Search and rescue: service teams seek more cooperation to save lives.

• Author: Kennedy, Harold

With U.S. forces heavily engaged in combat, peacekeeping and disaster-relief missions around the world, military search-and-rescue units are trying to figure out how to work more closely together while saving lives.

Although the Air Force has primary responsibility for combat search and rescue, all of the services have units that conduct life-saving missions. To be successful, they frequently have to cooperate with each other--and after 9/11 and a series of natural disasters at home--with state and local first-responders.

The problem is that all of these organizations operate differently, said Air Force Reserve Col. Steve Kirkpatrick, commander of the 920 Rescue Wing at Patrick Air Force Base, Fla.

"The Air Force has one way of doing things; the Army has another," he told a recent conference in Arlington, Va. The same is true of the Navy, Marines, Coast Guard and civilian emergency services. "We have to work on a standard game plan."

Search-and-rescuers from all of the services and some civilian agencies gathered at the conference, sponsored by the Institute for Defense and Government Advancement, to discuss common problems and possible solutions. High on their list of imperatives was improving their ability to conduct joint operations amid the often-frantic circumstances of life-saving missions.

Kirkpatrick cited two major, back-to-back events when multi-organizational cooperation was critical. The first occurred in June 2005 while the 920th was deployed to Afghanistan. "A Navy SEAL (sea, air and land) reconnaissance team was surprised and overwhelmed by a larger enemy force, and an MH-47 helicopter sent to rescue them was shot down," he recalled. All 16 on board the chopper--SEALs and Army special operations aviators--were killed. The entire recon team was missing.

What followed, Kirkpatrick said, was possibly the largest combat search-and-rescue operation since the end of the Vietnam War. HH-60 Pave Hawk helicopters searched the mountainous terrain for bodies and possible survivors, coordinating their efforts with coalition forces on the ground. Meanwhile, A-10 Warthog close-air support aircraft and AC-130 gun ships strafed enemy positions "to keep their heads down," he said.

The rescuers recovered all of the dead, including those from the helicopter and the recon team, but it wasn't easy. "The mountains had really big peaks, 15,000 to 20,000 feet high," Kirkpatrick said. "It was almost impossible for the HH-60s to work at that height."

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