there is a rumor about the cancellation of the comanche project. is it true?[:(!]
Unfortunately yes. See the thread in the helicopter forum for more details.
Army ends 20-year helicopter program
Canceled Comanche program will cost Army at least $10 billion
WASHINGTON (AP) – In a dramatic about-face, the Army canceled its Comanche helicopter program Monday after sinking $6.9 billion and 21 years of effort into producing a new-generation chopper.
It is one of the biggest program cancellations in the Army’s history and comes less than two years after the service’s $11 billion Crusader artillery project was dropped after $2 billion had been spent.
At a Pentagon news conference, senior Army leaders said they would propose to Congress that $14.6 billion earmarked to develop and build 121 Comanches between now and 2011 be used instead to buy 796 additional Black Hawk and other helicopters and to upgrade and modernize 1,400 helicopters already in the fleet.
“It’s a big decision, but we know it’s the right decision,” said Gen. Peter Schoomaker, the Army chief of staff. He said the Army also will invest more heavily in a variety of unmanned aircraft, such as the existing Hunter and the new Raven.
The Comanche decision reflects a growing realization in the Pentagon that the military has more big-ticket weapons projects in the works than it can afford, even after seeing the Pentagon budget grow by tens of billions of dollars since 2001. And it reflects the rising popularity in recent years of unmanned aircraft for surveillance as well as attack missions.
The RAH-66 Comanche helicopter project was launched in 1983 and was eventually to have cost more than $39 billion. The Army said it needed a stealthier, more capable armed reconnaissance helicopter not only to collect and distribute battlefield intelligence but to destroy enemy forces.
The program met with many setbacks and was restructured six times, most recently in 2002. The latest timetable had specified beginning initial low-rate production in 2007, with the first Comanches to have been declared ready for combat in 2009 with full-rate production to have begun in 2010.
The main contractors for Comanche are Boeing Co. and Sikorsky Aircraft Corp.
The per-unit cost of the scrapped helicopter has more than quadrupled, from $12.1 million per aircraft when the Army planned to buy 5,023 of them, to $58.9 million when the purchase was cut back to 650.
Even though the Comanche is dead, Army officials said they would ask the defense industry to propose plans to build a new armed reconnaissance aircraft. Lt. Gen. Richard Cody said no details are available except that an Army study determined a need for 368 new armed scout helicopters.
Andrew Krepinevich, executive director of the Center for Strategic and Budgetary Assessments, said in an interview that he believes Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld is killing off big-ticket projects that were conceived during the Cold War and that are threatening to squeeze the financial life out of projects more essential to the military’s modernization.
The Comanche, he said, was conceived to meet a valid need but is not crucial to the future.
“It was important to the Army but it wasn’t the crown jewel,” he said. “Some would say it was the crown.”
Dropping the Comanche is unlikely to stir the kind of controversy sparked by Rumsfeld’s decision in 2002 to kill the Crusader. Army leaders openly opposed that decision and they attempted to enlist support on Capitol Hill to keep the artillery program alive. In the case of the Comanche, Schoomaker stressed at Monday’s news conference that it was an Army initiative.
Rumsfeld has emphasized leap-ahead technologies like unmanned aircraft. The Predator drone, for example, began as strictly a surveillance aircraft but during the 2001 war in Afghanistan it was armed with Hellfire missiles and used to attack ground vehicles. The Global Hawk unmanned long-range reconnaissance aircraft also saw its wartime debut over Afghanistan.
“They (unmanned aircraft) are a favorite of Rumsfeld’s,” Krepinevich said. “And they’re a favorite for a good reason: They’ve performed well.”
From the first days of the Bush administration there has been talk of canceling a number of major aviation projects, including the Marine Corps’ V-22 Osprey hybrid helicopter-airplane and the Air Force’s F/A-22 Raptor fighter jet, but so far the Comanche has been the only casualty.
The White House budget office recently asked the Pentagon to provide independent reviews of the Comanche and the F/A-22, which is much further along in development and the Air Force’s top priority.
Congressional lawmakers and company executives associated with the Comanche program were scrambling Monday to figure out what will happen next.
Five Comanche helicopters are in production. Sikorsky officials said they did not know what would become of them.
“What we need to do now is find out how the government wants us to proceed,” spokesman Matt Broder said. “We’re cataloging everything we know, and we’re going to ask, `What do you, the Army, want to do with all of this great technology that you funded? All these manufacturing processes that you funded? All the classified technology that’s been developed?”
Broder said it was too soon to predict the effect on Sikorsky jobs.
The Sikorsky plant in Bridgeport, Connecticut, where the Comanche is being built, opened last year and employs about 400 workers.
“The blow is obviously going to be devastating,” said Harvey Jackson, president of Teamsters Local 1150, which represents 3,600 Sikorsky workers.
As envisioned by the Army, the Comanche was a twin-engine, two-pilot helicopter with stealth technology designed to make it more difficult to track and target by enemy radar. Its armaments include a 20mm gun, 2.75-inch aerial rockets and an air-to-air missile.
It’s sad, very sad, from alot of angles.
Lee
As an airplane (and to a lesser extent helicopter) enthousiast, I am sad that the Comanche won’t be built. On the other hand: how much use is a high-tech stealth bird designed to pentrate enemy lines and go looking for armour, when you’re fighting guys with ak’s? More AH-64’s can do that job better, and I think the Army is realising this now. [2c]
Guys I live here in CT and that is going to hurt us in a very big big way. That is all I can say. Now there talking about criminal problems within the Blackhawk community.
It’s an unnecessary relic of a cold-war development program. Sure, it’s cool and high-speed, and all that, but in today’s battlefield, it’s unnecessary. No way around that.
Matt your dead wrong it is extremly neccesary to the future for the future safety or our nation and our troups. We need the manufacturing jobs and the Apaches need to be replaced. They are tired and there is no resaon in the world to cancel this program. It is just that simple. I am born and rasied in CT and this state cannot afford to loose these jobs. It is just that simple. With all the cutbacks at Pratt and Whitney this state simpley cannot afford to loose those jobs. Now theres talk again of us loosing the sub base this state cannot afford these losses. IT IS JUST THAT SIMPLE!!!
waves to fellow CT person
And as to the subject, it blows that it got canceled… I think it’s a pretty neat looking helicopter and whatnot
How many were made anyway?
Hi all. Just wanted to share my opinions. I think it’s sad that the commanche won’t be built, but stricly from a helicopter enthusiast point of view.
However, financially, I see it as a sound option. I’m sure that the community that was to build the aircraft will be greatly affected, but as in all things in life, not everyone can win.
The only point I strongly disagree with is that made by jimz66 : “Matt your dead wrong it is extremly neccesary to the future for the future safety or our nation and our troups”
Safety from whom? No amount of military WARFARE technology is going to stop things like 9/11 from happening. Monitoring and passive hardware is what’s needed. The United States effectively invaded Afghanistan, and stopped any attacks from stemming over there. However, the Iraq invasion was based on a NBC threat, a threat that was supported by ‘evidence’ that amounted to little more than a few hundred gas masks the US troops found. The US is allready in an overwhelmingly more powerful situation. It wasa matter of weeks/months to invade the previously two noted locales, and that is a remarkably short period of time. So obviously more advanced technology on the fronts is not that neccessary.
So, it leads to one conclusion, which is why I don’t understand your point jimz66. Protect you from what? THere is no viable front where the machine like the Comanche is needed. Allready the Blackhawks and AH-64s are FAR superior to anything the US has/will face now.
Just my opinions anyways
I wonder if the horrible pounding the AH-64s took in the Iraq war had anything to do with the cancellation of the Comache project.
Regards,
what a waste. both in money and in jobs that are now lost.
joe
the cancellation of the commanche is a shame…i always liked the sleek airframe when i first saw it in '96 and now…sniff its gone.
Are there any plans to overhaul AH-64’s or build new (maybe upgraded) ones to compensate for the cancellation of the Comanche? Just wondering what the Pentagon’s long-term ideas are here.
Read post from delta dagger:
“At a Pentagon news conference, senior Army leaders said they would propose to Congress that $14.6 billion earmarked to develop and build 121 Comanches between now and 2011 be used instead to buy 796 additional Black Hawk and other helicopters and to upgrade and modernize 1,400 helicopters already in the fleet.”
Read the whole post as there’s more detail regarding this, but one would assume that the current fleet would include the AH-64s 
Reading the AIR FORCE TIMES, they stated that new A/C type projects the military are under consideration for either cancelation or delays for this budget year of 2005, the Times said the F/A-22, F-35, RAH-66, KB-767,V-22, are all conceidered but the good news is that the AF got the OKay to unretire 23 B-1B’s and upgrade the A-10’s, F-15’s, F-16’s, B-52’s, B-2’s, C-5’s, C-141’s, C-130’s,but the F-15’s & 16’s might see another manufacturing run too, so the AF might get the newer Block 60 F-16’s
Look it is this simple were not in a position that it is a good thing to cancell any programs. This state alone stands to loose TWO HUNDRED THATS RIGHT TWO HUNDRED MANUFACTURING JOBS!!! THIS STATE CANNOT AFFORD THAT. PERIOD!
sorry to say, but a few manufacturing jobs is not justification to continue an unnecessarily expensive project that the military DOES NOT need.
There’s no reason to continue it. The necessity of a stealthly scout chopper was made obsolete by the fall of the soviet union (for the most part). Future wars are likely to be of the “3 block” variety (look it up), which don’t often involve countries with extensive radar networks or AA capabilities beyond SA-7s and RPGs. As for replacing the apache, the 66 was never designed to do that - it was designed to replace the kiowa. The Army is currently facing the fact that they are not organized to fight post cold-war battles as efficiently as they should, and cancelling relics of it are a step in the right direction.
big picture.
AND BLUE THUNDER GETS HIT BY THE TRAIN! Let’s see where this has happened before… ummm… CF-105 Arrow, TSR.2, XF-103, YF-12and B-58B!!! I’m tired of the officials blowing money out their[censored] on campaign ads and GOLDEN TOILET SEATS!!!
There is absolutley no reason NOT TO BUILD IT!