Pilots spurring training, tactics revolution.

• Author: Tiron, Roxana

Army aviators--rehashing lessons garnered in Vietnam and seizing on recent experience gained in Iraq and Afghanistan--are forcing a revolution in combat helicopter training.

Armed with hard won know-how, veteran pilots are returning to flight schools to pass on an array of new combat tactics and flight techniques.

While Pentagon officials hesitate to compare the war in Iraq with Vietnam, when it comes to employing helicopters in battle, tactics used in that war are coming in handy. Operation Iraqi Freedom is redefining the way attack helicopters are being used, especially in urban environments, said pilots.

The Army is training its crews "to fight the aircraft to the limits of its capability," Col. Mark Ferrell, director of training and doctrine simulation for Army aviation at Fort Rucker, Ala., told National Defense during an Army Aviation Association convention.

The flight school is introducing a complete "culture change" by starting to teach maneuvering flight, something that has not been taught for decades, according to Lt. Gen. Richard Cody, Army deputy chief of staff.

The architects of a new modular aviation force are planning to create a structure that would allow pilots to go from one fight to another without losing their situational awareness. That only can happen with the integration of aviation and ground forces, said Cody. This is something with which the Army experimented during the Iraq war, and now is formally implementing.

While new doctrine manuals will be rolling off the presses as early as next fall, and working drafts are due out this summer, gaps will remain in the training of conventional aviators when it comes to operations in city settings. Aviators do not have a fill-scale facility where they can train for military operations in urban terrain (MOUT), said Col. Greg Gass, an assault commander with the 101st Airborne Division.

"We need to try to develop some type of MOUT training facility for aviators," said Gass. It does not mean that such facilities do not exist, but they do not replicate cities the size of Najaf or Karbala, in Iraq, with populations of at least 600,000 people, according to Gass. Most importantly, it is the conventional forces that need to get this training, he added. "It will pay off in the end."

To close up the gap, homecoming pilots impart their knowledge and experience from both Iraq and Afghanistan. Training with the new tactics, techniques and procedures will start at the level of Flight School XXI, the Army's refurbished pilot training curriculum.

The changes that Ferrell's directorate will be implementing are, in big part, tactics that "anyone coming out of Vietnam can do every day," he said. "What we have learned is that we have gone for about 10 years not teaching those old skills that we learned in Vietnam. We just quit doing it."

Aware of the Army's superiority at night, the enemy now chooses the time of day and the place of the fight, said Ferrell. Therefore, maneuvering flight for attack helicopters and the Kiowa Warrior OH-58 D--used for reconnaissance--is going back into the curriculum, said Ferrell.

"We pretty much...