As Army aviation’s flight path continues in the course of the drawdown and budgetary constraints, this will swap some helicopters around and defund others, said Maj. Gen. Kevin W. Mangum.
In so doing, Army aviation gets the correct mix it has to be ready and relevant, he said. The overall spoke throughout the Association of the us Army Aviation Symposium, Tuesday, in Arlington, Va.
Repeating words spoken in March 2013 by Chief of Staff of the military Gen. Ray Odierno, the commanding general for the U.S. Army Aviation Center of Excellence told conference attendees that the military must strike the precise balance with aviation capability.
“We can’t afford to have too little aviation, but we darned sure cannot afford to have an excessive amount of,” Mangum said.
It was March of last year when the military first started feeling the consequences of sequestration and drawdown, Mangum said. “Ever since then, we’ve been attempting to strike a balance,” he said.
The balancing efforts actually return further to 2010, when an analysis of alternatives study was done on how best to satisfy the requirement for an armed aerial scout helicopter, Mangum said.
The outcome of that study showed that the optimal choice could be a mixture of AH-64E Apache helicopters, teamed with unmanned systems.
At the time, “we didn’t find the money for to fund all of the AH-64s necessary” to try this, he continued.
“But now with a smaller force, we’ve the chance to get to that blend and repackage the 698 AH-64s, teaming them up with the Shadow and gray Eagle” unmanned aerial systems “to meet about 80 percent of that armed aerial scout requirement,” he said.
The money to do this and upgrade the Apaches from D to E models would come from divesting the fleet of OH-58 Kiowas, Mangum said.
Modernizing the Kiowas would have cost greater than $10 billion, and that cash was not there, he said. But modernizing the Apaches — despite their higher costs in fuel — would get monetary savings in the end.
“You can imagine the affection notes I got over that” decision, he said.
But by eliminating the Kiowas, he said the military also saved money and manpower by eliminating about 15 military occupational specialties that went with the aircraft, consisting of their programs of instruction. It also lessened aviation’s reliance on contractors.
“We reduced the logistics tail,” he said.
HELICOPTER SWAPPING
Besides defunding the Kiowa, Army aviation might want to swap helicopters around between the active and reserve components.
The idea is to drag AH-64s out of the RC and provides them to the AC, he said, while pulling UH-60 Black Hawk helicopters out of the AC and giving them to the RC.
The Black Hawks will provide the lift and medevac capabilities the Guard needs for its Title 32 missions, in addition to better supporting homeland defense.
The Apaches, he said, “don’t do much for a governor during a natural disaster.”
The decision for the swaps within the components and the call to divest the Kiowas involved not only decisions out of Fort Rucker, but from the full Army in addition the Guard and Reserve, he said.
Besides swapping helicopters, the drawdown would even have ramifications for the complete selection of units — meaning fewer.
Just many years ago, the military was planning for 15 combat aviation brigades, or CABs, he said. The 13th is now being built at Fort Carson, Colo. However, it’s likely there could soon be fewer than 13, with a worst-case scenario of 10.
No decision have been reached on that, he said, so “the chief told us to do a five-year plan.”
When the order to execute is given, Mangum said “we’ll provide a glide slope with decision points along the way” so leaders can take the “off-ramp” at any time should they need to head lower.
Another goal of Army aviation, Mangum said, is to become more modular, meaning having the ability and expeditionary capability because the Army draws down from Afghanistan and goes into regionally aligned missions all over the world. This may occasionally involve restructuring in the CABs and making each more uniform or interchangeable with any other.
CHANGES AT RUCKER
The budgetary turbulence has also impacted Fort Rucker.
Last year, the installation took a $250 million cut, which translated to a lack of about 30 percent of its training flight hours.
As a result, only 899 students are in initial-level rotary training in comparison to about 1,250 a year ago. “That’s a beautiful significant reduction,” Mangum said.
Rucker is doing a little helicopter swapping of its own. It’s replacing its legacy TH-67 Creek helicopter trainers with UH-72 Lakotas, a number of which it’s getting from the Guard, he said.
“The benefit of UH-72s is they’re bought and paid for,” he said.
Also within the works for Rucker and other locations is to rely more on simulators as flying hours are reduced. The matter, he said, is “there’s no pocket change within the near-term to take a position in those systems.”
And there’s little or no pocket change for other helicopter upgrades across the Army, he said.
“I tell youngsters who’re inside the Basic Officer Leader Course that after a number of you retire from the military in 20, we still wouldn’t have finished fielding the UH-60M and AH-64E,” he said. “That’s how far we’ve pushed these programs.
“People don’t like that word lean,” he continued. “I don’t either, but there won’t be any fat on this Army,” he said, drawing laughs from several hundred aviators and industry reps in attendance.
He concluded: “As the manager said, whatever the size of our Army, we’re going to be the perfect Army on earth. I say a similar applies to our premier aviation force that is relentlessly occupied with commanders and Soldiers at the ground, who expect us to be there when [they want us.]”
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