In his own words

BLOG: The John Young view

CSAR Aircraft Optional?

You start with the premise ‘CSAR-X community’ is in ‘desperate need.’ Well, we have a lot of assets that can be used in rescue missions with planning, so I don’t necessarily just automatically rubber stamp the CSAR-X requirement. I don’t know that that community has to have its own set of assets for the occasional rescue mission. We have new things coming on line like V-22s and other things that can be pressed into service. When we do our rescue mission we’re going to do a come-as-you-are operation anyway, unless all the CSAR assets are pre-positioned for that.

CSAR-X Program Problems

I can’t deny that CSAR-X has a couple of the problems that were in [the tanker program], and I think they should have been caught sooner. It is to the credit of the team that they listened to. One team that banged the drum on this was the OSD independent team. They went in and said CSAR-X is not in a good position to be awarded right now. I just wish we’d all found that sooner, because we were marching up, as you know, to the potential for a November/December [2008] award. To postpone this in October is not optimal.