For all PJ's

amlove21

Pararescue
Verified SOF
Joined
Dec 29, 2008
Messages
5,392
Location
The City of Destiny
SSMP
SOF Mentor
Please forward to all PJ's past, present, and future...disseminate widest.
I've cleared this with
my senior leaders.

This is an attempt to correct historical misrepresentations and unify the
collective message We, as United States Air Force Pararescuemen, convey to
the press, our leaders, our peers, our sister services, and to the public.
The intent is to explain to all those outside of our career field who we are
and what we do for the nation. DO NOT MODIFY..This message must be
consistent and persistent if we are to maintain and secure current and
future initiatives.

Attached is the UNCLAS strategic communication I've forwarded to all MAJCOM
Public Affairs. Below is an excerpt I wrote to both the same PA folks and a
producer at NBC who may do a story on Pararescue. I cut out the unimportant
stuff and left the stuff you and our men need to know and voice in a public
forum.

------------------------------
------------------------------

"These few/elite men are extraordinary American's and do extraordinary
things every day for our nation and they deserve recognition on the national
scale. But, I will tell you, thus far, no one's gotten it 100%. We/I am
constantly frustrated by the inaccurate reporting both from the civilian and
military press. I know it's not intentional, our PA professionals work
their tails off. I believe we as a PJ community haven't done such a great
job during interviews and our strategic communication with other's is
normally off the cuff at best. I do know these brave and elite warriors
deserve so much better, both from me as their leader to get the message out
and to the reporting agencies who work hard to convey that message. So let
me provide some up front reporting guidance for your professionals as well
as for us PJ's so we don't duplicate mistakes made in the past."

1. Pararescuemen are NOT MEDICS. PJ's are combatants, medics are not. We
play an offensive role during combat operations. We fight our way in,
rescue those who need it, and we fight our way out. Our mission is to
rescue anyone, anytime, anywhere, under any conditions. We will do whatever
is necessary to bring our fellow American or Allied personnel home. We deny
the enemy a capture, kill, body to drag through the streets, or sensitive
equipment to sell/duplicate. We have and will continue to deliberately
eliminate the enemy in order to bring our wounded, injured, shot down,
isolated, or captured home...medics don't do this. Yes, our trauma medical
skills are world class, but it's only one of several hundred other world
class s kill sets we possess.

Additionally, we are not "like" SEALs or SF and we should not be compared to
any of those.

2. Pararescue is spelled PARARESCUE. Our career field in Pararescue, we
are collectively called Pararescuemen...Not Para-rescue or Pararescue
Jumpers. We are sometimes referred to as PJ's for short. This acronym DOES
NOT stand for anything. It doesn't stand for "Pararescue Jumper" as most
news services including the military's typically states. "PJ" came from a
historic, circa 1950's, way of abbreviating/combining PARARESCUE and JUMPER
on flight orders and other military forms. Somehow the nickname stuck. Not
as sexy or marketable as SEAL or SF, but this is what we got for now.

3. We are AIR FORCE PARARESCUEMEN. Not Special Tactics (ST) Pararescuemen,
Combat Air Forces (CAF) Pararescuemen, SOF Pararescuemen, JSOC
Pararescuemen, Active Duty Pararescuemen , Guard Pararescuemen, Reserve
Pararescuemen, ect. We are a combined collective of 500+ Active Duty,
Guard, and Reserve PJ's assigned worldwide to execute the rescue mission.
These 500+ PJ's are spread throughout the world and under different
commands(ACC, AFSOC, JSOC, Reserve, Guard, PACAF, AETC, and USAFE).
However, all are trained the same, equipped the same, and execute the same
mission. A PJ is a PJ, none are better than the other, despite what even
some of my men may think...the only thing that changes is the customer
requiring our coverage and expertise. We can take any PJ from any command
and plug him into any team across the force and he would be able to operate
and execute the mission.

4. Our mission is Personnel Recovery. All missions we perform should be
referred to as "Personnel Recovery Missions or Rescue Missions", not
MEDEVAC, CASEVAC, CSAR ect. DoD and some of the leadership you may talk to
will refer to our rescue missions as such, they have their reasons, we
don't. If the nation is to hear our story, the public doesn't need to get
weighed down in semantics. PJ's perform rescue (live humans) and recovery
(dead humans and sensitive equipment) operations ANYWHERE, ANY TIME, AND
UNDER ANY CONDITIONS ACROSS THE GLOBE. In addition, those we rescue should
not be referred to as "patients"...they are shot-down, wounded, isolated,
ect., US or Allied Soldiers, Sailors, Marines, Airman, civilians ect. I
don't think our nations warriors in harm's way requiring our expertise like
to be referred to as "patients".

United We Stand,

v/r

LEE W. SHAFFER, CMSgt, USAF
Pararescue Career Field Manager
 
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