Resistance Training Laboratory (RTL) is a controlled training environment used in US SERE programmes to simulate captivity. Participants practise resisting questioning and exploitation, protecting information and fellow captives, and remaining able to act within their circumstances. Instructors portray the opposing side and subsequently discuss the participants’ conduct. RTL forms range from a mock prisoner-of-war camp to a hostage scenario.
What the RTL represents
Capture changes the isolated person’s task. Before capture, the person was trying to sustain themselves and evade the adversary. In captivity, the opposing side influences the situation and seeks to exploit the captive for its own purposes. Questioning can obtain information; oral or written statements can be used against the captive’s country or comrades. The RTL places these tasks in a practical situation: a participant must respond to other people while their answer or conduct may also affect fellow captives.
In the earlier US Army Camp Mackall model, the RTL was a mock prisoner-of-war camp. Participants had to resist interrogation and exploitation both individually and collectively. The Code of Conduct provided the US military framework for their behaviour. A USAF ECAC hostage scenario, by contrast, centres on being held hostage. This changes the opposing side being portrayed, the captivity situation and the way participants apply the conduct taught beforehand.
Preparation, application and debriefing
The Camp Mackall model initially combined instruction on the Code of Conduct with SERE techniques and practical fieldcraft. A survival and evasion phase followed, requiring participants to reconcile sustainment and movement under hostile threat. The subsequent RTL changed the situation to simulated captivity. Afterwards, instructors discussed the experience individually and with the group: which response protected information or fellow captives, which created additional opportunities for exploitation, and which conduct needed adjustment? This sequence connects preparation for isolation with conduct after capture.
An Academic Role-Play Laboratory (ARL) prepares participants for such situations through role-play scenarios with instructors. In the US training component for government and hostage detention, participants also observe and discuss each other’s conduct. This allows them to examine questioning or another exploitation situation from an observer’s position. In the mock-camp RTL, they must act as captives within the continuing scenario themselves.
Participants’ tasks
In the US prisoner-of-war scenario, participants practise applying the Code of Conduct to questioning and group situations. The required identity information is name, rank, service number and date of birth. They are to evade further questions to the utmost of their ability and avoid oral or written statements harmful to their country or its allies. The practical task is to recognise the significance of the information or statement being demanded and maintain information protection during interaction with the opposing side.
Resistance also includes responsibility towards fellow captives. Under the US framework, prisoners are to give no information and take no action harmful to their comrades. The senior prisoner takes command; the others support lawful leadership and its orders. RTL participants therefore have to deal with more than their own questioning. They must also sustain a collective organisation and avoid conduct that endangers the group. A leader’s task is to maintain cohesion under the influence of the opposing side being portrayed.
The Australian Conduct after Capture model distinguishes three captivity situations. Foreign government detention may involve a border security force, police force or intelligence agency, with or without armed conflict between the states. In the hostage scenario, a terrorist or criminal organisation holds the individual. In military exploitation, the opposing side is a foreign state’s military. Training includes both prisoner-of-war captivity that complies with international humanitarian law and detention by an authority that disregards those rules. Participants must therefore consider the detaining authority’s actual conduct rather than infer how they will be treated solely from its military character.
Instructor roles and control
An Australian Conduct after Capture model shows how role portrayal and safety control can be separated. Qualified Resistance Trainers portray state or non-state threat actors. A conducting officer, the shift senior trainer, neutral observers, medical staff and psychology officers monitor activities by video. Safety staff can stop an activity; medical and psychology staff can withdraw a participant from training. Stressors are governed by established protocols. These controls limit what may occur within the scenario.
In this Australian model, participants receive a briefing before the practical activity, reaffirm their voluntary participation and can withdraw from the activity. Even after an early withdrawal, each participant has an individual debrief with a Resistance Trainer and a psychology officer. This provides separate discussion of conduct within the scenario, processing the training experience and health concerns.
Training level and transfer to captivity
RTL names a form of training. In the US Army example it belongs to SERE Level C. The USAF Evasion and Conduct After Capture (ECAC) course is explicitly Level B and combines instruction, Academic Role-Play Laboratories and a practical evasion exercise with a concluding Hostage RTL. When a course description mentions RTL, the particular course and the captivity scenario being represented therefore matter. The abbreviation alone identifies neither the risk level nor the extent of the overall SERE training.
The practical transfer lies in recognising adversary exploitation, protecting information and fellow captives, and applying one’s own national conduct framework. Actual captivity cannot, however, be treated as following the training sequence: guards are not instructors, the end of detention is unknown, and a captive cannot withdraw from the situation as in a controlled training model. Practised responses must therefore be applied in light of the actual captors, their actions and the captive’s physical and psychological condition.