One thing I think should be made clear, that I don't think the author spells out for people who just know war by book, is that enemies frequently don't respect that red cross. In fact, like a swinging radio antenna from a backpack, it is a target and tactical advantage to pin ambulatory vehicles - whether they be airborne or land-borne. Some of this probably has to do with some knowledge that foremost military institutions will prioritize evacuation of injured and casualties at a high threshold in the face of their own safety.
Interesting. Does medevac actually result in improving combat effectiveness directly? It seems that in a great-power war you rescue a fraction of combat personnel who will be injured and they will not return to combat any time soon.<p>The value then is entirely in believing that your guys have your back if you’re hurt, which I can imagine has a massive effect on morale. I suppose the existence of dedicated medevac also provides some constant reminder of humanity, which also has a similar effect plus the additional motivating factor of outrage when your med guys are hit.<p>Of course I could be entirely wrong and we could be frequently rescuing soldiers and putting them back into duty quickly. Curious to see what the numbers say.
When reading pieces like that, and watching a lot of documentaries on the First and Second World War I always am reminded of a quote my SO presented me once:<p>"In war, people who do not know each other kill each other on the orders of people who know each other but do not kill each other."<p>But on topic:
I just don't know what happened to the world and to political doctrine in the last 20 to 30 years. I just don't understand this world anymore.<p>I grew up near the iron curtain on the western side. Filled with propaganda about how the West (and especially the US) were the better system. How democracy made people free and how socialism put people behind walls and made them unfree.<p>I grew up in a system of socially responsible capitalism with the government and other institutions somewhat ensuring that the everybody participated in economic uplift.<p>After the Wall fell it seems to me the west did not habe to pretend anymore and more and more restraints fell. Everything became capitalized as well as we are allowed to do everything because we are the good guys seems to have become a thing (or more of that at least).<p>I can't understand killing civilians with drone strikes at weddings (or anywhere), waiting for the ambulance and others to help and then striking again. I don't understand pushing Russia even closer towards China. I don't understand the EU pulling refugee boats back into the Mediterranean to sink there.<p>Somehow I am only in my forties and the world doesn't make any sense to me anymore.
If I rememeber correctly, in Korea medevac helicopters were marked as per the international conventions (Geneva or Hague, not exactly sure) and they still took fire anyways.
Also, there's another issue that won't and can't be mitigated by any visual means, many aerial engagements on a peer to peer conflict happen outside of visual range and on that case any non visual IFF would have to be radio based and due to the inherent proximity of medevac missions to the forward line of contact would be very susceptible to electronic warfare. So I'd argue that red crosses on front line medevac helicopters aren't that important
> First, if a situation is so dangerous that a medevac cannot land, it will require more than helicopter-mounted medium machine guns. Instead, it calls for a full gunship escort.<p>Ltc kettles would disagree:<p><a href="https://www.armytimes.com/news/your-army/2019/01/23/lt-col-charles-kettles-vietnam-era-huey-pilot-and-medal-of-honor-recipient-has-died/" rel="nofollow">https://www.armytimes.com/news/your-army/2019/01/23/lt-col-c...</a>
If only Namir Noor-Eldeen insisted on strapping red cross to a random Van trying to rescue him<p><a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UaqY12VHFv4" rel="nofollow">https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UaqY12VHFv4</a><p><a href="https://www.theguardian.com/world/2010/apr/05/wikileaks-us-army-iraq-attack" rel="nofollow">https://www.theguardian.com/world/2010/apr/05/wikileaks-us-a...</a>
The link where the author cites citizens are asking for machine guns in medvac helicopters goes here: <a href="https://medevacmatters.org/" rel="nofollow">https://medevacmatters.org/</a><p>Most of those posts just seem to be arguing for better training?
Is the recommendation to replace the cross with machine guns figurative or literal? It doesn’t seem obvious why the cross needs to go if the gun is added?
> He felt that bringing a just war to a swift end justified almost any act.<p>Looking at recent history, I find myself agreeing more and more with him.<p>War is horrible. War always involves innocent people dying, even if it is just you 18 year old kids either forced or enticed to join the military. War creates casualties both physical and mental in the people that fight it. I would bet if you include mental health, the vast majority of people who were actually involved in combat, came away with some kind of long term consequence.<p>Yet at the same time, war can be a necessity. Take of example WWII. There was no way Hitler could have been stopped without war. At the same time there was a lot of damage to German civilians.<p>The truth is that there is no way you can fight a clean war.<p>Having all these talks about “rules of war” just puts lipstick on a pig and makes a queasy public more willing to go along.<p>If it worth killing people for to achieve you objective, then go do it, and try to make it as short as possible. If it is not, then don’t start a war.<p>But making War into a type of game (these people are ok to kill, these people are not, and lawyering over how connected something is to war), I actually find kind of sick, as if it was just a big game.
Advancement in medevaccing wounded within golden hour reduce body bags. Body bags on evening news end wars. Reduced casualties is how lopsided forever wars go on maintenance mode. For humanity's sake, show the inhumanity of war. Peer warfare is another discussion.
Rules of war are predominantly to protect the losing side. US troops in Middle East should allow enemy or neutral non-combatants to evacuate enemy wounded without a fight. In terms of what US should do to evacuate it's wounded, it's a utilitarian rather than moral decision based on what's less likely to sustain additional casualties and whether enemy forces are inclined to respect unarmed red cross vehicles/personal or use them as easy targets. Let's hope we don't live to see a conflict where US is at the mercy of rules of law to protect our own troops and civilians. I am also not advocating our asymmetric engagements, just pointing out that our primary protection there is our own military superiority.