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From: olorin@wam.umd.edu
Newsgroups: sci.military
Subject: Re: Helicopter resupply mission
Message-ID: <1990Nov21.223913.22989@cbnews.att.com>
Date: 21 Nov 90 22:39:13 GMT
References: <1990Nov19.001338.8426@cbnews.att.com>
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From: olorin@wam.umd.edu ()
In article <1990Nov19.001338.8426@cbnews.att.com> v064lnev@ubvmsd.cc.buffalo.edu (Zerxes Bhagalia) writes:
>There has been much talk lately of a resupply mission for the US embassy
>in Kuwait.  From what I hear, it would likely involve one or two totally
>unarmed helicopters, filled only with supplies, which would fly over the
>Kuwaiti border to the US embassy.
>It is anticipated, by many however, that if such a helicopter resupply
>mission were attempted, the Iraqi military forces currently occupying
>Kuwait, would try their _utmost_ to _destroy_ the units. 
>If such a mission was put into action.
>My question is this:  Who chooses who to operate the helicopters on such
>			a seemingly suicidal mission?  And on what basis
>			is the selection made?  If selected, are the
>			personel given the option to reject the mission?
>			Would selection be totally voluntary?

I would think that the pilots would be volunteers, both for the practical
reason that you would want them to be your best people doing their best,
and for the political reason that starting a war over the bodies of
impressed pilots would not look good.  You'd be surprised what you
can get people to volunteer for;  there's an excellent book by
James Leasor called _Green Beach_ that recounts a secret mission to
Normandy in WWII.  Seems the Allies wanted information on German radar
units in France, but the only people that knew enough about German
radar to be useful also knew too much about Allied radar to be captured.
So they sent their expert off on the Dieppe raid with a squad of ten
bodyguards, with orders to shoot him rather than allow him to be captured.
And yes, he volunteered in full knowledge of that.

Xerxes does bring up a question I've wondered about for a while.  Under
military law, are there any grounds on which an order can be refused because
of its suicidal (or stupid) nature?  Is there any point at which a 
soldier can say, "I'm not going to get myself and my men killed for 
no reason?"  Clearly, an officer can order you to do suicidally 
dangerous things ("you are going to cross that nice open field of fire
and take out that machine gun") but can he, for example, order you
on a kamikaze mission?  Or do you just refuse orders and hope you can
convince the court-martial that you were acting reasonably?

This is actually not really a sci.military question, but there is no
soc.military...

Laura Burchard