Pave Low.
The men and aircraft also showed the larger utilitarian value of the aircraft as, over the years, they were called out many times to provide natural disaster and humanitarian relief from Africa to New Orleans, Louisiana..
That concept was validated in operations in Panama, Kuwait, Iraq, Serbia, Afghanistan, and many more smaller and quieter operations in between.
Foreseeing an ever-dangerous world, they harnessed those aircraft to a series of evolving new technologies that vastly improved the aircraft by giving them the ability to traverse airspace in any weather conditions, day and night, and to avoid enemy threats.
However, a cadre of dedicated combat aviators and commanders felt that the aircraft and community of Airmen had much more to give.
After that conflict, those aircraft and men were returned to peacetime locations and duties, and much was forgotten of those dangerous times and missions.
In accomplishing all of that, they also trained a whole generation of men who learned of combat along the Ho Chi Minh Trail in Laos and at other places like Quang Tri, South Vietnam
Son Tay, North Vietnam; and Koh Tang Island, Cambodia.
There they proved the efficacy of the aircraft for dangerous rescue missions, for the initiation of a whole new generation of developing avionics and navigation technology, for providing challenging direct support to small special forces teams and indigenous forces inserted behind enemy lines, and for a myriad of other things that heavy-lift Helicopters could be assigned to do.
Conceptualized, built, and designated for simpler missions, they were immediately swept up into the long war in Southeast Asia.
The aircraft themselves were revolutionary combinations of new, more powerful turbine engines with rotarywing aircraft to produce vastly increased lifting power.
But it was not always so.
It, perhaps more than any other aircraft, allowed the AFSOC to realize its purpose.
However, the single aircraft that, in its day, has best epitomized that role is the Pave Low helicopter. a step ahead in a changing world, delivering special operations power anytime, anywhere."1 AFSOC controls a mixed fleet of both rotaryand fixed-wing aircraft to facilitate the fulfillment of that mission. . .
Those aircraft and Airmen were assigned to the US Air Force Special Operations Command (AFSOC), "America\'s specialized airpower .
It is the classic combination of men and machine.
That machine is the end result of the evolution of state-of-the-art avionics, communication, and navigation equipment crewed by highly motivated, enthusiastic, and smart young operators well steeped in the principles, heritage, and credo of special operations.
It is a helicopter called the MH-53J/M.
But the conjure is real.
It is a powerful image-a conjure, if you will-that strikes fear into any enemy of the United States.
Mission complete, they just as quickly reassemble, reboard the aircraft, and then disappear into the consuming darkness.
Heavily armed, they quickly set up to collect intelligence, kill enemy troops, rescue downed or isolated friendly personnel, or otherwise conduct a direct action mission.
Earnest men of determination spew forth from it.
The rumble becomes a presence, a large helicopter that settles onto the ground amidst the deep darkness.
The term itself generates an image: a dark, wispy night; a low, pulsating rumble approaching from the distance.
Pave Low
