Personnel Recovery

The contemporary operating environment and recent increases in asymmetric tactics to counter the conventional military superiority of the U.S. presents significant operational challenges. Recovery forces are vulnerable conducting personnel recovery because the situation, not the military, dictates the terms of engagement. Thus, the central research question is: Given a report of the physical location of an evader, is the military using the most rational decision-making model to offset the predictable nature of traditional recovery activities? As a flexible and adaptive strategic decision-making tool, game theory offers a logical way to graphically represent and compare all strategy combinations in order to test the rationality of current recovery doctrine. After evaluating the generalized motives and capabilities of seven types of adversaries, in six cases the strategic costs of not recovering an evader outweighed the tactical costs of predictability. Deploying recovery assets is, more often than not, the optimal choice based on adversarial capabilities, ideology, motivation, and strategy. With a potentially devastating strategic vulnerability to hostage exploitation aimed at its legitimacy, credibility, and public will, the U.S. can ill afford not to recover those forced to evade. In this strategic context, the military's decision-making process with regard to personnel recovery is completely rational.