OK that last line made me laugh. But in all seriousness I do understand and agree...mostly. Every mission is different with a hundred different circumstances, so I would say it depends on the individual case and conditions to decide if it is necessary. Most often, probably not practical.
Buuuuut....i do want to try it in practice, if nothing else just for fun.
Were you involved with the dropping? Do you know what system they used (parachute, streamer, something else)? Any problems or procedures used to avoid catching the tail of the aircraft?
I didn't drop anything but friends did. They used streamers. The SAR organization wasn't quite "mentally ready" to try it out again after some previous real training drops in the 70s, which turned out to be both problematic and generally useless, so some folks went out and "practiced" privately.
Results were poor to say the least. Out of numerous drops on different days, only one item was ever recovered. In wooded areas, at least two items, even using streamers, ended up so high in the trees that no victim would ever be able to retrieve them.
Interest waned quickly once it was determined that most of our SAR here would be in mountainous densely forested land.
The item that was recovered successfully was equipped with a safety orange streamer and was dropped in white snow in an open field. Stuff dropped in regular non-winter colored areas never was recovered or, as mentioned above, ended up landing in places you wouldn't want someone going after it.
Obviously a heavy box of supplies would make it through brush in most cases, but then you have the problem of how to pack it so it doesn't disintegrate on impact. Water drops for example, would be a nightmare.
Having someone stuck where they were "located", but could not be extricated for days is pretty much unheard of around here, we have plenty of technical climbing and rescue folks who'll rig up ropes or whatever is needed if a helo can't get above victims. The most common winter retrievals are done with snowmobiles and maybe a litter for someone with lower extremity injuries, and summer it's ATVs and a litter. It's really rare someone ends up very far from a passable trail unless they take a long fall.
Even in cases of significant injury, usually the protocol is to have a properly equipped medical helo land in as close a clearing as possible and then have the mountain rescue folks extricate to that meadow or whatever.
The big killer here is exposure. One night out, most folks survive, two nights out at altitude things start to get iffy if they can't build or find shelter, three starts to be a death zone if not properly equipped for cold, even in summertime, so the need to drop any sort of supplies is nearly zero. We need to go in and get their butts out as quickly as possible. Ground teams will generally continue work overnight when aircraft are all grounded in the dark unless weather conditions are placing even properly equipped ground teams at significant risk.
A search for an aircraft a few years ago that iced up and eventually was found to have spun straight down into forested land was called off overnight multiple days in a row because the Sheriff felt the snowmobile crews were pushing it way too hard and he'd have a new search on his hands for a volunteer if they left folks out in what was essentially blizzard conditions and extremely cold temps.
When the sun came out a few days later, the ground team that found the wreckage did it by smell near the last known radar hits. The forest around the aircraft was completely covered in fuel. The aircraft had come apart in the spin and doused a large area of forest on its way down. The ground team smelled that before they found it.
I haven't heard a single story of needing an air drop of anything to survivors since I first started hanging around SAR folks here in 1991. Once they're located, they're never very far from the nearest passable ATV or snowmobile road, track, or trail. It's the finding part that is important. They've got about three nights out, or they start to die.
I would suggest that practice looking for a needle in a haystack from 500 AGL and getting really good at spotting things that don't look right, will serve far more useful than practicing air drops.
