JA83 said:
OldArmy - This is a Hegseth driven thing, and they're apparently trying to adapt lessons from Afghanistan, Iraq, and Ukraine to emphasize lighter, cheaper-to-maintain forces, drones/robotics, and rapid deployment. Ukraine supposedly taught us that helicopters aren't survivable near the front lines. I'm skeptical of these ideas because the lessons that we've supposedly learned from those recent conflicts may not apply to "near-peer" fights (e.g. "high intensity conflict" as it was called in my day). Not to impune today's high-ranking grunts who came back with lessons from the Middle East, but those wars have about as much bearing on the future as Vietnam in the '60s did on Central Europe in the '80s.
It has nothing to do with the ME conflicts but the fact that Near Peers are finally adopting the redneck innovation of Ukraine trying to stay alive. The Russia/Ukraine conflict has completely broken open the new technological arms race of drones. We have professionally designed and factory manufactured interceptor drones being developed as we speak by many nations now (including us) which will be a nightmare for rotary craft trying to get into effective range to do their jobs. And these won't always be nice large SAM batteries we can preplan and SEAD into oblivion but mobile 2 man teams hunkering down in rubble and bunkers.
For once in living history, I actually believe some of our brass are looking forward or at least attempting to. And not trying to fight the last war with the current one. Pretty much the exact opposite of your take.
Mix that with our extreme adversity to taking losses in airframes and it continues to diminish the roles helos will take in the future IMHO. The days of medivacs landing under fire are loooong gone. And our attack craft have been hideously outranged for years and years now.
Plus, the ultimate enemy for any weapons program. Budget money. Rotary assets are expensive, drones are not. Our next war with a determined near peer will smash every budgetary constraint within days I imagine.
I say all this as an extreme rotor lover. Love those big beautiful birds but this is the reality and challenges we face as we move forward.
