The medium- to heavy-lift helicopter, from an army perspective--and all my air force friends will get cross when I say this--is a big flying truck that can take off vertically. That's how I see a helicopter. By being able to do that, it can assist in casualty evacuation in those unfortunate moments when we have more than one or two people, both domestically and internationally. It could have delivered sandbags or food supplies to those citizens who were cut off during the Manitoba floods. It could have assisted in the removal of large pieces of debris from roads, for example, during the ice storm. And when the roads where completely shut down by this layer of death glâce, we would have been able, perhaps, to have better positioned soldiers and generators than we actually were able to. Most of the time it was either by snowmobile or track vehicle. We had our Badger tanks there ripping down some of those pylons.
Internationally, of course, the less time you spend on the road when you don't have to, the better. The vertical resupply is an extraordinarily valuable instrument. It is the idea of being able to deposit a medical team in a remote village in Afghanistan, or wherever we're going next, without necessarily telegraphing the fact that you're not going, but coming back, because it's the coming back that's dangerous, because the bad guys have time to react after you've done your good work. Doing it by helicopter, you're plunking the team down, picking them up, and moving them to another village, without exposing those medical personnel to risk. The list of possible utilities goes on.
