The HH-60 Pave Hawk is the US Air Force's combat search and rescue helicopter: a Black Hawk rebuilt around the job of going in after somebody. PAVE is the Air Force's programme name for the electronics — terrain-following radar, FLIR, an automatic flight control system that can hold a hover in the dark — and the airframe adds a refuelling probe, a rescue hoist over the right door and a pair of gunners' windows.
What sets it apart from every other H-60 is the refuelling probe. Tanked from an HC-130, the Pave Hawk has no practical range limit, which is why it has spent four decades flying the long, slow, unglamorous missions: downed aircrew in Iraq and Serbia, medevac out of Afghan valleys, hurricane rescues over New Orleans and Houston. The crews and the pararescuemen in the back carry the callsign Jolly, inherited from the Jolly Green Giants that did the same work over Vietnam, and the motto that goes with it — that others may live.
The type is now being replaced by the HH-60W Jolly Green II, a purpose-built rescue helicopter with nearly twice the internal fuel, better armour and a new defensive suite, which reached squadrons in 2022. The Pave Hawks are being retired as it arrives, after a service life that began the year the first of them was delivered: 1982.
