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Chop the ChopperThe Army's Apache attack-helicopter had a bad war.

By Fred KaplanPosted Wednesday, April 23, 2003, at 6:42 PM ET

Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld is gearing up for his next war—not with the Syrians or the North Koreans but with the hidebound generals of the U.S. Army. These are the generals who criticized Rumsfeld's battle plan while Gulf War II was still raging and who beat back his efforts, over the past few years, to "transform" the Army into a lighter, lither fighting force. With Rumsfeld's star rising and the generals' tarnished, he can be expected to mount a new offensive on their bureaucratic turf at the first opportunity.

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He might want to start by junking the Army's attack helicopter. The current version, the AH-64D Apache Longbow, is in many ways a vast improvement over earlier models, but it is still too dangerous to the pilots who fly it and not dangerous enough to the enemy it's designed to attack.

The U.S. Army's only disastrous operation in Gulf War II (at least the only one we know about) took place on March 24, when 33 Apache helicopters were ordered to move out ahead of the 3^rd Infantry Division and to attack an Iraqi Republican Guard regiment in the suburbs of Karbala. Meeting heavy fire from small arms and shoulder-mounted rocket-propelled grenades, the Apaches flew back to base, 30 of them shot up, several disablingly so. One helicopter was shot down in the encounter, and its two crewmen were taken prisoner.

After that incident, Apaches were used more cautiously—on reconnaissance missions or for firing at small groups of armored vehicles. Rarely if ever did they penetrate far beyond the front line of battle, out in front of U.S. ground troops or without the escort of fixed-wing aircraft flying far overhead.

Shortly afterward, when a speech by Saddam Hussein was broadcast over Iraqi television, some armchair commentators observed that the speech was probably live, or at least very recent, because he referred to the downing of an Apache. In fact, that proved nothing. If one thing could have been predicted before the war started, it was that an Apache would be shot down.

Last year, during the Afghanistan war, seven Apaches were flown in to attack Taliban fighters as part of Operation Anaconda. They all got shot up, again by RPGs and machine-gun fire. None crashed, but five were so damaged they were declared "non-mission-capable"—in other words, unable to go back into combat without extensive repair—after the first day.

In the 1999 air war over Kosovo, 24 Apache helicopters were transported to the allied base in Albania. Their arrival was anticipated by many officers and analysts as a turning point in the war. Yet, within days, two choppers crashed during training exercises. Commanders decided not to send any of them into battle; the risk of losing them to Serbian surface-to-air missiles was considered too great.

Attack helicopters have always been troublesome. The U.S. Army lost over 5,000 helicopters in the Vietnam War. (Nor is this a uniquely American problem: The Soviets lost hundreds of Hind helicopters to mujahideen firing shoulder-launched Stinger missiles during their Afghan venture.)

This sorry chronicle raises the question: Why did the Army build helicopters in the first place?

It all goes back to the end of World War II, when the Air Force became an independent service of the armed forces. (Before and during the war, air forces were a branch of the Army.) In its first few years of independence, the Air Force became involved in tumultuous budget battles with the other services. Finally, in April 1948, Secretary of Defense James Forrestal called a meeting with the service chiefs in Key West, Fla., where they divvied up "roles and missions." The emerging document was called the Key West Agreement. An informal understanding that grew out of the accord was that the Air Force (and, to an extent, the Navy) would have a monopoly on fixed-wing combat planes.

The Key West Agreement specified that one mission of the Air Force would be close air support for Army troops on the battlefield. However, it soon became clear that the Air Force generals—enamored of the A-bomb and then the H-bomb—had no interest in this task. To their minds, the next war would be a nuclear war. Armies would play no serious role, so why divert airplanes to giving them cover?

The Army realized it would have to provide its own air support. Blocked from building its own fixed-wing planes, it built rotary-wing planes (or, in civilian parlance, helicopters). And it built thousands of them.

During the Vietnam War, the Air Force's reluctance—at times refusal—to provide close air support became a grave problem. Congressional hearings were held on the lack of any airplane dedicated to that mission. Secretary of Defense Robert McNamara briefly brought a wing of the Navy's late-'40s A-1 fighter bombers out of mothballs to take up some of the slack.

Finally, the Army got bold and began research and development on a hybrid aircraft, a bizarre-looking fixed-wing helicopter called the Cheyenne.

McNamara killed the Cheyenne before it got off the ground, but meanwhile, an Air Force general named Richard Yudkin was furious about the Army's maneuver. He saw it as an infringement of the Key West Agreement and a raid on the Air Force's share of the budget. In response, he initiated the Air Force's very first dedicated close-air-support attack plane called the A-X, which grew into the A-10.

Yudkin was a bit of a rebel within the Air Force. The establishment generals (who, by the early '70s, were still dominated by the nuclear-bomber crowd) hated the idea of the A-X for the same reason they hated the close-air-support mission: It had nothing to do with the Air Force's bigger, more glamorous roles. Yudkin couldn't even get the Air Force R & D directorate to work on the project, so he set up his own staff to do it.

The A-10 rolled onto the tarmac in 1976. The brass still hated the thing. It survived only because of pork-barrel politics—it was built by Fairchild Industries in Bethpage, Long Island, home district of Rep. Joseph Addabbo, who was chairman of the House appropriations' defense subcommittee. The plan was to build 850 of the planes. By 1986, when Addabbo died, Fairchild had built just 627, and the program came to a crashing halt. No more A-10s were ordered, and 197 of those in existence were transferred to the Air National Guard and allowed to rot.

When the first Gulf War was being planned in 1990, Gen. Norman Schwarzkopf, the chief of U.S. Central Command, had to fight the Air Force to send over a mere 174 A-10s for his use. Yet in the course of the war, those A-10s knocked out roughly half of the 1,700 Iraqi tanks that were destroyed from the air, as well as several hundred armored personnel carriers and self-propelled artillery guns. They also conducted search and rescue operations, blew up roads and bridges, and hunted for Scuds.

Even the Air Force brass had to admit the planes had done a good job, and they kept them in the fleet. (They had planned on replacing all of them with modified F-16s.) Though the statistics aren't yet in, the A-10s seemed to do well in Gulf War II, especially now that the Army, Air Force, and Marines are more inclined to coordinate their battle plans.

The A-10 is an unsightly, lumbering beast of a plane. (It's commonly called the Warthog.) It flies low and slow, but its cockpit is made of titanium; it can be shot up very badly, all over, and still not crash. It was the only plane that the Desert Storm air commanders dared fly at under 15,000 feet. Its GAU-8 gun can fire 3,900 rounds of 30 mm armor-piercing ammo per minute. It can also fire Maverick air-to-ground missiles.

So here's a suggestion for Donald Rumsfeld: Deep-six the Apache, and restart the A-10.

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Fred Kaplan is Slate's "War Stories" columnist and author of 1959: The Year Everything Changed. He can be reached at .

COMMENTS

Remarks from the Fray:

The Apaches aren't all bad. They're just vulnerable to ground fire. They were designed to kill Soviet tanks in Europe in the Big One That Never Happened, and in that situation they probably would have done well. They could hide behind terrain (Iraq didn't have any) and attack Soviet armored columns from the flanks on a fluid battlefield. When they're on they can take a fearsome toll of vehicles in a very short time period. As close air support they leave a bit to be desired. The interesting question is this: who owns drones? Can the Army field their own close air support drones? Suppose they come up with a small, unmanned, fixed wing drone that shoots Hellfires, and use that for what they tried to do with Apaches in the Karbala attack. Can the Army build & operate the drones, or do they have to rely on the AF?

--MatteBlacke-3

(To reply, click here)

The author's criticism of the Apache is misplaced. The fact that so many of those Apache's returned from an encounter with the Iraqis that was nothing short of a hellish firestorm is testament to the quality of the chopper. Either the intelligence was flawed (underestimating the Iraqi firepower), the tactics were flawed (again probably underestimating the Iraqis), or both.

--Rich-48

(To reply, click here)

There are multiple problems with the Apache, some of which Fred Kaplan touches on. It does not always match up well with the missions it is being called on to perform. It is subject to mechanical failures and vulnerable to low-tech weapons like RPGs. It took a long time to design it, and will take a long time to design, test, and produce a suitable replacement. This last point is key, because it is one that could be made of almost any major weapons system used by any of the services. The cancelled Crusader mobile artillery piece, for example, hit the drawing boards almost fifteen years ago; the ill-starred Osprey Marine transport survived an early attempt to cancel it by Dick Cheney when he was Secretary of Defense and still has not reached the point where it can safely enter service. Restarting old weapons systems as Kaplan proposes with the A-10 is not really an answer either -- if firing up a production line for a system using 1970s-vintage components were that easy NASA would be launching space station sections on Saturn V rockets. In fact, to restart a production line for an older system the system itself would have to be extensively redesigned, a process that could take as long as designing an entirely new system. For Sec. Rumsfeld's revolution in military affairs to be truly revolutionary these interminable gestation periods have to be shortened somehow. An successful effort to do this would shake up the Pentagon more than anything Rumsfeld has proposed doing so far.

--Zathras

(To reply, click here)

My father was a support man for an Apache Wing of 12 Choppers out of Ft. Hood during the first Gulf War. The Apache's were new then. The military has a long history of taking any new equipment and throwing it right into battle. That's their belief. Any new tools always have bugs... they're designed for war, and the only way you can ever really work all the bugs out is to actually test in war. What's really surprised me is that during the first gulf war, the bugs were worked out. The apache's were incredible against Iraqi armor, and really didn't come up against ground fire... the reason... is that they have hellfire missiles onboard. All an apache has to do is sit off the horizon, 2 miles max if i recall, and just take out the armor out of range of ground fire. The canon on the front is really there just as a last resort... to take out any people that may get in way too close without the pilot realizing it. The apache isn't meant to be effective against ground troops, which is exactly why i question the strategic uses in iraq in GW2. I really thought it was obvious to the command that the apache COULDNT be effective in direct urban combat….Personally, i take offense at the article written here on the slate about the apache, because the plane isnt a waste of money, although it is waaay to expensive (appx 20 mil per plane for longbow, and there where less than 12 longbows in Iraq during this war, if i recall correctly. 16 mil for non longbow version). Its not a waste if used correctly. The A10 would be a waste if it were used in air-air combat, and i think everyone can agree on that. The problem is using the tools to do what their best at…

--Braham

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The Apache helicopter was used on the open day of Gulf War I to remove all the mobile air defense being used by Iraq. This allows other aircraft like the A10 to complete missions. There is no doubt that the A10 is better able to take damage and delivery damage then any helicopter but they have different missions. The helicopter flies below radar, at the tree line, one of its main roles has been to spot the enemy for our attack planes. The idea of the Apache was to destroy what it spotted, a mission it is highly capable of, even air to air targets. It was much better for our Apache to find a pocket of resistance then a column of tanks or a resupply unit. The Apache is a large part of our success in our missions, I would agree that the A10 is very well suited for third world type missions, but in a hostile well defend air space, no amount of armor plating will stop a air to ground missile. The reason the army wants more helicopter and less A10 is they: Number 1: They plan to fight somebody that has a real defense, ie intregated Air Defense system. Number 2: The army's airforce is designed as a mobile artillery to knock out fix placement and mobile targets such as tanks, and anti-aircraft sites, not intended to attack large groups of lightly armed troops hidden in cities or the field. They have tanks and armored personel carriers for that mission. They want something that flys low and slow, is there when they need it, and can remove threats to their armor. All these missions are much better completed by the helicopter than the airplane. We should keep the A10 as we will always need some heavy support aircraft, but please lets remember how successful we have been with our military, before we start to remove pieces of it.

--Mark_in_RSM

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