Attack of the Killer Bees: the return of the Air Cavalry
"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".
-E. E. Heinemann, Famed Designer of the B-26 Invader, A-1 SkyRaider and A-4 SkyHawk, Douglas Aircraft Company
When you consider we had to stop the combat air patrols over American cities because the 24/7/365 toll was becoming too great on our overly complex fighter-bombers, you wonder why most of our simpler, fuel-efficient, long loiter time A-10s are sitting in storage in the Davis-Monthan AFB desert? The day that weapons system complexity has made us impotent has already arrived! 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.
How We Have Gone Wrong?
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 1st 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 1st 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.
Nevertheless, when General Gavin created the Air Cavalry in the 1950s, it was with a turbine-engined, simple helicopter called the UH-1 Huey.
How we can maintain it?
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 simple, easy to maintain, full-sized helicopter not a micro-helicopter. What has 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 "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, 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 101st 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. 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 160th 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 1st Cavalry Division using smaller, more physically robust helicopters.