Posted on Tue, Feb. 24, 2004 SIKORSKY AIRCRAFT CORP. The Army announced Monday that it is dropping the RAH-66 Comanche helicopter program. Sikorsky Aircraft Corp. and Boeing are the main contractors on the Comanche. Army cancels Comanche plans By Robert Burns The Associated Press WASHINGTON - In a dramatic about-face, the Army canceled its Comanche helicopter program Monday after sinking $6.9 billion and 21 years into producing a new-generation copter. It is one of the biggest program cancellations in the Army's history and comes less than two years after the service's $11 billion Crusader artillery project was dropped after $2 billion had been spent. At a Pentagon news conference, senior Army leaders said they would propose to Congress that $14.6 billion earmarked for developing and building 121 Comanches between now and 2011 be used to buy 796 additional Black Hawk and other helicopters and to upgrade and modernize 1,400 helicopters already in the fleet. "It's a big decision, but we know it's the right decision," said Gen. Peter Schoomaker, the Army chief of staff. He said the Army also will invest more heavily in a variety of unmanned aircraft, such as the existing Hunter and the new Raven. The Comanche decision reflects a growing realization in the Pentagon that the military has more big-ticket weapons projects in the works than it can afford, even after seeing the Pentagon budget grow by tens of billions of dollars since 2001. It also reflects the rising popularity in recent years of unmanned aircraft for surveillance as well as attack missions. The demise of the Comanche could, in the long run, be good for Fort Worth-based Bell Helicopter. Bell produces the OH-58D Kiowa Warrior scout helicopter, which the Comanche was designed in part to replace. Bell officials, not wanting to appear as if they were taking joy from another defense contractor's problems, declined to comment Monday on the Comanche decision. But aerospace analyst Richard Aboulafia said it is "very likely" that the Army will decide to spend money on upgrades to the more than 400 OH-58D aircraft now in the force. At the very least, the Army will spend more on spare parts and repairs to keep those aircraft operating longer than planned. In recent years, Bell has made pitches to the Army to upgrade the OH-58s with new systems and engines developed for the Comanche. The RAH-66 Comanche helicopter project was launched in 1983 and was eventually to have cost more than $39 billion. The Army said it needed a stealthier, more capable armed reconnaissance helicopter not only to collect and distribute battlefield intelligence but to destroy enemy forces. The program encountered many setbacks and was restructured six times, most recently in 2002. The latest timetable had specified beginning initial low-rate production in 2007, with the first Comanches to have been declared ready for combat in 2009 with full-rate production to have begun in 2010. The main contractors for Comanche are Boeing Co. and Sikorsky Aircraft Corp. The per-unit cost of the scrapped helicopter has more than quadrupled, from $12.1 million per aircraft when the Army planned to buy 5,023 of them to $58.9 million when the purchase was cut to 650.
While we're at it, how about cancelling the Patriot, then Missile defense. http://www.cbsnews.com/stories/2004/02/19/60minutes/main601241.shtml The Patriot Flawed (CBS) In the Pentagon's multi-billion dollar arsenal of weapons, one weapon the government has already spent more than $6 billion on has not only had trouble doing what it was designed to do --bring down enemy missiles -- it also does something it was not designed to do. That weapon is the Patriot missile system. And the thing it’s not supposed to do is bring down friendly aircraft. The Patriot was originally built nearly 40 years ago to shoot down aircraft. But just before the 1991 Gulf War, its manufacturer, Raytheon, modified the Patriot to shoot down tactical ballistic missiles. When the U.S. and its allies invaded Iraq again last year, the U.S. Army deployed Patriot crews across the battlefield. And it wasn't long before those crews knew they had a problem. Correspondent Ed Bradley reports. . . . There was no way that Patriot system should have still been up and running, targeting aircraft. They should have stood down, knowing that they had a fatal problem on their hands,” says former Congressional investigator Joseph Cirincione. Cirincione says the Army has known the Patriot had serious problems since at least 1991, when Congress appointed him to lead an investigation of the Patriot's performance in the first Gulf War, a performance that had looked spectacular on network news programs. . . . But it turns out, that wasn’t true. Almost none of the Patriots had worked. Some of them had failed to hit the incoming Scuds. Some had shot at missiles that didn't even exist. But most of them still exploded in the sky, leading everyone to believe they'd scored a kill, when in fact they hadn’t. “The best evidence that we found supports between two and four intercepts out of 44,” says Cirincione. “About a 10 percent success rate.” Cirincione said the Army responded angrily to his findings: “The Army insisted that they knew they had some problems with the Patriot, but it didn't serve any purpose to make these public. We would just be aiding the enemy. And that they would take care of it in the course of normal product improvement.” . . . And they kept claiming success until 2001, when the Pentagon finally admitted the Patriot hadn't worked in the First Gulf War. By then, the Patriot had an even more disturbing problem. On the test range, it kept targeting friendly planes. And the man who oversaw those tests from 1994 to 2001 was former Assistant Secretary of Defense Phillip Coyle. The tests, according to Coyle, included pilots flying real planes and soldiers operating the Patriot missile system. And Coyle says that if they had been using real missiles, they would have shot down friendly planes. . . .
Why don't we bend over, clutch our ankles and say to the terrorists, "Do your worst." No weapons system, especially not the Patriot SAM, is perfect. But why are Patriot SAM's considered so pathetic if they rightly considered as the world's finest example of the craft? 60 Minutes has always been biased against every single new weapons system to come down the pike, from the Bradley fighting vehicle, to the Apache helicopter and many others. They magnify every single failing without knowing anything about how something that complex works. Criticism from uninformed sources is not criticism at all.
Several people down the chain of command overseeing the development of the Patriot and the Pentagon itself were uninformed sources? If you consider a 25% frag rate of friendlies a good design, there's no convincing you. Nice attempt to sidetrack the argument by bringing terrorists into it. We'll be ready to miss them, because it's more likely they won't deliver their arsenal via ICBMs or even short range missiles.
Does anyone know how well it's stealth design worked? What the hell did they do about the main rotor blades. I'm sure they have a special coating, but did it work? Yes, I know I'm a Democrat and a Liberal, but this stuff facinates me and I'm a huge supporter of having the best military on the block, bar none. There are a lot of people like me, believe it or not. I get so sick of the labels thrown around here sometimes. (and some of the labels we're proud of) Plenty of Democrats and liberals are tired of it when it comes to this subject. The ones like me just want to see the money spent wisely. When I read about our people not having adequate live ammo for training, or housing and health care for service men and women, and giving veterans the medical care they need, but we can spend billions on one or two B-2's, it drives me 'round the bend.
Not very well. Besides, if we're going for asymmetric warfare, the Comanches time passed in the 80's. Helicopters today and during the first deployments during the 60's demonstrate the same exact vulnerabilities. Loud expensive and vulnerable to small arms fire. We grounded our Apaches after that one confrontation where they popped up with their ak-47's, rpks, and rpgs and the enemy turned away the one massed helo assault in Iraq. The Comanche is even more vulnerable, because it carries it's armaments inside the body with less armor on the body compared to our current top of the line helicopters. It has a less vulnerable tail rotor and it's quieter than current helicopters but you can't make Blue Thunder yet. The main improvement on the Kiowa is the Comanche is much faster. You can't change the laws of physics to make a helicopter so quiet that someone on the ground isn't going to be able to easily hear and ambush if the copter comes in close. We aren't planning on ever using helicopters for fighting an enemy with radar( the only purpose for the stealth), we'd kill the radars first with airplane attacks. edit:actual stats in embedded picture. So instead of hearing the kiowa from several miles away, one will hear the comanche from a mile away... http://www.globalsecurity.org/military/systems/aircraft/rah-66-capabilities.htm
60 Minutes likely found the most anti-Patriot folks to interview, making it appear that Pentagon folks opposed the SAM, which is vital to our defense. Now, you tell me, if that SAM sucks so badly, why are countries throughout the world buying Patriot? So what's your solution, cancel it and replace it with..........? As for the Comanche, it was a Cold War dinosaur like the Crusader artillery piece. No tears shed over that hunk of junk.
The problem of intercepting ICBM's is one that is generally considered technically impossible to solve (by any scientist not getting paid by the DoD) if one is facing a determined adversary. It's much harder to hit a intercontinental missile than a plane or even the old school Iraqi version of Soviet missiles, and the defender has to be 100% perfect, otherwise he's failed miserably. If you want to believe otherwise, that's fine, it's more welfare work for Congress to spread around defense contractors. I would spend the money on something that a.) is more likely to happen and b.) more likely to succeed. edit: most folks feel it is much easier with a lower cost of entry in terms of money and tech to attack the US through it's many ports. This is why the Bushies are underfunding port security *and* not even bothering to spend the money they budget. http://www.americanprogress.org/site/pp.asp?c=biJRJ8OVF&b=35046 Think Again: Whatever Happened to Homeland Security? by Rick Shenkman February 26, 2004 Wondering what the Bush administration is doing to protect you from the catastrophic terrorist attack it keeps telling us to expect? Here's what my Internet search turned up in the way of press coverage: The Christian Science Monitor reported that Border Patrol agents - increasingly feel unsupported by the country they are trying to protect - even though they are supposed to be playing a key role in homeland defense; Sen. Patty Murray (D-WA) revealed that the Bush administration's new budget provides no funds for a project she sponsored to track cargo coming through American ports. Then, there was the disturbing story uncovered by the House Homeland Security Committee: When inspectors testing the capabilities of the U.S. Park Police deliberately left a suspicious black bag on the grounds of the Washington Monument, the police failed to respond quickly or effectively. One officer reportedly was caught sleeping. When a committee official called the Department of Homeland Security, he got a recording: "Due to the high level of interest in the new department, all of our lines are busy. However, your call is important to us and we encourage you to call back soon." Scary? Sure, but as Bob Dole might say, "Where's the outrage?" One answer is that the media have been burying these stories. Not one of these disturbing accounts of administration failure made it to the front pages of America's papers. Not even Murray's hometown newspaper, the Seattle Times, gave her complaints much attention. The port security story appeared on page B1, even though Washington State is peculiarly vulnerable to a bomb hidden in incoming cargo. Perhaps editors simply believe Bush administration's indifference to cargo security to be old news. After all, when the Bush administration suddenly discovered that the Federal Aviation Administration was running low on funds last year, officials quietly raided the cargo program budget for the money they needed. To force the government to spend the money Congress appropriated, Murray had to put a hold on a budget nominee. In the end, of the $75 million Congress appropriated for the cargo program, the government spent just $58 million. Even worse, the administration is appropriating just 7 percent of the $7.3 billion that the Coast Guard estimates it will need to implement the Maritime Transportation Security Act (MTSA) to be over 10 years. In that case, we can expect to be protected by roughly 2018 or so. It would be one thing if the administration were known for its penny-pinching. But a government which has just committed $87 billion to Iraq can't make the claim that it's a careful and prudent steward of taxpayer funds. Not that the Bush administration hasn't tried. Asked about the administration's crimped spending on port security, Homeland Security Secretary Tom Ridge responded, "We need to have a public debate as to whether or not it is the taxpayer's responsibility to continue to fund port security whether or not since these basically are intermodal facilities where the private sector moves goods in and out for profit, that they would be responsible for picking up most of the difference." Astonished at his answer, Murray retorted, "I'm listening to your logic, but I would just respectfully say that if one terminal or port in this country said, 'We're not going to ante up the money - we don't have it,' and a terrorist used that weak link to come into this country - all of us would be paying for the consequences of that." So now we are going to privatize national security involving American ports? Surely this should have made front-page news. It didn't even make the back pages. The New York Times has yet to mention Ridge's misguided scheme to privatize port security in the name of saving money, though it gave plenty of notice to the 10 percent increase in the department's budget next year to $40 billion. Was it too complicated to mention in passing that while the department seems to be spending a lot of money it is shortchanging one of the most vital programs it runs? . . .
Pretty scary when you consider Houston is one of the world's largest ports, 50 miles inland, and smack dab in the middle of several million people. But hey! We've got the libraries covered.
Well, why don't we just let ourselves be destroyed with the attitude that a "determined adversary" is going to destroy us anyhow. Why spend all that money on defense with that viewpoint. Why are you such a defeatist? Nothing that humans build is going to be 100 percent perfect. Just ask Bill Gates about Windows. And as for something "more likely to happen," what about all the tactical ballistic missile possessed by potential adversary North Korea. You'll tell our troops that you feel since the Patriot is not perfect, you'd rather we not have it and allow the NK's to rain Scuds down on them. Something is better nothing at all. Now as for this port security issue, privitization is a good thing! There is a saying about govt. workers, since it is near impossible to fire them: good enough for govt. work. Do you want people like that ensuring airline and port security? Without competition, those folks become stagnant, lazy and inattentive. Privatize them and make it where entrenpenuers compete for security dollars will ensure the best service to the American people and be cheaper in the long run.
I had a student who worked on a Patriot battery during the first Gulf War. Remember how they were hyped up during the war, but afterwards people were saying it was just propoganda and Patriot Missiles really sucked? I asked my student how good they actually were and he simply said "I can't tell you. But they are way better than you think." So, if he wasn't BSing me, there is a lot of mis-information flying around regarding that system.
I would rather have something that worked 10% or 20% of the time rather than nothing, so, in that sense, I'm glad we have the Patriot missle defense system. If nothing else, by all accounts that I've heard, it does an excellent job against aircraft. There are plenty of weapons programs around that we could cut or fund at a lower level and spend the money saved in a way that makes us stronger. We don't need to single out the Patriot. (the Patriot "Act" is a whole 'nother kittle of fish)
Woofer, So I guess an analogy regarding the Comanche would be, "Although the military could build a billion dollar HUMMER...why would they? I seem to remember the same thing happening to the Navy's Battleship contract a while back. They outgrew their "usefulness/massiveness" for their own good in today's military.
Good analogy with the battleship. I see the super-carrier the same way. I think we could do force projection with much smaller carriers (think Falklands) and decrease costs and potential casualties. I wouldn't get rid of all the Reagan-class carriers (if that's the right class, but you get the idea), but reduce their numbers.
Not going to work at all. You have to have at least 12 carriers (the absolute minimum) to cover our obligations. And besides, you kind of want the biggest ship for the most versatility (during our invasion of Haiti, an entire helo group from the Army staged aboard one of our carriers.). I'll go into greater detail why carriers are the one thing we can't skimp on in a later post.