Search and Rescue Merit Badge

The prohibition that is not a requirement

The requirements carry a standing note, outside the numbered list: flying in aircraft as part of a search and rescue mission is not permitted for youth members. The 2025 requirements book carries the same note in slightly different words, so this is not a one-off.

It is not requirement anything, which is exactly why it gets skimmed. Read it before you plan requirement 7 with anybody.

Requirement 7 puts itself in order

This is the only requirement on the badge that needs other people, a site and a date. A practice SAR exercise run with a team of Scouts, friends, or family. Its five parts are ordered by their own text, not by their letters:

1. 7(a) choose a scenario: from the pamphlet, or one your counselor approves
2. 7(b) develop an Incident Action Plan using the scenario information
3. 7(c) before the search begins, hold a PAUSE briefing on hazards, safety concerns, personal and shared Scout Basic Essentials and other gear
4. 7(d) execute the search
5. 7(e) after the search, hold a team debriefing Three of those five say when they happen in their own words. Get the team and the date first; everything else on this badge is a conversation with your counselor.

A term used three requirements before it is defined

Requirement 3(d) asks you to show a hypothetical place last seen and mark a containment area.

Requirement 6(b) is where the difference between PLS (place last seen) and LKP (last known point) is explained.

Work the list in its printed order and you meet the term at 3(d) with nothing to hang it on. Read 6(b), and the confinement term in 6(e), before you sit down with the map.

Requirement 3 needs equipment your counselor has approved

Using a map, a compass and a GPS device or app approved by your counselor. That approval is in the requirement's opening sentence, before any of the lettered parts, and it is easy to read past. Settle which app or unit you are using before the session, not at it.

The printed book is a different badge now

The page reports its own last change as 31 December 2025, after the 2025 requirements book was printed. The book has ten requirements to the page's eight and the material has been redistributed rather than edited: the book, for instance, required an interview with a member of a SAR team, and the current page does not.

This site follows the page. The change note on this plan lists exactly which parts the book can still corroborate and which it cannot.

What this page is

The Search and Rescue merit badge, drawn so the exercise at requirement 7 and the limits around it are visible from the start. It is not a copy of the requirements: each step is a short label with a link to the official requirements, which are what actually governs and which change from year to year.