Army retires the Kiowa Warrior

Lawman said:
I'm not talking about keeping W5's (SRP is looooong overdue). I'm saying because the Army doesn't do promotion groups based of community as far as warrant promotions we are going to be less competitive than our peers from other communities.

Every career path tracker talks about broadening and proving you can do the next job by gaining and having the skills for it. You don't get those skills by staying in a Battalion as a CW3/4 in eternity.

That's gonna lead to wide piles of year groups who make the W5 ring that are 60/47 heavy with the couple 64 guys that make the cut because we simply won't have the competitiveness those other promotion packets do. That's not even talking about the 2nd/3rd order effects of never sending attack guys to any of those jobs so within the community you don't have those people returning to spread knowledge of what they learned doing _____.
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At least in the AH community you're almost guaranteed to make it retirement regardless of what track you are. Even the handful of guys I know that were two time pass overs for W3/W4 a few years back have the opportunity to come back to active duty.

For me I'm completely ok with the Army making me retire at 20 years as a W4. When I made W4 a few years back I knew that even in the best case scenario the promotion rates for my year group to W5 would be in the high teens and I'd likely never see that rank regardless of my efforts. From then on I didn't have to sweat my OERs or what my job title was. Honestly it was a relief not having to worry about the politics of the job and just focus on making myself and the unit better.

From a financial standpoint as well its better to take retirement at 20 and move on to a second career, especially one that you can get a second retirement from.

Having worked at the Brigade level as a W4 (BAMO) and my time at Rucker, I've come to the conclusion that most W5s are self-licking ice-cream cones anyway. Case in point is the new Combat Helicopter Gunnery TC. I guarantee the senior warrants that wrote that never actually had to complete the tables in the field and have no clue how much butt-pain they imparted on their lower ranking brethren.
 
Low_Level_Hell said:
. Case in point is the new Combat Helicopter Gunnery TC. I guarantee the senior warrants that wrote that never actually had to complete the tables in the field and have no clue how much butt-pain they imparted on their lower ranking brethren.
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Same with the new-ish .09 and all the ridiculous AMS requirements now.
 
MikeFavinger said:
And don't get me started on the new .11.
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One of the best and eye-opening articles I've read about our Army is "Lying to Ourselves: Dishonesty in the Army Profession." To sum it up it's about how its become acceptable at all levels to pencil whip all the mandatory training requirements in the Army. I see this happen daily and the consequences the article speaks about. One example I'll put forward is that we show a crewchief how to click his way through SERE 100 saying its perfectly acceptable then expect him not to do that with the IETM when working on a helicopter. I could go on and on with examples of cutting the corners to make some spreadsheet cell green, many which I would be guilty of myself.
 
Low_Level_Hell said:
One of the best and eye-opening articles I've read about our Army is "Lying to Ourselves: Dishonesty in the Army Profession." To sum it up it's about how its become acceptable at all levels to pencil whip all the mandatory training requirements in the Army. I see this happen daily and the consequences the article speaks about. One example I'll put forward is that we show a crewchief how to click his way through SERE 100 saying its perfectly acceptable then expect him not to do that with the IETM when working on a helicopter. I could go on and on with examples of cutting the corners to make some spreadsheet cell green, many which I would be guilty of myself.
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I've read that too - great article.

Throw an Aviation Guard unit into the fray who has the exact same requirements as an AD unit without the benefit of having the unit at work most of the year and you can imagine the results.
 
It's funny, I actually know one of the guys that wrote the gunnery manual.

The whole AMS and collective training requirements grew out of the worst COA developed on how do we train for the hard RF/near peer fight at home. Essentially it was the only way you could force a units hand to do something (even if it's not effective), because nobody is willing to spend flight hours sending guys in aircraft TDY to RF ranges or MWATS to actually train effectively against those systems. And there aren't enough working ASE kits in the Army to outfit units who aren't short to deploy anyway so you'd have nothing to train with if they were.


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deadstick said:
News Flash:

"Now, just months after the final Kiowa Warriors were officially retired, the US Army is whining about how badly they need...an armed scout helicopter."
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Unbelievable......Sure now they have the budget from Trump and they want to try again for a budget approval after gutting the force.

Maybe they will bring back a updated version of the Comanche.
 
deadstick said:
MD540F/AH6S.
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I would like to hear from a few AH6 guys if they think their helicopter would make a good armed scout helicopter. I do know a few AH6 pilots but I'm not cool enough to talk to them.

Some drawbacks I have heard from non-AH6 pilots are how the flight controls are not hydraulically assisted and it would be exhausting to fly for extended periods and that the airframe doesn't really provide all that much of an improvement from the existing Kiowa Warrior as far as power margins and survivability goes.
 
deadstick said:
News Flash:

"Now, just months after the final Kiowa Warriors were officially retired, the US Army is whining about how badly they need...an armed scout helicopter."
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My favorite part about the article is when it talks about the Army trying to save money by replacing the TH-67 with the LUH. I'm still trying to wrap my head around that one.
 
The problem with the 58D and even the 6 is that if you try to cram everything in it you're going to have a power issue. KISS.

A scout is not an attack platform.



The Lakota as the primary trainer and park the 58s -- it's like Dumb and Dumberer. MS must have some powerful folks on the hill.
 
deadstick said:
The problem with the 58D and even the 6 is that if you try to cram everything in it you're going to have a power issue. KISS.

A scout is not an attack platform.
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One way to look at it if commanders want a platform with a full comm suite, survivability systems, sufficient range and station time, and sensors with video downlink, all while armed..... you get the Apache.

I would not be surprised if the AH6 leaves the Army's inventory in the next 5 years.
 
Low_Level_Hell said:
One way to look at it if commanders want a platform with a full comm suite, survivability systems, sufficient range and station time, and sensors with video downlink, all while armed..... you get the Apache.

I would not be surprised if the AH6 leaves the Army's inventory in the next 5 years.
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Unless task force can get some serious shot in the arm funding that would allow them own and keep a platoon+ of Apaches the AH-6 ain't going anywhere.

There are too many contingencies that it has to fill. And even though the old "not as involved" rule comes up now and again specifically because of Afghanistan, the Task Force has to many missions where they have to have a gunship, but can't wait on conventional Army to go through what it takes to "rapidly deploy" one. Plus not everything the MH/AH-6 community does is so much the cool kicking down doors videos on history channel stuff. That aircraft links us in with a lot of other country Air Forces to provide training and skills transfer to our allies that wouldn't exist if we were strictly a high cost gunship fleet. I've thought guys that fly MD530s and Apache doesn't translate at all to the way those guys need to learn to fight their aircraft.

Unless big Army is willing to have a permanent DSRW group that can't be touched for other usage they have to own their own. With 64s manned the way we are right now, that's impossible. The only way they divest the AH-6 is for another aircraft like it in a better platform, like some of the FVL concepts.
 
deadstick said:
Doesn't the "heavy" gun support for the TF come from the DAPs?
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DAP has some specific mission sets that don't work for a 64, at the same time I was doing a lot of DSRW in Afghanistan because there are only so many DAPs to go around. The big thing the DAP can do that we can't is Air Refuel which opens up a list of mission capabilities specific to it and only it. Even so an Apache and a DAP don't fight the same way.

The AH-6 is attractive because it's so small/simple. It's an airplane that can literally roll off a C-130 and be flight ready in tens of minutes. So when you talk about some of the crazier mission requirements like say taking the 75th Rangers into some country and seizing an airfield as part of a greater over all invasion plan now you have this aircraft that could go in almost immediately with the C-130s and as soon as ground is secure 30 minutes later you've got Close Combat Attack. Are we gonna do that every so often, I don't know, but if somewhere in the SOF world there is a mission contingency that the AH/MH6 is tied directly too than you have to find an agreed upon substitute and like I said conventional aviation can't just Substitute because it isn't set up to be rapidly deployable or tailorable the way the SOF would need it to be.


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64 will never....NEVER go to the swoopy guys. It's not a new idea and had been addressed many a time. Two problems.....mobility and maintenance

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