OH-58 going away / world record formation

Man, that's a lot of air being beaten into submission!

Good thing they kept them widely separated, too. I've seen other attempts at helicopter formation flight end disastrously when rotor clash led to bad results.

 

I was thinking the same thing when I watched that. I was figuring at least one rotor diameter clearance and 50 feet up from the aircraft ahead. Just thinking.

 

Huge knifefight on retiring the OH-58 and stealing all the guard and reserve Apaches to replace them in active duty units. Not sure if it has been settled yet. Stealing guard and reserve assets always causes a huge howl in Congress, and this was no exception.

 

Was sad to see our local Apaches go.

They were all replaced with Blackhawks.

Heard a lot of Kiowa crews are moving to drones. That's gotta suck.

 

I don't see The OH-58 platform going away anytime soon....

 

They are going to replace an observation helicopter with an attack helicopter? Why? I don't understand.

 

The OH-58 is armed...

The main difference that distinguishes the Kiowa Warrior from the original AHIP aircraft is a universal weapons pylon found mounted on both sides of the aircraft. These pylons are capable of carrying combinations of AGM-114 Hellfire missiles, air-to-air Stinger (ATAS) missiles, 7-shot 2.75 in (70 mm) Hydra-70 rocket pods,[67] and an M296 .50 caliber machine gun

While nowhere near as effective as an Apache, the OH-58 does just fine. The Apache is nowhere near the observation platform that the OH-58 is..

Never doubt that the military can make a bad decision when the budgets get cut to nothing, and they have to do something to save money.

 

One of the big advantages of the OH-58 was the high mounted pod that allowed them to hide below hills or tree lines while designating for Hellfires or other PGMs. The Apache does not have that, but does have other survivability features like suppressed IR signature and beyond visual range weapons, especially the D model.

 

Yes the OH-58 is going away. Already happened. We all caught a big shocker last week at aircraft selection. Apaches have been hard to come by lately. Maybe one or two per selection. My buddies had 12 available last week. Its been a mix of Echo's and Deltas. We'll see how it plays out at my selection in 3 weeks. Im flying OH-58 A/C's right now and they are a blast.


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Wagner's "Ride of the valkyries" started to play in my head immediately when I saw the formation.