Rumsfield you jackassFollow

What Bush wont fork out money on defense? <stammers in disbelief>

But you are being an alarmist.

Kao, why do you hate America?

By the way, where did you get that thing? It's friggin awesome. Almost as good as Kelti's hypnotic avatar.




beer and sex beer and sex beer and sex beer and sex beer and sex

They say they are going to use the money to upgrade the blackhawk fleet and build more unmanned vehicles. Sure, the blackhawks could use an upgrade, but really they are not all that old.

This is going to kill sikorsky as a viable helecopter company. If they were going to kill the contract, they should ahve done it 4 years ago when all the R&D and tooling hadn't been built. At this point they are required by contract to pay almost 10 billion in cancellation fees anyways. Heck, building a few of the suckers would have been cheaper in the long run.

You say alarmist, I say realist. At least I am not posting from a sockpuppet.

My country breathes a collective sigh of relief.

Eh, alright, I suppose so. I never did figure out whose that one was.

You're jsut trying to get me to slow down so you can catch up...

The Commanche program was axed in part because of the huge slice of the Army's pie it was eating. The -66 is bar none the largest project ever undertaken by the Army and was drawing funding from the other branches. Not that I minded since I was Aviation, but Artillery, the Infantry, and all the rest were getting the scraps of what was left on the table.

Yes, it is a technological marvel, especialy for a helicopter (snap shots at 70+ kts, 90* off axis, no rudder pedals, a cockpit 5X more complex than the most difficult aircraft the Air Force has to offer, etc), but in the end that is exactly what did it in. The cost per airframe grew to enormous proportions for what amounted to a gee-whiz scout aircraft. Yes, it carried Hellfire missles, but it wasn't to be used as a tank buster per se, it was the replacement for the four bladed OH-58D, the sky scooter that you see every news service and oil field service operator using.

And Sikorsky won't go belly up because of this. It hurts them, yes, but they have plenty of irons in the fire to keep them afloat. Besides, this isn't finished yet. The RAH-66 may just make it into service before all this is settled.

Totem

There is another aspect to this that deals with aviation doctrine. It has been the Army's plan to do deep strike/interdiction with the Apache, led by the Commanche, but ever since Iraq the philosophy has been shown to be flawed. It was predicated on stopping Soviet armor back in their laager areas or at strategic chokepoints (like the Valley of Death in Kuwait), but had never actually been tested for viability until this past spring.

What transpired pulled the planners and strategizers up short because Apaches were coming back full of bullet holes from small arms fire. In one mission alone an entire battalion went out and only a small handful came back without damage. Their OR (operational readiness) figures dropped through the floor and left the ground commanders without aircraft for several days while the wrenches worked day and night to get some birds back in service.

Contrast that with the Marines who have traditionally used their helicopters as close in air support and use them to pound the enemy after they have fixed and pinned them in place. They suffered very few casualties and had aircraft available for the entirety of combat operations.

This forced a change in the thinking of how aircraft are to be used, since all the services use the same training, but only the Corps achieved any measure of success.

The Commanche was part and parcel to the whole deep strike doctrine, but now is an aircraft without a mission. it doesn't pack the punch that the Apache does and the Delta does the mission far more cheaply and is already in service.

I suspect some Commanches will make it into service, but the whole project is being looked at-- particularly since money is tight.

Totem