Headquartered at Patrick Space Force Base, Florida, the 920th RQW is AFRC's premier combat search and rescue (CSAR) unit.

The wing consists of over 2,500 combat rescue Airmen, trained and equipped to locate and recover U.S. Armed Forces personnel during both peacetime and wartime military operations.

[3] The 920th RQW has initiated the retirement of its HH-60G Pave Hawk helicopters, replacing them with the HH-60W Jolly Green Giant II.

An average of eighty people Air Force-wide enter the 2-year CRO / PJ training program each year.

[4] The CRO / PJ team, along with enlisted Survival, Evasion, Resistance and Escape (SERE) experts, is collectively known as GUARDIAN ANGEL.

[10] Although this dispersal was not a problem when the entire wing was called to active service, mobilizing a single flying squadron and elements to support it proved difficult.

However, as this plan was entering its implementation phase, another partial mobilization occurred for the Cuban Missile Crisis, with the units being released on 22 November 1962.

[14][15] In one day in March 1993, the 301 RQS saved 93 elderly residents from rising flood waters at their Tampa area retirement community.

The same year, elements of the 39 RQW and 301 RQS mobilized to active duty under Presidential Selected Reserve Callup (PSRC) authority and forward deployed to Talil Air Base, Iraq in support of Operation Iraqi Freedom.

In 2005, the wing's HC-130 and HH-60 flight crews recorded more than 1,000 lives saved during disaster operations along the Louisiana, Mississippi, and Alabama Gulf Coast in the wake of Hurricane Katrina.

The 920 RQW's flight crews fly in weather conditions which often test man and machine or at night using night-vision goggle (NVG) technology.

On 7 August 2017 the 920 RQW retired its last "legacy" HC-130P/N COMBAT KING when it was flown to the 309th Aerospace Maintenance and Regeneration Group (309 AMARG) at Davis-Monthan AFB.

On 2 April 2020, the 920 RQW accepted delivery of its first HC-130J Hercules COMBAT KING II aircraft from the Lockheed Martin factory at Air Force Plant 6 in Marietta, Georgia.