It Looked Good on Paper

by Bill Fawcett

The RAH-66 Comanche

  William Terdoslavich

  Stealthy.

  Hard-hitting.

  Situationally aware.

  Overweight.

  Over budget.

  Overtime.

  Dead.

  The RAH-66 Comanche never reached deployment after consuming billions of dollars in its lengthy development. Originally conceived late in the Cold War, the RAH-66 was supposed to help pick out targets for the AH-64 Apache gunship to kill, namely the endless waves of Soviet tanks expected to invade Western Europe.

  While the Cold War ended in 1990, the mission of the RAH-66 did not. It was still slated to replace the aging OH-58 Kiowa recon helicopter.

  Ironically, the OH-58 outlived its replacement.

  Back in the Beginning

  The RAH-66 prototype’s first flight took place on January 4, 1996. The chopper was a joint effort undertaken by Boeing, which provided the computers and avionic system, and Sikorsky, which made the airframe. The Comanche was supposed to weigh no more than 7,500 pounds, with a flyaway cost of $7.5 million. The Army hoped to buy 5,000 Comanches.

  Trouble for the program began early, as the estimated production version of the RAH-66 was 1,000 pounds heavier than its original promised weight. That would mean a slower, shorter-ranged, less maneuverable airframe given its power plant.

  The big performance benchmark that the RAH-66 had to clear was the 500-feet-per-minute vertical climb, much needed to avoid small arms fire—something it was not going to do if it was heavier than expected.

  Nevertheless, the Army went ahead with the program, setting aside $3.5 billion to complete the next prototype and purchase six early operational versions of the RAH-66. Given the scarcity of budget dollars in the 1990s, many weapons programs were stretching out their development times and going into limited production. But this risked underfunding, which would generate unwanted expenses if you didn’t get the program right from the start. There would be little margin for error in the RAH-66 program.

  Still, the promised performance benefits were compelling. The RAH-66 had a five-blade rotor, was stealthy, had a fly-by-wire system that substituted a computer for older control cables, a low-drag airframe, and was quiet compared to helicopters of more conventional design. The Hellfire (anti-tank) and Stinger (anti-aircraft) missiles were stored in recessed weapons bays. A three-barrel 20mm cannon would be retractable into the helicopter’s fuselage. The radar cross-section of the RAH-66 was only 1/630th of the AH-64 Apache and the infrared signature only one-fifth. The engine, which weighed in at 307 pounds, produced 1,200 horsepower.

  Now the trick was to get from first flight to deployment, as the helicopter became more expensive as time passed. The Army’s wish was limited to buying 1,292 Comanches, with the first units flying them in 2006.

  In a perfect world, this shouldn’t be a problem. But real life is never that kind.

  In the mid-1990s, an AH-64 adequately performed a recon mission when it checked out Serbian positions in Bosnia during a U.S. peacekeeping intervention. If the AH-64 could do that, then why bother developing the RAH-66?

  It was to be the first of many vexing questions.

  When Push Comes to Budget Crunch

  It seems axiomatic in the Pentagon that the longer a weapons program takes, the more it will cost in the end.

  The Comanche program reached $39 billion total. The Congressional Budget office was estimating in 1997 that the helicopter would have a flyaway price of $26 million, well above the $7.5 million originally considered pricey. Upgrading the existing fleet of OH-58s would be a bargain at $1.3 billion over five years.

  This took place as the Army was struggling to maintain its 10-division strength in 1996-97. The money needed to do that was being consumed by various weapons programs. Wouldn’t it make sense to kill the Comanche, just to free up the money?

  The Army answered with a study that concluded that the Comanche had a higher likelihood of survivability compared to the Kiowa.

  That’s on the battlefield.

  But during peacetime, wars are fought over budgets, not terrain.

  The Comanche was flying around with a big bulls-eye drawn on it in the shape of a dollar sign.

  Development continued through 1997, but the weight problem could not be licked. The Comanche was now up to 8,943 pounds empty—that is, without fuel, ammo, or crew. The budget dollars needed to put the chopper on a diet could not be found. The RAH-66 would go on a development hiatus instead, being grounded for the next 18 months to save money.

  Another money-saving move was to push purchase dates back. First it was delayed from 2001 to 2003, then back further to 2006. The longer this program took, the more likely it would be overtaken by events. The General Accounting Office took one look at the need for a recon helicopter and realized it could get the same job done for $4.5 billion if the Army used unmanned reconnaissance vehicles (UAVs). Firepower would be lacking, but the recon capability would be better and the vehicles could be lost without losing aircrew. But the Army was not willing to surrender the program just yet.

  The Comanche resumed testing in 1999. Prototype number two took to the air. It was going to be the test bed for the Mission Equipment Package (MEP)—the array of sensors and weapons that would give the Comanche its killing power. Budget questions still dogged the program. There simply was not enough money to both pay for the RAH-66 and keep modernizing existing helicopters.

  Modernization was always the cheaper option, especially since it could keep the OH-58 flying until 2025, again undermining the need for the Comanche. In terms of operating costs, a key metric of the peacetime military, the OH-58 only cost $1,100 per flight hour compared to the $2,200 to $2,400 for the AH-64. If the Army purchased the AH-64D upgrade for its AH-64As, it would get the Comanche’s capabilities (without stealth) for a much lower cost and still perform the recon mission.

  For the RAH-66, the challenge was maintaining justification for an expensive helicopter whose job could be done by cheaper, existing models. The Army didn’t see it that way. “We need to get this aircraft (the OH-58) to 2025 and then we have to figure out how we are going to get it out of our fleet quickly,” said Brigadier General Robert Armbruster, aviation and missile command deputy for systems acquisition at the Pentagon. “The best thing we can do is to retire it (the OH-58) early and bring the Comanche on board earlier. That is our goal. The second best thing we could do is to minimize the financial impact of the (OH-58) Kiowa Warrior on the aviation budget so that the dollars are available to be spent somewhere else.”

  In the face of cheaper alternatives that were known to work, the military was choosing the more expensive option.

  If You Can’t Lose Weight, Add Power

  Development woes continued for the RAH-66. The chopper was not coming in at its fighting weight and its performance would be compromised if nothing was done.

  A few tweaks were needed, like a slightly longer rotor blade, or changing the performance requirement to 450 feet of vertical climb per minute instead of 500 feet. Engineers looked for ways to get the RAH-66 slimmed down to 8,700 pounds empty. Shedding the synthetic aperture radar and putting it on a UAV was one option. So was ditching the fire control radar, or even opting for a sensor package with fewer capabilities.

  Redeveloping the engine offered another option. The Army considered the LHTEC T-801 to replace the T-800 model used on the prototype. The T-801 had 11 percent more horsepower, thus recouping any performance lag caused by greater weight. (LHTEC was a joint venture between Honeywell and Rolls Royce.)

  Yet with all these tweaks and fixes, the RAH-66 was still tipping the scales at 9,476 pounds. The Army then tried to offer a performance bonus to the Boeing/Sikorsky team: an extra $5 million bonus if they could get the weight down to 9,300 pounds, an extra $1.4 million if they could get the weight down to 9,250 pounds.

  Sadly, they failed.

  The nimble wasp they wanted was still more of a fat pig.

  And it was putting a st
rain on the piggy bank.

  The longer it took to get the Comanche into production, the more it was going to cost, and it was going to rob funds from existing upgrade programs for the Army’s helicopter fleet. Scaling back the OH-58 to 80 percent of what the army wanted might help free up money for the RAH-66. Retiring the OH-58 by 2013 would certainly cut ownership and operating costs. Speeding up the purchase rate of the RAH-66 might also yield another $1–$2 billion to cover the cost of the Comanche program, now creeping up to $40 billion total.

  The RAH 66’s Engineering, Manufacturing and Development (EMD) stage, which began in April 2000, proved tricky and cost-prone, and was to be completed for $3.1 billion. By December 2001, the EMD was 4 percent over budget and 8 percent behind schedule. Likewise, the Mission Equipment Package development became problematic, as the desired weapons/sensor package triggered a front-end airframe redesign that lagged by four months and the rotor system redesign that came in nine months late.

  By December 2002, the Army only had nine more months to work out the weight and integration issues. Even with another engine upgrade to the LHTEC T-802, the RAH-66 was coming in at 9,948 pounds empty—almost one ton above its original design weight. The helicopter was 100 pounds away from maximum design weight and 220 pounds above its maximum empty weight as called for by Army requirements.

  The engineers tweaked the RAH-66 some more. Maybe they could find some weight to cut from the rotor system. Perhaps the mission requirements could be limited, so that some equipment could be stripped out of the fuselage. How about carrying two Hellfire missiles instead of four? Strip out the fire control radar? Cut the self-deployment range?

  By March 2002, the program was in serious trouble. The EMD portion now required another $3.4 billion on top of the $3.1 billion that was budgeted. The RAH-66 program had already consumed $5.2 billion and the Army only had two prototypes to show for it. Engineers could not add all the computer/sensor features the Army wanted without adding weight.

  With money and development woes piling on, Comanche supporters feared the worst: that Congress and/or Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld might notice.

  Out Come the Knives…and Bullets

  The program managers looking at the RAH-66 saw yellow.

  The Office of the Secretary of Defense (OSD) saw red. Red is not a good color in politics. It means “danger.”

  Despite the red flags, the Army thought it could save some money by rearranging the purchase schedule from 72 aircraft a year to 96. It spread out purchase over four distinct blocks of sensor/weapons packages and upgrades. It drew up plans to add capabilities to the earlier block aircraft as new components came on line.

  The OSD remained skeptical that the Army could manage speedier purchase of the RAH-66, save money, and still meet the budgetary needs of its current helicopter program and the highcost Future Combat System (FCS), the Army’s biggest budgetary sacred cow.

  In October 2002, the Comanche suffered another budget cut among the many that led to its death. Pentagon acquisition chief Peter Aldridge cut the procurement plan from 1,213 Comanches to just 650. This would cut the total cost of the program from $40 billion to $29 billion. The cut seemed pound wise, but was pound foolish, kicking up the price tag to $60 million per helicopter. (The Air Force had fighter jets that were cheaper than this!) And the yearly buy rate was cut from 96 Comanches a year to just 60.

  Now the parameters of the RAH-66 program were re-imagined. A yet-to-be designed UAV, that was expected to be out in 2006, would act as an adjunct to the recon copter, feeding it data. But that begged another vexing question: why spend $60 million for a recon copter if a UAV can do the same job for a tenth of the cost?

  The next blow to land on the RAH-66 came not from the Pentagon or Congress, but from Iraq.

  In 2003, during the initial push on Baghdad, a battalion of AH-64 Apaches had flown a deep penetration raid on Karbala, preparatory to a planned breakthrough there by the Third Mechanized Infantry Division. But the raid went awry as one of the gunships was shot down by small arms fire. The remaining 30 or so Apaches all suffered hits from gunfire and flak. This came within two years of a similar Apache attack being foiled in Afghanistan, again from intense ground fire.

  AH-64 tactics underwent revision after Afghanistan and Iraq. Flying at 60 knots was no longer fast enough to evade ground fire. Hovering in place to take aim and fire, a tactic that worked in the Gulf War of 1990-91, was scrapped. Apache pilots now had to execute gun and missile runs while flying forward or diving.

  That might extend the usefulness of the existing AH-64, which was already designed with some crew protection. A UAV did not need it since it had no crew to protect. The design emphasis on stealth was now useless for the Comanche. Redesigning the RAH-66 to provide better crew protection, however, would add weight to an airframe that badly needed a diet. And then there was the expendability question. Could the Army afford to lose an RAH-66, at $60 million a pop?

  The billions of dollars and years of development time wasted would also draw some unwanted attention from an unlikely source: the new incoming Army chief of staff.

  With the departure of Army Chief of Staff General Eric Shinseki in late 2003, the Comanche lost one of its highest-ranking protectors. General Peter Schoomaker, whose background was in Special Forces, was not sentimental about the RAH-66, or any other program that took too long to develop. He was going to take a closer look at Army aviation, whose limited budget dollars became tangled between upgrading existing aircraft and developing the RAH-66.

  By this time, the RAH-66 was weighing in at 9,950 pounds and the development team was very eager to trim another 200 pounds. As the engineers thought of ways to cut pounds for millions of dollars, Schoomaker was thinking about cutting programs worth billions of dollars. The RAH-66 was eating up 39 percent of the Army’s aviation budget and there still wasn’t a production model to show for the effort after a decade of tinkering.

  By January 2004, Schoomaker put the Comanche in the crosshairs.

  One month later, the general pulled the trigger, killing the RAH-66 program.

  “We know it is a big decision and it is the right decision,” Schoomaker said.

  Acting Army secretary Les Brownlee seconded the opinion: the future operational environment “is inconsistent with the capabilities of the Comanche.”

  What to Do with the Spare Change?

  The Army now found itself with $14 billion in spare change.

  Quickly a scheme was drawn up to purchase 368 new reconnaissance helicopters and 303 new light utility helicopters. This would mean turning to cheaper off-the-shelf solutions modified for military use to replace the RAH-66 and OH-58.

  The light utility helicopter (LUH) program still looked promising as of December 2006. Sikorsky, Westwind Technology, and EADS teamed up to modify the EC145 Eurocopter for military use. First production models are expected in September 2008, but appear to be delayed having only gotten FAA approval for military use in 2007.

  But the Advanced Reconnaissance Helicopter (ARH) being developed by Bell Textron flew into development troubles, just like the RAH-66. Systems integration problems and cost increases are now pushing the price tag per chopper up to $9–$10 million, and the December 2009 delivery date is in danger of slipping. The total program cost of $3.6 billion for 368 airframes grew to $4.7 billion for 512.

  And the OH-58 Kiowa?

  Its 2013 retirement date got pushed back to 2015, but it is starting to look more like 2017.

  The last Kiowa will be older than its pilot by the time it flies into the sunset.

  At least it outlived its replacement, the RAH-66 Comanche.

  “We really move our tail for you!”

  —Continental Airlines advertisement

  Double Jeopardy

  Teresa Patterson

  Duplicated systems are usually a good thing, especially in an airplane—except in the case of the Boeing 737.

  On March 3, 1991, while on approach to Colorado Springs, Unit
ed Airlines Flight 585 suddenly veered wildly, turned over, and fell out of the sky, killing all 25 people aboard. The plane involved was a 737. After an extensive 21-month investigation, the National Transportation Safety Board “could not identify conclusive evidence to explain the loss of” the airplane. The board listed the two most likely causes as bad weather or malfunction of the directional control system. The accident joined the short list of unsolved airline accidents, and was largely forgotten—until September 8, 1994, when another 737, USAir Flight 427, suddenly veered wildly and plunged to the ground in a similar uncontrollable dive.

  The USAir flight had been on approach to Pittsburgh International Airport, when it encountered turbulence from the wake of another aircraft. Moments after passing through the wake turbulence, the plane veered, turned over, and smashed into the ground, killing all 132 people aboard. Yet the only obvious event, wake turbulence, should have been simply a mild inconvenience, not a catastrophic event. The investigation that followed was the longest aviation accident investigation in NTSB history. There was so little left of the plane that, even after sorting through the rubble, the NTSB could not determine the cause of the crash. The flight data recorder turned out to be little help because it was an older version that only recorded 11 parameters of information. They couldn’t blame the weather this time, the day was clear.

  A break in the case finally came in 1999, when another 737, this one an Eastwind Airlines flight, barely survived a system malfunction. When the pilot tried to activate the rudder to turn the plane left, he reported that first the pedal pushed back, then suddenly the plane turned right, veering the opposite direction from the controls. Fortunately the Eastwind jet was high enough in the air that the crew had time to react and recover the plane.

  Finally with an undamaged plane to study and a live pilot, the NTSB was able to begin testing and determine the probable cause of all three incidents: the redundant systems in the main rudder power control unit. The very redundant systems that were supposed to prevent an accident actually caused it.