Chinook's funding troubles worry 'Darkhorse' aviators.

• Author: Tiron, Roxana
• Position: Special Operations Aviation Regiment helicopters

It rips through the air, shaving off treetops, at a dizzying angle. For the Darkhorse crews, flying the Chinook in broad daylight is a breeze above the familiar grounds of Fort Campbell, Ky.-their home base. In Afghanistan, however, these aviators found themselves in unfamiliar terrain, often with zero visibility and at high altitudes.

The pilots are quick to say that the MH-47E Chinook was the ideal aircraft for operations over the Hindu Kush mountains. The helicopter can fly as high as 16,000 feet and can operate without refueling for about four hours.

The Darkhorse is the 2nd battalion of the Army's 160th Special Operations Aviation Regiment (SOAR), called the Night Stalkers. They are known for their low-key demeanor and dislike for publicity. But after their return to Fort Campbell, they decided to share with a handful of reporters some of their experiences in Afghanistan and their predicament as a result of the losses in the MH-47E fleet.

The MH-47E is the latest special-operations variant of the Vietnam-era Chinook The conventional Army currently operates the CH-47D model. The Darkhorse is the only military unit in the world that flies the MH-47E, officials said.

Out of 26 helicopters in the battalion, one was lost in training back in 1996, one recently crashed in the Philippines, and one was completely destroyed in Afghanistan. Another three are badly damaged and will be out of commission for a long time. Five are deployed at the regiment's forward-based company in South Korea.

The remaining 15 are all that's left for both operations and training, said Lt. Col. Emmett Shaffer, the battalion's deputy commander. "We just don't have enough aircraft," he said. "The attrition issue is affecting us."

Aircraft maintainers and civilian contractors at Fort Campbell work 14-hour days (two shifts), to keep the aircraft flying. "As soon as they land and come to the hangar, our maintainers get on those aircraft and turn the wrenches," he said.

Plans are underway to upgrade the conventional D model to an F model and the special ops MH-47 D and E variants to a much more capable MH-47G. However, the estimated cost of the upgrades has more than doubled, according to a Pentagon report on weapons costs. The Chinook upgrade program will cost $6.7 billion, instead of the $3 billion previously estimated.

Although the program exceeded 25 percent cost growth and was in breach of the 1982 Nunn-McCurdy Act, in early May, the undersecretary of defense for acquisition, Pete...