Strategic Rescue: Vectoring Airpower Advocates to Embrace the Real Value of Personnel Recovery
Abstract
Few Airmen would dispute the intrinsic importance of rescuing comrades in distress. Stories of selfless efforts to recover downed personnel are rooted in US military lore, most strikingly in Southeast Asia and Somalia. This article suggests that although airpower advocates generally identify with the tactical rescue mission, they often fail to understand its inherent strategic value as part of the broader personnel recovery (PR) function. This needs to change. Current US policies clearly define the necessity for and strategic purpose of a concerted approach to rescuing people in physical distress, especially where America s security interests are at risk. These policies identify the beneficial effects that a nation with organic rescue capability creates within the international community. To fulfill this national policy, the Department of Defense (DOD) tasks the Air Force to employ dedicated rescue forces to perform global PR, which requires a holistic approach towards organizing, mobilizing, and conducting rescue responses that can systematically recover and then return all isolated personnel. Although some of these expectations resulted from top-down initiatives, we should note that PR professionals effectively climbed many bureaucratic walls to nudge the US government towards placing strategic emphasis on PR. Airpower advocates now have a strategic rescue capability that joins strategic attack; global reach; persistent intelligence, surveillance, and reconnaissance; and other airpower competencies to counter our adversaries' efforts to influence our way of life. It is up to these same advocates to maximize the emerging potential of what we might term "strategic PR."
Document Details
- Document Type
- Technical Report
- Publication Date
- Jan 01, 2011
- Accession Number
- ADA551079
Entities
People
- Chad Sterr
Organizations
- Air and Space Power Journal