Rescue Chopper Rumble

Last year, Boeing's Chinook won the contract to provide 141 rescue choppers to the Air Force. Losers Lockheed Martin and Sikorsky have cried foul ... and so have a number of journalists and pundits, including the folks at the Worldwide Standard as well as DANGER ROOM pal Bill Sweetman. They all say the Chinook is too big, too vulnerable and too expensive. Now the Pentagon is putting the contract up for bid again.

Personally, I think critics have missed the point ... but it's mostly the Air Force's fault. You see, Combat Search And Rescue -- CSAR -- used to be all about retrieving downed aircrew surrounded by enemy troops. And for that mission the Chinook might be too big and vulnerable, as I explained over at Military.com a few months back. But traditional CSAR missions are extremely rare: how many aircraft has the Air Force lost in combat in recent years? Five?

In fact, the new platform will perform many missions in addition to aircrew rescue. It will routinely haul humanitarian supplies, evacuate casualties and even transport passengers between forward bases -- often in austere, mountainous environments and at long ranges. National Defense explains best:

Gone are the days of lumbering jolly green giant helicopters plucking downed pilots from Asian jungles. Current conflicts have changed the environment, the adversaries and the stresses on Air Force rescue teams. Retrieving pilots is a fraction of the job description. Rescue teams recover stranded special operations forces, pick up civilian contractors in trouble, and retrieve weapons and equipment. “We did multiple dives into the Euphrates River to recover human remains,” said Lt. Col. Perry Johnson, commander of the 38th Rescue Squadron, a para-jumper unit attached to the 347th Rescue Wing, which is the Air Force’s only active-duty combat search and rescue wing.

Taking all this into consideration, the Chinook is a pretty good choice. It's capacious, powerful, stable and long-legged. The problem is that the Air Force decided to call the competition CSAR-X, as though Combat Search And Rescue for downed fighter pilots were still the sole mission. Dumb idea. That got all the pundits and journos thinking about daring rescues deep behind enemy lines, when they should be thinking about boring hops between remote mountain tops and shuttle flights transporting casualties to hospitals in addition to the occasional terrifying dash into Injun Country.

--Cross-posted at Ares