Roughly half of the U.S. Army’s iconic AH-64 Apache attack helicopters will disappear by 2028 if military officials can finally secure a new scout helicopter.
Defense websites were abuzz this week with news that the Army is focused yet again on acquiring a Future Attack Reconnaissance Aircraft. The service, for all intents and purposes, has wrestled with the challenge for decades.
Aviation Week, The War Zone, and The National Interest all weighed in on the decision.
“The FARA will only replace Apaches in our heavy attack reconnaissance squadrons and this represents about half of the Apache fleet,” a spokesperson for Army Chief of Staff Gen. Mark Milley told Aviation Week on Tuesday.
The War Zone’s Joseph Trevithick was not surprised by the move, as “there have already been serious questions about whether the AH-64 platform will be able to remain relevant, especially in a high-end conflict environment.”
Industry giants Boeing, Lockheed, and Bell are all working on projects that might meet the Army’s expectations.
“To adequately replace both the OH-58D and the AH-64, the new copter will need to carry sophisticated sensors and a heavy load of long-range weapons,” The National Interest reported Wednesday. “It will need to be able to fly for hours at a time at speeds fast enough to evade enemy defenses, all in hot-and-high conditions that can sap a rotorcraft’s lifting power.
“If the new scout replaces on a one-for-one basis all of the long-gone OH-58s as well as half of the AH-64s, then the Army is looking at a requirement for no fewer than 700 new scout rotorcraft,” the website added. “They could be worth tens of billions of dollars.”
Official answer by Gen. Milley’s spokesman, and it’s quite a surprise (at least to me.) pic.twitter.com/xi2HA6gdsT
— Steve Trimble (@TheDEWLine) March 26, 2019
• Douglas Ernst can be reached at dernst@washingtontimes.com.
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