Armed Reconaissance Helicopter (from Presidential Helo)

[Helowriter]

The Army cancelled the Comanche 'cause it had so mis-managed the
program that production became untenable. Given a choice of a Low
Observable armed recon helicopter or essential equipment for a wartime
fleet, the choice itself was sort of obvious.

That doesn't mean the armed recon mission is passe - quite the opposite
in the current situation. The Army insists the new Armed Reconnaissance
Helicopter -- ARH -- won't be Comanche Lite, and the two contenders are
based on existing aircraft. That doesn't mean people won't make a mess
of it with creeping requirements.

UAVs can be tremendous force mutipliers, but they have to stay
expendable to make sense. You want an asset you can put at risk. If
you look at it, the Unmanned Combat Armed Rotorcraft -- UCAR --was an
unmanned Comanche -- more sophisticated actually -- Low Observable,
autonomous target recognition, high resolution sensors to spot
dismounted threats. DARPA envisioned teams of the things hunting bad
guys on their own. That ain't expendable, and I suspect the Army would
have dug a new money hole if it had pursued the thing.

A Hunter or Shadow or ERMP under the command of an ARH or Apache crew
is probably the best answer to the armed recon requirement. At least
for now.

HW

[CTR]

Expendable? I thought the same thing a few years ago before I was
asked to consult on two different VTOL UAVs. The customer was
specifying 6,000 hours Mean Time Between Overhauls and 1 X 10 to the
8th hours Mean Time Between Flight Critical Failures. This is
equivalent to many maned light helicopters. When I questioned the
validity of these requirements I was shown the cost of the sensor
packages these UAVs were to carry. Some sensors were more than the
rest of the airframe including engine.

The only way they could justify the operational cost for these UAVs was
to give up the concept of them being expendable assets,

CTR

[Jim Carriere]

CTR wrote:
> Expendable? I thought the same thing a few years ago before I was
> asked to consult on two different VTOL UAVs. The customer was
> specifying 6,000 hours Mean Time Between Overhauls and 1 X 10 to the
> 8th hours Mean Time Between Flight Critical Failures. This is
> equivalent to many maned light helicopters. When I questioned the
> validity of these requirements I was shown the cost of the sensor
> packages these UAVs were to carry. Some sensors were more than the
> rest of the airframe including engine.
>
> The only way they could justify the operational cost for these UAVs was
> to give up the concept of them being expendable assets,

These are good points, but the big difference between losing a UAV
and losing a manned aircraft is what happens after each is shot down.
In battle, both are valuable assets, both money and tactical cost.
An advanced sensor package is tough to replace (dollars and losing
the usefulness of what it brings to the table), but in the end it is
still expendable. The cold fact is that an aircrew and their
aircraft, when put in harm's way, are also ultimately expendable, but
there is a magnitude of difference between these two kinds of
"expendable." A dead pilot being paraded does not compare with some
knuckleheads parading drone parts.

I think you're onto something with the dollar flyaway cost. Kinda
like the old joke that the air force will eventually be a single
billion dollar airplane, and everyone would take turns flying it.

[Helowriter]

Both good points. The UCAR discussions were getting into
crashworthiness to protect the sensor packages.

Obviously, the value of the UAV is reducing the risk to pilots.
However, they seem easier to shoot down than maneed aircraft, and that
begs the question what do you do for recon/intel if you lose several?

At some point, the asset becomes too precious to risk. The last quote
I heard on Global Hawk was $70 million per copy. You'll have very few
in theater, and if one or two get shot down, it denies you imagery.

There has to be a balance here.

HW