In WWII, the Korean War, and The Vietnam War, American and allied flyers could count on submarines and sea planes to pick them up, and after rotary wing assets picked up the mission as well. Off Korea and Vietnam, up to the coastline, the American Navy owned the water. We could get close to do Combat Search and Rescue, AKA CSAR.

We had a lot of assets, both multi-mission and dedicated platforms. Should war in the coming years appear west of the International Date Line, we will not have that luxury.

We have very few and very large submarines who have other missions of higher priority … even if they weren’t constrained by the very real limitations below the surface. Rotary wing assets on our surface ships are rather short ranged, slow, and few in number.

What are our options besides watching as our men and women die of dehydration, drowning, or are picked up by hostile power’s maritime militia?

The answer is simple and is in production by an ally who already buys a lot of military equipment from the USA.

[Why aren’t gameplanners at the Pentagon doing this kind of analysis? Or are they, but just getting ignored by brass and congressional appropriators? Read the whole essay, as CDR Salamander has a lot of comparative data on the options and demonstrates how this one option could save a lot of lives, and on the relative cheap, too. — Ed]