Technology Hurdles Hamper Search-and-Rescue Missions.

• Author: Kennedy, Harold
• Position: United States

U.S. military services are moving to improve their ability to find and rescue personnel who find themselves lost behind enemy lines or in danger from natural disasters.

The recovery of captured, missing or isolated U.S. men and women is "a matter of the highest national priority," Robert L. Jones, deputy assistant secretary of defense for prisoner of war and missing personnel affairs, told a recent conference in Arlington, Va.

To strengthen the services' ability to accomplish that mission, the Pentagon, in 1999, transferred primary responsibility for personnel recovery from the Air Force to a new Joint Personnel Recovery Agency (JPRA), within the U.S. Joint Forces Command (USIFCOM).

JPRA, headquartered at Fort Belvoir, Va., represents one-stop shopping for personnel-recovery expertise," said Navy Vice Adm. Martin Mayer, deputy commander in chief of USJFCOM. JPRA's goals are to:

* Return personnel to friendly forces.

* Increase confidence in U.S. rescue abilities, thus boosting troops' morale and operational performance.

* Deny adversaries the opportunity to exploit the intelligence and propaganda value of captured U.S. personnel, which can damage national strategy.

Efforts to locate and recover isolated troops have evolved over decades, Mayer noted. During World War II, he explained, the United States and its allies created organizations in the European and Pacific theaters to help 47,000 downed pilots and prisoners of war (POWs) escape and evade enemy forces. Of the 1,690 U.S. aircraft shot down during the Korean War, the Air Force--using rescue helicopters for the first time--managed to recover 254 aircrew members.

Following the Korean experience, the Joint Chiefs assigned primary responsibility for escape and evasion to the Air Force. Other services were required to meet training and operational standards set by the Air Force. President Eisenhower established the "Code of Conduct," mandating that members of the armed services "liable for capture" receive specific training to help them withstand enemy interrogation and to explain their obligation to do so.

These changes seemed to help, Mayer indicated. During the Vietnam War, more than two thirds of the 4,120 who found themselves isolated within enemy territory were recovered. Three quarters of the rescues were accomplished within two hours, typically by CH-3 helicopters nicknamed "Jolly Green Giants," made by the Sikorsky Aircraft Corporation, of Stratford, Conn.

When the United States pulled out of Vietnam in 1973, the North Vietnamese released 591 U.S. POWs, some of whom had been held for years under harsh conditions. Many more were listed as missing in action (MIA). A total of 1,990 are still unaccounted for today. In fact, the number of MIAs from all U.S. conflicts since World War II exceeds 88,000.

The United States is still searching for those MIAs. Each year, remains-recovery teams--each one led by a board-certified anthropologist--excavate dozens of old crash and battle sites around the world. The teams catalog the finds, which are verified by the anthropologist. Then, they are transported to the U.S. Army Central Identification Laboratory, in Hawaii, for forensic analysis.

In 1998, forensic scientists at the laboratory were able to use a new technology called mitochondrial DNA to identify the Vietnam Unknown, buried in the Tomb of the Unknowns at Arlington National Cemetery, in...