"The obstacles to any simplification may seem insurmountable, and the reasons for more complexity are many and powerful. But if we permit this Frankenstein of complexity to continue to work at its current plodding, insidious rate, it will slowly overwhelm us to impotency".

-Ed E. Heinemann, Famed Designer of the B-26 Invader, A-1 SkyRaider and A-4 SkyHawk, Douglas Aircraft Company

Carlton Meyer in his superb "Pegasus Air Cavalry" concept using micro-helicopter gunships [www.g2mil.com/aircav.htm] hits on the essence of what we need for 21st century combat, where we have gone wrong and how we can maintain a simpler, more robust airmobile force to act as a CAVALRY ahead of the main body in NSW and to do the lion's share of the work in SNCs. When we first had helicopters like the Bell Model 47 (OH-13 in U.S. Army use, HTL-4s in USMC use) below in the Korean War, they were simple, small machines easily transported by trucks and large airplanes to the battlefield where they were embedded with ground units and did not need their own airfields.

How We Have Gone Wrong?

NEW VIDEO: Meet the Air Mobile 1^st Cavalry Division!

Since WWII, the U.S. Army has not had a CAVALRY BRANCH to perpetuate by a powerful constituency general purpose mobile forces. To work around General Herr who didn't want to give up the animal horse, Armor Branch was created without a doctrinal foundation and has since drifted into exalted platform centricity instead of battlefield functionality. Armor branch with heavy, defensive 70-ton M1 tanks wants to joust with mirror images of itself. So while Carlton's concept of making the 1^st Cavalry an Air Cavalry Division again is a vital idea, there is no one in the U.S. Army who will fight for it (no Cavalry Branch).

You might say, Aviation Branch would want a 1^st Air Cav Division?

Not so.

Aviation Branch has also drifted into platform-centricity to exalt itself as a branch again without a clear battlefield doctrinal function. The best way to exalt the helicopter and their branch is to make it the largest, most budget-hogging platform possible that kills enemy tank platforms; ie: the AH-64 Apache helicopter. Because Aviation Branch will look at Meyer's proposal at the platform level instead of the battlefield functional level, they will oppose it because its "not enough helicopter" for them and their bureaucratic agenda, while citing exalted platform survivability technotactical issues. In other words, flying a micro-helicopter is "beneath" them and not "sexy" enough. However, all of the active protective measures that can be applied to large platform helicopters can be applied to micro-helicopters except equivalent heavy ballistic protection (armor) from small-arms fire since micro helicopters don't have large amounts of power/payload.

In the 1950s, the U.S. military considered a micro-helicopter "killer bee" scout concept only to choose the work-around-it larger Huey turbine helicopter. Helicopters got bigger and bigger and more complex.

www.usmc.mil/directiv.nsf/6c683984fd1e09cc85256c75006e6395/879f4a9e387e9d8c85257169006d69e0/$FILE/Marines%20and%20Helicopters%201946-1962%20%20PCN%2019000306900.pdf

EXCERPTS:

One-Man Helicopters * [35]

Other projects, not as successful as those which have been mentioned, were subjected to lengthy and detailed evaluation. The marine corps sought a wide range of helicopters capable of fulfilling nearly every requirement of the ground commander. The smallest size helicopter to undergo marine corps evaluation was the one-man helicopter. It was this project the marine corps actively pursued for over an eight-year period and was seen originally as some sort of "pinwheel" which could be strapped to a man 's back and would be capable of transporting him short distances. The concept was translated in 1952 into an operational requirement (AO-17503), when the Commandant apprised the Chief of Naval Operations of the marine corps' need for a one-man helicopter.

General characteristics of this device were:

1. Capacity-One man with combat equipment (240 lbs )
2. Operating Range-10 to 15 miles
3. Weight-50 to 75 lbs (one man portable)
4. Endurance-15 minutes
5. Speed-30 mph
6. Capable of autorotative landings
7. Require minimum training by nonpilots
8. Inexpensive
9. Packaged in a one-man load and capable of being readied for flight by one man in not more than five minutes.

* The contents of the following subsections were condensed and taken exclusively from a study on marine corps helicopter requirements prepared by the T&T Board, MCLFDC, Quantico, dated 2 May 1961.

35. MCLFDC, T&T Board Report : marine corps helicopter requirements, project #70-59-09, dtd 2 May61, App A-1 to F-9 (CCC, MCB, Quantico) .

In order to keep one-man helicopters from becoming an aircraft inventory item, in 1954 the CNO redesignated the one-man portable helicopter as an item of equipment, called the "Rotorcycle ." In 1956 the CNO published a revised Operational Requirement AO-17505 reflecting a few changes to the original requirement which subsequently became the basis for testing several other experimental air vehicles . Of the several types tested, none proved capable of satisfying the marine corps requirements. Two mandatory requirements were that it be light enough for one man to carry and simple to operate so that no specialized training for the " driver " would be necessary. The Gyrodyne RON-1 and the Hiller ROE-1 were the most promising models but they weighed in excess of 300 pounds empty, and were tricky " aircraft " which required the skills of an experienced helicopter pilot. Other models, such as Rotorcraft's "Pinwheel, " Kellet' s "Stable Mable," DeLackner' s "Aerocycle, " or Hiller's "Flying Platform, " while easy to fly and maintain,

The dream of a one-man, portable, flying machine never materialized. The closest operational device was this Rotocycle (Navy Photo Np/45/5834) .

proved unacceptable because of size, a requirement for exotic fuel, or the inability to autorotate to a safe landing after an in-flight power failure. It appeared that while a valid requirement existed for some sort of small, inexpensive vehicle (not an aircraft) which would be available to the unit commander as his personal " jeep" and free him from the limitations of terrain-mobility, construction of such a vehicle would have to depend on some new technological development . Marine corps exploration in the field of simple, lightweight aerial vehicles was cancelled by the Commandant in October 1960 and the satisfaction of this unfilled requirement, therefore, would have to rely on overland transportation or the use of a utility-type helicopter.

The Selection of an Assault Support Helicopter (ASH)

At the same time the marine corps was working on the development of its heavy and medium helicopters, it also was attempting to obtain a replacement for its light helicopter fleet. A new forerunner in this category was the proposed Hiller Aircraft Company turbine-powered CAMEL (Collapsible Airborne Military Equipment Lifter).

This type of light helicopter received considerable support from the Development Center and was seen as an essential element of strategic and tactical mobility during the later 1950s. It was to have the capability of being disassembled for transport by air or in any class of amphibious shipping to a combat area where it would be reassembled later and made ready for flight. It was not until 1960, though, that the marine corps began to see results of its efforts to obtain a replacement for its HOK and OE aircraft, both of which were to be completely phased out by 1965. In the past, vain attempts had been made to obtain funding for a single VTOL observation aircraft, or an ASH. It became apparent that to offset a forthcoming inventory shortage in these aircraft, immediate funding of a new program would be required. The Coordinator, marine corps landing force development activities (CMCLFDA), Lieutenant General Edward W. Snedeker, took a different view toward the headquarters proposal for the ASH. Snedeker, a veteran officer who had commanded both the 1^st and 2^nd marine Divisions and served as Assistant Chief of Staff, G-3 at HQMC, reiterated the position developed at Quantico. In November 1960, a proposed developmental characteristic had been sent to CMC specifying a helicopter with a 100-knot, 1,000 pound payload and 100-mile radius of action, which the Hiller's CAMEL was capable of meeting. The same specifications had been submitted earlier by the Development Center but it was now officially submitted as a proposed developmental characteristic since it was felt that AO-17503-3 (ASH) did not measure up to the requirements stated in either the marine corps landing force development center or HQMC research and development plans for that type of aircraft. A lengthy rebuttal to the concept of using one type aircraft as a replacement for the HOK and OE was also included. The letter pointed out that the Army's LOA requirement was within the framework of an aircraft "family " completely different than that envisioned for the marine corps. General Snedeker emphasized that the marine corps needed a separate replacement for each, a 100-knot ASH for the HOK and an STOL (short takeoff and landing) light attack-reconnaissance aircraft to replace and expand the mission of the OE aircraft. [20]

In March, the following year, the CNO suggested to BuWeps that a limited competition be conducted to select an aircraft to fulfill the marine corps ASH mission. He stated that once a satisfactory selection and model evaluation had been made, every effort would be expended to effect necessary programming of funds within the FY 1962 budget to permit the accelerated purchase of operational aircraft. Soon thereafter, BuWeps conducted a study of those helicopters under consideration for selection as an ASH. The results revealed that each prospective model failed to qualify because of one or more deficiencies in size, cost, capability, or simply lack of overall qualification. It became apparent that a compromise had to be made in regard to selection of an aircraft prototype [21].

Time was now an important factor since the HOKs were programmed for replacement in less than two years as they had been in the VMO squadrons continuously since May 1956. The Deputy CNO (Air), Vice Admiral Robert B. Pirie, had stated earlier that it would be in the best interest of the marine corps to accept the burden of increased size and cost of an operationally qualified model rather than gamble on a reduced capability or a possible protracted and costly developmental program such as the Hiller CAMEL or Army 's LOH. He mentioned that the potential of an existing trainer, or light utility aircraft, might well be considered by the marine corps planners as its ASH. The Deputy CNO also recommended to BuWeps that a request for proposal be issued as soon as possible with reasonable latitude in consideration of helicopter capability of performing the ASH mission. "The imperativeness, " Admiral Pirie said " of positive action leading to a selection of this increasingly critical subject cannot be overemphasized." [22]

BuWeps acted promptly to Admiral Pirie's directive. On 16 October 1961, requests for bids went to 10 helicopter manufacturers and by 27 November seven companies responded with their proposals." [24] After considering all the factors of each proposed design, BuWeps decided on 2 March 1962 that an existing Bell-manufactured helicopter, the Army-designated HU-1B, could fill the marine corps "ASH role."

A number of elements entered into the decision which led to the choice of the Bell HU-1B. The paramount consideration was the time factor. The Army's LOH was not programmed for production until 1965 where the marine corps ' ASH was needed by 1963. Additionally, the LOH was to be equipped with a smaller engine than the marine corps deemed necessary and provisions were not made in the LOH for carrying litters internally.

The marine corps version (UH-1E) differed from the standard Army HU-1B in that it was necessary to remove most of the Army communication and electronics and install standard USMC/USN equipment. Other changes included the incorporation of a rotor brake for shipboard operations, a rescue hoist, and replacement of magnesium skin with aluminum to reduce salt water corrosion problems [25]

Although the UH-1E utility helicopter was a fairly large and heavy aircraft, it met or exceeded the specifications of AO-17503-3 in all categories. The performance summary listed the empty weight at 4,734 pounds, maximum gross takeoff of 8,600 pounds, and the payload at approximately 1,300 pounds with a full fuel load. A combat radius of 100 miles was given along with a cruising speed near 100 knots and a maximum airspeed of 140 knots. The single-turbine engine, two-bladed helicopter had a rotor diameter of 44 feet and an over - all length of 53 feet. The cabin had large sliding doors on each side allowing straight-through loading. A total of three litters could be accommodated and they could be loaded from either side or from both sides simultaneously. Seats for five passengers were provided. Only one pilot was needed, although provisions were incorporated for a copilot.

USMC goes for bloated Helicopters after the Korean War

www.youtube.com/watch?v=QQv9merynNI

Why they had not turbine-engined and improved their proven Bell Model 47s with armaments is a mystery. These small rotary-wing killer bees are easy to transport en masse to get a lot of killing platforms in the air. Instead they went with the HUK (piston-engined predecessor to the UH-43 Husky) and then the needs-an-airfield Huey.

The consequences of rejecting small 1-man observation/attack helicopters/flying units for the USMC is they have ever since had to live with a screwed-up pack-men-like-sardines-in-too-large "medium" helicopters mentality with the CH-46 which is really a CARGO helicopter and have had no real small scout helicopter ever since the 1950s since the Huey is too large and loud.

The U.S. Army, on the other hand while embracing the Huey employed it as an INFANTRY SQUAD carrier, a wise choice of a smaller target that saved many lives in Vietnam even though the Army had them painted in absurd dark green colors, a stupid practice continued to the present day. The Army knew that it needed smaller scout observation helicopters and kept Bell Model 47Gs on duty over Vietnam until its Light Observation Helicopter (LOH) or "Loach" program resulted in the fantastic Hughes 500 "Killer Eggs" now made by MD Helicopters in stealthy quiet no-tail rotor (NOTAR) forms though the idiotic Army continues to operate buy loud and snag-on-everything tail rotor designs.

NOTAR

Bell complained about Hughes winning LOH and got themselves a contract to build Jet Rangers which have morphed into the current excellently armed and mast sensor-equipped but loud and slow OH-58D Kiowa Warriors. That the Army has recently bought more Long Jet Rangers without mast sensors instead of NOTAR helicopters shows that while they appreciate the need for scouting unlike the USMC, they lack the courage and imagination to make progress and improve observation/attack helicopters with either improved speed or stealth.

As far as speed goes, the Army at least knew at one time what right looks like by leading the way with fixed-wing short-take-off and landing (STOL) fixed-wing "grasshoppers" in the 1930s before WW2 began. Legendary U.S. Army General "Lightning Joe" Collins knew from Korean War experience where the power-hungry, too-fast, jets-for-everything USAF operating from long runways at rear air bases flying at 600 mph+ couldn't provide effective close air support and wanted fixed-wing STOL observation/attack planes.

http://usacac.army.mil/CAC/csi/RandP/airpower.pdf

KEY EXCERPT:

However, expansion of the Army's organic aviation and the Army's increasing use of the helicopter were to engender friction with the newly created Air Force and encounter obstructions from conservatives within the Army itself. [30] A key problem was that neither Executive Order 9877 nor the Key West Agreement had actually defined what constituted "organic" Army aviation. Also in the late 1940s, the Air Force and the Army held talks on the establishment of a system for the coordination of joint operations. These talks foundered because the Army insisted on a measure of operational control of its supporting air assets. This demand was especially unpalatable to the Air Force because it contravened the principle of the centralization of airpower assets along with the Air Force's insistence that all such assets should be under Air Force control. Army Chief of Staff, General J. Lawton Collins, reiterated his service's view early in the Korean War when he protested the coequal status of the Air Force and Army in close air support operations and called for the subordination of Air Force aircraft performing such operations to the army and corps commanders.

Furthermore, he suggested that the Air Force should provide each Army division serving overseas with its own dedicated fighter-bomber group. [32]

In Korea itself, in 1950, the Army got to experience the apparent benefits of marine tactical air doctrine at first hand when marine aircraft provided dedicated support to Army units during the defense of the Pusan perimeter and the Inchon landings, and Army officers liked what they saw. Drawing on this experience, General Edward M. Almond, commanding the Army's X Corps, recommended in December of 1950 and again in July of the following year, that a group of fighter-bombers be allotted to the operational control of each Army division. However, in August 1952, Army General Mark Clark forbade further Army requests for changes in the existing Air Force system on the grounds that it and the marine systems were designed for different circumstances and that adoption of the latter by the Army would be prohibitively expensive for any more than a handful of divisions in the field. [33]

Collins had even suggested that Army preferences should be taken into account in the development of future aircraft for the close air support role. This reflected another fundamental difference of opinion between the Army and the Air Force: this time over the nature of tactical aircraft. As we have seen, the Air Force held a broad definition of tactical air war which included air superiority and interdiction in addition to close air support. In order to retain the flexibility offered by centralization and also for budgetary considerations, the Air Force's preference throughout the 1950s and 1960s was to develop multi-role, high-performance aircraft that could seize air superiority and then be shifted between the different tactical air support missions. This inevitably meant jets, as they offered the additional benefit of increased survivability in the ground attack role as a direct result of their high speed.

However, the acquisition by the Air Force of such jet multi-role fighter-bombers also resulted in some problematic concomitant developments with regard to the Army's immediate aviation concern of close air support. The high speed of jet aircraft, which contributed to their survivability during a ground attack pass, also reduced the time available for the pilot to visually acquire the target, leading to a decline in the accuracy of the attack. Even if the pilot wished to fly slower, the relatively high stalling speed of such aircraft

limited his ability to do so. Jet aircraft also tended to fly higher than the old piston-engine fighter-bombers in the interests of fuel economy. This also led to poorer target acquisition and, thus, lower accuracy. Fuel economy considerations also militated against the use of jet attack aircraft to perform standing patrols over the battlefield. It was much more fuel-efficient to hold such aircraft on runway alert from which they could be scrambled quickly at the request of the ground troops, and this, of course, was the way in which the Air Force had operated its close air support system since the Second World War.

Jet bases, however, had to be relatively distant from the battlefield because of the increasing length of the concrete runways required by the high-performance aircraft of the time. Unfortunately this also reduced reaction time and, according to the Army, was detrimental to the morale of ground troops who would not have the comfort of knowing that their air support was orbiting overhead. Finally, jet, multi-role aircraft were expensive, leading to a reduction in the overall number of aircraft available for tactical air support duties.

Consequently, the Army wanted the Air Force to develop specialized aircraft optimized for the close air support role. These dedicated "CAS" aircraft would have quite different attributes to those required for the air superiority and interdiction missions. They would be cheaper and they might not even be jets at all. Dedicated CAS aircraft would be slower and fly lower than their multi-role cousins for better target acquisition and bombing accuracy. They would have good, short take off and landing performance to enable them to operate from rough strips close to the front-line. This would produce good reaction times, but the lower overall performance of the aircraft would also result in greater fuel efficiency that would enable them to loiter over the battlefield for long periods, if necessary. [34]

As the photos above show, the Army of 1958 still was not taken over by too-slow, helicopters-for-everything rotorheads and operated STOL fixed-wing aircraft with great skill, integrating combat engineers to create small, dirt forward runways to operate from close to ground troops and even from small, "jeep" escort carriers (CVEs) as the aircraft above did for the 1958 Lebanon crisis. Earlier however, the October 28, 1955 Able Buster and Baker Buster tests offered a "Flying Tank Destroyer" concept using 2.75" rockets fired from fixed-wing observation/attack aircraft (F-4U Corsairs used as surrogates) very similar to the von Rosen Minicoins of the 1960s but Army Headquarters wimped out and continued work on arming Army helicopters instead so as to not confront the egomaniac USAF.

The Army rejected the fixed-wing, Killer Bees CAS concept in 1955 that General Collins rightly pointed out they needed in favor of questionable use of slower, louder and more mechanically vulnerable helicopters as attack platforms. If these helicopters were kept simple and made stealthy with NOTAR and/or made to fly faster to their full 250 mph potential, a case could be made for them as en masse Killer Bees. However, as time wore on, even the turbine-engine Huey would need centralized maintenance at fixed air/fire forward operating bases in Vietnam and their size while much smaller than bloated USMC helos was still too large to be used as O/A means and the LOH helicopters were purchased but with inadequate speed and stealth. These large bases would drain troops away from combat operations in order to defend them and engendered rebellion from the local civilians for occupying their country.

The USMC tagged along with the Army lead and operated their own grasshoppers until just before Vietnam, then acted like the world's biggest "close air support" (CAS) hypocrites in the world by ditching prop plane A-1 SkyRaiders that can actually fly low and slow enough to do CAS in favor of sexier jet A-4 SkyHawks that go too fast and had no seat for an observer, though one was later added for training that enabled a "Fast FAC" capability but not as effective at finding the enemy as a slower aircraft is. When the Army in 1954 began the OV-1 Mohawk as the "ultimate grasshopper" with an attack capability, the USMC was along initially but then dropped out of the program in 1958. We speculate the Army nature of the OV-1 program bothered the USMC ego.

In 1956, HQMC did allocate funds for a small batch of improved O-1 Bird Dog II observation planes with a bigger gas engine, armor and self-sealing fuel tanks but further purchases were cut in favor of the "all helicopter" mentality that would damn many marines to die in Vietnam when it proved unworkable due to the corps buying bloated helicopters too large to operate in confined jungle landing zones. The gyrenes took to foot slogging at less than 1 mph from their FOBs while the enemy living from cached supplies from "home turf" ran circles around them at 4-7 mph. As Vietnam raged, the USMC was also without both scout helicopters and fixed-wing aircraft relying on the Army and the USAF to bail them out with their own pilots/observers in OV-1 Mohawk and O-1 Bird Dog aircraft spotting the VC/NVA to keep them from over-running marine forward operating bases. Smart marines K.P. Rice and Beckett saw this debacle coming and proposed in 1960 their "LARA" concept which became the OV-10 Bronco described in the next Killer Bees web page.

Nevertheless, when U.S. Army General Gavin created the Air Cavalry in the 1950s, it was with the smaller turbine-engined, simple helicopter called the HU-1 or "Huey" as its main troop assault carrier. General Gavin knew that the Army needed the efficiency and simplicity of fixed-wing transport planes that could land on grassy fields, and wanted a KIWI pod system to exploit it.

Testifying before Congress in 1958, General Gavin argued also that strict interpretation of the Wilson memorandum would be both inefficient and distort the manner in which the Army carried out its aviation roles. According to Gavin, even the limited airlift mission permitted the Army could not effectively be fulfilled with fixed-wing aircraft of less than 5,000 pounds empty weight. Therefore, these tasks would have to be performed by helicopters which were more complex and expensive than equivalent fixed-wing aircraft.

The USAF was not interested in helping the Army and didn't even try very hard to make the Fairchild XC-120 Packet plane work. The intention was to back VTOL helicopters with STOL OV-1 Mohawk fixed-wing observation/attack and CV-2 Caribou transport planes, the fatal flaw was not in fielding a smaller version of Gavin's brilliant AA/MPVF (M113) light tracked armored personnel carrier as the AR/AAV program intended to do to be helo-transportable by CH-47 or CH-54 heavy-lift helicopters so Air-Mobile infantry could fight the enemy from positions of superiority instead of M16 vs. AK47.

So by the beginning of the 1960s, the Army had simple turbine-equipped helicopters en masse to be an Air Cavalry, but not so simple that they could be operated with minimum maintenance like its fixed-wing grasshoppers. How we can maintain it? Is it worth it if they are easily shot down due to a lack of speed, stealth and fragility?

Early helicopters lacked the power to lift troops and heavy equipment until the advent of the turbine-engined UH-1 Huey. The Huey is a relatively simple, easy-to-maintain, full-sized helicopter but not a micro-helicopter comparable to the classic individual mobility mount, the horse. In fact, the Army consolidated ALL helicopter logistics into one organization, the 1^st Aviation Brigade which at any given time never operated more than 500 helicopters. Maintenance was so difficult, in the south an entire former Navy seaplane tender was modified into a floating Army helicopter repair base.

The Navy SeaWolves took the Army's idea of Hueys operating from shallow-draft ships (defacto helicopter carriers) to get them closer to the action by sailing them up river!

So even "relatively simple" single-turbine-engined Huey/HueyCobra helicopters were/are difficult to maintain so they were all centrally maintained by the 1^st Aviation Brigade, all 422 to be exact but as a round figure 500 of them. Remember this number.

AT NO TIME DID THE ARMY OPERATE MORE THAN 500 HELICOPTERS IN VIETNAM.

From 1965 to 1973, that's 8 years; 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, aka half of 1965, 1966, 1967, 1968, 1969, 1970, 1971, 1972, and half of 1973, we KNOW we lost 4, 000 helicopters over Vietnam. 2, 000 were crashes lost to TBATE and 2, 000 were shot down by TBAM. Not differentiating USMC helo losses to keep our ballpark grasp of the situation, this means WE LOST 500 HELICOPTERS EACH YEAR WE WERE IN VIETNAM.

We only operated at any given time 500 helicopters yet we LOST 500 helicopters each year.

That's a loss rate of 100%.

This means unless a particular helicopter was "lucky" EVERY DAMN HELICOPTER WE SENT TO VIETNAM WAS GOING TO AND DID GET DESTROYED. We replaced all of the 500 1^st Aviation Brigade helicopters 8 TIMES during the course of the war. If each cost $1, 000, 000 ($1M) each, this means each year we lost $500M (or half a BILLION $$$) in helicopters. 8 years of "Air-Mobile" warfare cost us $4 BILLION in just lost helicopters, great for Bell helicopter and Texans but bad for the dead and burned up Army Soldiers.

Yet WE PASSED ON A $500M/year helicopter firebase FOB style of warfare to the South Vietnamese who did not even have the $$ to pay for the fuel to fly these helicopters much less own/operate a Vietnamese version of Bell helicopter. So what did DoD think? That the American taxpayers were going to continue to pork subsidize Bell helicopter to prop up the South Vietnamse emulation (actually immolation) of our failed Air-Mobile foot-slogger tactics?

Now the Army's Aviators are clever liars and I'm tired of their lying shit which they use to sit on their asses and keep flying slow, loud and wrongly camouflaged crap complex helicopters. What they try to do is pad these horrific loss statistics with SORTIE crap to make it appear their helicopters are "doing a lot" before being crashed or shot down.

The Bonin CGSC paper states Army helicopters were lost 1 per every 5, 000 sorties.

The conventional helicopter is a 100 mph machine. So if it is flown from the FOB to somewhere 100 miles and back, that's 200 miles in 2 hours time. In an 8 hour flying shift that means a Huey could be flown 4 times a day, not getting exotic and flying at night and around the clock. This means if you flew every day of every month that would be 120 sorties per month for an annual total of 1, 444. To reach 5, 000 sorties before being shot down, would take 3 YEARS.

WE KNOW THIS IS A LYING PILE OF SHIITE BECAUSE 500 OUT OF 500 HELICOPTERS ARE BEING LOST EACH YEAR AND NOT AFTER 3 YEARS.

No, what this means is the Army Avia-Tors are lying ****s who are trying to make every 10 and 20 mile "milk run" into some kind of fucking "sortie" to cover their asses that their helicopters are somehow not the flimsy, slow and noisy piles of crap they are. If you don't go back and DO A REALITY CHECK and you take the 1 helicopter loss per 5, 000 SORTIE crap at face disvalue, you would be DECEIVED by the LYING ARMY AVIATORS into thinking a helicopter could fly for 3 years over Vietnam doing all kinds of dangerous air assaults when really they are doing a bunch of milk runs shuffling around people and materiel around sedate areas and counting these as "combat" sorties to cover up their actual atrocious combat losses flown into known enemy-held areas.

To "reality check" what I'm saying, take Lam Son 719, the U.S. flown incursion into Cambodia in 1970. 107 HELICOPTERS WERE LOST OUT OF 500 IN THAT OPERATION.

That's 1/5 of ALLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLL OUR **** HELICOPTERS IN VIETNAM WERE LOST DURING ONE LARGE OPERATION. 4 more "Lam Son 719s" and there wouldn't be any more helicopters to crash or get shot down. If it looks like an ass kicking by the enemy it is an ass kicking by the enemy. If you were a helicopter pilot/crew/troop onboard that means your chances of ending up as a burned up corpse was 1 out of every 5 or a 20% chance YOU WERE GOING TO D-I-E.

You might say "war is hell" or "c'est la guere".

No, THIS IS C'EST LA BULLSHIT.

This is c'est LA INCOMPETENCE AND FUCKED UP STYLE OF WARFARE CAUSING THESE LOSSES.

You could say "we can easily replace these helicopter losses".

Can we?

Are we building 500 of ANY kind of military or civil aircraft today?

You could try to weasel out of this by saying "our Blackhawks are ooo so much more sturdier". No, we are flying helicopters that are just as fucking slow and just as fucking loud as the Hueys but require even more maintenance to maintain so they can't even get into the air (a great way to prevent being shot down is to not fly at all to pad your statistics) and the ENEMY THREAT IS FAR WORSE THAN IT WAS IN VIETNAM. This month, the rebels in Iraq have decided they want to start shooting our helicopters down and have bagged 6 so far. Out of how many? What? 100? 200? How many flying each day? I'd like to see the true helicopter use rate facts from Iraq.

The moral of this story is simple.

ANYONE that tries to tell you helicopter combat loss rates are AOK are lying the minute they move their lips. They THINK they are "protecting" Army Aviation by denying serious problems exist but really what they are doing is they are trying to prop up their weak egos that need to be kicked down to the ground and they are DAMNING Army Aviation to continued failures and one day Congress saying, "You know what, Mr. Army Chief of Staff? We are damn tired of our sons/daughters coming home as barbeque in-a-bag and your excuses that say our pouring of BILLIONS of dollars down the drain for your helicopters is AOK. Its not A-O-K. Your budget is being cut. You better get off your tail and find a better way to get around the battlefield through the air."

For all the cost and hassle of maintaining even the Huey it was realized to be way too loud, slow and vulnerable from the get-go, yet the Army refused to attach pod-mounted engines to at least make them go as fast as they could to attain 240+ mph speeds.

Speed and Stealth Rejected for Absurd Treetop Hovering Firing

As dishonest Army rotorheads began to clamor for their own separate aviation branch within the Army, they developed a pattern of lying about their failures using non-combat "sorties" to pad their mission statistics to try to excuse away their excessive shoot-downs and crashes totaling 4, 000 for just the 8 years of Vietnam from 1965 to 1973. This comes out to 500 Huey-type helicopters lost each year at about $1 million each and keeping the Texans at the Bell plants busy with steady work and income as mortuaries stayed busy burying the burned up dead. It was a win-win situation for everyone except the Soldiers who died or were maimed in the flawed Air-Mobile CONcept of OperationS (CONOPS).

Despite the NVA placing 12.7mm heavy machine guns on tree tops to in effect be able to spot our loud Huey type helicopters for miles away and to open fire at 2 miles away before they could even reach the intended landing zone, and the advent of MANPADS SA-7 surface-to-air missiles causing horrific losses of 107 helicopters just during Lam Son 719 in 1970, the Army rotorhead liars used dishonest statistics to make excuses to deny there was any survivability problem while on the other side of their mouths asking Congress to fund more survivable helicopters. When the Army pleaded to be able to keep their necessary 250 mph Cheyenne compound attack helicopter, it was no surprise that Congress tired of being lied to by the Army told them no and funded heavily armored USAF A-10 fixed-wing attack planes instead. Rather than being honest and telling the truth that their helicopters flew too slow from the get-go, they tried to save face and their egos with fabricated lies and at the critical juncture in our history failed to get the fast compound attack helicopter we need to survive over future battlefields today. The legacy of this failure is the current too-slow AH-64 Apache helicopter. This problem can be fixed by adding wings and Piasecki thrust units to AH-64s, but as usual, the Army in denial there's a problem is dragging its feet as men and women die in their screwed up helicopters.

To justify the AH-64, the Army came up with a tree-top hover firing tactic for European forested areas combined with TOW anti-tank guided missiles (ATGMs) to kill Soviet tank armies. The Army had been clamoring for an airborne tank killer since the 1950s and why they didn't simply arm their fixed-wing OV-1 Mohawks with HEAT 2.75 inch rockets which they knew would work from the Able Buster tests shows rotary-wing prejudice was in effect.

Instead of working around the weakness of a hovering helicopter using wire guidance, laser-guided ATGMs for the 300 mph Mohawk could have been fielded during the Vietnam war instead of two decades later with the current Hellfire family. In force-on-force tests against armored vehicles, the AH-1 HueyCobras were able to "kill" 13 ground vehicles for every helicopter lost and the Army rotorhead egomaniacs proclaimed this as some kind of great success. This hovering-to-fire ATGMs "Fulda Gap" mentality would have to be unlearned over Afghanistan the hard way and fortunately there was still one Vietnam helicopter pilot on active duty to teach the current generation what right looked like to effect running rocket and gun runs. The AH-64 was built in a few hundreds and has been since then crashing and being shot down through small war combats and crashes as Boeing has made $BILLIONS gadgetizing them with more electronics as physically their power and speed decreases and their numbers shrink. If we fought an attrition war like we did in Vietnam with current out-of-production, AH-64s it would not be long before we would have no more AH-64s. For details on the rise of the absurd Army Attack helicopter mentality read the Bonin CGSC thesis:

www.webcitation.org/5JNK2QuIv
http://cgsc.cdmhost.com/cgi-bin/showfile.exe?CISOROOT=/p4013coll11&CISOPTR=356

"Toward the Third Dimension Combined Arms: the Evolution of Armed Helicopters into Air Maneuver Units in Vietnam, 1965-1973"

Major John Bonin, U.S. Army, 22 April 1986, U.S. Army Command and General Staff College, Fort Leavenworth, Kansas

What has also happened since the Huey, is that by platform centricity, the Huey's replacements have gotten bigger and more complex so they are no longer simple to maintain/fly. We are at the point now, where the AH-64D LongBow Apache is so complicated that we are often unable to fly them due to maintenance woes as the aircraft's electronics smother the physical robustness of the basic though large flying machine itself. So Army Aviation with the RAH-66 Comanche is putting itself out of the flying business by over-complexifying itself, (the marine corps V-22 hybrid debacle is even worse) "killing the goose that lays the golden egg", exactly what legendary designer Ed Heinemann warned us about! The first battle you have to win is against the earth itself (TBATE) to stay flying! The "gremlins" of WW2 have taken roost in our overly complex aircraft and getting the better of us!

Merry Melodies - Falling Hare (1943) with/Bugs Bunny

www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZpjzTqwtFf0

The "golden egg" of the helicopter is air mobility; you lose that nothing else follows, no digitalization of the battlefield, no missiles, no troop lifts etc. The Army's helicopters are so big now, that they cannot fly efficiently inside USAF fixed-wing transport aircraft to get them to the battlefield in the first place, so most sit on the sidelines for rapid-reaction missions like in Grenada, Panama, Haiti and Desert Shield until they can with time be delivered by fixed-wing aircraft and sealift. Once on the scene like the 101^st Air Assault Division in Afghanistan, the Army's helicopters are very useful providing 3D maneuver and Close Air Support in a conservative way. Because there are too few large helicopters and fixed-wing USAF A-10s flying in support of a large number of ground troops, there is no "Killer Bee" swarms Air Cavalry effect that can cover large areas of the earth to hunt down the enemy as we used to be able to do in Vietnam with simpler helicopters we could field in larger numbers. We even had Aerial Rocket Artillery (ARA) helicopters each carrying 48 x 2.75 inch (70mm) rockets in formation as entire units flown by Army Artillery Branch Aviators to lay down withering rocket fire which saved the day on numerous occasions in Vietnam, particulary the battle for LZ X-Ray in the Ia Drang valley in 1965. With the advent of Army Aviation Branch the full exploitation of helicopters as artillery platforms was lost.

What Meyer wants to do is already realized and in use by our NATO allies; the Germans and the French who use small, almost "micro" attack helicopters firing Anti-Tank Guided Missiles (ATGMs) in swarms in concert with light ground vehicles like the Wiesel and BV-206S light tracked AFVs also firing ATGMs and autocannon, to in effect be an Air/Ground Cavalry even if the word "Cavalry" is not technoelegant enough today for some though its battlefield FUNCTION is timeless. The point is that the Europeans have realized they must keep it simple, stupid (KISS) and keep their platforms flying in great numbers to have significant effects or nothing else will follow. Note that the goal is to have a BATTLEFIELD EFFECT not to be ego-centric and make platforms that individuals will find appealing to their personal survival/style goals. This lies at the heart of why U.S. Army Aviation except for the 160^th SOAR A/MH-6 and OH-58D Kiowa Warrior communities is not willing to go to smaller, simpler helicopters to gain strategic mobility inside USAF fixed-wing aircraft and gain Air Cavalry battlefield effects. If the U.S. Army had a Cavalry Branch, it could have the long-lasting institutional power and personnel believing in mobile, general purpose warfare to create and improve an Air/Ground 1^st Cavalry Division using smaller, more physically robust helicopters. In other words, we need people who think about and build Cavalry "Killer Bee" formations within the organizational Army.

Attack of the Rotary-Wing "Killer Bees"

NEW VIDEO! OV-1 Mohawks in Action during the Cold War, Vietnam and Iraq! Small Scout Helicopters, too!

The British Army has something the U.S. Army and marines do not have: simple light (less than 2 tons) turbine-engined helicopters that are CO-LOCATED with ground maneuver units. We do not like the Army's recent mistake of selecting the inferior flight performance and noisy tail-rotor Bell 407 LongRanger for its cancel RAH-66 Comanche "consolation prize" ARH helicopter, but there's no excuse why these small light turbine helicopters cannot be co-located with ground maneuver units via trailers and/or XM1108 Gavin tracked prime movers.

VIDEO! French Gazelle scout observation/liaison helicopters in action!

Studying the British experience in the Falklands War in 1982, you discover that their small Gazelle and Wasp/Scout helicopters are acting as liaison aircraft like the fixed-wing grasshoppers of WW2/Korea;

a. Observation for directing field artillery and naval gunfire
b. Insertion/extraction of recon teams
c. Armed escort of troop carrying helicopters
d. Armed attack of enemy targets of opportunity
e. Resupply of forward units in contact with the enemy
f. On return trip MEDEVAC of wounded men

A former British Army Soldier and defense expert writes:

"The Gazelles and Scouts operated from the ships in the bay, including Canberra, and the LSLs. Most were based on shore, (once the task force had landed) as where the SeaKings of the COMMANDO Squadron. If you buy a copy of Falklands Commando, by Hugh McManners (also a good friend of mine) you'll see Gazelles operating from the LSLs."

So here is a question.....WHY is it AOK for an "UAV" to be ground-mobile like the MMIST CQ-10A "Snow Goose" in U.S. military service (NSN 1550-01-505-3010) for resupply but not a MANNED aircraft?

UAV...AOK...

SAYS WHO?

The NOTAR MD-900 which hopefully will win the Army's LUH competition is a very COMPACT (compare to long tail-boom tail-rotor helicopters) and stealthy helicopter that could be easily ground mobile on a trailer or in a BATTLEBOXaircraft^TM.

Its got two powerful engines to counter the whining of narrow-minded rotorheads that NOTAR means loss of power. Getting shot down in flames because you are in a noisy helicopter is the "loss of power" (being DEAD) you should be worrying about.

MD-900 Explorer AS U.S. ARMY'S LIGHT UTILITY HELICOPTER (LUH) IN FORWARD-DEPLOYED SCENARIOS

GROUND-MOBILE BY TRAILER TOWED BY OR ON TOP OF XM1108 GAVIN TRACKED AFV

To be close to ground troops to be more responsive to their needs, as well as conserve fuel and flight time before maintenance, the MD-900 can be transported on the ground to forward operating locations (FOLs). Options to move Explorers include being moved on the back of XM1108 Gavin armored tracks (see drawing above) or on flat bed trailer:

To protect the MD-900 while on the ground, it can be partially covered

...or fully covered (as U.S. Coast Guard MD90s are on ships)

by Bruce Perch's Aircraft Covers
www.aircraftcovers.com/techsheets/md900.html
www.aircraftcovers.com/mil.html
bruce@aircraftcovers.com
(800) 777-6405
(408) 738-3959
FAX: -2729

GROUND MOBILE BY ISO CONTAINER "BATTLEBOXes" ON MOBILIZER DOLLY SET WHEELS OR ON A TRAILER PULLED BY A TRUCK OR TRACK

Another, more protected and covert mobility option is to use ISO shipping containers. MD-900 LUHs can be transported inside a custom-made 40-foot long ISO shipping containers that would be higher (about 11 feet 6 inches) to fit the 10.91 foot high MD-900 helicopter with rotors removed. This shipping container would enable Explorers to be shipped overseas discreetly by container ship. Once at the port, mobilizer wheels can enable M113 Gavins and other ground vehicles to tow the MD-900 Killer Bee into action alongside maneuvering units.

The 40-foot special "BATTLEBOXaircraft" for the MD-900 can be insulated, have air conditioning, heat, water and electricity from wind, solar, pedal, batteries, fossil fuel generator, or a power grid hook-up and have fold-down bunks for Soldier air and ground crews to live inside.

Another 20 or 40 foot long ISO container could carry an entire repair shop with tools and parts using expanding walls so MD-900s can be repaired inside out of the dirt, sand, heat, cold and wind.

BATTLEBOXes come with outer wall sections for dirt to be filled inside to make them protected against roadside bombs, RPGs, bullets, rockets and mortar attacks.

Jet pod for Survival Speeds

Another revelation is we've known since the 1960s we can simply attach a jet engine to even just one side of a helicopter to boost its forward thrust to get 240+ mph speeds. Yet what's sickening is we did not do it for VIETNAM WAGING AT THE TIME we STILL HAVE NOT DONE IT TODAY. MEN ARE DYING NEEDLESSLY because our loser mentality U.S. military dominated by fly boy egomaniacs refuse to admit to ANY problems in their approaches to military aviation.

1. Bad dark green camouflage
2. Slow helicopter
3. Loud helicopter
4. Probably no or inadequate IRCMs

= ANOTHER AVOIDABLE TRAGEDY

U.S. military refuses to make our helicopters fly faster with jet pods or Piasecki wings and vectored thrust units or quieter with NOTAR (pic attached) or even paint them in the right light gray camouflage color (U.S. Army's sin) www.combatreform.com/camie.htm to prevent them from being so easily shot down.

The V-22 is a mechanical monstrosity that cannot take-off and land quick enough to avoid shoot-downs lest it lose lift on one side and flips over. V-22s headed to Iraq will crash simply from being mechanically overcomplex and resultingly unreliable.

The simple improvements we could make to existing helicopters to improve their survivability, the U.S. military refuses to do.

New York Daily News
January 23, 2007
Pg. 16

Missile May Have Downed Copter

By News Wire Services

WASHINGTON - There is evidence that an Army helicopter was shot down in Iraq by a shoulder-fired missile, a senior military official said yesterday.

Searchers at the scene found a tube that could be part of a shoulder-fired weapon that may have been used to shoot down the aircraft, said the official, who requested anonymity because the investigation was still continuing.

A dozen U.S. Soldiers died when the Black Hawk helicopter crashed Saturday in the province of Diyala north of Baghdad.

Col. David Sutherland, commander of U.S. forces in the Iraqi province of Diyala, has said the crash is still under investigation.

An Al Qaeda-linked coalition of Iraqi Sunni insurgents calling itself the Islamic State in Iraq claimed yesterday that its fighters shot down the helicopter.

The posting's authenticity could not be independently verified, but it appeared on a Web site used as a clearing house for militant statements. The Islamic State in Iraq is believed to be the political wing of Al Qaeda in Iraq.

Also disturbing was the news over the weekend that insurgents were waved through checkpoints and allowed inside a provincial headquarters because they were wearing Iraqi and American uniforms and had American ID cards.

Five Americans died in the subsequent firefight Saturday.

The gunmen arrived in a convoy of seven white GMC Suburbans, a vehicle favored by Americans. After breezing through checkpoints, the force stopped at the police directorate in Karbala and took weapons but gave no reason, said police spokesman Capt. Muthana Ahmed in Babel province.

The light infantry narcissists want to ride around in helicopters instead of the armored tracks of the "mech pussies" and look sexy and look what it got them.

The damn helicopters are painted in idiotic dark green, they are too loud and too slow...and we're damn tired of hearing Army Aviator excuses why they SAY they are doing the best they can.

You strap a jet engine and you don't even need wings and you can get up to 242 mph as the Lockheed XH-51 proved in 1964.

How about having less people in each chopper and those that are inside wearing bail-out parachutes so if they get a missile warning they can bail out before being blown up?

WHY were these poor USMC people on board the CH-46 not wearing parachutes so they could bail-out? They appear to be at least at 1, 000 feet at 100 mph which would give them plenty of air flow and height for their parachutes to open.

The Russians wore parachutes in their helicopters over Afghanistan.

Again, typical U.S. military live-in-denial and make believe there is no problem as the article at the end shows they are even denying the marine CH-46 was shot down!

www.msnbc.msn.com/id/17071631/

Insurgent video claims to show copter downing Smoking object appears to hit Sea Knight in Iraq; flames

Updated: 7:55 p.m. ET Feb 9, 2007

BAGHDAD, Iraq - An insurgent group linked to al-Qaida posted a Web video Friday showing what it said was the downing of a U.S. military helicopter this week. Seven Americans [marines] were killed in the crash. The U.S. military has said it did not believe the CH-46 Sea Knight helicopter was shot down in the crash Wednesday northwest of Baghdad.

But a U.S. official, who was not authorized to address the topic publicly and spoke on condition of anonymity, said "the video appears to be legitimate" - meaning that it shows a Sea Knight crashing.

The two-minute video - which says it shows the "downing of U.S. aircraft on Feb. 7" - shows a helicopter that appears to be a Sea Knight flying. An object trailing smoke is seen in the sky nearby, and then the craft bursts into orange and red flames, with a spray of debris emerging from it. It is not clear whether the object is a rocket, and it cannot be clearly seen connecting with the craft. In the footage, the helicopter heads downward, but appears to be at least partially in control, though smoke and bright flames are trailing from it. The helicopter then disappears behind a line of trees as it hits the ground.

The video was issued by the Islamic State in Iraq, an umbrella group of Iraqi insurgent groups that includes al-Qaida in Iraq. The group on Wednesday issued a written claim of responsibility for the craft's downing and had promised a video would follow.

The video, titled "the Hell of Christians and Apostates in Iraq," was posted on a Web forum where the group and other Islamic militants often post messages.

The Islamic State in Iraq has also claimed responsibility for downing two other U.S. helicopters - a BlackHawk which crashed northeast of Baghdad on Jan. 20, killing 12 Americans, and an Apache shot down Feb. 12, in which two U.S. Soldiers died.

At least six U.S. helicopters have crashed or been forced down under hostile fire since Jan. 20. In the wake of the recent crashes, U.S. officials have said they were reviewing flight operations and tactics but maintain there is no evidence of sophisticated new weapons used in any of the latest attacks.

The authenticity of Friday's claim could not be independently confirmed.

U.S. Lt. Gen. Douglas Lute, chief operations officer for the Joint Staff, suggested the claim may not be authentic.

"This enemy is very astute in the use of the media. He has in the past had a pattern of posting things on the Web sites and claiming responsibility for attacks that did or did not occur," Lute said at a Pentagon news conference. "I'd be very cautious about drawing conclusions from things that are posted on the Internet."

As to what caused the crash, Lute said "there are some eyewitness accounts that cause professional aviation officers to believe it was most likely ... mechanical."

The question is how many more have to die before they wake up and change?

And yes, stopping flights does not count as adapting. Adapting means meeting the problem head-on and SOLVING it not hiding from it hoping it goes away so you can go back to business-as-usual.

Los Angeles Times
January 26, 2007

Iraq Crash Killed Key U.S. Officers

The copter went down last weekend. A missile strike is suspected.

By Associated Press

BAGHDAD

Two colonels, a lieutenant colonel and two command sergeants major were among the 12 U.S. Soldiers killed last weekend in the crash of a Black Hawk helicopter northeast of Baghdad, the Pentagon said.

It appeared to be the largest number of key officers and command sergeants killed in a single incident since the Iraq war started nearly four years ago.

The helicopter went down Saturday in Diyala province, one of the volatile regions in the Iraq conflict.

The Army has said the cause of the crash is under investigation. But a Pentagon official has said debris indicates the helicopter was hit by a surface-to-air missile.

Ten of the dead were members of the National Guard, making the crash the deadliest single combat incident for the Guard since at least the Korean War, said Mark Allen, a National Guard Bureau spokesman.

A Pentagon statement Wednesday said the victims included Col. Brian D. Allgood, 46, the top Army surgeon in Iraq, and Col. Paul M. Kelly, 45, assigned to the Joint Force Headquarters of the Virginia Army National Guard in Blackstone, Va.

Also killed were Command Sgt. Maj. Marilyn L. Gabbard, assigned to the Iowa National Guard, and Command Sgt. Maj. Roger W. Haller of the Maryland National Guard.

Command sergeant major is one of the Army's highest enlisted ranks.

The other victims were Lt. Col. David C. Canegata of the Virgin Islands National Guard; Maj. Michael V. Taylor of the Arkansas National Guard; Capt. Sean E. Lyerly of the Texas National Guard; 1st Sgt. William T. Warren of the Arkansas National Guard; Staff Sgt. Darryl D. Booker of the Virginia National Guard; Sgt. 1st Class John Brown of the Arkansas National Guard; Staff Sgt. Floyd E. Lake of the Virgin Islands National Guard; and Cpl. Victor Langarica of the 86th Signal Battalion, Ft. Huachuca, Ariz.

HIGH-SPEED MD-900 LUH CARGO DELIVERY SYSTEM

There are no "safe", "rear" areas on today's non-linear battlefields. The MD-900 Explorer with its super-quiet stealth NOTAR control system eliminates tail rotor noise to be silent until right on top of anyone in the area. The compact size of the MD90 and its lack of a tail rotor to possibly snag of power lines, trees ands other obstacles enable it to put down where other copters can't--on today's rapidly urbanizing world this means more locations where the Explorer can get supplies in and wounded Soldiers out...

The stealthy, all-gray U.S. Army MD-900 Explorer LUH [www.mdhelicopters.com] silently crosses the sky blending in with its gray-blue colors then swoops down to the forward maneuver unit, not revealing its presence to the enemy due to its NOTAR stealth....

As the MD900 hovers a foot off the ground or taxies forward via ground handling wheels attached, bundles of ammo, food and water cargo on 3' L x 2' W x 2' H SKEDCO plastic sheets are pushed out by a crew chief out the rear compartment where the hatch was removed....they drop to the ground as the pilot gently moves slowly forward...

Another crew chief mans on the right side a M240B 7.62mm medium machine gun....

The MD-900 Explorer LUH lifts off and the "kicker" grabs his 7.62mm x 51mm M16A5 and points it out the left side of the LUH...soon the NOTAR chopper is gone....the whole operation is over in less than 1 minute...and the troops in need have the supplies to win the fight...the troops can drag the SKEDCO bundles to safety and distribute supplies out of danger...

In 1995, U.S. Naval Institute PROCEEDINGS magazine accepted an article by 1^st Tactical Studies Group (Airborne) Director Mike Sparks proposing small OH-58D Kiowa Warrior "killer bees" be located on the Navy's new Patrol Coastal (PC) ships via adding a small helipad to give the SEALS an air insertion & attack capability.

They paid him for the article, but never printed it. Did someone scare them off? Would it "rock-the-boat" (pardon the pun) too much?

www.globalsecurity.org/military/systems/ship/pc-1.htm

Its ironic, since according to John Pike of GlobalSecurity the Navy discovered the PCs were too large for coastal inshore work ie; get close enough to deliver SEAL teams by small RIB boat. Pike says:

"They have limited endurance for their size, and their combat systems and ammunition allowance do not compare well with similar ships in most other navies. They are about ten times the size of their predecessors but carry about the same payload. It was belatedly discovered that they are too large for the close inshore work for which they were intended."

Maybe if they had printed Sparks' article and added helicopter pads for small helicopters back in '95 the Navy wouldn't be getting rid of the PCs and giving them to the Coast Guard? Here's proof that A/MH-6 Little Birds were used during the 1983 invasion of Grenada to evacuate casualties onto Navy ship decks. Ironic that at the time, DoD and the Army denied that "Killer Egg" A/MH-6s were used in the operation despite amateur video going public showing the "black helicopters" in action. Here, 23 years after the fact, is a picture from DoD of a Little Bird during Grenada delivering a wounded Soldier to a Navy deck.

How did the Little Birds get to Grenada? They were flown INSIDE USAF C-130 STOL transport planes two-at-a-time and airlanded at nearby Barbados.

As a matter of fact, small O/A helicopters can be carried inside USAF transport planes carrying paratroopers who can first jump in to secure the drop zone, which then becomes an "assault (landing) zone" for the helicopters to be airlanded shortly afterwards, as the photo below proves.

Its an inside shot of a C-17 Globemaster III with paratroopers rigged for a static-line parachute jump, while IN THE SAME AIRCRAFT is an OH-58D Kiowa Warrior O/A helicopter and a BS Humvee truck. Obviously there is enough space inside a C-17 to parachute troops and have center-loaded cargo which doesn't have to be a vulnerable, unarmored Humvee truck victim but should be a M113 Gavin armored track victor.

Little Birds can also hover insert/extract troops by FRIES if they cannot land. Pics of this are rare, here's the best one we've seen showing the FRIES set up on the A/MH-6:

These naval helicopters could be fitted with permanent or pop-out floats to land on the water for SEAL team insertion/extraction. If the Navy SPECWAR people are smart--which they are--they will develop a waterproof container to fit to their new SpecOps nuclear submarines to carry some "Killer Bees", perhaps NOTAR Little Birds or MD-900s to transport 1 to 3 SEAL "platoons" of 7 men by air with stealth, making them defacto "Submarine Aircraft Carriers".

Why be content with just the floats being inflated? Why not the ENTIRE airplane? An option would be to develop INFLATABLE FIXED-WING SEAPLANES for SEALs to deploy from their new SSGN spec ops submarines.

SEALs use inflated rubber boats for compact storage, why not faster and longer ranged seaplanes?

So, Carlton Meyer is right all along wanting a "Pegasus Cavalry" composed of swarms of "Killer Bees" ie; simple piston-engined helicopters. He writes:

"Another advantage is that airborne radar only tracks fast moving objects. AWACS ignores anything slower than 70 mph, otherwise the screen would be cluttered with fast automobiles. Yet what if a group of small helos cruised up to an airbase at 60 mph? The USAF would be caught with its pants down and $250 million F-22s on the ground.

Those now produced are F-22s, they have no ground attack capability at all. The USAF hopes to find funding in a few years to develop a ground attack F/A-22. They current use the false F/A-22 designation to BS everyone."

However, in the U.S. Army/marines we have lost air/ground interface by first getting rid of fixed-wing observation/attack/liaison aircraft in the late 1960s in favor of the mid-sized turbine helicopter as the panacea for this mission as well as a replacement for mechanized maneuver in light tracked AFVs and parachute delivery by fixed-wing transports.

www.youtube.com/watch?v=1f5qK-HwbTc

In wars previous, we had "grasshopper" STOL fixed-wing observation/attack aircraft that were co-located at all times with ground maneuver units by being owned and operated by FIELD ARTILLERY units to act as their spotters. The Henry Fonda 1965 film, "The Battle of the Bulge" showcases how manned grasshopper aircraft were critical to our success in WW2 despite us having inferior medium tanks compared to German heavy tanks. In Vietnam, to try to compensate for the foot troops after helicopter insertion having little firepower, we created artillery firebases that could drop shells so long as the air-mobile infantry always stayed within range of the guns. We passed on this American style of warfare to the South Vietnamese who did not have the industrial base nor could afford to keep even simple Huey type helicopters flying. The North Vietnamese then obtained longer-ranging M46 130mm artillery and crept into range of the firebases and began to smash them, one-by-one until the entire ARVN Army collapsed. Instead of learning from this, in the aftermath of Vietnam, we Americans took the already too large 4-ton medium Hueys and HueyCobras and replaced them with even larger, heavy 7-ton UH-60 Blackhawk transport and AH-64 Apache helicopters as Army Aviation became its own branch and wanted its own perennial "cash cows" to soak up funding and prestige from Congress. While the Blackhawks/Apaches are more battle-hardened, they are maintenance pampered and off in their own world far away from the ground troops, contributing less to their requirements; ie they offer LESS capabilities for MORE money. This tale of bureaucracies making their platforms heavier and more costly allegedly to "take care of the troops" via heavier protection also takes place in the ground maneuver units where 10.5 ton M113 Gavin light tracks were attempted to be replaced by medium-heavy and overly complex and poorly designed (fuel tank in center of the vehicle!) 33-ton M2 Bradleys. Now we have a heavy part of the Army that can fight in open terrains but cannot move through closed terrains and over swamp, rice paddy lakes and rivers. The light part of our Army full of walking infantry hubris hasn't realized yet its mission should be 3D maneuver via light tracked AFV mobility through difficult terrain types, so what a light tank can do gets lost in the shuffle of two camps trying to validate their extremes of fighting all on foot or all in vehicles.

The point of all of this is that SIMPLER AND MORE EFFECTIVE VIA LESS COSTLY HAS NO CONSTITUENCY WITH MILITARY BUREAUCRACIES that want things to be costly, and I accuse do not really want to fight when you get down to brass tacks due to Dixonian psychological reasons, because our all volunteer military draws on and is filled by weak co-dependents and narcissistic egomaniacs who are in the service for self.

Looking at things clearly, its not that the UH-60, AH-64 and the enduring CH-47 as large helicopters have no mission on the battlefield, its just that their scaling up has consequences on planet earth that harm their ability to contribute to the fight continuously as smaller helicopters and fixed-wing planes can. There are ALWAYS two battles going on, a battle against the earth itself to exist PLUS the fight against other humans. In the American military mind this reality is not understood due to our faulty understanding of the laws of physics and human war. If you use your larger size to be more armored and better armed against humans, its going to likely harm your resiliency against the battle against the earth to stay functional and fly. If you "supersize" your helicopters its difficult to tow them on trailers so they can be a part of the maneuver force instead of working around them, but it is possible so there is no excuse for Army and marine aviators doing their current junior "flyboy" air base imitation of the USAF.

If however, you keep your helicopters small and simple, they can sip fuel instead of guzzle it, they can sublimate themselves so they can be CO-LOCATED with ground maneuver forces to be there in continuous ways the larger helicopters cannot. Sometimes LESS IS MORE. The same thing applies to the M113 Gavin light track that can by virtue of its lightweight can be EVERYWHERE and be used by EVERYBODY since it essentially is a 5-ton cargo capacity truck engine in an armored box on all-terrain tracks. Everyone that can handle operating a 5-ton wheeled truck can and should be in a M113 Gavin track that can be fully armored to prevail on the non-linear battlefield dominated by high explosives.

What we propose is that the U.S. Army follow the lead of the British Army and obtain some small, simple light observation/attack helicopters to be ORGANIC to ALL of its ground maneuver units not be a part of Army Aviation Branch's empire of stand alone and afar units. We propose that both fixed and rotary-wing "Killer Bees" be in EVERY U.S. Army Infantry/Armor Brigade either in the new RSTA Squadron or the Fires (artillery unit). For details on the fixed-wing "Killer Bees" needed go to this web page:

www.geocities.com/usarmyaviationdigest/fighterinabox.htm

In this presentation, we take the minimalist approach for helicopters and outline the simple to maintain, fuel-efficient A/MH-6 Little Bird (MD520N) as the "rotary-wing killer bee". Most people know Little Birds can carry 4 men on external planks and be armed with 2.75" Hydra 70mm rockets, 7.62mm miniguns, 30mm autocannon and Hellfire ATGMs. Our Rotary-Wing Killer Bees would be even better because they have the following new features:

1. MD520 with NOTAR for stealth

2. 15% bigger engine to stop Army aviators whining about NOTAR power loss by 15% (beats getting shot down, huh?); a jet engine on a pod for 250+ mph speeds to avoid being shot down

3. Be painted in ALL GRAY camouflage so it blends into the sky unlike absurd Fulda Gap green

4. A lighting system to light up the Little Bird during the day time to blend in with the sky

5. Has 4 x very wide rubber tires based on Dave Hansen's trackwheels design so it can make rolling take-offs from small stretches or road or dirt strips sealed with Rhino Snot to carry greater payloads and when not flying be easily towed and rolled onto trailers (into ISO containers) and XM1108 Gavin logistics tracks for GROUND MOBILITY If its not needed to fly, we conserve fuel by ground mobility. Tires may be big enough to enable floatation in water for landings there. No more of the skids and attaching small wheels and expensive roller platforms non-sense.

Steve Cook writes: "You could probably permanently attach ground handling wheels directly to the landing skids, that way ground crews don't have to fu*k with installing/removing them."

6. Has a recovery parachute (RP) system in the tail boom so this shot down, you die perception of helicopters stigma is erased

7. Armament includes AIM-9X Sidewinder and AMRAAM air-to-air missiles so it can shoot down faster moving aircraft in event of an aerial meeting engagement. Its high time we wake up to the fact that anything that flies can be shot down and anything that flies with an all-aspect AAM can be the victor not the victim when this happens. In the Falklands a Scout helicopter was shot down by an Argentine Pucara turboprop fixed-wing aircraft due to being slower and less armed.

8. Has a specialized ISO container "Battle Box" and SOA Butch Walker ANT-ISO trailer/MHE for concealment, and weather-protected maintenance.

9. Has trailer than doubles as a landing pad

Here are some strange landing pad/roller combinations in use to move around skid helicopters:

Ralph Zumbro writes: "Mike. the bird doesn't need ground mobility out in the hills, just on the pad. so combine the transport truck with the landing pad...when the bird comes in, the ground crew NCO just drives out onto the pad, the bird lands on the built in transport/maintenance pad on the back of the truck and the driver pulls it off the pad to the maintenance area??? If there's a runway, the truck can also provide forward speed for take off...maybe."

A great idea Ralph! The trailer IS the landing pad = reduces dust kick up that creates BROWN-OUT...

YET ANOTHER REASON

why we need helicopters to be trailer-mobile.....

SIDEBAR: Aussies prove our ground-mobile helicopter concept: Mobile helicopter landing and maintenance facility, when is the U.S. Army going to do the same?

www.gizmag.com/go/4745

October 15, 2005 Australia's vast distances, harsh climate and isolated communities present major challenges for companies delivering vital services like electricity. To help in this environment, Brisbane-based Aeropower has developed a Volvo 380hp FM9 truck into a mobile helicopter landing and maintenance facility. Aeropower's Volvo-based mobile facilities for its fleet of Hughes MD500 helicopters plays an essential role in the aerial survey and maintenance of high voltage power transmission lines by providing not only a safer, elevated landing platform for its helicopter crew, but also fuel, water and maintenance provisions to maximize operating efficiency in the field.

The portable helicopter landing and service unit is actually constructed from a standard 20ft shipping container fitted with a 4,000 litre fuel tank and a 7,000 litre water storage, all topped by a fold out landing pad. This allows safer refueling and landing for the helicopter while delivering fuel and maintenance closer to the areas where the Aeropower team is operating, reducing transit time between refuels.

Often traversing roads that are little more than dirt tracks the Volvo FM9 has proven its dependability in the toughest conditions ensuring it is always able to establish a mobile operations base close to where the helicopter is working. With its assistance Aeropower is able to move down the power line without the need to enter farmers' properties, eliminating the need to drive across and damage valuable crops.

Aeropower's Steve Jones believes it was the first company in the world to develop and operate mobile helicopter landing platforms. "We started using mobile landing platforms in 1992, but the original vehicle we used was not up to the task. We found that we could not fully load the unit as it would have been overweight on the front axle."

The problem led Aeropower to search for a replacement truck, a task that was made easier by Volvo's proactive attitude according to Steve, "We're not a trucking company, so we knew very little about specifying a truck and that is where Volvo really excelled."

"Volvo Trucks however came and met with us and used their Weight Information System (WIS) and Performance (Perf) programs to match our requirements with the appropriate specification truck," he added. "It was that sort of pre-sale service, combined with very competitive pricing, that led us to choose the Volvo."

The twin-steer Volvo FM9 has allowed Aeropower to fully utilize the potential of its helicopter landing and service unit now able to run with the tanks fully laden. The 4,000 litres of Jet Fuel - A1 and 7,000 liters of de-mineralized water means the fluids alone tip the scales at 10 tonnes and when fully loaded the Volvo FM9 comes in a tonne under its 28 ton GVM.

The need to tackle rough country to be close to helicopter operations was another essential element for Aeropower and this meant the 8x4 chassis was the perfect choice. The FM9 comes standard with cross locks in each rear axle, and disc brakes with ABS/EBS added to the attraction and has resulted in tangible savings in terms of tyre wear. Steve attributes this to the way the Volvo FM9 puts its power to the ground and its smooth effective braking.

The Volvo FM9's specification enables Aeropower to utilize the truck through a diverse range of terrain from urban areas to rural bush tracks and to even some of the remotest parts of the Continent. Coupled to the D9A 380hp Volvo engine is the V2214, 14-speed split and range change transmission, which has the capability for high average cruising speeds - making it ideal for those long transport legs such as across Australia's Nullabor Plain.

The truck not only provides vital refueling and replenishment in isolated areas, but also delivers a safer and better landing facility for the Hughes MD500 Helicopters used by Aeropower. The level elevated landing platform three meters off the ground, keeps the helicopter clear of dust, which can be extremely damaging to jet engines. The platform also ensures the aircraft is clear of people on the ground improving the safety of operations and has allowed ground crews to get into areas they could not even contemplate in the past, further cutting transport time for the helicopter crews.

"Our operations are spread over a vast range of terrain and locations all over the country," said Steve. "We are currently operating in Western Australia, but soon we will be back on the east coast working in Far North Queensland, which gives you some idea of the sort of territory the Volvo FM9 has to tackle."

1. Mustang "Viper" 1-seat Hover-Gyro

* 1200 lb max take off weight
* 100% Hover capability
* 180 hp DeltaHawk diesel engine
* 120 knots Cruise speed (Cessna 172 = 115 knot Cruise)
* 135 Knot Dash Speed
* 4 hours fuel at Cruise speed
* Cost about $60k (Cessna 150 $100k)...before avionics

2. Mustang "Colt" 2-seat Hover-Gyro

* 1500 lb max take off weight
* 100% Hover capability
* 180 hp DeltaHawk diesel engine
* 120 knots Cruise speed (Cessna 172 = 115 knot Cruise)
* 135 Knot Dash Speed
* 4 hours fuel at Cruise speed
* Cost about $90k (Cessna 172 $120k)...before avionics

3. Mustang "Pony" 5-Seat Hover Gyro

* 3,500 lb Max Take Off weight (Bell Jet Ranger)
* 100% Hover capability
* 450 hp DeltaHawk diesel engine
* 135 knot Cruise (Jet Ranger 95 knots)
* 155 Knots Dash Speed (Jet Ranger 120 knots)
* 4 hours fuel (Jet Ranger 2.5 hrs)
* Cost $250k ($600k for Jet Ranger)

4. Mustang "Stallion" 10 Seats (Sikorsky S-76)

* 8,000 lb Max Take off weight
* 100 % Hover capability
* Two 450 hp DeltaHawk diesel engines (900 hp)
* 170 Knots Cruise Speed (S-76 145 knots)
* 210 Knot Dash Speed (S-76 160 knots)
* 4 hours fuel (S-76 3 hours)
* Cost $750k (S-76 $3 Million)

Time to Return to the Mosquito fighter-bomber at very low-level concept: in praise of wood

Superb illustration by Lance Russwurm

Mike Kemble writes: the Mosquito was an exceptionally streamlined design. The fuselage was made in left and right halves, which were shaped in concrete rigs and then joined. They were made of balsa wood between two layers of cedar plywood. The rest of the airframe was primarily made of spruce, with plywood covering. The wing was built in one piece, and attached to the lower side of the fuselage structure. The bomb bay was below it. The Merlin engines were put in steel-tube mountings in under-wing nacelles, which also contained the main landing gear. The radiators were housed in the extended leading edges of the wing center section, with inlets in the leading edge and outlets under the wing. This was an arrangement which reduced drag and even contributed positive thrust. The cockpit, over the wing leading edge, had seats for the pilot and the navigator. The bomber and reconnaissance models had a transparent nose. The first production version was the PR Ski reconnaissance aircraft, powered by Merlin 21s, which arrived in the summer of 1941. Only a few of these were built, before production was switched to the B.IV bomber. The first Mk.IVs were converted Mk.Is, but from November 1941 on wards the production B.IVs arrived. Originally they carried four 250 lb bombs, but later a switch was made to four 500lb bombs with shortened tail fins. The PR.IV was a reconnaissance conversion of the B.IV. The T.III trainer appeared in early 1942, but was built in relatively small numbers.

The Mosquito was designed as an unarmed, high-speed bomber. By dispensing with defensive armament the size, weight and drag of the aircraft could be greatly reduced. It was assumed that the resulting small, fast aircraft bomber would be almost impossible to intercept. The de Havilland design team lead by R.E. Bishop, R.M. Clarkson and C.T. Wilkins proposed the design of a twin-engined bomber, able to carry 1000 pounds (454kg) of bombs over 2400km, and able to reach a speed of 655km/h. The staff officers of the RAF and the officials of the Air Ministry where highly skeptical. They had earlier seen how some fast bombers had fallen short of the promised performance, or had been overtaken by progress in fighter designs, and became highly vulnerable. Also, de Havilland proposed a wooden construction, which is generally heavier than a metal one, but could be given a very smooth finish. However, a wooden structure was certain to deteriorate in a tropical climate, an important consideration for the RAF.

The project proceeded hesitantly, and would probably have been cancelled without the support of Sir Patrick Hennesy. Finally, a small series was ordered, as reconnaissance aircraft. The prototype was built in great secrecy in Salisbury Hall, and made its first flight on 25 November 1940. The D.H.98 handled well and reached 632 km/h, faster than the fighters in production. From the start, high priority was allocated to a heavy fighter version, and the initial contract was amended so that half the order became fighters. They emerged as NF.II night fighters, with four 20mm cannon, four .303 machine guns, and AI Mk.IV radar. The NF.II became operational in May 1942, somewhat delayed by a shortage of Merlin engines and the end of the German night bomber offensive. Later night fighter models had AI Mk.VIII or Mk.X radar. The installation of the radar dish in the nose required the deletion of the machine guns.

In June 1942 the FB.VI fighter-bomber model flew, and this was to become the most built Mosquito. It had the four .303 guns and four 20mm cannon of the night fighter, but could also carry two 500lb bombs internally, and from 1944 on wards they were equipped to carry four rockets or a 500lb bomb under each wing.

A variation was the FB.XVIII, sometimes called "Tse Tse", in which the four 20mm cannon were replaced by a single 57mm Molins cannon, which weighed 715kg and fired 6lb shells. Only two .303 guns retained, and additional armour was installed. These were originally intended as anti-tank aircraft, but because the 57mm cannon was obsolete in this role they were directed to Coastal Command.

The high-altitude performance of all models was greatly increased by the installation of Merlins with two-stage compressors, as installed in the PR.VIII, B.IX, or NF.XXX. The B.XVI introduced further refinement, with "handed" engines to eliminate torque, and a pressure cabin. Some were fitted with bulged bomb bay doors, and could carry a single 4000lb (1814kg) bomb.

Mosquitoes Save the day and rescue French Resistance Fighters from Execution!

The raid on Amiens Prison is probably the single most famous raid undertaken by the Mosquito. The idea was to precisely bomb only certain buildings in the complex in order for many hundreds of prisoners to escape the clutches of the Gestapo. This took place on February 18th 1944. Members of the French Resistance were being held there, awaiting execution. The weather was bad. They were not supposed to fly, but if the Mosquito pilots don't fly the mission the resistance fighters will die. They decide to go anyway.

18 Mosquitoes took part, flying just a few feet over the top of the water, at low-level to sneak in under German radar, then swooping down at well in excess of 300 miles an hour to a height of about 60 feet from the ground in order to precisely blow holes in the prison walls for the resistance fighters to escape.

Other targets were the guard sleeping quarters and eating areas to kill the German torturers and guards.

Here is another painting of when the mighty Mosquito pilots smashed Gestapo Headquarters!

Made of wood to conserve on wartime metal supplies, the Mosquito (affectionately known as "Mossie") performed a variety of tasks for the Royal Air Force. It saw use as a bomber, night-fighter, recon aircraft, and was well respected in all roles. This tremendously successful aircraft also enjoyed the lowest loss rate of any Bomber Command aircraft. The scene in this painting takes place of 11 April 1944, when six Mosquitoes of 613 Squadron came in fast and low over Holland to attack the Gestapo headquarters across from the Peace Palace at The Hague. Here we see two of those six Mosquitoes just after they have neatly bounced a pair of bombs through the front door of the Gestapo building.

Building aircraft out of metal or exotic composites is simply too expensive and demands highly skilled people. The good news here is we have a role model of a nation under extreme necessity inventing not only a solution but something amazingly better; the British Mosquito fighter-bomber which was made of WOOD. By making the Mosquito out of lightweight wood, the Brits were able to get absolute maximum power-to- weight ratios for 400+ mph speeds and these mass produced fighter-bombers were able to swarm all over Europe during WW2 to interdict supply trucks, panzers, troops and even locate and destroy the elusive V-1 and V-2 mobile launchers. "Quantity has a quality all its own" is about the only true thing the mass murderer Joseph Stalin ever said. If we are going to prevail over mobile enemy missile launchers we are going to need swarms of MANNED aircraft flying constantly overhead the battlespace to find them and destroy them. We are not going to get this with $56M F-18 jets at 600+ mph. The first fixed-wing "Killer Bee" was the British Mosquitoes in WW2. So where are they now if they were so good?

There remains only 1 flyable Mosquito in the world today because after a few years the glue holding them together began to deteriorate. Enter the jet age, and the Mosquito is all but forgotten except to those aviation wonks who might catch a History channel TV show on how the Mosquitoes kicked ass in WW2 conducting low-level precision bombing raids on Gestapo prison walls to enable French resistance fighters to escape execution. Years before Notre Dame football coach, Knute Rockne was killed when his Ford Tri-Motor's wooden wing spar snapped in flight. All of these wood stinks events are the result of early limited know-how (technology) failing, and people throwing then the baby out with the bathwater. Today, we have the technology to not only seal wood completely from rotting, we can bond it so well that it will not come undone. We can cover wooden structures with fire-proof and ballistic materials so well that we will not even miss metal. Howard Hughes' amazing wooden Hercules seaplane transport would work amazingly well if it had today's high power-to-weight turboprop engines instead of the piston engines he had to lift his "spruce goose". The point is that its high time we return to WOOD as an aircraft construction material.

Benefits of Wood:

1. Low Cost
2. Lightweight
3. Easy to work with even by untrained people
4. Wood absorbs/dampens vibration
5. Stealthy to radar

America's low-level steel Mosquitoes: Pappy Gunn and Kenney's B-25/A-20s in the Southwest Pacific

Chuck Myers writes:

"Once upon a time while serving as Dir Air Warfare in OSD, I discovered that when I was speaking as an advocate for low altitude attack tactics I was not being understood. Most pilots and others were thinking that 'low altitude' meant flying at 300 to 500 feet. This discovery led me to write a paper which I titled: 'Minimum Altitude Attack' which reflected my experience as a pilot in the Fifth AF, Pacific Theater. Our experience was flying attack versions of B-25s and A-20s where our PRIMARY weapon was either eight or twelve 50cal guns firing forward.

The (A-26) B-26 Invader: WW2, Korea, Cuba, Congo, Vietnam: the ultimate low-level "Steel Mosquito"

The B-25 Mitchell: scourge of Japanese shipping!

No gun sight necessary; fly until the target fills the windscreen and then hold down the firing button (oh yes, we also dispensed small bombs with 8-10 sec delay or streams of parafrags which gave us time to move forward beyond the blast. Meanwhile, our rear gunner was leaving a wake of 50cal behind. Re altitude: I never crossed a target much above fifty feet and if it was a ship: mast head height. The operations officer was adamant: 'DO NOT hit the target with the airplane; if you do, I'll ground your ass!!' This tactic was not a contest in 'bravado'; it evolved as the best way to avoid being hit by flak and small arms (of which there was a lot). It also solved today's problem of "gross errors" in dispensing ordnance. I have never been great at bombing, especially with fighters (can't hit my ass with both hands) but I will testify that with 'minimum altitude attack,' I have NEVER missed an intended target, even though, at the time I had less than a thousand hours of flying time. Have I ever been hit by enemy fire? Yes!! That used to be accepted as part of the job environment; its just that our airplanes seemed to be able to tolerate a few holes here and there. Also, it was accepted that beating the crap out of the enemy in support of the war was worth the risk of a first lieutenant. By the way, if you are into suicide, try flying over a contested zone/battle field at 300 to 500 feet; I can assure you a short tour (regardless of how fast you fly). Keep this number in mind: 50. Maximum Survivability Altitudes: Below 50' or above 50,000'. What is my favorite airspeed (considering our purpose is to be effective vice just survival): 250 to 300 kts. in an agile, tough aircraft. Re ALTITUDE: fly in the terrain mask. Ordnance Characteristics: weapons that do not force the pilot to remain above the mask for periods in excess of 10-12 seconds for delivery/application. The only existing weapon that really satisfies this criteria is a gun (unless we revive some of the old stuff that we could stream behind from WWII, Korea and SEA).

PARAMOUNT RULE: you do not indulge in these tactics now and then; has to be a full time occupation or forget it. Sporadic attempts will be fruitless and disastrous. I know that the USAF/USN/USMC aviation 'managers' will not permit and, considering that their aircraft are inappropriate for such use, I agree with them. Ergo: without a major change in equipment, we are unlikely to see the kind of maneuver air support (MAS) our grunts need.

Masking at 300-500 feet AGL: zero masking and its an altitude that suits the defenses just fine.

You reminded me of my first ever combat mission: attacking a Japanese airfield in the Celebes with waves of B-25s. My impression was: this must have been like the charge of the light brigade. We flew with the windows open thus inhaling the dust and smell of cordite from the exploding ordnance, the roar and smell from of our own guns and re altitude, I felt like I was riding a TALL FAST HORSE (maybe 200 mph at 30 feet). As we crossed the beach outbound, looking back while turning, I saw a B-25 at about a hundred fifty feet AGL streaming heavy smoke and slowly rolling inverted and into the target area (quite a sight!). When we returned home at the debrief, I remember the veterans (I was a 19 year old new kid) commenting that ol' whatshisname (the casualty) was flying too high 'again.'

I got the message.

I can remember in New Guinea, coming home with Kuni grass in the antennas beneath the fuselage (of course, that grass grows at least ten feet tall)."

Noah & the Ark and Killer Doves

Problem: exposed ground forces in flimsy wheeled trucks and vulnerable tents have no air observation/attack since aircraft need air bases and the egomaniacs operating them are working for themselves and always have myriad ready-made excuses for not flying for someone else

Solution: Noah & the Ark and Killer Doves

The Ark

All Army maneuver units are in tracked armored vehicles and ISO container BATTLEBOXes that can collect their own energy and distill water from air humidity and from the sea or ground. Everything fights and everything works. Ideally, they are hydrogen powered and can create their own fuel from collected water, so only food and ammo manufactured previously need be supplied. If hydrocarbon fueled, the arks can collect fuel captured from the enemy. These are our mini "arks" and insures we are self-contained with everything we need to fight at all times and the non-collectible supplies needed for at least 1 year's time to survive a "flood" (war).

Noah

Brigade commander, Colonel Noah commands his "family" (brigade combat team) while on the move (offensive operations in a "sea" of earth/human combats) or at a stop (he has the high ground position on a mountain of Ararat for defensive operations). He has his own "hip pocket air force" of "birds" which he can launch to do reconnaissance, attack and resupply/medevac.

Killer Doves

Inside 4 of his 40-foot long BATTLEBOXarks are 4 x Killer Doves on catapult/ZEL launch rails that in a brief stop can be erected and launched with two trusted "LT. Shem (pilot) and LT. Japtheth" (observer/AFAC) sons aboard. SGT Hams (driver/crew chief mechanics) drive the armored track towing the BATTLEBOXarks that hold the Killer Doves. These are fast (500 mph dash speed) but long loiter time, low altitude agile, armored, contraprop with emergency back-up turbofan engine in tail LARA 2 observation/attack planes with a cargo capacity of 5, 000 pounds or a 4-man recon team deliverable by parachute or STOL airland.

After their mission is complete, the Killer Doves return with an "olive branch" of information from observation and/or a recovered recon team by STOL landing onto a short stretch of road on the wheels of their ski/wheels or a dirt or grassy field or a river or lake or even the ocean using the ski part of their ski/wheels. To slow down stall speed and landing roll, boundary layer control blown flaps, a drogue parachute and reverse thrust applied to the contraprops enables the Killer Doves to land nearly anywhere impromptu in less than 300 feet (one football field or about 200 cubits). SGT Hams reload the Killer Doves back into their BATTLEBOXarks' erector launch rails and refuel/rearm them with all or some of the crews taking off again to effect continuous 24/7/365 coverage or waiting on alert status to launch on request for immediate maneuver air support. When not flying, LT Shems and Japtheths are sleeping in their BATTLEBOXes on fold-down bunks.

Killer Dove: A-4 SkyHawk-in-a-Box or on a trailer!

BATTLEBOXaircraft ZEL Transporter-Erector Launchers (TEL) = Aircraft launched instantly like mobile SCUD missiles from constantly position-changing, cross-country mobile, hard-to-detect, camouflaged launchers = Aircraft that don't congregate on obvious open danger area runways/air bases = aircraft that will not get destroyed on the ground

The sad reality is that most aircraft are on the ground at any one time. Today's heavier-than-air jets are too complicated and costly to keep in the air 24/7/365. You can have a few on "scramble" alert status at the end of the runway to take-off and TRY to defend your air base, but the facts are that Welsh & Taylor in today's P-40s are not going to be any more successful at stopping a "Pearl Harbor" counter-air strike than they were on 1941. If you don't have EARLY WARNING and have plenty of time to get your planes loaded with pilots and warmed up, your aircraft are going to get caught on the ground and destroyed IDF 6-day war style. Having LTA blimps and Aerostats that can stay aloft 24/7/365 via air buoyancy can achieve this, but it must not be just radar based defense since radar can be evaded by low-level flights and stealthy constructed aircraft. The video below details how painfully long it takes to check a HTA plane, warm it up, taxi down to the runway which is nothing more than a huge bottleneck denying your aircraft to take off.

Here you see the OV-10 take forever to get airborne like most aircraft. One option air forces do is to place their aircraft in hardened shelters or even in the sides of mountains like the Swiss, Swedes and Red Chinese do. The problem with hardened shelters is their runways give their presence away and eventually enough high explosives directed accurately should blast at least their doors enough to jam the aircraft behind them inside.

What we gather from this video is we need to DISPERSE AND CAMOUFLAGE aircraft so they are not even detected at all and to be able to launch them without runways using vertical launchers in BATTLEBOXes which open up and the MAS plane inside's wings unfold, crew chief does his checks, engines revved up to max thrust and ZIPPP! it takes off right on the spot. This is essentially a "Sink-the-Air Force" concept not unlike what we need to do with the Navy's aircraft via submarine aircraft carriers.

BATTLEBOXaircraftZELTELs would enable tactical-sized FIGHTER-IN-a-BOX aircraft to be always on the go, so even if they were to be spotted by enemy surveillance means they would be long gone by the time attack means were brought to bear. Furthermore, the FIBs could be dug into the ground itself and camouflaged yet the pilots/observers would be nearby in an adjacent BATTLEBOXtroops ready to enter the aircraft, do flight checks, open the top, erect the launcher rail and launch instantly, then lower back down, close the box top and restore camouflage.

Recovering FIB aircraft would be a challenge but if they are LARA 2 seaplane types that can land on water if a lake or river were nearby leaving no tracks or trace and then be picked-up by a prime mover to be taken back to their BATTLEBOXaircraftZELTEL. If the FIB were a LARA 2 type landplane with skis/low ground pressure wheels or event tracks, they could recover on an open grassy field and be picked up and brought back to their BATTLEBOXaircraftZELTELs by a prime mover whose own tracks should be covered by a special track covering vehicle. If the FIB aircraft was a STOVL capable type like the F-35B JSF, they could come to a hover near their BATTLEBOXaircraftZELTEL and land vertically to be returned to inside with minimal track trace on the nearby grass/ground. Air Force are going to have to start thinking like artillerymen who today go to great lengths to avoid counter-battery fire. And in essence, tactical aircraft except when observing or transporting are nothing more than either air defense or ground bombardment artillery, anyway. Strike aircraft are indeed artillery that flies by aerodynamic lift instead of ballistic projection.

Paul Czysz' "Killer Wasp" Concept

He writes:

"I prefer South American wasps they have a 2 inch wing span and are lethal within 20 minutes,. BECAUSE you need thousands of bees but only a few wasps. I keep seeing references that the target was so close you did not need a sight!! Remember what Sir Richard Steele said in 1613, "For the British Soldier no Sword is too short." That's OK when there are no SAMs around. Chuck Myers is on the right track with an ARMY integrated tactical air arm that includes armor. But that air arm should be lethal outside the range of the SA-11's and 13's and use synthetic vision to see and hit at that range. These little bees are fanciful ideas that they can be employed in an area outside the southern Sudan. A larger size and faster aircraft (it can slow down to attack) can give combat damage survivability as well as the ability to generate combat damage. Marine Corsairs and AD's [SkyRaiders] put the bombs, napalm, etc. on target just a 100 feet in front of the marines at Chosin Reservoir. They were the last army group that operated with their indigenous tactical air. The Russian FRONT organization has its own airforce and would be a bear to combat (Ask the Germans). I keep using Russians for an example because as Genghis Khan taught them an army MUST be a killing machine. We don't have that today as we apologize every time we kill a person in what is called Iraq.

Someone has to abrogate the Key West Agreement and give the Army back its tactical air power. The trouble with autogyros is that they have a rotor head. They can and do takeoff and land very short but their payoad and speed are limited. They used to build Kellets in southeast Missouri before WW II and used to watch them fly regularly. My dad was in WW I and was always attached to aircraft.

I agree you need some ARMY killer bees, not USAF. Trucano, T-6, and Pilatus are all neat aircraft but I think you need a twin with good forward visibility and eyeballs aided by superimposed synthetic IR and mm radar vision. The twin gives a good location for a high speed forward firing cannon somewhere between a 0.50 (12.5 mm) and 25 mm gatling gun. You also need a fire and forget guided missile beyond visual range weapon.

I think the Mosquito or Westland twin is something like the size you need, except a turboprop with opposite hand engines. If you want the prop diameter smaller for the shaft horsepower available then counter-rotating props. If you use the GE double counter-rotating turbines you can eliminate the gearbox. One is an old pre-WWII design by Bell, I think the Airacuda. It had pusher props and a gunner in each engine nacelle. Not needed now but the pusher is an interesting idea.

Ralph Zumbo, TANK SERGEANT author writes:

"In January 1968, we found out, in Vietnam, that armor and air are inherently compatible. Pleiku Airbase was getting penetrated and its fighter rivetments blown on almost a nightly basis....Securing a perimiter around a one mile strip is a bear. They asked the army for manpower and some genius sent US, a platoon of M48A3 tanks. We not only solved the problem with IR searchlights and cannister/flechette ammo, but we quickly found out that our tanks could be repaired in their shops, and the supplies (tracks, ammo, crats, etc) flown directly to the tanks, and we once retracked the platoon right out of the C-124s. When TET hit, some of our crew were airmen. This has possibilities. You could, for instance, base a battalion of Mech Infantry with a tank company in a forward LZ with TacAir and choppers. Comment?"

So where do we start?

Enter Chuck Jarnot's Viper Autogyro fighter-bomber for Maneuver Air Support

The thing the U.S. Army and marines lack is a trailer-mobile liaison aircraft that can be CO-LOCATED with ground maneuver troops to observe and attack the enemy for them by remaining constantly overhead. As good as the A/MH-6 Little Bird is, even in NOTAR form, its a metal helicopter that requires specialized people to maintain and fly them at great costs. When all is said and done they are owned and operated by military egotists in their own little club and they do not even get around to being used as small unit recon team insertion/extraction, MEDEVAC and resupply means like the British Army's Scout/Gazelle helicopters do, and our fixed-wing "grasshopper" STOL airplanes did in WW2, Korea and Vietnam. What we need is a 2, 000 pound or less WOODEN "Killer Bee" observation/attack/liaison aircraft that is simple and inexpensive to operate that is OWNED AND OPERATED BY THE GROUND MANEUVER UNITS THEMSELVES. If they cannot be flown due to weather etc., they are on a trailer or in an ISO container and sublimate themselves with the rest of the ground forces vehicles. Vipers will get to the battlefield in ISO sea/air/land containers. There will be no air bases, no special facilities, no comfy barracks, no special fuel trucks, the wooden "Viper" will sip the same diesel or JP-8 that the rest of the ground forces use. However, unlike a small helicopter the Viper will be very fast like the Mosquitoes of WW2 and travel in excess of 200+ mph to avoid being shot down. Retired LTC Chuck Jarnot proposes a simple autogyro made of wood with fixed wings and pushed by very powerful DeltaHawk diesel piston engines. It would be armed with guns, rockets and missiles and would indeed become a real killer that Hollywood fantasized with Sean Connery in the 007 movie, "You Only Live Twice" where an armed Barnes autogyro delivered in suitcases shot down a squadron of enemy conventional Bell Model 47 helicopters in air-to-air combat.

By being made of wood, the Viper would be radar invisible like the AN-2 Colt biplane and by using piston engines give off little heat signatures compared to turboprop engines while also not being so vulnerable to dirt/sand/dust ingestion problems. A compartment in the back would accept either a pair of scouts or 1 wounded Soldier on a stretcher or 1, 000 pounds of vital supplies. Being an autogyro, the Viper could take-off vertically by a kick start of engine power but not hover. LTC Jarnot writes:

"The Viper, like other modified autogyros, can pre-rotate the rotor on the ground with a simple hydraulic motor, then literally "jump" into the air and can land vertically with no ground roll....but they can not execute sustained hover."

This is ok since all the rotors do is spin to enable V/TOL and agile flight without the mechanical cost and complexity of powered and directed helicopter rotors. If you are too costly to exist and too complex to fly you are just as grounded as if an enemy shot you down.

Some will say, "great! Let's build a wooden autogyro UAV/UCAV to do this". No can do. UAV/UCAVs cannot see and find the enemy like humans in an aircraft can. We must not continue this wimping out that is taking place throughout DoD so they can work around over inflated pilot egos just to get SOMETHING in the air under THEIR DIRECT CONTROL. Man must be in the loop for the Viper "killer bees" to work. UAV/UCAVs can be "worker bees" to add more quantitative numbers to the "swarm" but the force must begin with a BRAIN, a queen bee and Soldier bees. DoD is try