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Cost-effective rescue options

• There is a very strong synergy to be gained from combining mobile damage control (DCS) surgery teams (those that can travel to the patient) with shorter aircraft alert times (e.g., being able to launch a recovery within one hour of notice rather than the current three).
• These synergies increase rapidly with decreasing alert times below one hour. Compared with a notional alert time of three hours, an alert time of 15 minutes would be more than twice as beneficial as an alert time of one hour. The expected survival rate would rise 1.5 percentage points, going from three hours' notice to one hour's notice and 3.4 percent going from three hours' notice to 15 minutes' notice.
• Under all sets of conditions considered, additional DCS teams are always initially preferred to additional aircraft.

The mission of rescuing injured personnel in Africa is uniquely challenging for a variety of reasons, including the limited scale yet widely distributed nature of U.S. Africa Command's (AFRICOM's) operations and the uncertain security conditions in much of the continent. This report identifies the most cost-effective options for improving rescue capabilities in AFRICOM's area of responsibility (AOR).

The researchers built a rescue model that accounts for seven factors: the costs of new rescue capabilities, the current and projected locations of medical treatment facilities in AFRICOM's AOR, the current and projected locations of deployed aircraft in Africa, the existing locations of airfields in Africa, the locations and numbers of U.S. personnel in Africa, the survival rates of injured personnel as a function of time and of medical care received, and the trends in injury occurrences in combat theaters. In addition to charting the optimal rescue paths out of Africa, the model calculates the marginal cost-effectiveness (in terms of survival rates) of investing in four separate rescue assets at various basing locations while instituting shorter aircraft alert times. The findings suggest that there is a very strong synergy to be gained from combining mobile surgical teams with shorter aircraft alert times. Under all sets of conditions considered, additional surgical teams are always initially preferred to additional aircraft. The researchers recommend that AFRICOM request additional mobile surgical teams and decrease aircraft alert times as much as possible.

• Chapter One

  Introduction

• Chapter Two

  Cost Analysis of Rescue Asset Options

• Chapter Three

  "Rescue Capability" Inputs

• Chapter Four

  "Personnel Injury" Inputs

• Chapter Five

  Rescue Model Outputs

• Chapter Six

  Recommendations