Army cancels Comanche after wasting 8 billion of our tax dollars.

To say its been wasted is a bit of an overstatement. All the technology developed for the Comanche will be implmented in the next generaton helicopter anyway, just at a later date. I'd rather of seen them finish the helicopter but oh well. We've still got our F-22s rolling out soon and we're already working on a replacement for it.

 

My father was/still is/ a huey pilot for the army during vietnam and reserves. He claims to be able to do a loop in one, and one of the other pilots says he can do it... others say its possible but hey... they are in the army, its almost a requirment that they are full of it right?

Either way, I loved the idea and look of the comanche, but sadly sometimes you just need to cut your losses when you realize theres no need for a replacement quite yet.

 

Aside from the technology derived from the program utilized in other areas, I was thinking of the contract jobs that put money back into the nearby businesses. Some of these techs and engineers probably bought homes on the duration of the project. I realize that represents a small amount in percentage of economical impact in contrast but at least money was circulating in the hands of the civillian world. "So what are you saying Gabe, that more government waste programs should spring up just to fill the economy gap?" No, what I'm saying is that program was not entirely a loss at all, though the final product was not awarded a contract to go into production, the road along the way kept people going and in that regard technology was refined.



- Gabe

 

This is quiet normal, military programs get shelved all the time. You just can not know in advance what will pan out and what will not. (XB-70 Valkyrie, M-1 predecessor, Cheyenne...) Military requirements also change due to different political/world situations.
Think on the bright side, a lot of very smart people were retained by the program and not forced to move to India or the private sector.

 

the XB-70 is amazing.

The truth is our theatres of engagement are changing, we are not going to go head to head with China or Korea. That project was started when we thought it was going to be a technology war.

 

Kind of sounds like the BAR Honda team. All dough and no go.

 

UAVs killed the Commanche.

Why do we even need stealth hielos when an Apache can now sit three hills over and lob hellfires into the air that acquire at the peak of their trajectory?

There's a UAV orbiting over the target the whole time, lighting it up with a laser (coded to the hellfires). If it gets shot down, so what. We've got 20 more in the area.


The Comanche program surely did produce a good ammount of useful technology that will be applied to the next military (and civillian for that matter) aircraft. It's not so much a failure as a radical shift in focus.

The end result is that $8bil got spent on things that will end up not quite being a new heilocopter. (Is military spending the most efficent use of money? Hell no! Is it sometimes the only way certin technologies are developed that later migrate down? Hell yes!)

 

The real reason the Army decided to nix the Comanche is that we no longer need a front-line tankbusting chopper, even though the Comanche wasn't necessarily destined to be employed in this way. Frankly even the Apache is obsolete really, its job when first concieved in the late 70s was to pick off hundreds of Russian T-80s as they rolled across Poland and into Western Europe during a non-nuclear WW3.

In Iraq the Apache has been a mixed bag. Although a media darling, if you dig a bit you find that Army evaluators have been critical of its service record overseas, its high level of maintenance in the harsh climate of Iraq, and the fact that TWICE small arms fire brought them down, creating PR disasters in the process. By the end of the last major offensive into Iraq, Army planners held the Apache far back from the front, putting handcuffs on it basically, so as not to lose another one.

It sucks that Cold War platforms like the Comanche are being cancelled, I love that technology, but there just isn't as much need for a dedicated tactical helicopter thanks to the modernization of other aerial delivery platforms. I do believe we'll still see a future Army helicopter, but I don't think it will have internal or external weapon stores. More of a tactical scout role.

My new personal hard-on is the UCAV. That's the future and I can't wait to see what they do with them. The thought of robotic unmanned platforms taking off from carriers and delivering ordinance with 100% stealth up to 1000 miles away is amazing, and GPS makes it all possible. The X-45 is the testbed, and a vision of the future. Read up on it here:

http://www.boeing.com/phantom/ucav.html

 

Thanks Impala, how about you show your appreciation by changing your avatar to one of Alyssa Milano for next week?