Combat Search and Rescue: A Mission Evolves

One of my longtime mil-pals called the other day to grouse about yet more delays in the USAF's neverending competition to award the new combat rescue chopper contract. The $15 billion contract for the CSAR-X (Combat Search and Rescue) bird should have been awarded by now, but won't be doled out until after the elections. Everyone who has a stake in this contract, I'm told, is getting more antsy than the finalists in a beauty pageant.

Which got me to thinking. Competitions aside, the real beauty, here, is that we as a nation are fully devoted to the concept of combat rescue. We really do not leave our troops behind. Even if we retrieve them solely to lay them to rest, we always bring them home. This devotion is one of the qualities that has distinguished our armed forces over the years.

How did this quality evolve? Let's turn back our collective memory a bit to World War II. Although precise figures on combat rescues from the Second World War have yet to be tallied (and likely never will be), military historians reckon that some 47,000 Allied personnel (downed pilots or prisoners of war) managed to escape or evade enemy capture. This number seems to imply that the United States, at least, entered World War II with a finely honed capacity for combat search and rescue (CSAR). Not so. When the war began, the U.S. military had a fragmented approach to CSAR. Policies and missions were left up to the individual commands. Much of the rescue mission was in fact self-rescue. If a service member became isolated behind enemy lines, his best shot at recovery was to evade capture and find his way back to enemy territory. We wanted our troops to return safely, but we did not have a dedicated rescue mission like we do now.

How, then, did modern CSAR evolve to the point that we keep it where it rightly belongs, on the front burner? The mission roots will surprise you. Hint: We didn't invent the concept. Tune in next week for the start of a new series on the evolution of Combat Search and Rescue. Until then, let us all continue to pray for the safety of our treasured troops.