by DAVID AXE
It was a mission that stretched the airmen to their absolute limits. Coalition troops were stranded on an Afghan mountain, some 9,000 feet above sea level, somewhere in the country’s north. An element of the 33rd Rescue Squadron, normally based in Kadena, Japan, was tapped for the rescue attempt. Flying from Bagram, outside Kabul, they would recover the troops in a pair of HH-60G Pave Hawk helicopters. In each armored Pave Hawk ride teams of highly trained combat medics. Door gunners scan for threats and suppress them with bullet-spewing mini-guns.
Problem is, the lavishly-equipped Pave Hawk is a less than stellar performer at altitude. Under-powered for its size and over-burdened with armor and weapons, the Pave Hawk can’t reach 9,000 feet under normal circumstances. In Afghanistan flat, low south, where other HH-60Gs are based, that’s not a problem. In the mountainous north, even routine rescues can pose huge challenges. To pluck the stranded troops to safety, the 33rd took extreme measures.
They removed all the aircraft’s armor and weapons. “Stripped to the bone,” is how one rescueman described it. The airman, a member of the Air Force’s specialist pararescue jumper community, requested his name not be printed. While the equipment removal allowed the Pave Hawk to climb to 9,000 feet, it did so un-protected from gunfire and rockets, and unable to shoot back in the event of an ambush.
“The Air Force is supposed to be the most capable at personnel recovery,” the anonymous rescue jumper lamented, using the Pentagon’s term-du-jour for rescue missions. “We have one single limiting factor — the aircraft.” He recalled the days before the HH-60G’s predecessor, the larger MH-53, was retired from service. That aircraft could reach 13,000 feet without removing its armor. But times have changed. So have the Air Force’s rescue squadrons and the Pentagon’s attitude towards the squadrons’ mission.
Read the rest at Offiziere.ch.
(Photo: David Axe)
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Well, good thing we retired the MH-53 in the midst of war in a mountainous country. Oh, but fielding a replacement CSAR bird is an AF priority. Too bad that won’t make a difference for years.
The Thunder Run has linked to this post in the blog post From the Front: 11/18/2009 News and Personal dispatches from the front and the home front.
The big decision to have a smaller replacement for the now retired MH-53 was all about cost. You can sustain 2-3 HH-60s for the price of a bigger helicopter. When the PowerPoint warriors saw that, it was a done deal. It is doubtful that any replacement of the HH-60 with anything that costs more to sustain in the annual budget will work. PowerPoint warriors in the Pauper USAF rule.
The battlestars are still around just not deploying (they are reserves still in the U.S.) they HH-60′s were supposed to be a stopgap until the air force got with V-22′s but with production problems (seemingly engless ones) they have not and the 60′s are about worn out. All branches of the services (including the Coast Guard) are fighting the age of the airframes and a programmed shortage of spare parts (more airframes ordered with fewer spares for a larger force, but less maintainability over the long run) My brother was a supply officer for naval aviation when the tsunami hit a few years ago and the Seahawk/Blackhawk force went through YEARS of spares and airframe life in 6 weeks flying in relief supply in Asia. This is the normal mode for expensive military items these days….fewer spares….a lot fewer.
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[...] routine rescues can pose huge challenges. For one mountain rescue, the 33rd Rescue Squadron had to strip all the weapons and armor from their aircraft. Luckily, they weren’t hit by enemy fire. If they had been [...]