Tom Clancy Drool-Fest Canceled
From the AP:
The Army has decided to cancel its Comanche helicopter program, a multibillion-dollar project to build a new-generation chopper for armed reconnaissance missions, officials said Monday.
The contractors for Comanche are Boeing Co. and Sikorsky Aircraft Corp.
With about $8 billion already invested in the program, and the production line not yet started, the cancellation is one of the largest in the history of the Army. It follows the Pentagon’s decision in 2002 to cancel the Crusader artillery program — against the wishes of Army leaders.
Pentagon officials said a public announcement was planned for Monday afternoon.
Smart move. The Commanche would have been a damn fine chopper — but the need for a costly, high-tech, lightly-armed, and stealthy scout chopper died with the successes of the Global Hawk and Predator UAVs.
And with this, you see several things:
–Why Rumsfeld is disliked, often, by the services in general.
–Why Army leaders, in particular, hate Rumsfeld.
–Why Transformation is necessary (despite the carping of many folks in uniform)
–Why it’s not always the uniformed folks who are right.
–Why it takes time to implement change. (Keep in mind that the Apache, designed to take hits, hasn’t done that well in Iraq, either.)
I think not. My money on this becoming another A-10-esque fiasco in 5-10 years. Aside form what a lot of brass tends to think, the UAV’s aren’t a complete replacement for men in aircraft by any stretch of the imagination.
As for “lightly-armed”, the Comanche was in the same firepower ballpark as the Apache with its external wings attached. It’s no lightweight by any means.
None of the current UAV’s are anywhere near as flexible as a good light attack chopper, and with the Apache approaching 30 years of age, this was a very stupid move.
Thankfully, we still have my fine aircraft, the UH-60L Black Hawk. It may not be a recon bird but it has a real mission that requires pilots and won’t go away anytime soon. Getting ordinance on target will become a mission for the fast movers and unmanned vehicles. It’s not an ideal situation since it will take a while for the technology and inter-service doctrine to mature but the amount of money needed to get the admittedly sweet Comanche up and flying can’t be justified IMHO.
The flawed and vulnerable Apache will have to do for now. The Kiowa Warrior needs to be taken out back and shot.
Mr. Lion:
First, if the Comanche mounted the stub wings it needed to carry a worthwhile amount of ordnance… it would lose most if not all of its “low observability” capability, which is what made it so expensive in the first place.
Second, even with the stub wings, the Comanche could only mount about half the weapons loadout of an Apache (8 vs.16 Hellfires, ect.) and was stuck with a much less capable gun system as well (2-barreled 20mm vs. 30mm Chain Gun).
Third, while the Comanche might have been more capable than the “current generation” of UACV’s, I will point out that it took 25 years for the Comanche to get just THIS far and would’ve taken at least until 2010 until it hit series production (with no promises that unforseen design problems won’t make it take longer)…by which time the NEXT generation of UACV’s will be already in service.
I regret the $8 billion in sunk costs, but would rather not spend another $10 billion plus to try to justify the money already spent.
Find a copy of Arthur C. Clarke’s short story, “Superiority”.
The Comanche was a nice chopper but yes, the need for it has passed.
Recon? Drones do it better and cheaper.
Stealth? Hide from who? A mujadhin with a RPG doesn’t rely on radar to pop one up your tail rotor.
Firepower? It needs external wings attached to carry a good payload. To me, this screams “patch job!”
No, this is a good idea. In fact, the entire weapon system acquisition process needs to be re-thought — 20 years is way too long, especially when technology moves as fast as it does today.
Still, it *is* a nice chopper…
Something else to think about: When we started to procure the B1 Bomber, the cost overruns eventually became so severe that there was no way at all of using it for it’s original purpose (completely replacing the aging B-52′s then in inventory with something newer and more capable). As a result of the increased per-unit and total program cost, the number that could eventually be procured kept steadily dwindling over time (which of course INCREASED the per-unit cost, in a vicous cycle).
After several decades, many upgrades and much expense, the B1B is now a useful weapon and an asset to the Air Force…and we still need to replace the B-52. Would we have been better off with something less capable- and had more of them, sooner?
Dave,
As I recall, the Comanche was able to pack upwards of 14 hellfires (six in the internal bay, eight on the stubs), or 28 stingers. Or, of course, a combination there of. It could also pack up to 56 Hydra 70′s.
Yes, it has slightly less flexibility than the Apache, but it’s certainly not glaring given the flexibility of the weapons bay. You can call it a hack, but I think it was a rather good design. More bulk when you need it, more stealth when you don’t.
I dunno, I like the thing, and not simply because it’s cool looking or a “good” chopper. Again, the A-10 fiasco rings bells for me on this issue.
Curse the Soviet Union for collapsing! We had the coolest tech! And we were going to spend a bazillion kazillion on it! And it would have been unbelievably cool!
And they collapsed, and who doe we need to spend it on? Waaaaa!
Man, we really need Martians to invade, or something, to keep working on kewl miltech.
We’ll just have to rely on fiction and speculation and all that kewl stuff we used to before we adopted military socialism, i guess.
just my memory, but wasn’t the A-10 actually in production and flying, just hated by the fighter jocks (ugly, slow, ground attack)
comanche is not in production, won’t be for many more years, (aiming at a 25-30 year developoment time!!!) and isn’t a demonstrable improvement over current versions of apache
so it ain’t the same thing
if the comanche had come out 10 years ago, when it was supposed to, it would have been cool…. but now it just doesn’t meet the required payback… it will have a useful life of 5-10 years… then it will (i know, famous last words) be completely overtaken by ucavs/uavs hell it may have been overtaken before it ever got into service. the BUFF is 50ish and will keep on flying for very many years… the apache can as well… and they are still in production (unlike BUFF) and are being upgraded (longbow…almost as delayed as comanche, but is at least incremental)
ucav (or uacv.. whichever spelling) is the future for both fast and slow movers, given its relative cheapness, lower requirements (less need for survivability) and higher operational capabilities (especially the fast movers)
the coolest helicopter is the marine dragonfly… the one that squad leader throws at the enemy and scouts around…. thats what i call combined arms and organic air support!!!
the us built a really cool arsenal to take on the waves of soviet tanks that were going to come pouring through the fulda gap… the past 15 years has proven that that arsenal was more than capable and could have repelled the target. but the most likely theatres do not look like europe, and the enemies don’t look (anything) like the russians
mostly fighting lower tech enemies (massively, not just incrementally like the sovs) in very different environments (desert or jungle, not pastoral) who have much lower numbers and prefer hit and hide, not formations
also, the US is primarily reliant on airheads when the ball goes up, with ports/beaches being important later on
the m1a2 can’t get there fast enough (well, except in a real serious emergency) never mind the stuff that is getting killed. crusader was the best gun ever, except that it couldn’t get in theater fast enough and there isn’t anyone to fire the bloody thing at
it currently lookks like the best place to put r&d into is in ammunition… copperheads, tomahawks, patriots, etc are improving, evolving and being introduced very rapidly, while platforms develop slowly and can’t evolve fast enough to meet new needs
a squad of marines with javelins can take out at least their own number of m1a2… there’s the humvees with the kinetic weapons taking out tanks… faster, cheaper, stronger wins… especially when we must rely on the airhead
comanche isn’t that better than apache, will likely have minimal uses, and doesn’t move fast enough…. so kill it
i just don’t want to see the same thing happen to the raptor, although its likely…
The A-10 fiasco I was referring to was the plane being yanked from service by the brass, who thought it was redundant and not needed.
Unfortunately for them, nothing else filled the role, so as soon as we needed a slow, beefy ground attack fighter, they quickly hauled a lot of them out of storage and put them back into service. It’s slow, it’s ugly, but it does a damn good job against ground targets. Far better than any F/A jet or chopper can do.
My concern with the Comanche being scrapped is that it’s going to remove a vital role which isn’t really going to be filled very well by other aircraft. The Apache is slow and rather obviously easy to bring down, the UAV’s can’t carry a significant amount of firepower and are also easy to bring down. There’s also a pretty significant issue with satellite bandwidth, and the UAV’s are a pretty big drain on it. So what’s left, the F-35? No where near as useful as a small, quick chopper with a lot of bite.
Ah well, we’ll find out soon enough, I guess.
Mr. Lion:
Keep in mind that the A-10 was doing a mission that didn’t appeal to any of the major Air Force constituencies. It wasn’t a heavy bomber (like B-1 or B-2), and it wasn’t a fighter (F-15, F-16), so it didn’t draw support from the biggest bureaucracies w/in the AF. Note that the AF also got rid of the SR-71, roughly for similar reasons (lack of internal constituency).
But the elimination of the Comanche, like the Crusader, is not being done by internal bureaucracies, but by external pressures, specifically the SecDef. This is the equivalent of getting rid of carriers or fighter jets—something that will be fought bitterly by the bureaucracy. Even if, “objectively,” it’s the right decision.
This is distinct from the issue of “who will supply the firepower”? I don’t think bandwidth has been thoroughly thought out. I DO think that the vulnerability of helicopters, esp. attack choppers, had not been realized fully ’til now. (Although this puts the unwillingness to commit the Apaches to Kosovo into a rather new light.)
I think what is evolving (faster in OSD, but in the other offices in the Building) is a reconsideration of what the next war (and the war after next, more importantly) is going to look like and require. Just as AirLand Battle, Division ’86, Deep Attack, etc., both required and facilitated a new look at warfare (greater emphasis on maneuver, less reliance on attrition, greater exploitation of mechanization and early IT, more jointness), so the current Transformation effort and wartime experience is getting folks to try and think outta the box, in terms of what new technologies, new capabilities, and new approaches might bring you.
Or, we could be like Gary Farber and John Kerry, and dump all those nasty weapons! Why do we need ‘em anyway?
Kum-ba-yah, my Lord, Kum-ba-yah!
oops…got my prices wrong. The Comanche program was to cost over $30 billion, plus sunk costs… assuming no cost overruns (anybody wanna bet?). Schumaker has already announced his intention to use those funds to buy somewhere on the order of EIGHT HUNDRED more choppers for the Army.
Comanche didn’t have a role. Recon is being done by UAV’s, attack and anti-armor by Apaches and PGM’s, and there was no point in spending a bunch of money on a bird that did both jobs…but neither as well as a dedicated platform, and at a higher cost than both platforms together.
As far as the A-10 goes, that is an entirely different issue. Technically speaking, that was an Air Force program (as almost all fixed-wing non-carrier planes are, just as the Air Force surrenders rotor-wing almost completely to the other services) or at least it ended coming out of USAF’s line-items and the Air Force has been trying to get completely out of the ground-support role since 1945. Cutting it, no matter how useful it was or how much the Army wanted it, made a great deal of sense…to the Air Force. With the Comanche, it wasn’t filling a niche that no other unit could fill. The people who had to employ it had final budget say-so. They said no.