| | | I know Michael Yon (MY) and I can tell you that our failures in the area of Medevac issues are near and dear to his heart.
I believe this really hit home to him when he watched a young soldier, who had suffered grievous injuries from an IED, had to wait over an hour for a Dust-off bird to arrive. Apparently, the delay was due to lack of AH-64 support that had been required at that time (still is?)... The soldier died, but likely could have survived had a Medevac been permitted to head for the soldier's AO without waiting for the Apache support.
Michael then became an advocate for stripping the Red Cross off of our Medevacs, and arming them so that they didn't have to wait for scarce Apache support as we see with the Air Force PJs (Pedros).. But a lot of institutional resistance on the part of the military to do that.. They wanted to adhere to that foolish Red Cross, despite the FACT that the Taliban couldn't give a rats ass about shooting at one of them.. They shot at everything and sending unarmed choppers into a hostile LZ was inane.
Btw, Michael didn't retire as SF. He served one tour with 10th Group and then ETS'd..
But he sure as hell spent a lot of time "downrange" as a civilian writer/photographer, strictly funded by donations, over the course of which time, he got to personally know a lot of the major US leadership in both Iraq and Afghanistan..
I have a lot of respect for him, as well as his opinion. He's also done some yeoman work on dispelling the "Comfort Women" issue related to WWII Japan.
Hawk |
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