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US Air Force SERE specialists, Icelandic coast guard sharpen open-water rescue skills
Mass Communication Specialist First Class Conor Martin
Aug. 28, 2026
KEFLAVIK, Iceland - U.S. Air Force survival, evasion, resistance and escape specialists conducted open-water rescue and personnel recovery training alongside the Icelandic Coast Guard in the freezing waters off the coast of Iceland during exercise Northern Viking 2026, Aug. 28.
The interoperability evolution tested cold-water survival procedures, hoist extraction techniques, and joint communication links across U.S. and NATO rescue networks.
During the training, three Airmen deployed into one-man life rafts from a rigid-hull inflatable boat launched by the Icelandic Coast Guard vessel ICGV Þór (Thor).
An Icelandic Coast Guard Airbus H225 Super Puma helicopter crew was then challenged to locate the simulated isolated personnel and hoist each specialist from the open sea.
“[This exercise is] a great opportunity to test the communication between the Navy personnel infrastructure, Air Force personnel recovery infrastructure and the Icelandic personal recovery communication,” said Senior Airman Spenser Ferguson, a SERE specialist attached to the 31st Operations Support Squadron. “We already know how the communication is going to flow and are more familiar with the interoperability, because it's all about getting the person back home.”
Operating in the North Atlantic requires personnel recovery teams to maintain absolute confidence in cold-weather survival suits and cross-nation coordination, said Páll Geirdal, commander of the Icelandic Coast Guard ship Thor.
“The Coast Guard has very good suits,” he said. “So the cold environment doesn't matter for us. That is our biggest concern for our crews that we are equipped accordingly. We are always in this situation. Our guys are going into the sea, getting the feeling of how it works and getting the confidence in the suits. They have to go in the sea and feel how it is one or two times so they know that if they fall overboard in the suits, they will be okay.”
Exercise Northern Viking 2026 focuses on the defense of Iceland and critical sea lines of communication across the Greenland-Iceland-United Kingdom (GIUK) Gap, exercising multi-domain command and control among allied forces.
What matters in a successful rescue operation is always getting the person home, said U.S. Air Force Staff Sgt. Brennen Bengford, a SERE specialist attached to the 52nd Operations Support Squadron at Spangdahlem Air Base, Germany.
Participating in Northern Viking helps build an operational plan of rescue so when an accident happens, all nations involved are ready, he added.
“We’re just ironing out the wrinkles,” Benford said. “It's better to train to something to help the fluidity of the actual operation. If you do it over and over and over again, you're going to be a lot faster out in the water.”
| Date Taken: | 08.28.2026 |
| Date Posted: | 09.02.2026 14:09 |
| Story ID: | 573623 |
| Location: | KEFLAVIK, IS |
| Web Views: | 16 |
| Downloads: | 0 |
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