Should the US Army have procured the RAH-66 Comanche?

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danwild6

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Considering the failures in later procurements should the US Army have just procured the Comanche this is with hindsight of course.
 
danwild6 said:
Considering the failures in later procurements should the US Army have just procured the Comanche this is with hindsight of course.
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I think so, for all the hype about drones the AH64 and AH1Z are being used in combat in 2026 and I think the RAH66 would be useful given that fact.
 
Well, first of all, it would've served good half of normal career at this point.
Yes, things have stretched nowadays, but there would be a lot of value obtained out of it even through 2026.
 
Oh, so they are going to bring back the RAH-66 Comanche?

Currently, the Black Hawk is undergoing a temporary engine replacement phase involving the F109 engine; furthermore, there are modernization upgrade programs for the Apache (2030–2035), the MV-75 project, and so on. Aside from the items mentioned above, have we missed anything? (Weaponry)
 
I doubt they'd bring it back now, but if they had produced the from the late 2000s I think they would have provided valuable service in the last ~15 years.
 
While it might have been nice to save some $ on the failed replacement programs, you don’t need a Comanche to target terrorists or shoot down drones. So even in hindsight there was no mission that would have benefited from continuing the very expensive Comanche. Better spend the money elsewhere (eg. UAVs).
 
H_K said:
While it might have been nice to save some $ on the failed replacement programs, you don’t need a Comanche to target terrorists or shoot down drones. So even in hindsight there was no mission that would have benefited from continuing the very expensive Comanche. Better spend the money elsewhere (eg. UAVs).
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What UAVs were funded because of the Comanche's cancellation?
And after further research about $1 billion have been wasted on other programs to replace the RAH-66 Comanche.
 
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danwild6 said:
What UAVs were funded because of the Comanche's cancellation?
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Perhaps not directly but the money spent on 350 Predator Bs and 400 Reapers was a much better investment than Comanche. They did the same job that Comanche would have done, far better and for less money.
 
danwild6 said:
Considering the failures in later procurements should the US Army have just procured the Comanche this is with hindsight of course.
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It definitely should have been cancelled. Existing helicopters had every mission covered.

I'm a huge fan of tilt rotors. I think the US should have instead made a small tilt rotor about half the size of the V-280. The range and endurance of a tilt rotor would have provided increased capability over the existing helicopter fleet.

Rough specs
2x 2000hp T700 engines
Empty weight: 10,000lb
VTOL weight: 15,000lb
STOL weight 18,000lb

I would make it so the tail folds upward and over. When folded the vertical fins sit on either side of the cockpit. It would then take up similar footprint to a folded up Seahawk. It does not need a complex folding mechanism like the V-22.

I would have 8-10 seat troop versions for both the Army and Marines. Similar to the Huey or about 75% of a Blackhawk.

I would have 2 seat attack versions for both the Army and Marines with a 30mm cannon. The higher speed and range compared to AH-64 Apache and AH-Z Viper attack helicopters would allow it to do some of the A-10 and Harrier close air support missions.

The Navy would get ASW versions that allow a much greater area to be covered compared to the Seahawks. The Arleigh-burkes can't land a V-22 but this smaller tilt rotor would be perfect.

Taking off from a runway with a cargo pallet it will be able to fly 2,000 miles and send cargo direct to destroyers.

As this small tilt rotor would most likely cost more than a conventional Blackhawk I would have paired it up with a highly affordable civilian helicopter to create a high/low mix. Something a little bigger than the UH-72 Lakota.
 
Rule of cool said:
Helicopters (all machines in fact) don't last forever, and the march of technology means you can't keep teaching an old dog new tricks. Eventually you need a new dog!
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The Comanche was still old dog helicopter technology wearing a fancy dog collar. The radar cross section and acoustic improvement don't really add much to survivability. The advanced avionic technology were simply fitted to the old Apache and you have a better platform.

I would take the noisier Apache with extra armour than the quieter Comanche that can't take hits.
 
insidersource said:
The Comanche was still old dog helicopter technology wearing a fancy dog collar. The radar cross section and acoustic improvement don't really add much to survivability. The advanced avionic technology were simply fitted to the old Apache and you have a better platform.

I would take the noisier Apache with extra armour than the quieter Comanche that can't take hits.
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It wasn't old tech in the mid 2000s, it was 20-25 years newer in conception than the Apache.
 
The real problem is that air defense has literally made helicopters in their traditional 'fire brigade' role obsolete. Have people noticed that most helicopter users have been investing in indirect-fire missiles for their helis? That isn't a coincidence, as MANPADs proliferated to the point that insurgents can get some. Same thing with body armor, oddly enough.

Some people here and many elsewhere don't want to admit it, but unless anything that flies NOE is far behind friendly lines, the moment it shows ONE rotor, it's dead.

The Comanche doesn't have the stealth tech to hide from MANPADs since the Stinger. UV is a pain to conceal and decoy.
 
GruntFox said:
The Comanche doesn't have the stealth tech to hide from MANPADs since the Stinger. UV is a pain to conceal and decoy.
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Are you saying the RAH-66 was not meant to be a stealth helicopter?

What Commanche lacked at the time was later added onto the Longbow program, a fire and forget missile using third party target information. It had been a scout copter with Apache/Cobra standoff weapons that did not augment the stealth mission. Those missiles eventually did come too late. The actual RAH-66 killer was pure and simply based on the collapsed of the Soviet Union.
 
MadRat said:
Are you saying the RAH-66 was not meant to be a stealth helicopter?
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In a sense, the stealth features became useless. It also didn't help that the environment it was going into is essentially stupid-deadly to anything flying NOE. Hell, the Sgt. York proved that a helicopter can't rely on anything less than a solid object, like a building or hard terrain like hills and mountains, to stay out of radar LOS. It only got worse as time went on, culminating in Ukraine, where IADS basically turn entire areas into no-fly zones for manned aircraft and severely attrit any drone strikes in their bubble.
MadRat said:
What Commanche lacked at the time was later added onto the Longbow program, a fire and forget missile using third party target information. It had been a scout copter with Apache/Cobra standoff weapons that did not augment the stealth mission. Those missiles eventually did come too late. The actual RAH-66 killer was pure and simply based on the collapsed of the Soviet Union.
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The collapse of the USSR didn't do it any favors, but the bigger problem is that the environment it was going into literally put NOE aircraft out of existence, hence why I said that helicopters have been transitioning from their original missions to basically hiding well behind friendly lines and acting more like artillery, while indirect fire missiles are being developed and deployed for all helicopters regardless.
 
The money from the cancelled RAH program was reinvested in all three of the current helicopter programs. The Army got AH-64D, UH-60M, and CH-47D.
 
GruntFox said:
In a sense, the stealth features became useless. It also didn't help that the environment it was going into is essentially stupid-deadly to anything flying NOE. Hell, the Sgt. York proved that a helicopter can't rely on anything less than a solid object, like a building or hard terrain like hills and mountains, to stay out of radar LOS. It only got worse as time went on, culminating in Ukraine, where IADS basically turn entire areas into no-fly zones for manned aircraft and severely attrit any drone strikes in their bubble.

The collapse of the USSR didn't do it any favors, but the bigger problem is that the environment it was going into literally put NOE aircraft out of existence, hence why I said that helicopters have been transitioning from their original missions to basically hiding well behind friendly lines and acting more like artillery, while indirect fire missiles are being developed and deployed for all helicopters regardless.
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helicopters have been transitioning from their original missions to basically hiding well behind friendly lines and acting more like artillery
This is why the vietnam era 'aerial artillery' term should be reintroduced as a more apt description.
Once roles r redefined then a genuine survivalble penetrating craft like the S-67 (carries scouts/sniper, signifigant stores, rng, speed) can be reconceptualized.
 
I think that the main reason the Comanche program was ultimately cancled was that the US lost it's main enemy at the time which was the Soviet Union when the Cold War ended and the peace divided happened that ultimately ment that there was no longer a need for the Comanche's mission requirements.
 
FighterJock said:
I think that the main reason the Comanche program was ultimately cancled was that the US lost it's main enemy at the time which was the Soviet Union when the Cold War ended and the peace divided happened that ultimately ment that there was no longer a need for the Comanche's mission requirements.
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Yeah the colwar really should have ended a decade later after finishing so much cool stuff( Marder 2)
 
In a larger sense that was a reason. Chasing the illusive peace dividend resulted in a whole lot of things being cancelled or cut back. The RAH-66 was one of those programs they kept going up until they had to start spending the big money to actually mass produce and introduce them into service. At that time, it was also increasingly clear that the CH-47, UH-60, and AH-64 fleets were due for a modernization and overhaul. Plus, the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan were also huge money sinks.

A really unfortunate collection circumstances and I'm still disappointed by the outcome.

The whole "UAVs will do it all" concept was sold heavily when the Comanche was cancelled. But UCAR fizzled out and even with all the other UAVs in service there was still a demand for a scout helicopter. So, they started the ARH-70 program intended to field a cheap mostly COTS design and soon discovered it would take a lot more work and cost more than they thought it would, and as a result that was cancelled. There was another program (AAS) after that looking at a few options, but none were determined to meet requirements, and at the same time they also decided to retire the aging OH-58s.

Following this was FVL and its FARA component which gave us the Bell 360 and Sikorsky Raider X, both of which seemed to me like promising designs that were progressing rather smoothly and represented two distinct approaches for what the next scout helicopter could be. But FARA was cancelled as both designs were being readied for their first flights because of the same reasoning expressed back in 2004 that UAVs will do it all. What a miserable 20 year loop resulting in no production hardware. There ought to be a whole hanger at the Army Aviation museum for all the rejected prototypes of a new scout helicopter starting with the RAH-66.

I'm not convinced there isn't still a useful niche for the manned scout helicopter even with the saturation of small drones we see. The Sikorsky design in particular could have been very versatile IMHO.
 
Foo Fighter said:
What made it obsolete?
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Battlefield helicopters are simply not survivable. They're the modern equivalent of horse cavalry - useful in tiny and diminishing niches only (and of course the establishment insists on them, just as it insisted much too long on keeping horses).


The concept was highly questionable during the late 70's (in face of Gepard SPAAG), but completely pointless once AIM-120 AMRAAM brought active radar (lock on after launch) seeker missiles into the aircraft targeting business at scale. The Russians had R-73, which were shown to be somewhat capable of LOAL as well. Such LOAL air defences arrived slowly, but they could have been deployed en masse by the mid-90's already (before the Comanche prototypes flew!).

Ukrainian helicopters did little more than inaccurate lobbing of unguided rockets over Ukraine even though the Russians don't deploy anything like state of the art LOAL air defences and hardly any AEW and datalinking.
 
BTW, for all I know (about its firing arcs) the gun installation of RAH-66 was not as suitable for plinking insurgents in the dark as the AH-64's gun installation.
 
lastdingo said:
Battlefield helicopters are simply not survivable. They're the modern equivalent of horse cavalry - useful in tiny and diminishing niches only (and of course the establishment insists on them, just as it insisted much too long on keeping horses).
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The advent of helicopter APS (HAPS) & DEW defensive turrets can well provide decisive survivability & unparalled lethality in the deep dispersed battlespace,
lastdingo said:
The concept was highly questionable during the late 70's (in face of Gepard SPAAG), but completely pointless once AIM-120 AMRAAM brought active radar (lock on after launch) seeker missiles into the aircraft targeting business at scale. The Russians had R-73, which were shown to be somewhat capable of LOAL as well. Such LOAL air defences arrived slowly, but they could have been deployed en masse by the mid-90's already (before the Comanche prototypes flew!).
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A decent ranged helio & the transparent battlespace allows IADS to be primarily suppressed or simply skirted as the current front so starkly displays.
lastdingo said:
Ukrainian helicopters did little more than inaccurate lobbing of unguided rockets over Ukraine even though the Russians don't deploy anything like state of the art LOAL air defences and hardly any AEW and datalinking.
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The UKrs have few helios so husband. They are not really committed to any sort decisive deep warfare either.
 
lastdingo said:
Ukrainian helicopters did little more than inaccurate lobbing of unguided rockets over Ukraine even though the Russians don't deploy anything like state of the art LOAL air defences and hardly any AEW and datalinking.
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The Russians had a whole lot of modern and mobile air defense systems although I don't know how many they've pissed away in this wasteful war. Plus generous amounts of man-portable SAMs. You can't expect old unmodernized Ukrainian Mi-24s to achieve much in this environment even before the drone saturation set in and the battlefield became increasingly static.

For all of their failings in this war Russian Mi-28s and Ka-52s were useful at blunting Ukrainian efforts at a large-scale counteroffensive a few years ago. The Ukrainians have also done a useful job improvising and killing all kinds of drones with their helicopters.
 
Russian air defences looked neat on paper, but were short of LOAL capability near the front. There was no bird's view (AEW) support with datalink most of the time anyway, nor infrasound OTH detection of helicopters known to the public.

jsport, I wrote about that in 2017, but a fully protected AH at the front is simply too expensive.
https://defense-and-freedom.blogspot.com/2017/07/attack-helicopter-survivability.html

A combo of Helispot and 9M96E (LOAL with active radar) would wipe out helicopters at 8...20 km from the forward-deployed helispot array, which can be camouflaged very well and is passive.
https://defense-and-freedom.blogspot.com/2016/10/acoustic-sensors.html
 
lastdingo said:
Russian air defences looked neat on paper, but were short of LOAL capability near the front. There was no bird's view (AEW) support with datalink most of the time anyway, nor infrasound OTH detection of helicopters known to the public.

jsport, I wrote about that in 2017, but a fully protected AH at the front is simply too expensive.
https://defense-and-freedom.blogspot.com/2017/07/attack-helicopter-survivability.html
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Thank you Lastdingo, DIRCM et al are great but .. saw no direct reference to Hard kill missile HAPS.
https://verticalmag.com/press-releases/orbitalatkcompleteskeytestofhelicopteractiveprotectionsystem/

As well hard kill dew either internal or RTX pod mounted.

https://www.wearethemighty.com/migh...-gives-the-blackhawk-a-powerful-drone-zapper/
Some version w/o the pallet has been around for awhile w/ the USN as a test bunny.

https://dsiac.dtic.mil/articles/hel...y-laser-shoots-target-in-groundbreaking-test/

High cost is not such an issue when the intent is finally realized. ie deep BAI + troop carrying. Yes, real battlespace effects up to strategic. :}
 
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danwild6 said:
Considering the failures in later procurements should the US Army have just procured the Comanche this is with hindsight of course.
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No. FPV drones have made attack helicopters somewhat impotent and Comanche wasn't designed for that threat. It would be extremely vulnerable in the air littoral, and retrofitting something like a HAPS or high power microwave would require a new helicopter, at least without sacrificing everything that made Comanche any different from a Cobra or Apache. If Comanche had been able to be delivered a decade earlier in quantity it might have been useful in the 1990s small wars. Task Force Hawk would have appreciated its abilities in Kosovo in hunting and destroying air defense systems that otherwise kept them relatively grounded.
 
jsport, hard kill protection hardly ever works as advertised in practice. See Merkavas taking FPV hits despite Trophy, lots of warships getting hit because they're hardly ever ready for defence when under missile attack. Likewise, helicopter hard kill defence would at most shift the attacks to some slightly different approach. Moreover, such systems cost payload or endurance, add maintenance needs, reduce technical readiness, increase costs.
Helicopters are survivability-wise at a point where the necessary effort is in no way justified by their military usefulness.
The battlefield rotary aviation that's still worth it is the one that's cheap; 150 kg payload-class multicopters, including for CASEVAC, possibly normal personnel transport and even air assault (esp. in mountainous areas).

Kat tsun, TF Hawk was a logistics disaster and they would have needed LIDAR/LADAR to avoid powerlines.
 
lastdingo said:
Battlefield helicopters are simply not survivable. They're the modern equivalent of horse cavalry - useful in tiny and diminishing niches only (and of course the establishment insists on them, just as it insisted much too long on keeping horses).


The concept was highly questionable during the late 70's (in face of Gepard SPAAG), but completely pointless once AIM-120 AMRAAM brought active radar (lock on after launch) seeker missiles into the aircraft targeting business at scale. The Russians had R-73, which were shown to be somewhat capable of LOAL as well. Such LOAL air defences arrived slowly, but they could have been deployed en masse by the mid-90's already (before the Comanche prototypes flew!).
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Commanche was literally intended to fly into the face of Shilkas, SA-8/9s etc.

Intended to fly into IADS and take out the major nodes, like at the start of Desert Storm.
 
lastdingo said:
jsport, hard kill protection hardly ever works as advertised in practice. See Merkavas taking FPV hits despite Trophy, lots of warships getting hit because they're hardly ever ready for defence when under missile attack.
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There are some folks that would like to hear given the cash spent. ..have never seen a Trophy attempt & miss a drone.
lastdingo said:
Likewise, helicopter hard kill defence would at most shift the attacks to some slightly different approach.
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What other approach? Once a fast acting directional HPM possibly combined w a Laser. You would need a nuke to down a craft.

Moreover, such systems cost payload or endurance, add maintenance needs, reduce technical readiness, increase costs. Helicopters are survivability-wise at a point where the necessary effort is in no way justified by their military usefulness.
Fat chance, given what is spent on other penetrating aerial vehicles. A fast attack heli would be a slow F-111 + specops carrier well worth the payoff.
Engines, reduced hub load/lift rotars & material science, compact avionics et al. all argue helicopters to finally finally come of age.
 
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IMHO, a lot of folk are using a personal opinion as fact, something very common now and conflating that opinion into fact. That fact then makes the system at hand obsolete or the dog'z danglies. Rinse and repeat but add the 'fact' of a u potato submission as strengthening the 'fact'.
Along with the AI bookz mentioned elsewhere on the forum, factz are harder and harder to define.....
 

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