Quote Originally Posted by M.L. View Post
We pilots are a cautious bunch.
and I remember many a ride and CA where this was not so, that done with pilots and crews running over 100+ hours a month, no seats in the a/c and other things that today would cause many to have the vapors. Not saying that caution is all bad, however, folks there today tell me it very much varies from Avn unit to Avn unit though the overall philosophy seems to trend toward ever greater caution; sort of Airframe protection instead of pure force protection.

The informants are airborne and SF types and they may have a slightly different perspective than others that ride with you but I suspect the difference is slight. Not there, don't know -- I merely pass all that along for what it might be worth and as a thought provoker for your consideration.
What we are really talking about with helicopters here is making enough to get an huge force air mobile.
Huh? Take my 500 plus birds, a relatively realistic number given the funds stated, you'd be looking at 20-30% or so deployed, worldwide, at any one time; say 75 UH60s, 20 AH64s and a like number of CH47s. Take the Afghan slice, add an OR of ~70% -- that's a max of about 80 op birds or less spread over a nation about the size of Texas -- hardly Airmobile Division fill even at the KAF International Airport level of concentration.

Those 500 birds equate to about 3K air crew (O, WO and E) and a like number of maintainers. That's doable, sustainable and IMO, desirable -- but we have elected to not go that route, so it's all academic in any event.
Sadly, my perspective also compels me to say this: There are simply not enough helicopters in the Army inventory to make air our primary intra-theater force projection platform.
I agree at this time; the question was whether that would have been a better approach than the massive purchase of MRAPs. The allied (and perhaps far more important) question is whether commuting to war is a good approach. Those questions are just that; questions. The answer to both is that we may have elected to buy fewer aircraft due to, I believe, OMA costs more than any other one reason plus the forced MRAP buy but the reasons are immaterial, you are correct we don't have enough to do air movement with the current fleet and TTP. We have rightly or wrongly elected to commute to war and to do that in MRAPs simply because they are there. Interestingly, No one I've talked to with much recent combat experience has much use for them...

Take away the MRAP, use existing air wisely, extend patrol times significantly and decrease the number of FOBs and you'd have a different war. Not going to happen due to risk avoidance. I'm opposed to risk avoidance as a philosophy but do understand its presence in Afghanistan to compensate for a total lack of strategy in why we're still there and what we're now doing. C'est la guerre -- or perhaps as my son who's there for his third trip says of today, "I don't know what this is but it isn't war." C'est Le temps frappé then, I guess.