Drones and Apaches Are the Army’s New Aerial Scouts - And Not Everyone Is Thrilled by David Axe, War is Boring
… The Kiowa Warriors, built by Bell, have flown nearly a million hours in combat since 2001—that’s around two hours per day, every day, for each of the roughly 100 OH-58s deployed to war zones. Scores of the 34-foot-long copters have been shot down or crashed in battle. Today the Army has just over 300 OH-58Ds, down from a pre-war inventory of 368.
But soon there could be no more Kiowa Warriors in U.S. service. In a surprise move, the Army is proposing to eliminate all the OH-58Ds in the next couple years and replace them with Unmanned Aerial Systems along with upgraded Boeing AH-64 Apache attack helicopters, which are much larger and heavier than the Kiowas and typically do not fly as low.
Part of a sweeping reorganization meant to shrink and upgrade the Army and save billions of dollars, the plan to “divest” the Kiowa Warriors has met with fierce resistance from inside the Army…
Comments
A stupid plan on the part of the brass if this happens... Like the A-10, the Kiowa does a couple peculiar jobs very well. It could and needs upgrades but what doesn't? No UAV is gonna be able to respond, like a Kiowa, sometimes you just can't replace the man. The brass seem to have a love of technology that boarders on the insane. We currently field a bunch of artillery we can't shoot, wasted $5-6 billon on a camo pattern that doesn't hide you any wear but a gravel pit, issue rape whistles and hundreds of other dumb items and a 100 mil on an assault rifle that we never got. Making every piece of equipment into a swiss army knife sounds good... Until you are skinning a deer... Yes it can be done, but is the best piece of kit for the job? Nope. Changing the way we spend our defense dollars would do a lot more for us than, getting rid of the Kiowa. The Apache is a great bird, but like the Bradley, it's no good for scouting/reconnaissance.