As the main Army close air support aircraft, a lot of effort is devoted to making helicopters work:
Speaking to reporters yesterday, [the head of the Army’s aviation Cross Functional Team BG Wally] Rugen outlined a symbiotic relationship between Army aviation and artillery. Drones jam the enemy radars and locate the anti-aircraft batteries; artillery destroys them with long-range missiles, rockets, and cannon shells; and manned aircraft penetrate the enemy defenses at the resulting weak point.
I've noted the effort some years ago, which I imagine is inspired by a near-disastrous deep strike by massed Apache helicopters during the Iraq War conventional phase, which I noted back in 2004 in that post.
I wonder if the Army would devote so much effort to making a vulnerable platform like the helicopter viable on a dangerous battlefield if it could use fixed wing aircraft for close air support.
The Air Force has a point that expensive aircraft like the F-35 can't go low to provide support to troops--whether close air support or air defense against drones--in the face of dangerous air defenses. And the A-10 is on the way out and may not be survivable (even if the pilot can survive in the tough plane) in the face of conventional enemies rather than insurgents.
So the future is that in conventional combat, the Air Force will have nothing that can go low to support troops. That means that the Army has to make helicopters work because that is the only aircraft that will come in low to support troops.
But is the only game in town the game the Army should play?
I really wish the Air Force would aim high and be the Aerospace Force while leaving the "brown skies" above the battlefield to the Army that can use whatever type of aircraft it thinks is best to carry out the missions in that dangerous air space above the troops.
Would the Army invest so much to make the helicopter viable on the battlefield if it had broader options?
And honestly, while armed helicopters operating over friendly forces to kill enemy forces approaching American troops at long range is very helpful, I'm not sure why deep penetrating raids by manned Army systems are even necessary with weapons like this:
Within five years, the US Army will field new artillery weapons — howitzer shells, rockets, and missiles — with ranges of 70 to 500 kilometers, double that of current systems. After 15 years of close-range combat against insurgents, the service’s top priority is now what it calls Long-Range Precision Fires to counter “peer competitors” like Russia and China on vastly larger battlefields.
Yes, such missiles and long-range artillery can suppress air defenses to pave the way for manned aircraft to strike targets. But the missiles and long-range artillery could also simply hit the target that the aircraft would have struck, no?
In the long run, you want to suppress enemy air defenses so all your support assets on the ground and in the air can pile on the enemy; but in the short run, troops in need of support will want the target threatening them knocked out quickly without pondering the long-range benefit of air supremacy.
Ultimately, soldiers on the ground should simply call for a target to be stuck without even really knowing--or caring--what system the fires people task with doing the job the most effectively and in a timely fashion.
UPDATE: Army aviation-related. But I have no basis for judging this, so I just pass it on.
