Young Opinion On CSAR Questioned
Feb 12, 2009
By Michael Fabey
Editor's Note: These articles are part of an exclusive series on combat, search and rescue (CSAR) that originally ran in Aerospace Daily & Defense Report in late January 2009.
Comments made by Pentagon acquisition chief John Young in November doubting the need for a dedicated U.S. Air Force combat, search and rescue (CSAR) fleet have caused some alarm within the CSAR community, which has long questioned whether DOD acquisition officials understand the mission and its requirements
In a white paper circulating within the Air Force that was seemingly written in response to Young, Col. Michael Healy – the former Air Force chief of Special Operations Forces and CSAR requirements with combat command experience in Afghanistan, and now a military liaison to the Department of Homeland Security – says that DOD officials have little grasp of the nature or needs of those missions.
“We have a lot of assets that can be used in rescue missions with planning, so I don’t necessarily just automatically rubber stamp the CSAR-X requirement,” Young said at the time. “I don’t know that that community has to have its own set of assets for the occasional rescue mission. We have new things coming on line like V-22s and other things that can be pressed into service. When we do our rescue mission we’re going to do a come-as-you-are operation anyway, unless all the CSAR assets are prepositioned for that.” (Aerospace DAILY, Nov. 24, 2008).
“The first myth contained in Mr. Young’s comments – that ‘we have a lot of assets that can be used in rescue missions’ – completely neglects the critical shortages in rotary wing aviation across the breadth of current operations,” Healy wrote. “Arguably it has become the most critical shortfall in the entire global war on terror and DOD has had to form a task force to examine the problem.”
During the opening stages of Operation Enduring Freedom, Healy wrote, “the U.S. was forced to delay the beginning of offensive operations for weeks due to the lack of rescue forces in the region.
“The second and most dangerous myth is that any available force (even with planning) possesses the capability to conduct the [kinds of personal recovery] missions that AF Rescue is performing today,” Healy continued. “This statement is directly contradicted every day in our current fight and neglects the historical record of rescue operations of all types. PR [Personnel Recovery], CSAR in particular, is the most dangerous military mission in history. Also ... the time-sensitive nature of PR is also well known. Using untrained assets to rescue isolated personnel as an ‘additional duty’ will generally result in their death and the death of their would-be rescuers.”
Young said the whole operational concept for CSAR may have to be revisited. Further, he said, the data shows there has been no recent long-range rescues that would demand the kind of CSAR fleet the Air Force is trying to buy.
But such “high-end” forces have been in demand, Healy said. “Evidence of the need for a dedicated force with the ability to execute these ‘high-end’ PR missions can be found in the over 1,000 AF Rescue missions since 9/11 where the isolated person’s component had determined that their circumstances were beyond the limits of their own forces,” Healy wrote. “Each of these ‘saves’ represents a case [where] the forces of another component physically could not get to their own people due to range, threat, or weather. They do not include AF rescue missions ‘in lieu of’ U.S. Army medevac helicopters, where the AF has rescued several thousand more.”
The paper also cites other efforts by Young to deplete CSAR assets, even though those programs were properly vetted and approved by appropriate channels and are consistent with DOD policy. “The AF has been consistently committed to a full and open competition on CSAR-X, despite OSD’s pressure to ... award a sole-source contract to Boeing for MH-47s or a mix of MH-60s and MH-47s,” Healy wrote. (See related story p. 1.)
Young especially bristles at any suggestion that he has been trying to deplete CSAR assets. He told Aerospace DAILY he simply has been trying to pinpoint the best assets for that mission – adding that it appears a dedicated Air Force fleet as envisioned likely would not be the best option.
The Pentagon has maintained that it never put any pressure on the Air Force to buy the Chinook. Healy’s comments are not endorsed by the Air Force, but the service is quick to say it has met the requirements for CSAR-X selection and the eventual contract award.
Photo: Boeing
