An Apache helicopter crashed in the water off the coast of
Oman and the military is telling us that the 2-man crew was rescued by an
unmanned boat, a 24 ft Corsair. That’s
astounding! An unmanned boat rescued
downed aircrew who had been adrift for two hours. Here’s the headline.[1]
The promise of unmanned is finally being fulfilled!
We have no details, only sensationalistic headlines but,
presumably, the boat located the aircrew on its own, plotted a course, found
the crew, lifted the crew into the boat, applied emergency first aid as needed,
and returned the crew to safety.
Of course, unless the boat had capabilities I’ve never heard
of, it didn’t locate the crew, lift the crew into the boat, or apply emergency
first aid because unmanned boats can’t do any of that. Don’t get me wrong. Pulling up near the crew so that they could
climb aboard, unaided, see to their own first aid (were there any emergency
supplies on the boat? I doubt it), and
be transported out of the area is very helpful if no manned asset was available
but to call this a rescue by an unmanned boat is akin to saying that a sling on
a helicopter rescued a swimmer in the water.
The sling didn’t do anything. It
was just a tool.
My larger question is, given that we’re in a high intensity
war in the area, shouldn’t we have manned assets blanketing the area, including
dedicated search and rescue units? For
example, an SH-60 type helo traveling 170 mph could travel the length of the
strait in a half hour or so, depending on the start and end point and could
reach any specific point in less time than that, flying a straight line. Was there no manned ship, boat, or helo anywhere
in the strait? To rescue downed aircrew,
we pull out all the stops. All the stops
meant no manned assets? We’re not
talking about covering the entire Pacific Ocean. The area around the strait is pretty
small. The Navy’s presence in the area
seems abnormally sparse which may explain why we seem incapable of escorting
ships through the strait. Is this a war
we’re serious about or not? The Navy
doesn’t seem all that serious about it and this is just one more example.
____________________________
In First, 2 US Apache
Pilots Rescued by Drone Boat
https://www.newsmax.com/us/drone-boat-rescue-us-pilots/2026/06/09/id/1259057/
The Apache was reportedly downed by a Shaheed, so I suppose the fear is that the SH-60 coming in to rescue the crew gets taken out by a second Iranian drone, and now you have a cascading failure.
ReplyDeleteHaving said that, I concur with the overall point - that our assets appear to be deployed very sparsely, for whatever reason(s)