Originally Posted by
General Dogsbody
It would appear an overly complex mission to recover one individual 200nm from friendly territory, one would assume given the scale of the air campaign that the USAF would have CSAR assets in theatre that are available for exactly this mission, they would be normally be from the Air Force 24th Special Tactics Squadron and utilise MC-130's and HH-60's with significant air support.
How planner's came up with using a desert strip to land to C-130's and assemble and fly 4 MH-6's to recover a downed pilot with the use of Delta force or DevGru seams far fetched, the fact they had C-295's on standby as a contingency adds complexity that would to the untrained eye appear to point to a mission that had been in the works for a significant amount of time
A successful mission, and even that gives birth to either a conspiracy theory or arm chair quarterbacking. You mentioned untrained eye, do you have a background in CSAR?