Integrating Unmanned Aerial Vehicles with Current Combat Search and Rescue Doctrine

The events of September 11, 2001 brought home to the United States (U.S.) the realities of the Post Cold War World. With the realization that our Republic's armed forces are fighting a new type of enemy came a demand that the United States military defeat this new threat using every tool in our arsenal.1 The use of United States Air Force Predator Unmanned Aerial Vehicles (UAVs) and externally carried Hellfire anti-armor missiles against selected Taliban and al Qaeda targets was the first modern-day UAVs to do so in combat.2 This use of UAVs in a direct combat role, as opposed to their traditional Reconnaissance, Surveillance and Target Acquisition (RSTA) role, led me to the idea of using UAVs for other non-traditional roles in combat. As an Army UH-60 Black Hawk helicopter pilot, Combat Search and Rescue (CSAR) is an integral part of our Army Aviation mission. This is also true among the other services' rotary-wing and fixed-wing communities. A common problem among all the services, particularly the Air Force, is the limited amount of resources and manpower that are devoted to the CSAR mission. Under the current force structure, exactly 105 HH-60G Pave Hawks in the Air Combat Command inventory are too few to perform the potential number of missions required to support current operations.3 The rescues of Lieutenant Colonel Iceal Hambleton in Vietnam and Captain Scott O'Grady in Bosnia illustrate the difficulty associated with CSAR operations on the modern battlefield.