FÖS stands for Försvarsmaktens överlevnadsskola, the Swedish Armed Forces’ joint survival school based at K 3 in Karlsborg. It develops and teaches SERE and Personnel Recovery. Its role connects preparation of a person who may become isolated with training for staffs and units: the individual must remain capable of acting under threat, while the military organisation prepares, directs and follows up a possible recovery.
National role and target personnel
The school uses SERE for Survival, Evasion, Resistance and Extraction: staying alive, avoiding enemy detection and capture, conduct in captivity and extraction from isolation. Preparation therefore extends to the individual’s tasks during pickup by a recovery force. On the organisational side, Personnel Recovery covers the release or recovery of involuntarily isolated personnel and their reintegration. FÖS is based at Livregementets husarer, the K 3 regiment; its training responsibility extends beyond that regiment’s own soldiers.
Students come from different parts of the Swedish Armed Forces. Many are preparing for an overseas posting or a readiness assignment. The required SERE level is related to their intended employment. Someone who may have to wait concealed or move with little equipment after an incident needs personal survival and evasion skills. A staff member in a PR role also has to understand how a unit searches for that person, verifies their identity and brings available resources together for a pickup.
Preparing for personal tasks in isolation
Swedish isolation preparation starts with deciding whether the incident site remains an acceptable place to stay. A vehicle can provide equipment and protection while also drawing attention to the person’s location. If security permits, the person stays there; if they have to move, they take emergency equipment to a protected hiding place. They determine their position, organise available resources and assess how injuries, water needs and the threat limit their next actions.
At the hiding place, camouflage and observation are connected with further planning. The person reviews their prepared route and agreed procedures, sets movement times and an escape route if discovered, and remains ready to move to a possible pickup point. A completed ISOPREP contains information for subsequent identity verification; the Routeplan records planned movement. This preparation remains useful with a failed radio: it gives the person’s movement a direction on which search and recovery planning could already be based before isolation.
For concealed movement, Sweden uses SOLO among other guidance: Stanna, Observera, Lyssna, Ofta – stop, observe, listen, often. The person moves in short stages between protection and concealment and pauses repeatedly to scan the next area and listen. During these pauses, they can focus attention on the surroundings before exposing themselves to the next stage. A road is first observed from a protected position; the crossing should offer as little exposure to observation as possible. These tasks connect maintaining personal ability to act with avoiding capture.
Preparation for pickup includes organised equipment, accessible signalling devices and readiness to move from the hiding place to the agreed meeting point. The person prepares any available radio and their means of identification. When a recovery force appears, they must be able to identify it positively before using the agreed PR signals. A premature visible signal can expose the hiding place while the apparent help has yet to be identified as friendly.
Captivity and training responsibilities
Resistance concerns loss of freedom of movement and a captor’s attempt to exploit the person. Swedish conduct guidance connects assessment of the captors’ actual treatment, protection of information and avoidance of escalation that increases violence and the risk of death. Controlled disclosure of information is addressed as a specific method for dealing with unlawful violence. The person should preserve dignity and self-respect, retain mental control despite another party’s physical control, and attempt escape only when there is a real prospect of success.
Swedish resistance exercises are subject to a separate regulatory model. If a person is deprived of liberty during an exercise and their freedom of action is restricted with handcuffs or a blindfold, the resistance rules apply regardless of the exercise’s label. K 3/FÖS issues the training instructions for A and B; the C resistance exercise is conducted exclusively by K 3/FÖS. The exercise leader must be a SERE instructor who has completed the appropriate B or C exercise as a participant or a member of the directing staff. Treatment capable of causing physical or psychological harm is prohibited. Withdrawal after consultation with the exercise leader must be possible while preserving personal integrity. For instructors, this establishes specific responsibility and a duty to protect participants in captivity scenarios.
PR training for staffs and units
The FÖS PR role also concerns the tactical staffs of the individual services and the joint operational level. Responsibilities, preparation and direction of recoveries have to be integrated into the wider operations plan and exercised with units. An isolated person may follow a prepared route and agreed signals; the staff needs to know the same procedures and account for the forces, communications equipment and conditions actually available in the area of operations.
FÖS/K 3 is responsible for a specific national course, the Hemvärns Personnel Recovery Officerskurs, abbreviated Hv PR-O. It prepares Swedish Home Guard staff members for PR duties, such as serving as a PR Officer at battalion or company level. Its planning component covers operations orders, PR standard operating procedures and special instructions, adapting resources to the area of operations and allocating duties between staff sections and higher PR coordination elements.
The execution component covers reporting, locating, supporting, recovering and reintegrating. Reporting templates help organise the situation for staff action. The Routeplan and ISOPREP form part of preparation for location and identity verification; communications and intelligence support assistance to the isolated person. Planning simulations and application exercises are used to practise work on PR situations in the battalion staff and support to the commander. The reintegration training component provides an introduction to PR debriefing.
These staff tasks have direct consequences for the individual: if they leave the intended area, a search may remain directed towards their previous location. Having prepared identity and pickup procedures ready helps them act clearly and recognisably when the force actually reaches them. Without radio contact, they use agreed signals only towards positively identified friendly help, follow its instructions, adopt a non-threatening posture and holster their weapon. Until such forces actually arrive, sustainment, observation and concealment remain their own tasks.