Attack Helicopters Remain Vital to the American Way of War

I’ve spent a career looking at the battlefield through the periscope of a tank, and I know what it means to rely on a platform that skeptics call a “relic.” For decades, pundits have predicted the death of the Main Battle Tank, yet every time the lead starts flying, the grunt on the ground looks for the 70-ton beast with the 120mm smoothbore to clear the path.

Today, with the advent of widespread drone usage in Ukraine, some of that same “obsolescence” talk is being directed at the attack helicopter.

We’ve all seen the grainy footage from that war: a drone’s-eye view homing in on a target until the screen dissolves into static. Drone warfare is on everyone’s mind, leading many to ask if manned aviation has finally met its “Revolution in Military Affairs.”

As a retired tank officer, I’ve seen technologies come and go, but I know one thing for certain: cheap mass cannot replace high-end, combined-arms maneuver.

Despite the undeniable impact of drones, the attack helicopter is far from a museum piece. It remains a vital, irreplaceable component of the American way of war due to its unique ability to operate from unimproved spaces, its maneuverability, its versatility, and its resilience.

The lessons of military history, the distinct capabilities of manned attack helicopters, and the imperatives of military doctrine all reinforce its utility and necessity.

Historical Innovation in Warfare

Throughout military history, the emergence of a new technology has rarely rendered an existing capability irrelevant. In the more common scenario, the new and the pre-existing technologies and capabilities adapt to, and complement, one another into a new, integrated system.

When the tank was introduced in World War I, it was thought to be a gamechanger, as there was no immediately effective countermeasure. As time passed and anti-tank weapons and doctrine developed, infantry became a necessary complement to the tank to, in effect, counter the countermeasure. The tank was not a standalone miracle weapon; it was integrated with the infantry to provide the ground force with a new level of mobility and lethality.

Gen. Billy Mitchell in 1921 demonstrated that aircraft could sink a battleship from the air. Did this revolutionary moment render surface ships obsolete? Hardly. Indeed, Mitchell was court martialed for his trouble. Yet naval doctrine adapted, integrating aircraft into naval warfare.

A mere 20 years later, at the Battle of Midway, the U.S. and Imperial Japanese fleets never saw each other, only aircraft did. Ships were sunk, but no one declared the end of the surface ship.  Instead, the surface fleet and aviation were integrated to form a naval force of even greater capability than either could be on their own.

Power Projection: From Rhino to Caracas

Manned rotary-wing aviation has been essential to missions that changed history.

Take Operation Enduring Freedom. In 2001 the U.S. conducted the longest amphibious operation in history to put boots on the ground in Afghanistan.  Because the country was landlocked, Marines were launched 400 miles from the sea to establish Camp Rhino. That required massive maneuver and power projection that only heavy-lift and attack helicopters could provide.

Consider Operation Neptune Spear. To capture or kill Osama bin Laden, we didn’t send a drone to drop a bomb; we needed a “snatch and grab” capability with real-time human intelligence on-site. Modified stealth Black Hawks slipped through Pakistani air defenses to put SEALs on the X.

Most recently, in Operation Absolute Resolve in Venezuela, the 160th Special Operations Aviation Regiment flew MH-47 Chinooks and MH-60 DAPs to extract Nicolás Maduro from a fortress in the heart of Caracas.

None of these missions would have been successfully accomplished without manned rotary-wing aircraft.

The Roles of Drones and Their Shortcomings

Drones, of course, are proving useful in a range of missions: Intelligence, Surveillance, and Reconnaissance (ISR) drones (like the RQ-4 Global Hawk), combat drones, or Unmanned Combat Aerial Vehicles (UCAVs) (like the MQ-9 Reaper), and loitering munitions. They vary in size from small and portable to large and highly sophisticated.

But drones have many shortcomings that have been under-reported. A recent report from Jakub Jacjay, a veteran of the Ukrainian conflict noted that FPV drones were “finicky, unreliable, hard to use, and susceptible to electronic interference. Few first-person view drones have night-vision capability.”

We are only on the cusp of encountering the counter-drone movement that is sure to gather momentum, which will include electronic and cyber countermeasures. For the first years, there were very few effective countermeasures to drones. As the war has dragged on, we have seen platforms previously considered obsolete, such as the German Gepard 1A2 self-propelled anti-aircraft gun, get new life as a counter-drone platform.

We have seen the recent proliferation of fiber-optic drones in Ukraine, which are intended to offset some of these countermeasures. While fiber-optic connections defeat jamming, they also present challenges such as tangling, limited range, reduced payload and added operational complexity.

Integrating Attack Helicopters and Drones

Modern US attack helicopters, such as the AH-64 Apache and AH-1Z Viper, traditionally have provided close air support, conducted deep anti-armor strikes, and performed armed reconnaissance.

An attack helicopter’s weaponry—such as an autocannon and large payload of AGM-114 Hellfire missiles—continues to offer a level of sustained, adaptable firepower that is far superior to that of a drone—even a fleet of drones.

The range of helicopters’ weaponry is continually being improved upon. The range of the new Long Range Attack Missile (LRAM) is expected to approach 200 nautical miles and is designed to defeat armored vehicles, bunkers, and small naval targets.

But with the advent of drones, the attack helicopter enters a whole new era. The key to American way of war is our effectiveness as a multi-domain, combined arms Joint Force. That involves bringing all assets together to bear in a synchronized manner to deliver lethal effects. Again, the focus is on integrating new advancements with existing platforms.

In that vein, consider the attack helicopter integrated with Air-Launched Effects (ALE), where drones and the attack helicopter mutually benefit and support each other to more devastating effect against the adversary. With ALE, a manned helicopter acts as a mothership, commanding a swarm of smaller, expendable drones.

These ALEs can fly ahead of the main aircraft to extend its sensor range, provide decoys, or jam enemy communications. This allows the helicopter to remain at a safe distance from air defenses while the drones deliver specific effects. This symbiotic relationship leverages the strengths of both manned and unmanned platforms, with the human pilot remaining in the crucial decision-making loop.

Moreover, the pilot cannot be cyber attacked. If drones are jammed due to electromagnetic warfare (EW)/cyber threats, a pilot can use a GPS weapon. If GPS is denied, the pilot can use a laser-guided weapon. If laser countermeasures are present, the pilot can use a ballistic weapon, and so on.

The simple laws of physics and the limitations of remote operations also highlight the enduring relevance of attack helicopters. A drone’s ability to carry a heavy payload is inversely related to its range and flight time. To carry the same number of Hellfire missiles as an Apache or Viper, a drone would need to be either significantly larger or accept a drastically reduced flight duration, either option increases its vulnerability. This payload limitation makes drones less effective for prolonged, high-intensity missions.

Moreover, once a drone becomes large enough to carry heavy payloads, it becomes more expensive, reducing its value proposition. The simple value of the helicopter’s reloadable magazine is essential yet easily overlooked.

The human element is equally critical. A pilot’s ability to make instantaneous, on-the-spot decisions and adapt to a rapidly changing tactical situation is a crucial advantage that a remote operator, communicating over a vulnerable data link, cannot replicate.

Finally, the perceived vulnerability of attack helicopters in Ukraine is a result of a holdover Soviet military doctrine, not an inherent flaw in the platform itself. The Russian military relies heavily on massed artillery firepower, a doctrine that made their helicopters vulnerable to a decentralized air defense network. They flew their helicopters low and slow, which made them vulnerable to a host of ground-launched effects and they employed unguided rockets and guns. The Russians, however, have been learning from their early mistakes and are now using standoff tactics and employing long-range precision weapons like the AT-16, which is improving their survivability.

In contrast, the American military employs a multi-domain combined arms warfare doctrine, where attack helicopters are not meant to operate alone but to work in concert with infantry, armor, fixed-wing aviation, maritime fires, and artillery to create synergy. The whole becomes more effective than the sum of its parts.

We create dilemmas for the enemy: Pop up and we shoot you with direct fire; stay in your fighting position and receive indirect fire.

To conclude that the attack helicopter is obsolete based on Russia’s initial incompetent usage is a misguided assessment that fails to recognize the attack helicopter’s fundamental role in the American way of war.

As Jonathan Panter, a fellow at the Council on Foreign Relations, has written, “A grinding artillery war of attrition on the European landmass between two militaries wrought with funding, personnel, and training problems, is not an appropriate analog for superpower war in the Indo-Pacific. […] There is a real risk that the U.S. military over-indexes on lessons learned from the Ukrainian battlefield, to the detriment of deterring (and, if necessary, defeating) China.”

Conclusion

Drones remain a potent and transformative new tool, but they are a complement, not a replacement, for the attack helicopter. The attack helicopter’s ability to provide responsive close air support, deliver overwhelming firepower, and command swarms of drones as an airborne command hub ensures its continued relevance.

The future battlefield will be a complex ecosystem of both manned and unmanned systems, with the attack helicopter evolving to remain a vital asset for any modern military. Wherever the U.S. military needs to fight, our ground forces will rely upon the overwhelming lethality of the attack helicopter.