Posted on 02/08/2024 8:13:19 PM PST by grcuster
WASHINGTON — The US Army is cancelling its next generation Future Attack Reconnaissance Aircraft (FARA) program, service officials announced today, taking a potential multi-billion-dollar contract off the table and throwing the service’s long-term aviation plans into doubt.
In addition, the Army plans to end production on the UH-60 V Black Hawk in fiscal 2025, due to “significant cost growth,” keep General Electric’s Improved Turbine Engine Program (ITEP) in the development phase instead of moving it into production, and phase the Shadow and Raven unmanned aerial systems out of the fleet, the service added.
All told, it reflects a massive shift in the Army’s aviation strategy and upends years of planning. There is also an ironic sense of history repeating: the decision to end FARA comes two decades to the month after the Army ended its plans to procure the RAH-66 Comanche and nearly 16 years after it terminated work on the ARH-70A Arapaho, both aircraft designed to replace the Kiowa — the same helicopter FARA was supposed to, finally, replace.
The reason for ending FARA, Army leaders told a small group of reporters ahead of the announcement, is a reflection of what war looks like in the modern era.
(Excerpt) Read more at breakingdefense.com ...
This is smart.
They are huge, vulnerable targets with a very low suriviablity.
The same job can be done better by a low cost, very small organic battlefield drones that are very hard to even detect, much less destroy.
Advances in sensors, secure downlinks, and massive image processing capability capable of networking into defensive and offensive grids in tiny packages combined with very capable and very small VTOL and land based recon drones are revolutionizing battlefield ISR
But it’s insanely fun to arrive in an attack helicopter instead.
Don’t tell my husband, or he will be mounting an hellfire on our truck.
And if we lift it more…. Maybe air2air.
Getting there is one thing. Getting back is what counts.
Our progressive soldiers probably complained that helicopters tended to mess up their hair when they got near them.
“Our progressive soldiers probably complained that helicopters tended to mess up their hair when they got near them.”
Actually, I suspect that a lot of the women recruits also complained, not just the guys.
If we secured the border getting back from it wouldn’t be an issue. Sure putting the FEBA along the border or 10 miles into Mexico would be an undertaking, but the US Army is big enough to handle it. No doubt some leadership changes will be needed, but filtering out the incopmetents is the cost of any war. In fact its something that pays off handsomely for the next generation or so.
I think I saw that truck. You’re too late.
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