.
The air force has had this type of specialty going back at least to Vietnam with the MAC-V/SOG units, and more recently AFSOC. These are the Air Force equivalents of the better-known SEALs and Green Beret units.
Traumatic injuries to players, such as neck injuries, which lead to the game being stopped for 10 to 20 minutes while the medical team attends to the player, before transporting him off the field, nearly never lead to cancellations. The crowd is quiet, the players are stunned, and after the player is off the field, play nearly always resumes.
The only time I can recall that an on-field medical emergency led to an outright cancellation of a football game was in 2023, when Damar Hamlin’s heart actually stopped due to a blow to the chest, and he had to be revived on the field. The game was suspended, and as it was late in the season, and the outcome of the game would have had no bearing on the playoffs, it was never resumed.
I had a friend at the game who watched it happen live. His group assumed the guy died then and there. My friend described a “chilling vibe” throughout the stadium.
Far be it from me to be the guy who learned it 20 minutes ago questioning the guy who lived it, but…
Last night I was reading FB comments about this on military-related pages, and dozens of people were complaining about it being called fast rope when it wasn’t (according to them) fast rope. According to these threads, “fast rope” is sliding down a rope by hand while wearing thick, single-use leather gloves and typically is done from a height of around 50 feet or so, with 100 feet being extremely high for that method (the stadium was from around 180 feet). So “fast rope” wouldn’t be a type of rappelling?
Wikipedia draws a distiction between rapelling and fast-rope descent.
Fast roping is quicker than abseiling (rappelling), although more dangerous,[1] particularly if the person is carrying a heavy load, because the rope is not attached to them with a descender.
Whether you consider Wikipedia’s take on the issue to be correct or definitive is up to you.
