IT’S AN AXIOM IN WASHINGTON that government programs never die, and they don’t fade away either. Instead, they invent new rationales to perpetuate their existence ad infinitum. So it was rather stunning when, last Monday, the Army announced the cancellation of its prized $39 billion Comanche armed reconnaissance helicopter program.
Credit the dramatic about-face to the Army’s new chief of staff, Gen. Peter J. Schoomaker. The former head of the U.S. Special Operations Command was brought out of retirement last August by Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld to shake up an Army many observers think has become too bureaucratized and sclerotic for 21st-century battles.
Canceling Comanche is Schoomaker’s most audacious move so far. It shows he’s not afraid to exercise his command over the Army’s hidebound bureaucracy. As if to underline this point, Schoomaker, with acting Army Secretary Les Brownlee, announced the decision while Rumsfeld was in Iraq, and he made clear it was a total Army decision.
It is “very, very important to emphasize that this is an Army initiative,” he said. It results from “our studies, and it is about fixing Army aviation for the future–for today and for tomorrow–not just about terminating Comanche.
“It’s a big decision,” he continued. “We know it’s a big decision. But it’s the right decision. And I think when you take a look at the specifics . . . you’ll come to that conclusion.”
It’s difficult to dispute Schoomaker’s logic. With ongoing operations in Iraq and Afghanistan, the Army has urgent unfulfilled aviation requirements. The service’s most pressing need is for new countermeasure systems to neutralize the ubiquitous threat posed by rocket-propelled grenades, shoulder-fired missiles, and man-portable air-defense systems, all of which are growing in sophistication and lethality.
“We’ve had nine confirmed helicopters shot down with the loss of 32 lives” in Iraq and Afghanistan, said Lt. Gen. Richard A. Cody, the Army’s deputy chief of staff for operations, at the press conference.
The Comanche is a fine and even revolutionary helicopter, but it lacks countermeasures, and equipping the aircraft with survivability systems would be prohibitively expensive, Schoomaker said. Moreover, such upgrades would “take away from its primary stealth capability,” he noted.
The Army would prefer to replenish its existing fleet of aircraft, especially for the Reserve and National Guard, which remain the service’s neglected stepchildren. This is important because Guard and Reserve units are included in the troop rotations in Iraq; yet, their equipment typically is older, substandard, and not always interoperable with the regular Army.
Moreover, by accelerating technological upgrades to existing aircraft like the AH-64D Apache Longbow, the Army can fulfill much of the Comanche’s mission profile at a fraction of the cost of a new helicopter.
Unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs), which are a Pentagon priority, also can be used for armed reconnaissance missions. And with a joint, interservice force increasingly a reality, the Army expects to utilize the reconnaissance capabilities provided by other services and platforms.
In short, the Army could spend $14 billion on Comanche through 2011, or it could use that same money to recapitalize its $100 billion aircraft fleet. The service could procure 121 Comanches, or it could acquire 796 new aircraft while simultaneously upgrading 1,400 decrepit helicopters and airplanes.
Given the rapid pace of technological advancements, what with UAVs and digital connectivity, and given the current and future threat environment, the Army decided to do the latter and not the former. The Comanche, service officials decided, was a relatively bad investment, a Cold War relic no longer suitable for the 21st-century battlefield.
“If you take a look at when Comanche was envisioned, starting in 1983, and you take a look at the threat that we faced at that time, and the kind of battlefield that we envisioned, Comanche made a lot of sense, but it makes less sense today as we go forward,” Schoomaker said.
That’s the problem with a long, drawn-out procurement process that extends over more than two decades: Technology outstrips the program and nothing useful gets fielded. It’s a problem that plagues all of military procurement and not just the Comanche.
The Special Operations Command, though, has its own, unique, streamlined procurement process, which enables it to secure cutting-edge equipment in a timely fashion. As the former head of that command, Schoomaker knows the system well and reportedly is eager to adopt it, in modified form, for the regular Army.
The service still requires a new armed reconnaissance helicopter; however, it will be procuring far fewer and much less expensive aircraft (an estimated 368 helicopters versus 650 Comanches) for niche reconnaissance missions.
“The bottom line is 70 percent of the current fleet that we have we’ll be able to either upgrade, recapitalize, and buy new, compared with trading off [or buying] 121 Comanches,” Cody explained.
But such benefits accrue only if all of the displaced Comanche money is applied to Army aviation programs. Schoomaker said he has been assured by President Bush and Secretary Rumsfeld that it will happen; however, service officials are skeptical. For years, they note, Army aviation has suffered a mismatch between requirements and resources. “Money has a way of disappearing and promises have a way of evolving,” one official observed.
In fact, the Army’s perennial failure to fund Comanche adequately contributed mightily to the program’s incessant delays and unfulfilled promise. “We never could bring enough money to bear on the program to really move it forward quickly,” says John Douglas, president and chief executive officer of the Aerospace Industries Association and a former assistant secretary of the Navy in the Clinton administration. “I think . . . the program was more limited by the amount of money per year they could spend on it than it was by technological issues.”
The Army’s share of the Pentagon budget has remained constant, at roughly 25 percent in recent decades. Yet, the service is bearing the overwhelming brunt of the burden for overseas deployments in Iraq, Afghanistan, Bosnia, and Kosovo. So funding remains a serious concern.
Some politicians are squawking about the Comanche cancellation. Mostly, these are Connecticut pols, because the Comanche’s lead manufacturer, Sikorsky, is based in Connecticut. Still, the program surely will remain terminated. That’s because unlike the Crusader howitzer, which Rumsfeld killed two years ago over the strenuous objections of the Army, the Comanche is being scrapped by the Army itself.
What’s more, the Army has agreed to use much of the displaced Comanche money to upgrade Guard and Reserve aircraft, and that’s always politically popular back home, especially today, in light of the grave dangers faced by soldiers in Iraq and Afghanistan.
The Pentagon will incur cancellation fees of between $450 million and $680 million, but that pales in comparison to the $30-billion-plus that would have been spent had the Comanche program continued.
Critics complain that the $6.9 billion already invested in the aircraft was squandered, but that’s not completely true. As Schoomaker observed, new technologies developed for Comanche will be incorporated into the military’s industrial base and used on future joint rotorcraft. To take two examples, the Army requires a vastly more capable vertical heavy-lift aircraft by as early as 2012, and a joint-service, multirole helicopter is planned for the 2020 time frame.
Equally important but less heralded is that Schoomaker has shown leadership can make a difference; government programs can indeed be terminated. Now, if only such leadership were exerted throughout the federal government.
John R. Guardiano is defense editor of Rotor & Wing, a monthly international helicopter magazine.
