Meanwhile, the assets the Air Force had acquired to take people to and from behind enemy lines were placed under SOF command (or CINCSOF—before Goldwater-Nichols, air rescue forces had been assigned to Military Airlift Command). Among these were various helicopters and the HC-130 command-and-control aircraft. This version of the Hercules transport provided a platform for an on-scene director to orchestrate the rescue. Vietnam-era MH-53 Jolly Green Giant helicopters were now called PAVE LOW IIIs, and equipped with devices that permitted low-altitude flight at night. Later, a newer and smaller rescue helicopter was introduced for the SOF, the MH-60G Pave Hawk; it was also equipped for flying at treetop level at night. Though PJs were disappearing, new enlisted crews, called “Special Tactics Personnel,” were being trained to ride the SOF-penetrating helicopters. STPs performed the same functions as Vietnam-era PJs, and trained just as hard.

The monkey wrench in the works was the change in command lines that accompanied the 1983 changeover. The new SOF airmen now worked for an Army colonel whose primary focus was on glamorous missions behind enemy lines. He wanted his “air force” available to support his missions behind enemy lines and not tied up chasing after downed aircrews.

Some basic presuppositions made matters even worse: In their own private view, special forces fight alone, in isolation from other land, sea, air, and space forces. Therefore, for the most part SOF airmen trained for terrain-hugging night flights, which was considered the safest way to enter enemy airspace. In consequence, they felt they were ill-trained to conduct air rescue operations in daylight.

During the Gulf War, as it turned out, SOF airmen operating in Kuwait and southeastern Iraq61 owed their survival in enemy airspace, not to their night training, but to the grounding of Iraqi fighters by Coalition airpower and to the vastness of the desert, which was so large and inhospitable that Iraqi air defense forces could not cover all of it. And when Iraqi ground forces did locate Special Operations units, these units as often as not had to be picked up and returned to safety during daylight hours—SOF bias notwithstanding.