New Use as Fighters : Lowly Helicopter Now Vying to Be Top Gun

“Bandits at 12 o’clock,” the Marine pilot radioed to his wingman, as they spotted a tiny dot on the horizon that turned out to be an enemy aircraft flying directly at them across the desert.

“Tallyho,” the wingman radioed back, using the cry of the hunter sighting his prey. In short order, the two airmen “pinched” the bandit aircraft into a vulnerable position and scored a kill on the hapless opponent.

This mock battle took place recently over a training range at the Marine air station at Yuma, Ariz., but it was no ordinary mission involving supersonic jet fighters soaring into the blue yonder.

These combat aircraft were helicopters, lumbering along only a few hundred feet over the saguaro cacti and maneuvering at the comparatively lethargic pace of about 150 m.p.h.

Historic War Heroes

Aerial dogfighting, which made Eddie Rickenbacker and Baron Manfred von Richthofen among the most famous war heroes of this century, is now being studied by Marine and Army helicopter pilots for the day when they, too, will become aces of the sky.

The concept of American and Soviet helicopters chasing each other over Europe with guns blazing and with sophisticated missiles marks a significant turn in military doctrine and opens a huge new market for U.S. defense contractors.

“This is a whole new area of warfare,” said Lt. Col. B. T. Johnson, an officer at the Marine Corps weapons and tactics school in Yuma. “It is just like being back in World War I.”

On a 700-foot-high butte above the desert helicopter range, Johnson stood surveying the mock battlefield and remarked: “We believe the battle of the future will be the helicopter air battle.”

For years, helicopters have been hovering at a low rank in the world of aviation, certainly several rungs under the gleaming supersonic jets that the Air Force and Navy fly. But that notion has begun to change in recent years and Hollywood even produced a couple of popular television series, “Blue Thunder” and “Airwolf,” which featured high-tech helicopters.

Fleet of 8,071 Copters

And the Army could surely use an image boost. A lot of people think of the service as a bunch of grunts wallowing in muddy foxholes, but that’s not the modern helicopter Army. It owns a fleet of 8,071 helicopters, roughly as many aircraft as the Air Force has in its inventory.

“The glamour of the white scarf, the open cockpit and being out there shooting back at something--I guess a little bit of that is subconsciously in most young guys,” said Maj. Gen. Ellis P. Parker, commander of the Army Aviation Center at Ft. Rucker, Ala. “I found as a commander in Vietnam there seems to be a propensity on the part of youngsters--even if it’s more risky and more hazardous--most of them want to shoot. Probably some of it is ingrained so deep back in our psyche we don’t even know where it comes from.”

The Army has been dabbling in helicopters ever since the Air Force was separated from it in the late 1940s and it was relegated to flying small propeller airplanes. But few limits were placed on it regarding the still-primitive helicopter, and that became the Army’s unusual route back into aviation.

Of course, Army officials say the excitement of air-to-air combat and the glory that goes with it have nothing to do with their recent initiatives.

The Army wants to ensure that its critically important fleet of helicopters is not blown away in the first few hours of a European battle by new Soviet helicopters, known in the West by the unflattering names of the Hokum and the Hind, which are designed to shoot air-to-air missiles, said Col. Frank Mayer, who is developing the Army’s new helicopter doctrine.

Defense Against Soviets

One key line of defense against those Soviet helicopters that the Army was counting on fell last year when Defense Secretary Caspar W. Weinberger canceled production of the Sgt. York anti-aircraft gun, amid allegations by critics that it could not hit a Hokum or a Hind.

The Marines’ and Army’s response has been in part to equip their own helicopters with missiles and guns to fight the similarly equipped Soviet helicopters.

“The best killer of a helicopter is another helicopter,” Parker said. “We know we have to be armed for self-protection, if nothing else.”

One obvious problem for both sides in a war is that with helicopters fighting each other, they are not accomplishing the most important missions they were created for, such as destroying tanks and scouting the battlefield.

And it is not just Soviet helicopters that the Marines and the Army want to shoot down. They are originating theory and training for the day when they will be shooting at high-performance jet fighters, a seemingly risky business for awkward-looking and slow-flying helicopters.

Agile, Maneuverable

“When you look at air-to-air combat, the winner is not necessarily the guy flying the fastest system,” Parker said. “It is the agility and maneuverability of the helicopter that does make it a match for the fixed-wing.”

But the din of a helicopter rotor would barely drown out the chortles from much of the aviation community at that notion.

Air Force Secretary Edward Aldridge Jr. said flatly in a recent interview that a helicopter is no match for a jet. “Absolutely not,” Aldridge said. “There is no attempt, in my view, by the Army to build up a fleet of helicopters to go shoot down airplanes. That’s just about the silliest thing I ever heard of. That would last in Congress about three micro seconds.”

Some veteran helicopter pilots of the Vietnam War, the biggest helicopter war in history, also have serious doubts about the Army’s plan to engage in helicopter dogfights. They suspect that helicopters will be shot down like flies.

“I think it’s a bone-headed idea,” said Paul Hoven, who piloted a UH-1 Huey combat assault helicopter in Vietnam and now works as a military affairs analyst in Washington. “The Russians have bombers. . . . We don’t say, ‘Let’s build a bomber to go get their bomber.’ ”

But the Marines and the Army think that they may have the last laugh.

Shoot Down Jets

After recent training exercises at Yuma, Marine helicopter pilots say they have become just as proficient at shooting down F-18 fighter jets in mock battles as the jet pilots are at shooting them down.

As a measure of the threat they face, the Marines point to an incident in West Germany last year when a Czechoslovakian jet fighter fired on a U.S. Army Cobra helicopter. At the time, a Pentagon spokesman complained that the battle was a “mismatch” and said the helicopter did not return the fire. But that may change in future engagements.

“The helicopters aren’t grapes, waiting to be picked. . . . ,” said Maj. John Graham, a top Marine F-18 fighter pilot who has trained to battle helicopters. “It’s a tough fight. I would much rather fight an F-14 or an F-15 than a helicopter.”

Indeed, helicopter pilots are no truck drivers. They are some of the best technically educated soldiers in the Army. Many have advanced degrees from top universities and they train almost incessantly.

And Marine helicopter tactics instructor Maj. Paul J. Blemberg said: “The Marine Corps has recognized the inevitability of helicopter air-to-air combat and has begun to prepare.”

Market for Warfare Gear

Meanwhile, defense contractors are barely a half-step behind, because helicopter dogfights will establish a requirement for exotic air warfare gear that is likely to evolve into a huge market in the not-so-distant future.

“Helicopters are becoming more and more important,” Dean Borgman, vice president for research and engineering at McDonnell Douglas Helicopter Co., said. “When you consider the helicopters, the missiles and all the related systems, that is a multibillion-dollar market.”

For example, Sidewinder and Stinger missiles are being readied for use on helicopters, slung on launching rails just below the cockpit. The Army Aviation Center at Ft. Rucker hopes to build up a five-day war reserve of Stingers for its attack and scout helicopter battalions.

The Army’s war reserve plan calls for each helicopter to fire its missiles three times a day. It all adds up to the 72 helicopter battalions--each with 31 helicopters--being equipped collectively with a minimum of 72,000 missiles, worth a mind-boggling $5.8 billion.

“I don’t know that there is a need to come up with the 72,000. That probably overstates it. But it is a lot of missiles,” said Mayer, the director of combat developments at Ft. Rucker. For one thing, Mayer observes, critics would wonder why the Army needs 72,000 missiles when the Soviets have only 4,100 Hind attack helicopters and have not even produced the Hokum yet.

Lucrative for Contractors

In addition to the missiles themselves, there will be lucrative programs for contractors to modify existing helicopters to fire the missiles and to provide hardware to help soldiers train for helicopter dogfights.

Cubic Corp., a San Diego-based defense electronics contractor, has been touting its combat training system, which allows pilots to fire imaginary missiles while in actual flight and know whether they would have scored a hit.

The systems, called Tactical Aircrew Combat Training Systems, are installed at 14 bases around the world and have become crucial at the Yuma range for helicopter dogfight training. Each system costs $25 million to $50 million.

But possibly the largest potential reward for defense companies lies in the future helicopters themselves, which will be designed with air combat as an important capability.

“Our current assets were not designed for an air-to-air role,” Mayer said. “They (defense contractors) have a very lucrative future.”

If Congress eventually approves, the Army plans to buy 7,000 new-generation helicopters, known as the LHX, and will put a heavy emphasis on air-to-air battle capability. Initial designs of the craft look virtually like a jet fighter.

“The Army is estimating the total value of the LHX program at $30 billion to $40 billion,” McDonnell Douglas’ Borgman said. “That’s a major market, whether you are talking about helicopters or any other hardware.”

But the Army is not waiting for the LHX. Even though existing helicopters were not designed for dogfighting, pilots have adopted tactics that make them a difficult target for fighter jets and an equally difficult target for opposing helicopters.

Helicopters are small and they can hover almost at ground level, where they are extremely difficult for other pilots to see and almost impossible to detect by radar or with infrared sensors.

A jet fighter pilot flying at 550 m.p.h. is lucky to spot a helicopter a mile away. At that point, he has eight seconds, at best, to bring his nose to bear on the helicopter and open fire with his guns.

A Difficult Target

But a helicopter moving at 150 m.p.h. is a difficult target. Each round of cannon fire from the jet fighter takes two to three seconds to reach the helicopter, time enough for the helicopter to be hundreds of feet away from the speeding bullet.

Once the jet fighter makes its initial pass, things go from bad to worse. As the fighter tries to creep up on the helicopter’s tail, the helicopter can almost always turn around faster than the jet pilot can complete his maneuver.

“If it turns into a turning fight, there is no way a fixed-wing aircraft can turn as fast as a helicopter,” Blemberg, the Marine helicopter instructor, said.

Armed with supersonic missiles, a helicopter is ideally positioned to shoot back at the jet fighter. Its missile guidance system looks upward into an empty sky, save for the target. And a missile’s infrared guidance is less likely to be fooled flying up into the cool sky than it is flying down toward the hot ground.

Meanwhile, Blemberg said the Marines, who have taken the lead in developing tactics for helicopters, are only just starting to realize the potential of their equipment. Training manuals outline such maneuvers as the low yo-yo, the pitchback and the evasive quick stop.

Some Scoff at Plans

While all of this sounds good in theory, some helicopter pilots who are veterans of Vietnam, like Hoven, scoff at the Army’s plans.

Hoven believes the Army has ignored how vulnerable its helicopters will be to massed artillery and machine-gun fire in a European war. In Vietnam, thousands of helicopters were shot down in a much milder combat environment.

“We start with the assumption that our helicopters will never get hit, so each generation of our aircraft get softer,” Hoven said. “I had a friend in Vietnam, Leo. He got shot down three times in one day. In terms of the real world, they have no idea of what they’re getting into.”