Michael,

A really inept reaction by someone to attempt to refute your story. Just the number of factual errors indicates no one with any direct experience wrote it. But, it gets worse. At least, no one is trying to take the MEDEVAC mission from the Army, only trying to get them to realize when the enemy stops respecting the Red Cross, it is an anachronism. The brave MEDEVAC crews deserve better.
This pales in comparison to the recent OSD recommendation to study disbanding the Pedros and moving them to the USMC or other service within SOCOM. A pure cannabalistic land grab under the guise of saving money, an attempt to save manpower and treasured programs in the USMC. In this case, they would certainly take the money/personnel , buy more expensive V-22s, leaving tomorrow's wounded to rely on unarmed MEDEVAC & "addtn'l duty" rescuers in "pick up game" ops after the dedicated rescue force was disbanded. This is the nature of inside the Pentagon these days, truly ugly.

Holy cow that is a poorly written piece of trash. If my boss had handed me this "issue" I would have at least put some decent English on it. As it stands, you should be offended by the intent. More importantly; the delivery - it's downright disrespectful.

After the first two paragraphs I had already pegged many problems.. I read so many inconsistancies (sp?) in that letter that it made me ill. How can they dictate who, what and when can go in and evac our wounded?? I fully understand the hot LZ situation, but arent our wounded pretty important? I could rant for hours.. I have followed this series of dispatches for quite some time. Now that I have read that, I am a little (a LOT) hot under the collar. I hope that whoever needs to realizes the disservice they are doing for our wounded. How many could have been saved in time of need had it not been for this.. BAD protocol? How many of MY Marine brothers and sisters would have survived? They make me more than sick to my stomach. I hope they can sleep at night. Safe and sound. Why should they care? They arent over there...

Mike,

Will read it in detail later, but what the hell is are ".240 caliber door weapons"?

I know they meant an M240G 7.62mm door gun, but What the hell? A junior 2nd Lt wouldn't make that mistake!

Semper fi, brother.

Typical bureaucratic writing in that they redefine the issue to the point that their actions are now justified. The issue, as I understand it, would arming med-evac helicopters saving lives by reducing response time (coordinating escorts, etc). They never answered that question, but instead switched the question to could Pedro's have done this one mission more successfully.

This is an embarrassingly illiterate letter to come out of JCS. D+ on grammar and spelling....and everyone knows not to take poorly written documents seriously. Someone has to go back to school. I recommend courses in grammar, spelling, ethics and honor.

There can be no military coup in the U.S., and Obama is counting on that even as he, as Commander-in-Ch ief of the military (and acting as the Muslim King of the U.S.), enforces Sharia law over the troops and assists the enemy in picking off and weakening the U.S. force. How will the U.S. defend itself with no able-bodied troops left?

The JCS should have been able to break out the casualties in areas served by Medevac and Pedro helos and compare their relative OOS rates. They did not. With a logical gap like that in a High School junior or senior paper I'd kick it back for a redo. Pretty thin gruel.

Ed Nutter's comment is dead on and would reveal differences in outcomes based upon the differing protocols in place. that .240 machine gun makes me think that is was written by a civilian employee. Remember, the previously posted Army letter was actually signed by a D.A/C. - a Department of the Army Civilian. Of course, what Nutter suggests would require actual work by someone just a little familiar with statistics and a spreadsheet. I just watched the CBS News report. It pretty much let the DCSOPS have the floor and his party line resembles this "JCS
" letter. There are some really smart young officers in DCSOPS who could do the analysis correctly. Lastly, the LZ did not sound hot. Did the Colonel determine that it was hot? For the pilots here, would it have made any difference if the BN CDR actual had gotten on the radio or had he done so? It is clear from your reports that he is a fine officer and leader.

I've been following this for some time. I can't believe this tripe the Army is pushing. It should be used to grow crops in Afghanistan's most arid regions 'cause it would surely make great fertilizer. To use the added weight of 600 lbs as an argument for arming the MEDEVAC helicopter is hogwash...the Air Force doesn't seem to be complaining about the extra weight. I, and I'm sure many others here, am having a hard time understanding why the Army is trying so hard to defend their position on this subject. I'm beginning to think that the Army doesn't want to admit it was wrong in their decisions or believe they know more about this subject than the upstart Air Force, the Marines or the British. I won't argue that having over 90% survivability is something to be proud of but it can most certainly be better. Keep up the good fight...hopeful ly someone in the Army chain of command will see the light.

Unless things have changed since I was down in RC-S helping CJMED, there aren't "lines". There are "cirles," which go out along a set radius of medical facilities and are also categorized by level of care available. The next mistake I see is, again from my 1 yr old dated knowledge, they also don't just follow "set lines/cirles," because air assets, as well as beds, are always in flux. Just as a MEDEVAC may differ in initial launch location due to many operational variables, so does the location they're sent. If a hospital is black (no beds), they'll be assigned a different destination than the "norm." I'm not a CJMed guy, but this is my experience in watching them work at the Regional Command command center.

Nice piece of writing. Come up with what you want the issue/question to be and then answer that one instead of what was really asked. Mikes issue was that the protocol/policy of using unarmed medevac which must have an armed escort needs to be changed, not that they didn't follow procedure.

Cover your buttocks all you want guys, but change the protocol to protect the troops!

Although that letter is b.s., they obviously spent a LOT of time researching all the various stats, preparing the letter, etc. - time which could have been better spent, in actually solving the problem!

Don't argue specific cases as then your sucked into arguments that you probably can't win. This should be a broad based fight using sound logic. Pedro's are armed and they work. Army policy is to paint red crosses on the aircraft so that they can't be armed. Get rid of the red cross and you can arm your aircraft Simple

Mike, Ive been following your dispatches since your embed with TF 1-6 Centaurs (Baqubah, Iraq) in 04-05 Great stuff! But honestly, that letter looks like a draft info paper or something to the sort, nothing more...especial ly given the fact that it hasn't been signed, or on any kind of letterhead. Not saying there isn't an issue...but you see with all the back and forth between you, JCS PAO and staffer, there is no one stepping up and claiming it for sure because of the fact it's more of a raw document probably meant for someone higher up to read (after editing and cleaning up the facts a bit)

I didn't check to see how many terms in the glossary weren't included in the main body of the document (I suspect more than one), since when I hit CHASE (lightly armed 'slick') I started looking for the case where CHASE was used. Since I could not find it, I assume CHASE is always used when ESCORT is not? So they always have a two-bird formation at minimum? That is an incomplete document without that explanation. Perhaps that info was meant to be excluded and the term was left in by mistake?

It seems to me that the Army is now resting their laurels on the fact that unarmed Dustoff holds 4 litters, while armed Pedros can supposedly only carry 2 litters (and Pedro23 has eloquently debunked that restrictive along with several others). And they deem this expected loss of capacity as unacceptable.

So, I wonder how many times Dustoff has actually had to carry more than 2 patients (since they are quoting statistics)? And if, as I suspect, a 4-litter Dustoff is minimally escorted by a 'slick' CHASE, how would sending two armed MEDEVAC birds capable of 4 litters total (not taking into account Pedro23's artful debunk) differ from the current capacity of one unarmed 4-litter Dustoff with either a lightly armed 0-litter 'slick' CHASE or a heavily armed 0-litter ESCORT? And wouldn't two armed Dustoffs have just that much more firepower to tackle any hot LZs? As I understand, the normal tactic is one bird lands at a time while the other provides covering fire. Imagine two armed MEDEVACs performing this like Pedro does. Has Pedro ever come up short of space?

Interesting observations here from a Dustoff Pilot:

http://www.michaelyon-online.com/thoughts-from-a-dustoff-pilot.htm

If we ever have came short of space it was due to leaving the Cat B/C patients at the lz and picking up the 5-8 Cat A's first. Then we would go back to pick up the rest.

Also the situtation wasn't a hot lz. During those times we get as much as possible in with our 3 medics giving treatment. It is packed and not ideal but it does work and is very messy. We do cycle but I'm not going to get into PEDRO's tactics.

I feel sorry for the one medic in the back of DUSTOFF's pick up bird. I have seen numerous 9-lines for 2-4 Cat A's with two patients being a double/single amp. I can only imagine how busy that person is trying their best to save all 4 patients and having the flying mechanic help. Either way DUSTOFF, PEDRO, and TRICKY have their hands tied one way or another.