The Air Force’s flawed evaluation of bids for a lucrative aircraft contract put it under an unflattering spotlight this month after the Government Accountability Office scrutinized the award of a $35 billion deal to build new refueling tankers.

Perhaps other evaluations by that branch of the armed forces call for closer eyeballing, too.

U.S. Rep. Cathy McMorris Rodgers has done just that in a letter to Gen. Michael T. Moseley, who is on his way out as Air Force chief of staff. The Eastern Washington congresswoman wants a more detailed explanation – considerably more detailed – for why the Pentagon still wants to move an important helicopter unit away from Fairchild Air Force Base.

Late last summer, the fate of the 36th Rescue Flight seemed a little brighter. The Senate Appropriations Committee at that time signed off on a statement of support for the unit, which is assigned to Fairchild’s Survival School. In December the House requested a report on the Air Force’s search and rescue capabilities in the Pacific Northwest.

The report, which came out in May, included a rundown of Air Force installations in the region, plus an inventory of helicopters by location. But little of that was helpful. As McMorris noted, the report failed to explain how the role that has been filled for more than 30 years by the 36th Rescue Flight would be maintained efficiently if the four UH-N1 Hueys and support personnel are sent somewhere else.

The helicopters and their crews play a dual role at the Survival School: They participate in the training scenarios and, if trainees should become injured or lost in difficult terrain, the choppers go get them. But, as hundreds of hikers and hunters throughout the Inland Northwest have learned, the 36th Rescue Flight makes an additional and significant contribution to the region as a whole.

Twenty times a month, on average, a call comes in from somewhere between Seattle and Great Falls for the 36th’s services. Someone’s lost. Someone’s hurt. Someone needs to be found, rescued, transported quickly for medical treatment. The Pentagon has long recognized this kind of community service as an extension of the Air Force’s mission.

How to deploy military resources most efficiently – meeting mission requirements while being thrifty with taxpayer funds – is a reasonable concern for the Air Force. But how does that figure into the plans to redeploy the 36th Rescue Flight?

In her three-page letter to Moseley, McMorris Rodgers asked for specifics to back up the Pentagon’s intentions. She wants calculations that would determine how quickly and how economically rescue operations could be effected from the various bases where helicopters would be available. She wants to know, for example, what features the various aircraft have compared with the Fairchild-based Hueys.

Those are good questions. The region’s congressional delegation needs to continue the bipartisan approach it has shown on this issue in the past and insist on thoughtful, responsive answers.