S. 1951 — RESCUE Act of 2025

This section requires the Medical Service Corps of the Army to maintain a dedicated aeromedical evacuation capability—including personnel, training, doctrine, and aircraft specifically configured for aeromedical evacuation missions—effective 180 days after enactment of this Act. (Aeromedical evacuation entails the air transport of patients requiring specialized medical care from the point of injury to medical treatment facilities.) The section clarifies that (1) the Army aviation branch retains authority to organize, train, and equip aviation assets per operational requirements; and (2) the Army medical department, under the Surgeon General, retains authority for medical command and control, patient care, and clinical standards in aeromedical evacuation operations. It further directs the Secretary of the Army to maintain this capability (1) in alignment with the Surgeon General's sufficiency analysis; (2) consistent with Army medical evacuation doctrine and operational planning; and (3) in support of combatant commanders, contingency operations, civil authorities, chemical/biological/radiological/nuclear response, humanitarian assistance/disaster response, and garrison emergency medical operations at DOD installations. The section prohibits restructuring the capability into general-purpose aviation or dual-use configurations without prior notification to the congressional defense committees, accompanied by a formal risk assessment of Medical Service Corps readiness and a report based on the current Army Structure Message and Total Army Analysis (without proposing aircraft authorization changes); any force structure adjustments must account for operational medical requirements and joint force needs, with the Surgeon General retaining authority over medical force structure, staffing, clinical oversight, and doctrine. It also prohibits allocation changes inconsistent with these requirements without prior consultation with the Surgeon General, who must certify adequacy based on a sufficiency analysis. Nothing in the section prohibits augmenting military patient movement operations with combatant, commercial, or allied assets in contingencies or humanitarian operations, as determined necessary by the Secretary of Defense.