Army shifting aviation focus from unmanned to manned.

• Author: Erwin, Sandra I.

The role of Army helicopters in Iraq as combat workhorses has bolstered the notion that rotary-wing aircraft, for most missions, are unlikely to be replaced by unmanned vehicles.

The upshot is a renewed emphasis on long-term investments in research and development for manned aviation, which has suffered in recent years, as funding flowed to unmanned programs.

The experience in Iraq also has spurred upgrade programs for current helicopters, in areas such as sensors and survivability, officials said.

Hundreds of millions of dollars will be needed to not only improve current technologies in support of helicopters, but also to repair at least 600 aircraft that will be coming back from Iraq and will need to be restored and returned to the front lines within a year.

Another reason why the Army is paying renewed attention to manned aviation is the anticipated need for a heavy-lift helicopter than can carry several times more payload than the CH-47 Chinook.

The Defense Department and the military services are evaluating concept studies for a "joint vertical airlift" program. A decision on the project's future could come within the next several months, said Maj. Gen. Joseph Bergantz, Army program executive officer for aviation.

The Army gradually is seeing a "shift in focus from unmanned to manned" aviation, Bergantz told the Helicon conference, hosted by the Institute for Defense and Government Advancement. "There is a push to reinvigorate science and technology strategic investments in manned aviation," he said. "Perhaps the pendulum swung too Far in favor of unmanned systems."

This is good news for aviation, he said. "That's the most encouraging thing I've seen" in a long time.

It now appears that the Army wants to "reorient efforts to JTR, or joint tactical rotorcraft," said John M. Davis, chief of advanced aviation design at the Army Research, Development and Engineering Command.

During the past two years, "out work has been very 'unmanned-centric,'" Davis said at the conference. "Within the last few months, I think we have been really trying to evolve back into a balance between the manned and the unmanned systems."

UAVs are important to the Army, even though they will not necessarily replace manned helicopters, but rather will be employed as part of "manned unmanned" aviation teams, he said. The goal is to "develop technology that will support both manned and unmanned, recognizing that teaming and collaboration are going to be key elements in how the future force will be fighting."

Army Col. William Gavora, commander of the Aviation Applied Technology Directorate, said the capabilities of UAVs have been overestimated. "There is a general misperception in the country that UAVs can do everything that manned aircraft do," he said in a presentation to the Defense...