Posted on 07/15/2002 6:46:22 AM PDT by TADSLOS
The Army wheeled out its top guns Thursday to promote its next-generation armed-reconnaissance RAH-66 Comanche helicopter, which is under fire in Congress and at the Pentagon.
Top officers from the Army's infantry, armor, indirect-fire and aviation branches voiced support of the Boeing-Sikorsky helicopter at a symposium near the Pentagon presented by the Association of the U.S. Army.
The Army expects Comanche in the field in 2009. It will be used as a collector of information from sensors on and off the aircraft, pulling information together to send to a common operating picture available to many levels of command and also sending precise real-time targeting and other information to combatants.
The symposium was timely. Several congressional committees have criticized the Boeing-Sikorsky helicopter, which has been restructured six times over two decades and has cost $6 billion. At the Pentagon, the Defense Planning Guidance for 2004 through 2009 is considering Comanche as one of four developmental programs that could be terminated or cut as irrelevant to the future military. The others are the CVN(X) carrier, the Air Force F-22 Raptor fighter and the Marine Corps and Air Force V-22 Osprey tiltrotor.
Part of the team
"The Comanche is not just another helicopter," said Maj. Gen. Joseph Bergantz, program executive officer-Aviation. It would contribute to the commander's "situational awareness" and allow the commander to choose from Army, joint or coalition assets. These qualities will help make the adversary "irrelevant," said Brig. Gen. (p) Michael Vane, deputy chief of staff for doctrine at the Army Training and Doctrine Command, based at Fort Monroe, Va.
Future joint campaigns will be characterized by a mobile force with 360-degree coverage of its battlespace and the ability to understand the situation as it unfolds, Vane said. Beyond that future forces must have immediate and accurate battle damage assessment.
"Comanche is among the first systems to be fielded that will truly achieve this goal," Vane said.
Maj. Gen. R. Steven Whitcomb, commander of the Armor Center at Fort Knox, Ky., said the connection between sensors and the shooters will pull the branches together from "the foxhole to space," and make a variety of weapons available to help.
"I don't care who shoots it [the target]," he said. "I care about what's shooting at me and how I can stop that from happening."
However, "I don't mean to imply that Comanche is the center of the universe," Whitcomb said. It is a way to multiply combat power.
In an urban-warfare simulation, the Comanche's ability to tell the ground commander "what is real" helped soldiers, said Col. Paul Melody, director of the Infantry School. Troops operated on knowledge of the immediate situation, as it unfolded, not on perception or guesswork.
Brig. Gen. David Ralston, deputy director of the Artillery Center, said Comanche's abilities to link precise target-location information with the ability to choose fires from numerous platforms expanded the effectiveness of fire support.
"We can put downrange a precision munition and we will hit the grid as given to us," Ralston said. "If that grid, however, or that target is given to us inaccurately, we're going to precisely hit a non-target."
Pressure to produce
Comanche "is a bold venture," said Lt. Gen. John Abrams, commander of the Army's Training and Doctrine Command.
"If this aircraft [is] delivered to standard by Boeing and Sikorsky—and they know we are very direct about this—expectations are very high," Abrams said. "If they can match up to our requirements logic, it will give us a very key capability."
"The mission package on this platform is everything," Abrams said. Preempting critics who contend unmanned aerial vehicles, or UAVs, can take on many of the Comanche's planned reconnaissance and surveillance and perhaps attack capabilities, program executive officer Bergantz said working with UAVs is under consideration.
An advanced concept technology demonstration called the Hunter-Standoff Killer Team with the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency is under way to run through fiscal 2006. It involves teaming an AH-64 Apache, as a surrogate for the Comanche, with a short-range Hunter UAV, some joint assets and the AGM-154 Joint Standoff Weapon.
This demo will look at controlling UAVs from the Comanche, over a yet-to-be determined tactical common data link, at ranges up to 100 nautical miles.
Also, the office is considering how to work with armed UAVs, he said.
DAB on the way
As Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld ruminates canceling or cutting the program, Army Secretary Thomas White made his view clear to reporters in March: "We'll terminate it ourselves," if the service doesn't get it right. He won't wait for Rumsfeld to cancel it.
Meanwhile, the program is preparing for a Defense Acquisition Board production decision at the end of the summer.
In Congress, the House Appropriations Committee said its "full support for this program is now in jeopardy unless the Army can show marked progress over the next fiscal year."
The House Armed Services Committee approved the Army's $910 million fiscal 2003 budget request for Comanche but fenced the funds until the service submits a report on the cost of completing engineering and manufacturing development and provides a new timeline to attain initial operational capability.
The Senate approved the budget request in the authorization bill, but the appropriators have yet to act.
Not exactly a resounding endorsement. Smells like CYA to me.
There are a whole lot of weapons systems out there that didn't work during the testing phases or that didn't have kinks in them in early production phases.
But, hey, we could always go back to the Stuart tank, the Brewster Buffalo, or the M1 Garand, right?
If you civilians want a cheap, efficient war...go watch the SciFi Channel!
If this is true, then why do we need it? :-)
LOL!!! My buddies??!! LOL!!!
I have read elsewhere that the two big advantages of the Comanche as a helicopter itself are (1) it is somewhat stealthy, and (2) it is faster than other helicopters that could carry the same gear. Now, I don't know how a helicopter flying in the trees can rely on stealth and I also don't see spending billions for fifty extra miles per hour. If there are other advantages nobody is writing about them.
The airframe itself is stealthy, having the radar cross section of a large bird, and it is also less noisy for a helicopter. Combine it with a fire control radar and fire and forget radar equipped hellfire missiles and you have a platform that can fight quietly and is hard to detect at standoff ranges. It's real contribution though, is it's capability to send digital, real time information to commanders on the ground, airborne C3I platforms, and ostensibly control and view imagry from UAVs. It's being sold as the "quarterback for the Army's Objective Force". If it wasn't for that, it would probably already be dead as a program IMO. The AH-64D Longbow has some of the same packaging and continues to be upgraded but lacks the stealthy radar evading profile of the Comanche.
As to that extra 50 knots of airspeed...well...I place a priceless value on my butt and I imagine you would as well! :-)
Please note that my observations are made as an engineer and a veteran cannon cocker. I am not nor never was an Army Aviator...my parents were married to each other prior to and after my birth and that disqualified me from consideration for that branch.
Some of them are being fitted both platforms. The main advantages of the Comanche are steath and the ability to point the weapons in a different direction from the direction of travel. Supposedly it can travel sideways at close to 100 mph.
Seeing it and being able to "touch it" are two different things. It's not easy to pick out a hovering helicopter that has you in his crosshairs from 3-5 miles away while positioned just above the treeline or with terrain and vegetation as a backdrop. Add in the fact that it can unmask just its radar wheel to acquire an enemy vehicle, identify it, categorize it, then either release a radar equipped hellfire at it autonomously, or pass the target off to another aircraft or weapons system within range . Besides, most attack helicopter operations are conducted under cover of darkness, making it near impossible to see an aircraft visually at those ranges and conditions.
At first, I thought this was going to be another diversity story...
LOL!! Hey, it could be under the current regime.
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