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Helicopter reconnaissance is a dangerous mission. Jet aircraft use high speed or high altitude to avoid ground fire, helicopters use luck. Reconnaissance helicopters often "find" targets by drawing fire, which is why they must be cheap. The US Army's multi-billion dollar RAH-66 Comanche helicopter program seeks to make a helicopter invisible, which it impossible. Stealth technology can reduce its radar image, but only for the front of the aircraft. Since reconnaissance involves looking for the enemy, it's impossible keep a helicopter pointed toward him. The Comanche has nearly the same side and bottom radar profile as the proven Cobra and Kiowa helicopters. It is also just as easy to see visually, which is the crude method most low-level AAA systems rely upon. Traditional eyeball aiming is how all the Apaches were shot down or damaged in both Afghanistan and Iraq. The Comanche will be quieter, but not quiet, and produce less heat, yet still enough for infra-red detection. When Congressmen questioned the need for multi-million dollar helicopters for reconnaissance, the Army added a gun and missiles and argued that the Comanche is a gunship too. However, the Apache is a more effective gunship, it has much more armament and more armor too. This is why former Defense Secretary William Perry cancelled the Comanche back in 1996, but the program hung on as a test platform and quietly slipped back into procurement plans. It's ludicrous to think that a helicopter is going to sneak up on a camouflaged enemy. If an enemy is not moving and covers his infra-red signature, a Comanche will have to come within 100 meters to find him. A smart enemy will wait until he's that close before letting loose a volley, which is what happened to dozens of Apaches in Afghanistan and Iraq. A serious enemy will dispose of a $60 million-dollar gold-plated Comanche as easily as older Kiowa and Cobra helicopters. Actually, Comanches will prove more vulnerable since they plan to carry Hellfire missiles inside their fuselage to limit radar signature. Bullets have exploded Hellfires mounted on the Apaches stub wings causing damage, but an internal explosion will doom a Comanche. The US Army doesn't have billions of dollars to waste on this target drone, it should just upgrade the Kiowa and Cobras, or modify some Apaches into RAH-64s. Army tacticians are struggling with the employment of light armored vehicles in the offense. No one has suggested they should have "stealth technology" so the enemy can't see them because the idea is absurd. However, the Comanche will have even less armor protection as it floats into enemy territory, yet the Army accepts the idea that the Comanche will have an "Indian ghost shirt" to protect it from harm. The Comanche is not needed to maintain a helicopter industrial base because the Army needs to upgrade all its UH-60As and CH-47Ds, or buy the new version of the CH-53E heavy lift helicopter (dubbed the CH-53X at right, which can easily lift 28,000 lbs) This proven helicopter is already used by the US Marine Corps to rapidly move equipment and supplies around the battlefield. America's leading defense expert, George C. Wilson, listed the Comanche as the Pentagon's #1 Turkey in a November 15, 2003 commentary in the National Journal. He noted: The Pentagon's Selected
Acquisition Reports for June 30, 2002, and for June 30, 2003, the latest one
available, show that the Comanche's cost jumped from $39 million apiece to $59
million in only one year -- a 51 percent increase that includes research costs.
Part of the reason for the giant jump is the Army's decision to buy fewer
aircraft in hopes of holding down the total cost of the Comanche program. But
cutting quantity cancels out the savings that would come from large-scale
production at the factory. The Army has plenty of firepower, but is lacks the ability to rapidly supply forward combat forces and move them rapidly in-theater. The first step toward a 21st Century Army is the formation of helicopter transport brigades with 54 new CH-53X heavy lift helicopters each. These helicopters could quickly fly combat vehicles planned for the new "medium weight" brigades over mountains and rivers, and support their rapid deployment in theater, like from Germany to Albania. They could also support air landed units by hauling supplies from ships off-shore, and speed supplies to armored units that outrun their supplies lines, as happened during the invasion of Iraq. Buying 400 CH-53E helicopters would require billions of dollars, but the money is available; in the Comanche budget, which now devours a billion dollars a year and produces nothing. Carlton Meyer editorG2mil@Gmail.com Letters Dump the Comanche Will Sloan A Joint Helicopter in Essential
The Secretary of Defense is in the process of transforming the US armed
forces, as the overall mission of the US armed forces has change from facing
a large similarly-armed force from a large industrialized county to facing
aggressions from a smaller second- or third-world country, and from
non-affiliated aggressors. There is also the current round of Base
Realignment and Closure to consider, and some of its criteria for joint sitting of services at a single base. MD500s are ideal for Recon You forgot to mention the MD500 Littlebird. We absolutely do not need any more OH58Ds, they're so slow and underpowered its pathetic. MD500's are well proven by SOCOM, can be outfitted with all the sensors/weapons of the OH58D and still be able to keep up with Blackhawks on Air Assaults (which the OH58 can not). MD500s have a very low maint/flight hour ratio and are more robust because of no hydraulics. They are also a very small target to try and shoot down. That the Army chose the OH58 over the OH6 (as the MD500s earlier version was called) in spite of everything pilots and program managers said says a lot about the acquisition program. I don't know what an MH53X costs, but at $59 million for each Comanche, you probably have enough to buy an MH53X and still have enough left over to buy a couple of MD500s. Reid High Tech vs Real Tech I am amazed that the military continues to dismantle really effective weapon systems in favor of brilliantly incompetent replacements. The Comanche has no hope of surviving in the battlefield however, many hotshot pilots who relish the privilege of flying the most advanced helicopter on the planet will defend its deployment. This is preaching to the choir since you already share this point of view but what really bothers me is the idea of replacing the A-10 with say, a F-16. The ongoing trend of trading what works for what looks cool is silly. I will admit that I am fascinated with things like the Comanche, the V-22, and the Raptor. However, I also recognize that "Rolls Royce" technology doesn't always translate into success on the theater of war. The A-10, and to a lesser extent the Apache, represent logical and cost effective combat weapon systems (when employed properly) that favored robust construction and utility over flash. This reminds me of how the Air Force ordered the destruction of the Saturn V, it's F1 engines, and it's plans in order to ensure the survival of it's (not NASA's) Space Shuttle. The Saturn V was the most reliable and most powerful rocket/launch vehicle ever made. It suffered no launch failures which no Launch vehicle can claim today. Not even Russia's Energia, the most powerful LV in operation today, can match it. The expense of launching a Saturn V is comparable to the Space Shuttle despite what NASA might say about reusability. The Space Shuttle certainly is more glamorous, but it spends most of its power lifting itself! I am impressed that you featured many lengthy letters that either
disagreed with you on some fronts, or in the case of one, rambled on about some
psuedo-patriotic nonsense. That's a great way to maintain some objectivity on
your site. A Better Jointhawk Very good editorial on the
JointHawk. Might be worthwhile to see about contacting Chuck Jarnot at Piasecki on making the Jointhawk
better by the Variable Torque Ducted Propeller configuration and stub lift
wings. If you're going to buy 1200, it makes sense to make them better from the
start. Wings might be removable for specific missions if they aren't far enough
back for clearance. Ed: The 1-12-04 issue of "Aviation Week" noted that fighting in Iraq has cost the US Army seven Apaches, three Black Hawks, seven Chinooks, and six Kiowas. The Army lost another Black Hawk, Kiowa, and Apache since that article went to press. In addition, the Army may scrap heavily damaged helicopters: four Apaches, nine Black Hawks and four Chinooks. Also this year outside of Iraq, the Army lost twelve Apaches and three Kiowas, and may scrap another four heavily damaged Apaches and three Black Hawks. The only replacements ordered with wartime supplemental funding are seven new Chinooks, to replace this total of 41 lost helicopters and another 24 likely to be scrapped. No new Kiowas can be purchased, while the dozen CH-60L Blackhawks and several "Longbow" Apaches in the FY2004 budget are not new buys, but upgrades/overhauls of older models. That same issue had an article about Army aviation plans which noted a shortage of Black Hawks. It revealed that the new expensive high-tech RAH-66 Comanche: "will be unable to communicate with other services or command-and-control aircraft since it will lack LINK-16, will have no active protection against anti-aircraft missiles and no blast wall between the two crewmen, meaning any hit in the cockpit, unlike the Apache, will likely disable or kill both. 'Will the Army risk a $47 million helicopter in a mission over Baghdad?' asked an Army program official. 'It's not likely, yet the Comanche is eating up 39% of the Army aviation budget. All the other small aviation programs have been killed.'" Keep in mind that the billions of dollars in funding the Army has devoted to the Comanche program this past decade has been for "development", not for procurement, and testing will continue for several more years at a cost of over one billion dollars annually.
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