Wait. The largest airforce in the world needs to hire “someone with a helicopter”? 
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Meanwhile at the Army…
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Manning cuts and what not…
That’s USAF speak for “we’d love Harrison Ford to use his wink wink”
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Wow. The world’s largest military aviation arm wants to hire someone to go recover their plane.
LeMay must be rolling in his grave.
On the way…
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Thing is, I know it’s probably going to be cheaper to hire someone than use AF assets.
Wouldn’t it be in enough pieces for a Chinnock to haul it out? I’m betting that they are not equipped to deal with the environmental impact.
Well knowing Lemay, he’s probably mad the drone hasn’t been nuked, the surrounding mountain firebombed, and then nuked, all on a precise schedule with strict grooming standards enforced.
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This may be closer to the truth than any of it. There are probably engineering and environmental cleanup firms that are far better equipped to deal with this very issue, not only that, they probably have a lot more practice at it. I retract my earlier statement. The AF is more geared toward removing things from existence than it is trying to reclaim something from destruction.
I just hope nobody goes souvenir-hunting at the crash site and risks getting radiation poisoning from the thorium in the lenses of the camera gear.
“Lose a drone, use a drone”, is what I say.
Humans Resist!
I agree…even though it sounds funny that they are requesting outside help, I’m betting that area (it is described as being in the Mt. Whitney area) is probably in the Inyo National Forest. Therefore, whatever recovery operation has to probably meet a pile full of environmental impact regulations. Having hiked the Mt. Whitney area several times, I can tell ya’…that is not going to be a friendly recovery scene. High altitude, really rugged stuff…and with the first snowfall probably only a few months away, they have their work cut out for them.
On top of that, let’s be honest, the military can often go to the gov’t and say “we have this unforeseen cost X here” and get the money to pay an outside group. They can’t just pull personnel out of thin air.
They may not have sufficient trained people to do something like this in a timely and cost effective manner anymore.
When I worked at an AFB years ago, I was often amazed at the jobs people in uniform would do. Sure, they CAN do it, but aren’t there other jobs that contractors and/or civvies can or should NOT do where their services would be better utilized? A lot of it was “this is so they know how to do it when deployed where there are limited contractors/civs”, yes, but some of it was real head-scratching territory.
In a case like this, I would bet there’s a good mix of highly specialized contractors and former military personnel who know their $#$^ and can get this done far better than a group of largely under 25-year olds.