Kevin Brooks wrote:
"Thomas Schoene" wrote in message
ink.net...
Granted
they may not have done as badly as press reports suggest, but these
wars showed that the idea odf the deep penetration striek by
helicopters independant of ground forces was probably not a viable
option.

That is one hell of a leap based upon the results encountered during a
single mission where the SEAD support was intentionally withheld. A
lot of green suiters (outside the aviation community) thought that
the emphasis on the deep attack mission was bit overdone, but to
condemn the entire concept as "not viable" based upon one mission?
That's a bit much.

As I've said in another post, it's not just one mission. Afghanistan
(especially Op ANACONDA) certainly cast some doubt on current attack helo
doctrine.

But I did sort of misdirect my comments here. I really should have said
that these ops suggested that Comanche wasn't going to offer enough
improvement in Army aviation's capability to perform these missions. As a
fairly large helo (smaller than Apache, but not that much smaller), Comanche
wasn't going to be dramatically less vulnerable to the sort of threats that
were actually being encountered. But it was going to be a lot more
expensive. Its main improvement for the performance of these missions seems
to have been in sensors, which surely can be retrofitted to Apache for less
money.


It's also hard to understand why a scout needs an armament that's
only slightly lighter than the attack helo it's supposedly scouting
for,

You think the cavalry scout helos are there only to operate in
support of the attack helos? Nope. Cavalry units can be tasked to
independently screen and guard at the division level;

Granted. But why do they need a unique helo for this? Can't a cavalry
aviation formation have attack helos the same way a cavalry ground formation
has tanks?

or why
you need a scout at all when the attack helos have potent
surveillance radars like Longbow.

So the attack helos can concentrate on their mission (killing bad
guys), while the cavalry scouts perform their mission (screen, guard,
reconnoiter, etc.).

In which case, the scouts don't need heavy armament. If you were going to
have a heavily armed scout, it seems like the Apache could have done that
job, too with the main differences being in crew training and doctrine
rather than the airframe. Given the shortcomings of the Kiowa Warrior, I
get the impression that Apache units have been pretty much self-scouting in
many cases anyway.

--
Tom Schoene Replace "invalid" with "net" to e-mail
"If brave men and women never died, there would be nothing
special about bravery." -- Andy Rooney (attributed)