• Soldier's death sparks debate over arming medevacs
    94 replies, posted
[release]BAGRAM AIR FIELD, Afghanistan (AP) — It took a medevac unit 59 minutes to get U.S. Army Spec. Chazray Clark to a hospital in southern Afghanistan after receiving a call that a roadside bombing severed three of his limbs. Clark did not survive. "I need something, please. It hurts," Clark, a 24-year-old combat engineer from Detroit, can be heard saying on a videotape as he waited in the dark for the helicopter. But the rescue aircraft was unarmed, as are all Army medevacs. And the pre-dawn pickup zone in the Zhari district of Kandahar province was considered "hot," or dangerous, meaning the medevac could not swoop in for the pickup until another chopper with firepower arrived to provide cover. In Clark's case, the military says there was a delay in determining whether any armed escort helicopters already in the air could be diverted to the scene. It's unclear how long that lasted and whether it made a difference. Army officials said they could not disclose the time Clark died because of a policy not to reveal medical information about casualties. About 20 U.S. lawmakers have written to military officials inquiring about the Sept. 18, 2011 incident, which has revived a debate over whether Army medevac helicopters should have their own guns. "I feel like they should be armed. They're in war. Why aren't they armed? These young men and women are risking their lives," the soldier's mother, Keyko Davis-Clark, said by telephone from her home in Romulus, Michigan. Clark's mother, some medevac pilots and others who want to see the medevacs armed note that helicopters fly in pairs in Afghanistan. If both are armed, escorts wouldn't be needed and both could evacuate patients from the battlefield. That amounts to greater capacity, not less, they say, and there would be no waiting for escorts. In a Feb. 7 letter to a lawmaker, U.S. Gen. Martin Dempsey, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, said the U.S. Central Command, which oversees Afghanistan, would be directed to review guidelines on the use of escort aircraft. Army officials say that waiting for an escort is rare, and that installing machine guns, ammunition and soldiers to man them would add roughly 600 pounds to a medevac chopper. That extra weight would limit its ability to fly in some high-altitude areas of Afghanistan and reduce the number of patients who could be evacuated at a time. "They try to lighten the aircraft as much as they can. They take seats out. They do all kinds of stuff," said Maj. Gen. Richard Thomas, surgeon general of U.S. forces in Afghanistan. "Weight is their enemy. They need to get lift and you need to get speed." Unlike the Army medevacs, which are emblazoned with red crosses, the Air Force, Special Operations Command and the British fly search-and-rescue and medevac missions with armed aircraft. They do not have red crosses, which can be displayed only on unarmed aircraft, according to the Geneva Conventions. The Army's goal is to get the most critically injured troops, or Category A patients, to a medical facility within 60 minutes after someone on the battlefield calls for the rescue. Clark reached the hospital one minute within the goal. The Army says that last year 167 Category A missions took longer than 60 minutes, nine of them because the medevac was waiting for an air weapons team. None of these delays affected the outcome for the patient, according to the Army. "You rarely wait" for an escort," said Maj. Graham Bundy, a medevac commander from Sussex, Wisconsin, who is stationed at a hangar at Bagram Air Field that operates like a firehouse waiting for a casualty call. "They could be off doing something else and get re-tasked (to escort a medevac) and that could cause a delay. In six months, I can't think of an instance." The Army boasts that a service member wounded in Afghanistan currently stands a 92 percent chance of surviving — the best rate of any war. Clark was among the 8 percent who didn't. After the explosion, Clark's fellow soldiers applied tourniquets to stop his bleeding. They were hopeful that he might survive even though both of his legs and most of his left arm were severed in the blast. A videotape of the incident filmed by author Michael Yon shows Clark writhing in pain. Yon, who writes articles often critical of the military on his online magazine, was embedded with Clark's unit, the 1st Heavy Brigade Combat Team, 1st Infantry Division out of Fort Riley, Kansas. After concluding that no armed escort helicopters already in the air could be dispatched to the rescue, the Army summoned an armed Apache AH-64 helicopter, parked at Kandahar Air Field, to the scene along with the medevac. The medevac crew loaded Clark aboard in two minutes and whisked him to the hospital. Ms. Clark is convinced that her son, who leaves a wife and stepson, would still be alive had he gotten there sooner. "He might be an amputee with three prosthetic limbs, but he would be here," said Ms. Clark, who has been writing letters to the military and lawmakers. Among her questions: If the landing zone was in such a hot zone, why wasn't there already an armed helicopter providing air support for the soldiers on the ground? "On the video, it didn't seem like there was fighting going on," she said, questioning why an escort was needed at all. The Army says armed escorts are mandatory for hot pickup zones. The requirement for an armed escort when militants are merely in the area is based on a risk assessment by aviation commanders and troops on the ground. Pilots, crew and medics who fly Afghanistan in 78 medevacs have a sole mission of recovering the wounded. Add guns to their helicopters and they would become a fighting aircraft too, according to the Army, which reviewed the issue in 2008 and decided to keep the medevacs unarmed. U.S. military officials also say that door guns can't match the precision firepower unleashed by Apache helicopters, which often escort medevacs. Limiting collateral damage is critical in Afghanistan where the death of civilians and destruction of property has put the U.S.-led coalition force at odds with the Afghan people. "I just don't see the precision fire capability that this fight really requires, especially when you've got aircraft around that are specifically designed with Hellfire missiles, .30mm cannons with laser range finding," said Col. T.J. Jamison of Broken Arrow, Oklahoma, who commands the 82nd Combat Aviation Brigade based at Bagram. "You're not going to get that out of any door gun on the side of an aircraft." Critics of the policy, including Yon, say the Army's arguments for keeping medevacs unarmed are flawed. In Clark's case, had the medevac been armed, it could have had Clark airborne and flying to a hospital within 12 minutes of his unit calling for a medevac, Yon said. Also, armed HH-60G Pave Hawk helicopters equipped with door guns that were parked in Kandahar at the time could have picked up Clark and delivered him to a hospital in fewer than 35 minutes, he said. These helicopters often assist with medevac missions, but their primary mission is for personnel rescue and recovery. A medevac helicopter pilot flying in Afghanistan, who spoke on condition of anonymity because he feared repercussions from his superiors, challenged the Army's belief that weighing down medevacs with guns would result in fewer wounded troops being evacuated. The issue is not how many patients can fit in a helicopter, but how many patients the single medic aboard can treat at a time — and that is one, the pilot said. He said waiting a long time for an escort is not common — but one time is one too many.[/release] [url]http://news.yahoo.com/soldiers-death-sparks-debate-over-arming-medevacs-184034109.html[/url] I think they should be armed. The taliban has no remorse over shooting at medevacs, so why not arm it to defend themselves?
It's a Geneva convention thing, if you are marked with the red cross / crescent (on a vehicle) you are only allowed personal weapons. I do agree that the insurgents don't give 2 shits, but the amount of money and time that it'd take to upgrade all of the helicopters, then downgrade them again to comply with the Geneva Convention just wouldn't be worth it. Much easier to just have an escort.
Arming them would pretty much annul the Geneva Conventions, medical units need to be impartial, tend to the sick and wounded regardless of the side they're on, not kill the enemy.
medivacs already act as healing dropships, giving them an attack would be ridiculously imbalanced
[QUOTE=VistaPOWA;34691759]Arming them would pretty much annul the Geneva Conventions, medical units need to be impartial, tend to the sick and wounded regardless of the side they're on, not kill the enemy.[/QUOTE] all they'd have to do is take off the red cross.
[QUOTE=Lachz0r;34691764]medivacs already act as healing dropships, giving them an attack would be ridiculously imbalanced[/QUOTE] then we would have to nerf them right
The red cross symbol doesn;t mean shit to insurgents. Take it off, give them weapons (the weapons are bolt on and easy to fit so time won't be a problem)
[QUOTE=VistaPOWA;34691759]Arming them would pretty much annul the Geneva Conventions, medical units need to be impartial, tend to the sick and wounded regardless of the side they're on, not kill the enemy.[/QUOTE] That's good and all, except insurgents don't really give a shit if there's a red cross on the side of a helicopter or not.
I'm sure insurgents don't even know what the red cross symbolizes.
They made a good point about weight as well, though, needing to keep the medevacs light. Just task a couple of gunships to exclusively escort the medevac so they don't have to wait for one to be retasked.
[QUOTE=Sgt Doom;34691881]They made a good point about weight as well, though, needing to keep the medevacs light. Just task a couple of gunships to exclusively escort the medevac so they don't have to wait for one to be retasked.[/QUOTE] Or you could keep like 2 or 4 medevacs that are armed to go into "hot" zones in emergencies, and let the rest be unarmed for the weight.
[QUOTE=yawmwen;34691959]Or you could keep like 2 or 4 medevacs that are armed to go into "hot" zones in emergencies, and let the rest be unarmed for the weight.[/QUOTE]Eh, that too, but i'd figure it'd be far easier and cheaper to just assign permanent escorts.
[quote]"I need something, please. It hurts," Clark, a 24-year-old combat engineer from Detroit, can be heard saying on a videotape as he waited in the dark for the helicopter.[/quote] That line really made me sad.
[QUOTE=Sgt Doom;34691977]Eh, that too, but i'd figure it'd be far easier and cheaper to just assign permanent escorts.[/QUOTE] I don't know. There is probably a reason that they don't currently have that set up. I'm under the assumption that we need a lot of helicopters patrolling and doing whatever it is helicopters do(attack stuff, I guess). Assigning permanent escorts could hurt their operations by lowering the number of helicopters that are able to be out and attacking stuff at any one time.
It's either weaponry or a red cross. You can't have both on a single vehicle, that shit won't fly.
[QUOTE=Clavus;34692076]It's either weaponry or a red cross. You can't have both on a single vehicle, that shit won't fly.[/QUOTE] They know this. "Unlike the Army medevacs, which are emblazoned with red crosses, the Air Force, Special Operations Command and the British fly search-and-rescue and medevac missions with armed aircraft." They are arguing making the Army medevacs like Air Force medevacs, that don't have the red cross but carry guns.
[QUOTE=Clavus;34692076]It's either weaponry or a red cross. You can't have both on a single vehicle, that shit won't fly.[/QUOTE] So if I paint a cross on an apache it won't work anymore?
[QUOTE=Clavus;34692076]It's either weaponry or a red cross. You can't have both on a single vehicle, that shit won't fly.[/QUOTE] Well they're helicopters so technically yes that shit will fly. [editline]14th February 2012[/editline] Ninjaaaaaaa'd
[QUOTE=En-Guage V2;34692229]So if I paint a cross on an apache it won't work anymore?[/QUOTE] Yeah just like if you paint flames on it, it will go faster.
or if it's red :v:
[QUOTE=Meller Yeller;34692869]Yeah just like if you paint flames on it, it will go faster.[/QUOTE] I think they should paint it the color of the sky so they become invisible.
[QUOTE=RichyZ;34693319]geneva convention doesn't apply if the other side already breaks it[/QUOTE] No.
[QUOTE=yawmwen;34692121]They know this. "Unlike the Army medevacs, which are emblazoned with red crosses, the Air Force, Special Operations Command and the British fly search-and-rescue and medevac missions with armed aircraft." They are arguing making the Army medevacs like Air Force medevacs, that don't have the red cross but carry guns.[/QUOTE] It's common bloody sense in the Afghanistan conflict. While the aircraft being armed means it can't have the Red cross, not having the Red cross doesn't mean it can't still carry out CASEVAC missions. It being unarmed also means more danger to all parties involved.
[QUOTE=RichyZ;34693319]geneva convention doesn't apply if the other side already breaks it[/QUOTE] isn't that exactly the same logic the germans used for the soviets in WW2?
[QUOTE=Cloak Raider;34693492]isn't that exactly the same logic the germans used for the soviets in WW2?[/QUOTE] No, Germany had a regime based on ethnic cleansing and views the soviets as inferior race.
[QUOTE=Cloak Raider;34693492]isn't that exactly the same logic the germans used for the soviets in WW2?[/QUOTE] Don't mention the Eastern front and Geneva in the same sentence.
I think medivacs should be armed too. And while the whole "you don't shoot medics because they're just trying to save lives"-rule is quite gentlemanly, I doubt there was a whole lot of mercy involved with medics, since it was war or because you couldn't think clearly enough to differentiate.
[QUOTE=Hans-Gunther 3.;34693687]I think medivacs should be armed too. And while the whole "you don't shoot medics because they're just trying to save lives"-rule is quite gentlemanly, I doubt there was a whole lot of mercy involved with medics, since it was war or because you couldn't think clearly enough to differentiate.[/QUOTE] I think the only real argument against arming medevacs is that of armament adding additional weight, therefore reducing the amount of casualties that can be evacuated in a single run. the geneva convention hasn't really applied to the guerilla fighters we've fought in the last 3 wars.
How is this even a discussion? If you read the article it very clearly explains why they are not armed and why that makes sense for them. This was a rare occurance.
[QUOTE=I-the-gamer;34693797]How is this even a discussion? If you read the article it very clearly explains why they are not armed and why that makes sense for them. This was a rare occurance.[/QUOTE] however it doesn't explain why the USAF and Brits arm their medevacs, there must be an argument for that.
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