Ghost of Comanche haunts army helicopter leaders as they push for new models.

• Author: Magnuson, Stew
• Position: Army Aviation

Army Aviation officers want a family of new helicopters. Not now, but 20 years from now. Two decades may sound like a long time--but its is not when developing Army rotary wing aircraft.

Brig. Gen. Anthony Crutchfield, Army aviation commanding general, said the service needs to build new rotary wing aircraft by 2030, and the process must begin soon. "I don't want my grandchildren to be flying the UH-60 Zulu model," he said at the Association of the United States Army aviation conference.

The service lives of the AH-64 Apache Block III and UH-60 Black Hawkend around 2040. The CH-47 Chinook stops in 2035 and the OH-58 Kiowa Warrior in 2025. "When that all ends, we have to have something ready," Crutchfield said. The deadline for producing new helicopters to replace the four models should be 2030, he said.

The airframes for these aircraft date back as far as 50 years and are routinely called "Vietnam War" technologies. However, they have all undergone numerous changes to their internal components as new models, or blocks, have been produced.

The problem, helicopter experts said, is that the Army is not currently investing in the cutting-edge technologies that would make a new generation of vertical take-off and landing aircraft possible.

Crutchfield said the difficulties with new helicopter programs in the past have been that technology, as well as the needs of the service, evolve during a long, drawn-out process. Inserting new requirements in the middle of the development cycle has led to the failures.

Case in point is the canceled Comanche program, which lasted 22 years, and only resulted in two prototype aircraft. The Huey, when it was developed in the 1950s, took eight years from concept to delivery, he noted. It took eight years just to name the Comanche, he said.

Paul Bogosian, former program executive officer for Army aviation, said unless current investments in rotary wing research and development increase, the service simply won't know what it can and can't achieve for these next-generation aircraft.

"You're either going to have to accept the limitations of conventional rotary wing technologies. Or you're going to have to ask yourself 'What levels of investments do I want to make to overcome those?" he told National Defense.

Funds originally intended for the Comanche were invested in new conventional helicopter technologies that were later inserted into subsequent blocks of Chinooks, Black Hawks and Apaches. Those efforts will allow...