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Combat search and rescue is a vital capability that the Navy would be sorely pressed to lose. Going joint-leaving combat search and rescue to the Air Force or Special Operations Command-likely would create more problems than it would solve.
During the past ten years, the Navy's active-duty helicopter antisubmarine (HS) community has directed a large portion of training time and effort into developing and maintaining an organic combat-searchand-rescue (CSAR) capability within the carrier battle group. This effort has come at the expense of other primary mission areas within the helicopter forces and the carrier air wing. The Navy presently maintains both an active and reserve CSAR capability, leading one to ask whether present force structure provides any benefits or whether it should be altered. In light of the increased emphasis on jointness and the existence of CSAR capabilities within the other services, should the Navy be in the CSAR business at all?
The frequency of our involvement in low-intensity conflicts has risen dramatically. Given a national military strategy of engagement, logic dictates that the Department of Defense (DoD) would make a concerted effort to maintain CSAR capabilities; but this has not been the case.
No one will deny the validity of the mission or its tenets, but CSAR has suffered from neglect throughout DoD. As with other support missions, during each war since 1945 the U.S. military has scrambled to develop a CSAR capability only to let it atrophy quickly after the war. Cost undoubtedly has played a role in the lack of focus placed on CSAR; it is a difficult and dangerous mission. During Vietnam, the Navy lost one additional aircraft for every 1.4 successful rescues and one additional airman for every 1.8 successful rescues.1 Air Force CSAR statistics reflect similar costs. A post-war Air Force study revealed that each rescue attempt had cost the military more than $70,510 in 1973 dollars. What these statistics failed to reveal was that by the end of the war, success rates had improved dramatically as many of the lessons that had been recognized in Korea were relearned and reapplied in Vietnam.2 The lessons from these statistics should have been that inadequate equipment and doctrine and limited training greatly increase the dangers of CSAR. Instead, most simply...