Three American helicopters have gone down in Iraq in a little more than a week. Is there anything behind this collection of crashes? Or is just lethal coincidence — part of what happens when troops do something death-defying, over and over again? I asked Defense Tech pal ME, a former Kiowa Warrior pilot who served in Iraq, to weigh in with his thoughts.
I haven’t heard of any reason as to why we’re losing more lately, but we also haven’t lost any in a long time prior to this – I think it’s reflective of somewhat of the odds catching up to us and an increased combat operations tempo.
[That said], I would point out that US helicopters aren’t that heavily armored. [Something David Axe noted about last week's Blackwater copter crash -- ed.] They have blocks of armor protecting some key parts of the engine, and crew compartments, but it’s not nearly comprehensive. Most don’t have flare systems, and their only active countermeasure against IR missiles is an ALQ-144 jammer. Relatively speaking, there is very little protection from direct small arms hits.
In my opinion, our greatest threat was from small arms and RPGs while operating at low altitude and low airspeed. My troop was under standing orders not to fly above 500 feet AGL (above ground level) or under 60 knots – and never hover unless absolutely necessary. At low altitude – we felt that it was key to minimize the time available to acquire us as a target. We used the ALQ’s but at the time I was there, we didn’t see much threat from SAMs [surface-to-air missiles]. Towards the fall of 2003 we did start getting more reports of SAM engagements – spiral smoke trails arcing up, rather than lob shots from RPGs, but in our flight regime, AK’s and RPGs were the biggest threat.
The Kiowa Warrior… has very little armor [see the pics]. The Blackhawk is similar, and the Apache has relatively more. A friend of mine who was a troop commander in the (in)famous deep strike to kick off OIF said the only positive from that mission was that they learned that the Apache could soak up a lot of small arms fire and keep flying. When you look at the armor though, it’s easy to see how a few small arms rounds in the wrong place can bring a bird down.
There are some other issues with the ALQ-144. Some of them are classified. Some are mundane: they’re difficult to keep operational in the desert, and must be cleaned to be effective. They also must be turned off and on as part of a landing checklist (see my next point). The Blackwater birds don’t appear to have them at all. If there are new supplies of SAMS coming in, they may be much more effective than RPGs and AKs.
…Complacency kills, especially in an environment as unforgiving as Iraq is. With high temps and flying at high gross weights, there is little performance margin. Combat maneuvers take power, and familiarity (read boredom) take their toll, even on experienced pilots. After a few months, I could fly from Baghdad to Al Asad without a map, and knew every neighborhood in between – and it made me too casual at times, about mission prep and procedures. As pilots go back for repeat tours, they may fall into that even more quickly.
“Since May 2003, the U.S. military has lost 54 helicopters in Iraq, about half of them to hostile fire,” according to the AP.
Increasing the armor of those birds would increase their weight, making them less effective in combat. Their flight characteristics would go down with existing engines while consuming more fuel, or they would consume even more fuel with more powerful engines. Without more fuel the aircraft range decreases as is the ammount of time it can stay in battle or on patrol. If you increase the fuel load the weight has to come off something, most probably weapons payload. Either way you will have less to support the troops on the ground with.
These are aircrafts, not ground vehicles.
Besides USSR had a highly armored hind, which seemed to have faired terribly in afghanistan.
Fortune favors the bold.
Maybe the insurgents are just getting a bit more bold than they have been in the past. unfortunate set of circumstances for sure, but perhaps just a coincidence.
Hmmm.. the hind is a big bird.. if I remember it’s an attack chopper/troop transport.
There really is no easy answer… Weapons are design to kill… it’s all escalation…
I still think a lawernece of arabia approach would probably be better…
For get reacting and ‘patroling’.
How about infilitrating and blending?
The hind had an armored cabin, but the windshield was normal aviation-rated glass, and wasn’t ballistic resistant. The Afghans used hunting rifles, which are precise compared to the AK, and aimed for the pilots.
Just for the record – there were 2 fatal helicopter crashes in Al Anbar in December.
Since the occupation began, there has been a marked seasonal pattern to fatal aviation incidents, with the November-January period being responsible for some 26 incidents ( this is all coalition and contractor-operated aviation ) out of 45. January has consistently been the worst month with a total of 14 fatal crashes across the occupation period.
What I’m curious about is whether this “pattern” is just dumb luck, or whether there are specific reasons for this.
The helicopters flying over the battlefields of the War on Terror are the most lethal in the eyes of our enemies and safest in the eyes of our soliders ever in history. The issue of more armor is always a major concern for flight crews and the contractors who build them. There is a never ending battle with weight to lift capability and the engineers behind the design of the fantastic machines work without rest to make it better and safer. Believe me when I say that news of Apache going down anywhere in the world has impact all the great people who make and deliver them to the War Fighter. We are at the cutting edge of technology and pushing for more.
3 in 10 days, it’s not dramatical statistics compared to the total amount of helicopters that have been downed. Roughly half of the 54 helicopters crashed for other reasons than hostile fire… get something done about that!
@DT.fan: Infiltration is effective only when one can blend with the enemy without detection. In the Middle East, most cells are built from the ground up of friends, family and neighbors. These people know each other, have trained and/or grown up together. It is nearly impossible to infiltrate this kind of group. Even recruiting them as children is ineffective because they can be turned so easily by the pro-male message of Islam. Once turned, they cannot be disuadded by rhetoric or example. They are, in effect, the perfect “robotic army” if you will because they see only the goal; not the pain or anguish they cause getting there. In fact, they are taught that the more pain and anguish they cause on the way, the bigger their reward in heaven. This is an enemy that cannot be reasoned with (they will lie to you with a straight face because they believe they should), argued with (they are right, you are wrong, the Imam said so), or bargained with (they will ignore any agreement once they have obtained that which they were seeking in the first place). The only thing you can do with this kind of enemy, just like any robot gone berserk, is to shut it off by any means possible.
Improvements to the Helicopter Fleet are LONG overdue. The Russians have been armoring their (COMBAT: key word!) helicopters for years. Now that the Cold War is over, why can’t we swallow our pride and fix these death traps?
“Or is just lethal coincidence — part of what happens when troops do something death-defying, over and over again?”
Remember how Mogadishu 1993 became the springboard for anti-Clintonista rants about how the force there was under-equipped? No… “Black Hawk Down” happened because the commander (Garrison) used exactly the same tactic five times in a row: helicopter a team in to grab Aidid, light ground convoy dashes in, pickup & out of Dodge. It worked smoothly (except for not finding Aidid) four times; the fifth time, the opposition had learned enough to (1) concentrate RPGs around the likely target site and (2) use street blockades & ambushes to stymie the pickup force.
Garrison had no Plan B in place for a heavier convoy in place; once he put it together (more than 8 hours later), it punched through fairly quickly. So the real problem was Delta/Ranger arrogance: the assumption that the warlord gangs were too stupid to learn and adapt. That will catch up with you sooner or later in any tactical context.
So… I realize this is a hardware-centric venue, but before focusing too much on hardware issues: how much of the trend (to the extent it’s real) in Iraq could be accounted for simply by the bad guys accumulating observation of how we use our choppers, and sharing “best practices”…?
re: Hinds in Afghanistan– a Hind is a waaaay bigger target than an Apache, it’s half again as tall and has those big flat sides and fat troop-carrying ass. That matters a bunch for ground fire.
I was watching the cnn special on the reporter who was beheaded by a jihadi raddical. It all started with e-mai. One cam shot was of 6 soldiers jihad that one of them had a tow rocket. I thought those were american made. Perhaps he got it off of a dead soldier or wreckage that was not policed properly…