Michael's Dispatches

Nothing in these video's indicate a need for armed medevac helocopters.

On the contrary the presence of an actual attack helo with the medevac shows why arming them is a BAD idea. Do you really want the medevac to be out clearing the area first? Wasting fuel and attracting fire so a door gunner can lay suppressive fire? Or let the attack bird do that, and the medevac come in hard and fast, focused only on the wounded?

Do you really want to put the pilot in the position of delay of the evac, but provide fires that might save more lives on the ground? Because that is exactly what will happen in the hot zones you are so concerned about. If its really hot then EVERY weapon counts -- esp a door gunner with a great field of fire.

And do you trust the leadership to reserve armed helocopters to only medevac when airframes are scarce and missions are plentiful? Seriously? I know we never could keep the division's hands off our 'scout' cobras -- no matter how much doctrine says they belonged to the cav for recon, the tempation to use them on 'critical' combat missions was too much.

The concern for having fire support for the medevac is best solved by getting the escort choppers able to scramble as fast as the medevacs. And let the medevac's focus on the casualties, not the fight.

I have to agree with Mikey on this. I’ve flown three combat tours as a Dust-off command pilot and the last thing I would want is my back seaters looking out 100-300 meters searching for targets to light up and not looking down at the landing zone to help clear the aircraft through the unreal dust that we land in over there. Not to mention that I’ve have our bacon saved more than once by a back seater who say an IED in the dirt just before landing on it.

Two things to note about the video. First, though they had already called in their 9-line, yet several minutes later they are asked for the MIST report to add to the 9-line. This request often comes from the Medical Regulating Officer (MRO) who tasks the request out to the supporting aviation asset. At this point, the mission hasn’t even been approved, meaning it is delayed because the guy pushing assets wants more information. In other words, the bureaucracy of the process has the launch bogged down. The mission is requested by the ground guys, then passed to their battalion who enters it into MiRC chat, then it goes to the division where the MRO sits and decides who should take the mission, and where the patient will go. After that, it is sent to the aviation brigade and evaluated for risk and intelligence data by a battle captain and his staff to determine who should approve the risk of the mission. Once approved by an Aviation Branch LTC or COL, then do the the Dustoff or Pedro folks get clearance to launch. The second thing to notice is the continuous requests for AWT (Air Weapons Team) requesting support. Problem is, these assets are limited, so not always available. This is why medevac crews are delayed 99% of the time as the Aviation Branch leaders don’t want to send any UH-60 aircraft (armed or not) into a high risk area where they may be shot at without gunship cover to respond. This applies to Army UH-60s and CH-47s, not just Medevac. There are the two real issues in all of this. Red tape in mission launch approval slows missions and shortage of gunship support.

Dear Mr. You

This link will take you to the helicopter Sikorsky has developed already based on the same helicopter the US Army used in Afghanistan for medi-vac. They can be bought in the Battlehawk version or older UH-60L converted in the field.

http://tinyurl.com/bq8jtmg

Jack E. Hammond