Army's restored combat choppers fly like new.

• Author: Parsons, Dan
• Position: Helicopters - United States Army's Wartime Replacement Aircraft program

* Twice the Army has tried and failed, at great expense, to build a new fire-support reconnaissance helicopter The service still wants to buy one, but that plan may fall victim to a Pentagon budget crunch.

Without a viable replacement for the aging OH-58 Kiowa Warriors, the Army has found that gutting and rebuilding older airframes might do the trick and could cost significantly less than buying a new aircraft and building new support systems.

To that end, the Army's aviation depot in Corpus Christi, Texas, has teamed with Fort Worth-based Bell Helicopter, which built the Kiowa Warrior until halting production in 1999 when the Army quit buying them.

The arrangement to modernize old helicopters--characterized by the depot commander as "fairly cheap" compared with buying new aircraft--could be a harbinger of the new normal in the big-ticket military hardware business. With less to spend, the Army and other military branches may consider revamping existing vehicles as a less costly option for modernizing their fleets.

Bell is under contract to convert 19 obsolete A models--first used during the Vietnam War--to the newer armed OH-58D Kiowa Warriors. The company is also in negotiations with the Army to bend new metal and build airframes from scratch to fulfill the program total of 42.

Army aviation is in dire need of replacement aircraft, in both the short and long term, say officials. While they work to keep deployed soldiers flying, Army buyers also are hoping to replace their scout helicopter fleet entirely by 2030. By then it will have been 61 years since the design was first fielded.

That's not to say there isn't room for competition. Army buyers are considering new commercial-off-the-shelf aircraft designs from companies that will compete in a fly-off next spring.

The Army's failure to field a new scout helicopter came as wars in Afghanistan and Iraq put more demands on the aging Kiowa airframes.

The fleet has been put to the test over a decade of war, logging nearly 800,000 combat hours in Iraq and Afghanistan. Down to 316 Kiowas, it has been a trial to keep the fleet at strength with an average loss of seven per year, for a total of 52 since 2001, said Col. Robert Grigsby, project manager for armed scout helicopters.

Cirigsby is tasked with keeping at least 368 helicopters in the fleet, a level considered sustainable.

With no replacement aircraft on the horizon, the Army has resigned itself to using the current scout chopper for at least the next 15 years.

In a pinch, nine trainer Kiowas stationed at Fort Eustis, Va., were rushed into service, but more are needed to bring the fleet up to operational levels, he said. The Army has funding to acquire the 42 additional Kiowas.

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The name of the game now is getting wounded Kiowas back into service as quickly as possible and to replace those damaged beyond repair.

"We had to figure out how do we build a wartime replacement aircraft," Grigsby said during a press conference at the Association of the United States Army's annual convention in Washington, D.C.

The Army and Bell have come up with a two-pronged approach to keep the Kiowa flying that may foreshadow a new partnership model for modernizing older weapon systems.

The Army is calling the process its Wartime...