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Last month I attended the Basic Inland Search & Rescue Course (BISC). It’s a free 3-day course offered by the Air Force Rescue Coordination Center (AFRCC) that:

1. Shares what the AFRCC is, what they do, and how they fit into Search and Rescue in the US
2. Teaches Search Theory 101
3. Introduces some basic concepts around Incident Management - particularly relating to Search and Rescue incidents

There isn’t too much information about the course online, so I wanted to document and share a few things I learned that I thought were interesting.

The AFRCC

But first some background! The AFRCC is located at Tyndall AFB in Florida. They are the inland Search and Rescue coordinator for the US. More specifically, the AFRCC:

• Receives notifications about distress beacons. It used to just be aircraft ELTs that broadcast on 121.5 MHz, but these days they receive notifications for any beacons transmitting on 406 MHz – whether it’s an aircraft ELT, a personal locator beacon, or a marine EPIRB. The AFRCC will investigate beacons and spin up a mission if needed
• Receives notifications from the FAA about overdue aircraft and will spin up a mission if needed to help locate the plane
• Receives requests from state and local agencies for assistance with SAR incidents. The AFRCC can help procure federal resources to assist
• Receives requests from state and local agencies for assistance with life- or limb-saving missions, where there are no commercial resources available. That could include transporting patients, medical supplies or organs.

In 2024, the AFRCC logged close to 14,000 incidents. Only about 4% of those turned into missions, which in total led to over 200 saves.

I was pretty amazed to see those numbers. That’s a lot of incidents to receive every day – on average, about 38 – and AFRCC staff need to quickly filter out requests and beacons to determine what falls under their jurisdiction and charter, beacons that may have been triggered accidentally, overdue aircraft that aren’t actually lost or crashed, etc. That’s clearly the bulk of the work. The AFRCC staff sound very creative when it comes to investigating - making use of social media and anything else quickly accessible to make sure someone is not lost or critically injured. At least in 2024 - they were able to filter out about 96% of their logged incidents, so it seems like they are pretty good at that filtering step!

They currently have a staff of about 30 people, working in 3 shifts to provide 24/7 coverage. They plan for somewhere between 3 and 5 people active per shift. That’s smaller than I was expecting. I got to meet quite a few AFRCC staff at the class I attended, so pretty cool in a way to have met about a third of the entire AFRCC.

Resources

Roughly 85% of the AFRCC mission tasking is performed by the Civil Air Patrol. What I didn’t know is what was in that remaining 15%.

Much of it are military assets that can be used to assist. There are several Combat SAR teams that can sometimes be available to support. Occasionally large drones can be utilized. The military also has aircraft with advanced capabilities that might be useful and otherwise not found in civilian and state/local police aircraft.

One of the success stories they shared was transporting some critical medical material by a fighter across a long distance. It required two aerial refuelings, and the jet otherwise had its afterburners on the whole way.

The AFRCC doesn’t have authority to directly task any organization, but it has a number of existing agreements in place. And more importantly, a large number of existing relationships. They were very insistent in the class that, working future incidents, we should ask the AFRCC for what we could use and let them say no. That includes during training exercises as well.

Search Theory

My knowledge on search theory before this class was limited. I had some specific formal training for ground and air searches. Through that training, I had heard about Dan Koester’s book on Lost Person Behavior, but I didn’t know much about it. In total, my impression was that search tactics were largely based on a collection of anecdotes and “gut feeling”. Boy was I wrong. While it may be the case that “gut feeling” drives the majority of real-world searches, the underlying theory is fairly robust and rooted in math.

The fundamental driving principle in search theory is maximizing the probability of success in the shortest amount of time. Expressed as a function, the probability of success for a specific search is equal to the probability of containment in the search area multiplied by the probability of detection. If you know both probabilities, you can compute the probability of success for a specific search. And that means you can, at least in theory, identify the probability of success for many different kids of searches, and choose the ones you have resources for that will result in the largest probability of success.

So how do you compute the probability of containment and probability of detection? Well, you just need to refer to the International Aeronautical and Maritime Search and Rescue Manual, or IAMSAR!

To determine the probability of containment, split up the possibility area into smaller regions (either based on a grid, natural boundaries, or other boundaries), and use past experience or judgement to derive a probability of containment in each region.

The IAMSAR contains worksheets and guides for boats, planes, and parachuters that can help inform probability of containment. They take into account winds aloft, water and wind current, surface wind, and more.

For lost people, Dan Koester’s book really comes in handy here. He has pulled together a ton of historical data about lost people, categorized them based on the kind of person that is lost, and summarized the different ways they behave when lost. There are also tables describing how far from their last-known point they were found, and other data that could help inform probability of containment.

For the probability of detection - the IAMSAR manual contains a ton of tables that help you determine how likely it is to find specific search objectives given different search patterns and conditions. For example, here is a table for searching over land in an aircraft, which is one table of many, and just one part of determing the probability of detection!

There’s no way I was going to become an expert or even close to proficient in search theory after a three-day course, but I certainly know now just how rigorous and complex search theory actually is.

Tabletop Exercise

I knew BISC included a tabletop exercise, and I was actually very excited to see how it worked.

Tabletop exercises exist in the software world, but I’ve always been interested to see them both used more and used effectively. There are not a lot of opportunities to develop skillsets around large incidents or major outages. Part of my goal for attending BISC was to learn a bit about tabletop exercises that I could apply to my future roles in the software world.

The tabletop exercise we performed involved an overdue aircraft and a ground search for a missing person. The class was split into smaller groups, and each group was working the same problem in isolation. Each group took on the role of an incident manager / incident staff, and were tasked with walking through all the things we had learned in the class around incident response and search theory, over multiple virtual days as the incident evolved.

The scenario we worked was relatively well planned. It was designed in a way where you couldn’t find the objective quickly (much to the chagrin of at least one of more experienced SAR folks participating), but that enabled teams to pick up breadcrumbs if they were on the right track. The instructor answered questions we had that would have been directed at local agencies, witnesses, etc., and also gave us the results of actions we decided to take.

It was a great way to get more comfortable with the material we had just learned, and more importantly to really absorb it. What I thought was most interesting though was seeing how other people’s thought processes worked the problem – and to see what other groups came up with. There’s certainly no “right” answer, but getting to see different perspectives and approaches was really helpful for illuminating what reasonable tactics or ideas might look like.

Closing Thoughts

Overall I thought BISC was great. It was a ton of information to take in over a pretty short period of time, and I definitely found myself wanting more.

Fortunately, there is a more advanced course! The Inland SAR Planning Course is a five-day course that focuses hard on search theory, and not on any specific search tactics or procedures. It might be a little while before I take that class - five days is a pretty big investment of time, and ideally I would have a bit more hands-on experience I could bring with me to maximize what I can learn.

I would highly recommend BISC to anyone who currently or may work SAR incidents. Or for anyone in an emergency management role that might benefit from learning how the AFRCC can support their needs. The class schedule is available on the AFRCC’s website.