Posted on 05/13/2008 11:21:53 AM PDT by Dawnsblood
If I told you that improvised explosive devices (IEDs) were the leading cause of U.S. casualties in Iraq, you'd expect the Pentagon would have mounted a major R&D effort to defeat this threat. And you'd be right.
If I told you that helicopter crashes and shoot-downs were the leading cause of U.S. casualties in Afghanistan, you'd expect the Pentagon would have mounted a major R&D to defeat that threat as well. But you'd be wrong.
Helicopter losses are the No. 1 cause of U.S. casualties in high-altitude, mountainous Afghanistan and the third leading cause in Iraq. Yet Pentagon R&D spending on tactical aircraft dwarfs the amount spent on rotor craft. In recent years, the total budgeted R&D for helicopters was $2 billion to $3 billion, roughly half of what the Defense Department spends on just one new tactical aircraft and one-quarter of its R&D on missile defense.
Doesn't that sound out of whack? Spending so much on low-probability future scenarios and so little on today's real-world operations?
This is the reality of U.S. defense spending going all the way back to the fall of the Berlin Wall: we buy one military, and we use another. We buy plenty of super-expensive tactical aircraft for "big war" scenarios and spend frighteningly little on helicopters that are - beyond all doubt - the "long pole in the tent" of small wars, crisis responses, humanitarian relief operations and counterinsurgency campaigns.
(Excerpt) Read more at knoxnews.com ...
Aren’t accidents one of the leading causes of casualties in ALL wars?
I think the proliferation of RPG's with fragmentation warheads being volley-fired from urban cover has a lot to do with it.
I was also reading an article by a helicopter test pilot who used to fly CH-46's in Nam. He said that they all used a manueuver to snap decelerate the machine quickly while reversing direction to throw off the aim of a machine gunner near a jungle LZ. He said that it's so tricky that it is prohibited during peacetime, and lamented the fact that helicopters, crew & passengers are being lost because of it.
I’ve worked with the Army on this issue and I can tell that they are very concerned. However, you can’t change the environment under which these machines operate, and the helicopters are what they are. They blow up a lot of dust when operating in dusty environments. Plus night vision technology is already being pushed to the edge of the envelope. If anyone has ideas on reducing accidents, the Army wants to hear about them.
If anyone has ideas on reducing accidents, the Army wants to hear about them.
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I can’t help with the accidents but I can reduce losses dramatically ... The answer is KILL THE BAD GUYS WITH BIG IRON BOMBS ... the fewer bad guys alive the fewer there are to shoot off a heat seeking missile at your low , slow and vulnerable helicopter.
Hope he doesn't do for the rotary-wing community what he did for Fallon's career....
What a moron. (The author, not you, Dawnsblood.)
Soldiers went from unarmored HMMWV’s to MRAPs.
That’s quite a jump.
Aircraft started at multi-million $ vehicles.
Strategy Page has some info with a different perspective:
“Since 2003, the United States has lost 63 helicopters in Iraq. Most of them belong to the U.S. Army, the rest are marine and civilian (mainly security contractors.) In 2007, helicopters were fired on about a hundred times a month, and about 17 percent of the time, the helicopters were hit. In Vietnam (1966-71), 2,076 helicopters were lost to enemy fire (and 2,566 to non-combat losses). In Vietnam, helicopters flew 36 million sorties (over 20 million flight hours). In Vietnam, helicopters were about twice as likely to get brought down by enemy fire than in Iraq.”
http://strategypage.com/htmw/htatrit/articles/20080426.aspx?comments=Y
Contrast this impressive improvement in platform survivability with what's happened in Marine Corps rotor craft over the same time frame. In Vietnam, the Marines lost a helicopter once every 6,000 sorties. In Iraq, their loss rate jumped to one every 1,500 sorties. That is a four-fold increase in rotor-craft losses compared to a 26-fold decrease in tactical aircraft losses.
With this spending record, it's clear that you'd be a lot safer spending your military aviation career as a fighter pilot than a helicopter pilot - counterintuitive but true.
This guy is whacked. The USMC example he uses is now OBE with the Osprey operating in theater. Also, he offers no real solutions (other than high tech plinking) to what will always be the case with rotary wing aircraft in combat, especially operating in high altitude, mountainous terrain environments. It's part of the risk-reward matrix that commanders always have to deal with in supporting troops on the ground- where lasting results happen.
Possibly first and foremost, maintain air superiority. If the enemy can keep it's own fixed wing aircraft in the air, our helicopters aren't gonna last long.
Better detection of the enemy. I know we've invested in better radars and detection systems for helicopters. Such systems often get used on multiple platforms, so they might not show up as helicopter specific funding.
However, it makes more sense to try and detect the enemy with a UAV than with a helicopter which has less stealth and not a lot of speed either.
You can only put so much armor on a helicopter and rotors are relatively fragile by their nature. There's a limit to how much you can do to make a helicopter less vulnerable to ground fire.
Most of ways you can reduce helicopters getting shot down involve preventing them from taking fire in the first place.
You can also have electronics warfare systems to try and prevent ground to air missiles from locking on, but since helicopters usually can't just fly by quickly at high altitude less complex weapons still tend to be effective against them.
I think the officer is incorrect that the government isn't investing more in protecting helicopters, however most of the efforts are indirect rather than spending on the helicopters themselves.
I spent 4 years turning wrenches on Army helos. The fact is, the very thing that makes them so useful, is what makes them so vulnerable.
They are very maintenance intensive and very unforgiving when things go wrong. But they are the only thing available that can do what they do.
The V-22 may improve things a bit, but they are very expensive, require lots of maintenace, and when transitioning, just as vunerable as any helo.
Until they make a helo that can carry both troops and enough armor to survive heavy weapons fire (or crashes), things won’t change.
Bingo.
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