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Military Aviation - Fixing the Fiasco
This post is in-line with the last post about Peace as the anomaly and the needs in restructuring our forces to meet the new threat. Our current Army aviation assets are designed to take on a large armored force, not complex operations in Urban terrain.
Recently, I posted about the cancellation of the Army's Commanche helicopter program. Below is the transcript of the briefing about it and some comments from comrades knowledgable about the briefing. I will edit the briefing to General Cody's (Deputy Chief of Staff for Operations) comments only. I also apologize for not posting the slides of Gen. Cody's brief.
It's long so don't begin it unless you have ten minutes to read it, and, if anyone wants the complete transcript, send me an email and I'll get it to you. If you are short on time, consider scrolling to the comments at the end of the briefing where I will put in some comments and details (into the process of acquisition in the Department of Defense) by people I know at the Pentagon who are commenting on General Cody's briefing.
First, let me state that I am not qualified to fly anything other than a Mahogany Five-Drawer. Second, the comments below the briefing are from senior Aviation Acquisition soldiers - not DoD civilians. If you ever wondered about DoD processes, this may shed some light on a very dark and mysterious area. Last, if you wondered about the kinds of General Officers that the Army Chief, Gen. Peter Schoomaker, has installed to change the Army from the Shinseki era, this may give you an idea. General Cody is one squared away soldier.
Briefing on the Restructure and Revitalization of Army Aviation
Presenter: Acting Secretary of the Army Les Brownlee
Monday, February 23, 2004 4:30 p.m. EST
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General Cody: It's first I've been introduced. Just going to clarify something. What I'd like to do first is introduce who's also with us: the Honorable Claude Bolton, who is our acquisition executive for the Army; Lieutenant General Steve Blum, who's the chief of the National Guard; Lieutenant General Ron Helmly, who's the chief of our Army Reserve; and Brigadier General E.J. Sinclair, who's the commanding general of Fort Rucker, our aviation training center. And he's also our aviation branch chief.
First off, we've had seven major studies in the last 25 years on Army aviation. It intensified after Task Force Hawk, and then we did another study just prior to 9/11[/01]. And that study drove us to some decisions as to retiring Vietnam-era aircraft, the Cobra, the Huey, the OH-58 A and C model aircraft, out of the National Guard. And that study also had us cascading some modern aircraft into the National Guard, at some numbers.
We've had a changing operational environment, and we've looked at it very carefully since 9/11. War does several things for you, but it also requires you to really focus your efforts and to study exactly what risks you thought you took and what -- how those risks actually play out on the battlefield, as you made them without a good crystal ball.
And the operational environment has changed. Comanche was built to go deep. It was built to be a low observable helicopter. It -- which it is. It was built to be a highly responsive reconnaissance aircraft with a 4 billion -- excuse me -- 4 million lines of code, of mission equipment package, so that that it could be the see-first, understand-first and the action agent to act first on the modern battlefield. And we're sure that it could do that.
But the operational environment has changed. We're seeing a proliferation of MANPADS, IR missile systems, more sophisticated air-defense systems, as well as, in the joint fires arena, we have now new types of capabilities to deal with the radar threat environment that 13 or 14 years ago we did not have in the joint force. And so that has changed.
We've also seen, in the war in Afghanistan, in the war in Iraq, a greater preponderance in synergy between our ground maneuver forces and our aviation forces. And that changed our operational dictum.
We also took a good look at the attrition of our aircraft and loss of lives that we've had since 9/11 in aircraft that have been shot down. And I won't get too much into that because of the classification. But we did look very hard, and we sent people down range. And it gets to the question about why just now? It took us quite a while to study every one of these tragic incidents so we fully understood what the real threat was and what we forecast the threat to be.
Reserve component missions. Because we're retiring their aircraft because they're not sustainable and they're 1970 technology aircraft, we were faced with two choices; either not cascade aircraft from the operational force that's being used more, which has about 44 aircraft we've attrited already, or shortening -- or making their formations smaller. At the same time, we're relying more and more on the National Guard and the Reserve component aviation forces. We have in Afghanistan right now, we have them in Iraq. They're part of our rotation base. Yet we have not adequately equipped them with helicopters and formations and their formations don't look like ours today. So we took a good look at that.
We looked at our replacement and recap, recapitalization requirements for our fleet. And then we also looked at the emerging unmanned aerial vehicle strategy for manned and unmanned teaming with our helicopter fleet, and what it means as we move to the FCS-equipped force in terms of the requirements for reconnaissance, surveillance and target acquisition.
And then we looked through the lens again of this, and the task force came back to us and said: Here's the capabilities you need to have for Army aviation.
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And so it was a capabilities-based study, not targeted towards Comanches in particular.
And what we had in the balance, when it was all said and done, the task force came back to us and said: We've got to deal and fix right now our aircraft survivability equipment across our fleet. We need to fully fund the Apache Block III Longbow. The [AH-64D] Longbow with full Block III capability gives us all the digital connectivity, the battlefield awareness, the battlefield situational understanding that we would get with Block I [RAH-66] Comanche. And oh, by the way, the fire-control radar on Longbow Block III is the same fire-control radar that Block I Comanche would have. So they recommended that.
They also recommended that we needed to continue to pursue retiring the [OH-58D] Kiowa Warrior aircraft, which was an interim reconnaissance aircraft, and buy a new reconnaissance aircraft.
They recommended buying 303 light utility aircraft to replace the Hueys and OH-58s in the Guard; recommended buying more Blackhawks. We have a Blackhawk buy in the current pres-bud [FY'05 President's Budget], and that number was about 100, and they recommended buying another 80 Blackhawks, which we could give to the National Guard as well as to replace the ones that we lost; buying more Chinooks -- 50 of them; buying 25 fixed-wing cargo; but also invest in common cockpits and fly-by-wire. Common cockpit will bring us closer to where the 160th Special Operations Aviation Regiment's aircraft are, so that we'll have our UH-60 Mikes that are coming and our CH-47 Foxtrots have the same cockpit, the same technology upgrade that we have in our special operations. And that will also proliferate on the battlefield more situational understanding and awareness in our assault and lift aircraft; and then invest in our aviation munitions for our rockets and for our Hellfire and the joint common missile; initiate RDT&E funds in some of the tech base that we have in Comanche for the Joint Multirole Helicopter for 2020, and then resource our new UAV strategy.
So that was in the balance, and then what we had in these years, 121 Comanches coming off the line, a Block I that was designed for low-observable.
It would have been a reconnaissance aircraft replacing the Kiowa Warriors. And it has great diagnostics; it has two-level maintenance. But, as the chief already explained to you, based upon the current operational environment we have, we would have to put more money into those aircraft to make them survivable through the full spectrum of what the study told us are the emerging employment of Army helicopters that we had.
So what this enables us to do -- and this is why we made the decision -- we went here and said we want to buy 800 new aircraft, fully recap 1,400 of our aircraft, fully buy and wire our fleet for aircraft survivability, and double the buy of our aircraft survivability B-kits, the jammers and the chaff and flare systems. It gives us 796 new aircraft; it fully fleshes out our multifunctional brigades that we're building for the Army, for the active and the Guard; enhances our Reserve components; and it moves us towards modularity, to where we're going....
I just want to touch on this just for a minute because it's kind of important to understand. Today we have about seven different formations in Army aviation depending upon what division, what corps or what National Guard division you're in. And the study came back to us and said if you want to fight Army aviation as part of the joint force in the air-ground regime that we anticipate to fight with the Future Combat System-equipped force, they recommended to us that it needs to be at the brigade level, it needs to be resourced with two attack battalions of 48 aircraft; a lift battalion of 30 aircraft; a general support battalion of eight command and control helicopters, 12 CH-47s, 12 medevac aircraft; a self-sustaining aircraft support battalion, with its own AVIM unit; and then the Class IV UAV unit.
When you lay that out -- and that would be for all our heavy divisions, a very similar design for our three light divisions, except here we would have the light reconnaissance aircraft vice the Apache Attack Helicopter -- you see that we've standardized our formations between the active component and the Guard component. When you lay that bill on the table, with the attrition aircraft we have and the retirement of over 880 Vietnam aircraft, we were short aircraft even with the buys we had in the current budget, not to mention the fact that we have to recap many of these aircraft based upon the operational tempo we have on them.
So we're moving to these formations. In fact, the 3rd Infantry Division, when it goes back to Operation Iraqi Freedom, it will go back with this aviation brigade. Its original aviation brigade only had 18 Apaches, 16 Black Hawks, did not have this and did not have this, and that was a heavy division design.
So that's where we're going. Next slide.
Now this is a complex chart, and I made it that way, because it's the only way I understand it. But when we looked at the missions areas of attack, reconnaissance, reconnaissance and surveillance with our UAVs, utility and cargo assault aircraft -- and I'll talk about fixed wing here in a second -- what's in green is what we had funded. We only had funded so many Longbows in Block I and II; did not have Block III funded. We were going to divest ourselves of the 605 Kiowa Warriors that we have, and we were going to buy Comanche and go out.
What we can do now is go to Block III and take our 501 Longbows, 284 between now and '11, to make full up Block III and place up the other residual 237 to bring us up to 501 Block III Longbows; divest ourselves of the Kiowa Warrior and purchase a new armed reconnaissance helicopter with the cast common cockpit, so it's digital connectivity, about 368 of them, and recap our A-model Apaches for the National Guard.
On the UAVs, right now, this is where we would have been: We've already got Hunter; we're working an early buy-out for the Shadow; we just started producing and procuring the Raven, which is the small UAV. And what we're able to do now is procure more UAVs, accelerate the extended-range and multipurpose UAVs so that we can fully work the manned and unmanned teaming with our helicopter fleet.
By the way, a Block III Longbow will give you level-four control of a UAV. In other words, what the UAV sees, the Longbow will see. If the Longbow pilot wants to take charge of the UAV package that's 50 miles out in front of him and drive the sensor package, he will be able to do that. And so that's how we're working and pulling transformational-type technology forward.
On the utility fleet, if we stayed where we were, we had the UH-60L, and we were going to buy about 101 in our program. This new program continues with the 101, but also buys another 80. It also buys 303 of this light utility helicopters to replace these aircraft, and then it converts -- some of our Ls will come to the Mike-model line, will have an A-to-A UH-60 recap, and it gets our program set up out here to 2020.
The CH-47, we had a new buy in here of 20, plus we had six that we'd already had funded, and this also allows us to accelerate that. But also, for both of these aircraft in here we fully funded common cockpit for both of these airframes as well as fly by wire so we can deal with the austere brownout conditions that our pilots have been encountering, so that they can better land the aircraft in brownout conditions.
And then when we looked at our fixed-wing fleet, we're already set up on our special electronic missions aircraft. We'll be moving from the RC-12 and RC-7 out to the aerial common sensor aircraft. That's a joint program. That's been on track.
What has not been on track is our cargo aircraft. Right now we have about 40 of the C-23A's and B's in the Reserves, and we're looking to replace that with a much more capable aircraft, about 25 of them, that we'll put in the National Guard to meet intra-theater lift requirements for the new modular formations we have, as well as for the homeland security, homeland defense missions that the Guard has.
So the bottom line is, 70% of the current fleet we have we'll be able to either upgrade, recapitalize and buy new, compared to trading off 121 Comanches. And that's what this whole program's about.
Someone's going to ask me how much money we're putting in UAVs. It's about $300 million.
Q: For what period?
Cody: During this period, '04 to '11. And I don't have the exact numbers, but we'll be putting a sizable amount of money into the joint multi-role helicopter and the Joint Vertical Lift technology.
Q: How does the UAV investment compare to what you were going to do before?
Cody: Much more.
Q: How much?
Cody: I don't have the figures here, but it's sizable. And of course, you know started this on emergency funding, the Raven; now we're going to putting this into our budget.
Q: If I could just clarify.
Cody: Go ahead.
Q: You mentioned 70% being upgraded or modernized versus putting that money into Apache -- into Comanche. But if you didn't put that money into Comanche, my understanding is you'd still have upgrade programs on other aircraft. So what would the comparable figure be?
Cody: Okay. Our total upgrades would have been 498, and now we move it to 801. Our current new buys would have been 107; we now move it to 903. And our total modifications will stay the same because those programs are ongoing. Go ahead.
Q: I'm sorry, that's number of platforms, not dollars?
Cody: That's platforms.
Q: The armed recon 368, is that a new development? And how is that different from Comanche?
Cody: We have several ideas of how we're going to approach that. How would I answer that, Mr. Bolton?
Bolton: As soon as you give me the requirement, we're going to put that on the street and let industry tell us which way to go.
Cody: That's how we're going to handle that.
Yes, ma'am?
Q: Comanche has had so many critics in the past suggest things like this, what is different now? You have to be missing some sort of capability in the future. Say 10 years from now, when you go ahead with this plan, it will be just as good, comparable to Comanche?
Cody: The chief told us to put this in the total context and come back with the capabilities, but also to be informed as to what we're going to do with our brigades as we move from a brigade-centric formation in our Army, more modular, more self-sustaining, that leverages joint fires and other joint forces. And as we looked at it, that's where we came up with the newer formation.
If you remember, Comanche was going to be in the (U of A?) with 12 aircraft. That was prior to 9/11 and prior to everything else that we did. We have since gone back and looked very, very hard at the aviation formation and came up with this new formation based upon how we're fighting. Also, there has been -- the way we're changing our brigade structure and the way we're moving to more joint fires, some of the things the Comanche was going to do for us can be done by other joint systems.
And when you lay all this out and you take a look at the health of Army aviation and where it's going to be, and the synergy between Army aviation and Army ground forces and the propensity for us to fight more joint, but also for our helicopters to be more in the close fight in support of our ground maneuver forces for killing, reconnaissance, surveillance and target acquisition, that's what changed. And we think we're going to get as much capability or more capability by going to this larger aviation force.
Go ahead in the back.
Q: Yeah. Are you -- are weaponized UAVs and stealthy UAVs part of this plan?
Cody: We will weaponize UAVs.
Q: But --
Cody: You had a question in the back. Wait.
Q: -- not stealth?
Q: Yeah, about the recon helicopter, the new one.
Cody: Yeah.
Q: Did Mr. Bolton say that you would be putting an RFP out, implying this is an entirely new program?
Cody: We will generate a requirements document for him, and then from that he will make a decision on how to go about getting us that helicopter.
Q: Does that imply that this is a new program altogether, a new goal?
Cody: This will be a new start, this will be a new start, this will be a new start.
Yes?
Q: Where do UAV weaponization efforts stand right now? I mean, you have some kits for the Hunter, but how soon will they be deployed?
Cody: I'll have to get back to you. I can't remember where we're at on it.
Yes?
Q: Sir, could you explain in lay terms what about the operational environment raised survivability concerns about the Comanche, and what about that aircraft left it susceptible to these issues?
Cody: Okay. What we're seeing on the battlefield is a proliferation of much more sophisticated missiles. What we're seeing on the battlefield is triple-A weapons systems, and where they're being employed is much more sophisticated in terms of target acquisition. If we were to put Comanche on the battlefield today, we would have to do some upgrades to deal with that.
Yes, go ahead.
Q: A couple quick factual questions. You mentioned at the beginning that you studied the shoot-downs in Iraq and Afghanistan. Could you tell us, without giving details of each one, how many were shot down? Could you tell us how much you've spent on Comanche so far, and could you tell us how short the reserve component is of aircraft?
Cody: Okay. We have spent about $6.9 billion on Comanche, most of that in our RDT&E account. We've had nine confirmed helicopters shot down with the loss of 32 lives. And I'll refer to Steve Blum or Ron Helmly on the Guard and Reserve questions. Steve?
Q: How many are short?
Blum: Well, it really depends. If we're going to look exactly like the Army, and we move to modularity, so that we have the exact same capability on the battlefield, whether we're an Army National Guard unit or an Army Reserve unit or an active Army unit --
Q: Could you move to the lectern?
Blum: Sure. As we move to modularity, which is exactly where we should go, so that all components of your United States Army have the exact same capabilities on the battlefield, so that they're interchangeable, plug-and-play parts, as we're using the Reserve component as an operational Reserve today and in the foreseeable future, this is an essential move for us.
So you can see that the organizations now, while they today don't match, they're not plug-and-play, they're not interoperable, and they're certainly not interchangeable, we insisted -- and the Army has come up with an organization that makes us look exactly alike, we'll be equipped exactly alike, and we'll be -- we will fight exactly like our active-duty counterparts, as soon as the same modules that you see here are resident in the Reserve component as they are in the active duty, and the same numbers apply.
So we will take the current fleet that we have, reapportion it against the new modularity model, and then this new initiative with Comanche will enable us to have modernized aircraft, new aircraft, relevant and ready aircraft for homeland defense and overseas.
Q: How much of an increase in aircraft numbers is that? How many more aircraft --
Blum: Well, we don't know until we apply what we have currently against this modularity force and then buy what we need and recapitalize what we have to....
Cody: It will not be a one-for-one of the 880 we're cascading out, because, as you know, a Black Hawk is much more capable than a UH-1.... So if you're looking for a one-to-one, it won't be that way. I don't have the absolute numbers. I used to have them. We'll get that to you. But there is a sizable amount of new acquisitions going to the National Guard.
Go ahead.
Q: General, can I just double-check some of the dollar figures? My understanding had been that about $8 billion had been spent. You're saying it's 6.9 (billion dollars)?
Cody: I saw that on TV. It's a bad number.
Q: The 6.9 [billion dollars] is the right number? The total price tag of the program, 39 billion --
Cody: Thirty-nine-point-something billion. And that would have been bought 650 Comanches.
Q: Sir, on the same -- following through on the numbers questions there, do you have a ballpark figure of what the cancellation costs might be for Comanche?
Cody: No, we don't know what the contract cancellations -- I'll ask Secretary Bolton to address that. They've got some windows, but we don't know what it will be. There's a process that has to go through that I'm not fully up to speed on.
Sir?
Bolton: For the termination costs, somewhere between 450 to about 680. We won't know the exact costs until I have a chance to put the proposal out to the two companies that are involved here.
Q: (Off mike.) -- asking is much higher than that, but that's clear, you're saying that 2 billion is over -- is way more than you would expect it to be?
Bolton: Two billion is not, if I look in the contract today, it is way over-estimated. So the number between 450 and 680 is a much better number. As I said, we'll negotiate that with the contractor over the next year.
Q: Bell and Boeing estimate that this would impact about 1,300 jobs, initially anyway, in five states. [**Sic! The Comanche team was Sikorsky and Boeing, and most of the affected employment will be in 4 states -- Florida, Connecticut, Arizona, and Pennsylvania, assuming that the cut isn't immediately ameliorated by plus-ups in BlackHawk, Chinook, and Apache. --SteveD] As the secretary and the chief said, though, can you talk about how this new plan may get those jobs back? For example --
Bolton: I think, as you see with what both the chief and secretary have said and General Cody, on the one hand we have 121 aircraft we could have bought over the next five years using the money that we're taking from the Comanche. On the other hand, you're buying almost 800 new vehicles, recapitalizing 1,400, and we're going right back to the same companies, because that is the aircraft industry industrial base. And so I've got to think that the jobs will be there. I have to leave that up to industry. I've already talked to industry today, talked to leadership of both Boeing and Sikorsky. I'll meet face to face with them again tomorrow, and the briefing that you're getting here today they will get on Thursday. And they will also receive a request for information from me that says how do we make this happen? Because my job is to take all of the boards that you've seen up here and what the chief and secretary have said and what the war fighter, the soldier needs, and make that a reality and to do it as quickly as possible. And the only way to do that is to get industry involved right away.
Q: Okay. How fast are you divesting yourself of the Kiowa Warrior and what is the timetable exactly for procuring the new -- (Inaudible.) --
Cody: We want to do this as quickly as we can. And again, it will be based upon the requirements, documentation that we send to the acquisition executive and then how quickly industry can react to build these new air frames for us to bridge this gap.
I'll take two more questions. Go ahead.
Q: Sir, the dollars -- in the '05 budget there's roughly about a billion-two for Comanche R&D. Roughly how much will be spent on '05 under this new plan?
Cody: We don't know until we work the termination costs, but clearly we're looking to take those dollars and put it into this plan.
Yes.
Q: Sir, how much will it cost to -- how much is your estimate for the Army reconnaissance program for the '04-to-'11 timeframe?
Cody: Let's just say that we've got some target values based upon these new starts that I talked to you about -- the 368, the 303 and the 25 -- and based upon our studies and everything, we have the right balance to be able to buy those aircraft fully up to the capabilities that we know we're going to write in our requirements documentation.
Q: All within that time period?
Cody: All within that time period.
Staff: One last question.
Cody: Yes.
Q: General, our affiliate in New Haven, Connecticut, wanted me to ask -- they were up covering Lieutenant-General Riggs back in September at a ribbon-cutting for the new Sikorsky facility, and the quote they sent along that they wanted someone here to respond to is, "If one ever questions the need for this aircraft, the events of the last two years make it clear we need this system now more than ever." When did it become apparent to you that the operational requirements changed?
Cody: For me -- in fact, I'm surprised you quoted him. I'm sure you could've quoted me a year ago. (Laughter.) And I think I'm the only general officer that's flown the Comanche. And I will tell you up front, and pass on to my friends at Boeing and Sikorsky that are on this team, they built a tremendous aircraft. It is the most flexible, most agile aircraft that we have produced in this country, and the people that built it ought to be very, very proud of it. Tremendous flying characteristics and leap-ahead technology that's going to help us as we move forward.
But the last six months in particular, as I looked at it, the weight of the requirements to fix Army aviation and the change in the operational environment balanced against the cost of the Comanche and the niche capabilities it brings to the table today as a Block I aircraft, and the niche capabilities it has as we move to the future force and what we can do on the other side to enhance all of Army aviation, I crossed that river about six months ago.
Q: How many of them actually exist?
(Cross talk.)
Cody: That's all I have for you. Thank you.
Q: How many Comanches actually exist? Sir, how many exist?
Cody: I think there's 2 that are operational.
.... (trails off)
Here are some extensive comments about the briefing, Army Aviation, and defense contractors from a friend of mine in Aviation Acquisition:
1. "The study also indicates that we should upgrade, modernize and rebuild our attack, utility and cargo helicopter fleets... as rapidly as possible." The AH-64D Apache Longbow's problem isn't that it is obsolescent or physically worn out, but that it is unreliable, hugely time consuming and lift-consuming to forward deploy, and poorly suited to the missions it is being asked to perform and the tactics being employed. The last problem is one of doctrine and tactics, not the aircraft itself. Attack helicopters should be directly attached to brigade-level forces, and be used as part of an integrated combined arms and joint force. They should not be used for independent deep attack missions except in the most desperate or unusual situations. This plan basically kills off an admittedly too-costly future to sustain the past -- specifically to keep the Apache program alive. Unfortunately, the Apache is a nightmare from a mission availability/systems integration standpoint, because when Hughes designed it 30-odd years ago, systems integration was incompletely understood, and Hughes had never designed a helicopter remotely as complex as the Apache. So, the real answers are not here -- mission availability and more relevant doctrine and tactics. The Army is solving a non-problem -- keeping Apache alive -- while ignoring real problems. This is especially true for the AH-64As, which are less capable and even less reliable than the D models. -- The Army utility and cargo fleet is getting rather elderly, and the Army Guard's is even worse off. The UH-60 fleet is coming due for replacement or zero-time remanufacturing of all but its latest blocks, and the entire CH-47 fleet (all of which has been extensively refurbished or remanufactured at least once by now) is getting truly elderly at the most basic structural level. The Navy decided to replace rather than remanufacture its H-60 variants, and perhaps the Army should do the same, which would perhaps create the possibility of transferring overhauled older BlackHawks to the National Guard. In the case of the CH-47, it is beginning to sound like the Army is going to buy a foreign built medium-lift helicopter, of course relabeled in a red-white-and-blue name (e.g. "Americopter") and championed by a big US defense prime (e.g., the politically well-connected Lockheed Martin). The fix is in, as has become evident in the small "nose under the tentflap" executive airlift and personnel recovery program buys. It is also likely that the Marine Corps will be forced to choose between an H-60 variant or the Americanized Eurocopter for any future new construction non-tilt-rotor purchases. The Joint Transport Rotorcraft is a pipe dream. The Army and Marine Corps requirements are substantially different, because their con ops are very different. The Marines need a true amphibious-ship-compatible VTOL with more payload and capacity than the V-22, while the Army needs even more payload and capacity (their goal is a C-130H equivalent), and they have not ruled out going to an ESTOL (extremely short take off and landing fixed wing aircraft) or something other than a true VTOL, which the Army should definitely consider, but is not compatible with Marine Corps requirements. Neither service has enough projected RD&A funding to develop and field sufficient numbers of a "clean-sheet" design.
2. "... and replace our light observation and scout/attack helicopters as rapidly as possible." Unless the Army plans to buy European or South African scout/attack helos, or build upon the USMC/Bell-Textron AH-1Z program, there is no way to replace light observation and scout/attack helicopters, rapidly or otherwise. The Joint Multi Role Helicopter is another paper aircraft that is decades away from fruition at best -- and the Marines' requirements remain substantially different from the Army's The OH-58Ds should be transferred to the Guard (along with older UH-60s) within the next two years to replace their worn out and obsolete helicopter fleet for homeland defense/SAR missions. Their sensor capabilities would be excellent for homeland defense and security, but the aircraft is too overweight and vulnerable to be effective in combat environments. The Guard could also use leased commercial utility helicopters (e.g., Bell 414s). Most of the missions performed by OH-58Ds can be performed by UAV/UCAVs and/or the very sensor-/comms- heavy AH-64Ds. The Apache Longbow can serve as this "battlefield quarterback" or "battle captain," although with developments in UAVs, the function can be performed from a hardened armored vehicle using UAVs as comms relays and sensor platforms.
3. "We also believe that the helicopter industry will benefit, both now and in the future, from these actions and programs." The only sense in which this is true is that the industry is going to have to adjust to the reality that the overall size of the Army helicopter fleet is going to shrink -- of necessity -- as mission requirements, fiscal constraints, and personnel limitations all come together to impose a "descoping" of manned rotary wing aviation in favor of lighter, cheaper, higher endurance rough/short field-capable, semi-autonomous fixed wing UAV/UCAVs. I am NOT saying elimination, just shrinkage from today's unaffordable levels. The sooner the industry adjusts to this the better. The future of the industry is clearly moving in the direction of consolidation. Only big, very broadly based defense primes with international partners will be able to survive in an environment where relatively few but very complex platforms are built, and are expected to be sustainable for decades to come. Thus, Boeing and Lockheed Martin (as a "partner" with Eurocopter) are going to be helicopter primes for the long haul, even as they are the primes for a diverse range of other defense programs for DoD. Bell and Sikorsky are simply too narrowly focused to stay alive and competitive between contracts. They will need to merge -- not with each other, but with broader defense primes (e.g., Raytheon, Northrop Grumman, General Dynamics) -- to survive at all. The future of DoD contracting will increasingly be a few very big, diverse prime/system integrators supported by large numbers of secondary and tertiary subcontractors and component suppliers. This is not to fault Bell or Sikorsky products or engineering -- but as businesses, they are increasingly anachronistic, and DoD simply cannot afford to keep them afloat indefinitely. Bell is already squeezing the last bit out of the AH-1/UH-1 family, and Sikorsky is increasingly being squeezed down to the H-60/S-70 family. Personally, I am not pleased that the Defense Department would even consider allowing domestic helicopter developer/manufacturers to fade in order to throw work to EU-subsidized, Franco-German dominated EHI (which in turn is interconnected with Eurocopter, a US competitor that has been selling to a host of US-proscribed buyers) -- and Lockheed Martin is little more than a front for the Europeans).
4. The Comanche should have been cancelled back in early 2002, instead of going into yet another (albeit more radical) management reshuffle/schedule stretch-out/RDT&E dollar infusion. By that point, it was evident that the program was going to be so late to deliver a producible, tested product (2012) that even if it managed to pass OT&E with flying colors based upon its original operational concept and requirements, it would be obsolescent as well as far too expensive. The RF threat never justified it, while the IR MANPADS threat and medium-caliber automatic cannon threat had grown far beyond what was envisioned when the Comanche first evolved out of the LHX multi-mission light helicopter family (back during the Cold War). The Comanche was always a threat to Apache, and vice versa. The Army Aviation budget was never big enough for both. When the Apache Longbow was funded back in the '90s, it should have been with the understanding that the trade-off was cancelling Comanche. Instead, the Army salami-sliced the programs, delaying both and driving up the costs of both.
5. Radar-guided SAMs have never been a major threat to scout/attack helicopters operated in accordance with US doctrine, and the push to make Comanche "stealthy" proved to be extremely costly, imposed serious constraints on more important functions (IR signature suppression, sensor effectiveness, weapons flexibility, structural complexity, etc.), and never reached the required levels of stealthiness. Today's Bell AH-1Z T700-powered 4-bladed rotor SuperCobra can provide nearly all of the performance and capabilities of the Comanche except maximum speed and RF signature reduction at a substantially lower cost, and would provide commonality with the USMC. But the Army refuses to admit that killing its Cobras (instead of transitioning them to the scout role) was a bad move. An Army that "never looks back" can never learn from its past mistakes, much less undo them.
6. There is no reason for the Army to persist in its multifunctional aviation brigade concept. It is an anachronism from the days of a corps-centric, forward-garrisoned army. The future must look towards incorporating multi-functional aviation squadrons into "units of action" or other independent, brigade-sized units designed to operate as part of a joint task force, not necessarily as part of a larger division/corps/field army-sized Army-green formation. This makes it important to "neck down" aviation to the minimum number of airframes. I would suggest two: one, an assault/utility helicopter with the ability to rapidly convert to a missile-firing (Hellfire/JCMM/APKWS) platform or a UAV/UCAV operator/manager platform in the field. This could be another derivative of the well-proven Sikorsky H-60/S-70 series, though I would not rule out competition from a Bell-Textron 414 derivative incorporating lessons learned from the Marines' UH-1Y program. The other would be a compact, scout/attack helicopter performing classic cavalry missions -- and this could very easily be the AH-1Z already being developed for the Marines or a higher-powered/higher payload, NOTAR designed, tandem-seat derivative of the former Boeing MD 530. Alternatively, the manned scout/attack function could be dispensed with and be performed by rough/short- field- capable UAV/UCAVs commanded from mobile ground systems and/or the assault/utility helo variant mentioned above.
7. The Guard needs fixed-wing light utility transports -- as well as helicopters and UAV/UCAVs. So does the Army Reserve. Why both? Because the Guard should be focused on the homeland security mission for the foreseeable future, and should not be deployed abroad. The Guard should be raised, trained, organized, and equipped for homeland defense -- augmenting border security forces and domestic protection of critical infrastructure, and carrying out terrorism, natural disaster, and civil disorder consequence management. The Guard should NOT have the same unit structures or TO&E as Active or Reserve forces. The Reserve should stand ready to deploy to fill gaps in the Active Army and provide a surge/contingency response capability which is especially important given the high and continuous ops tempo of the Active force. The Reserve's units need to be as interchangeable as possible with the Active force's. The Guard and Reserve should not be seen as interchangeable, nor should they be abused with constant mobilizations for use as "temporaries" to compensate for substantial, and substantially unacknowledged, active force shortages in deployable units and personnel.
March 01, 2004 • Permalink
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