Helicopter units revert to Vietnam-era tactics

[Hoss68]

November 01, 2004

By Jim Krane
Associated Press


TAJI, Iraq — The U.S. military is increasingly turning to attack helicopters to battle guerrillas in Iraq, using tactics closer to those from Vietnam or Israel than the Gulf War formations that blasted Iraqi tanks.

The Army is also pushing its fleets of transport helicopters as hard as it can, ferrying U.S. troops and Iraqi leaders by air, rather than letting them drive the country’s ambush-prone roads.

“When we fly, soldiers don’t die,” said Col. Jim McConville, who commands the 1st Cavalry Division’s aviation brigade. “We’re basically flying as much as we can. And we can’t fly them enough.”

Since February, McConville’s 4th Brigade, headquartered on this dust-blown air base just north of Baghdad, has flown 50,000 combined hours in its nearly 100 helicopters, the highest airborne rate in division history.

Helicopters have emerged as the most important weapon in the U.S. air war in Iraq. Pairs of Apache, Kiowa and Marine Cobra attack helicopters often act as the eyes — and arms — for small bands of ground troops.

And they are expected to be critical to the forthcoming attempt to retake guerrilla-held Fallujah.

Helicopters have proven themselves in dozens of counterinsurgency battles, with pilots radioing directions or firing rockets, allowing ground troops to overcome ambushes or blocked streets.

“It’s an adrenaline rush, guys flying 140 miles per hour just above the trees and firing rockets,” said McConville, whose own helicopters have been rocked by rocket-propelled grenades or punched with bullets.

The Black Hawk, which entered service in 1979, has become a taxi for soldiers and contractors hopping from the safety of one U.S. base to another.

“If everyone had a choice no one would drive,” said McConville, 45, of Quincy, Mass. “But there’s not enough aircraft to fly every soldier who wants to fly.”

The ominous thumping sound of American helicopters roaring over Baghdad’s rooftops is becoming as emblematic of this war as it was of Vietnam.

In February, an Iraqi reporter asked Army Brig. Gen. Mark Kimmitt, spokesman for the occupation forces, what he would recommend Iraqi mothers tell their children frightened by low-flying helicopters.

“What we would tell the children of Iraq is that the noise they hear is the sound of freedom,” Kimmitt said.

American helicopters provoke dread among insurgents as well, McConville said. The shooting often stops when one shows up.

“The Iraqis are afraid of helicopters,” McConville said. “We think they’re pretty deadly. But they think they’re a lot more deadly than they are.”

The 1st Cavalry, whose pioneering of Vietnam “Air Cav” operations was featured in the 1979 movie “Apocalypse Now,” has seen two of its helicopters shot down. Two other 1st Cavalry Kiowas collided and crashed, for unknown reasons, in October.

Heavy armor, like the Black Hawk’s Kevlar flooring, helps bring the machines back after they’ve been hit.

“They’ll come in with holes and we’ll repair them,” said Maj. John Agor, 42, striding through a Taji hangar filled with disassembled Black Hawks and Apaches. “More likely than not we’ll put them back into battle that night.”

Helicopter tactics here resemble those that emerged at the end of the Vietnam war, when the Viet Cong acquired Soviet-made SA-7 missiles that were able to pick off high-flying choppers. U.S. pilots began flying low and fast, skimming the trees and fields in a technique known as “mapping the earth.”

When the Apache gunship entered service, tactics evolved again.

The Army trained pilots to hover behind front lines and blast tanks with long-range missiles. Apache pilots did just that in the Gulf war.

But Iraqi insurgents have no front lines or tanks. After rebels with shoulder-fired missiles took down a pair of helicopters, including a Chinook transport in November that killed 16 U.S. troops, the Army stopped flying at high altitudes.

“We used to hover around. We can’t do that now because you get shot down,” McConville said. “People thought it was safer to come down low and risk small arms fire and wires.”

So the Army went back to mapping the earth, with improvements. Helicopters have better armor and are loaded with precision weapons and night targeting systems, including those that can detect a person’s body heat.

Apaches and Kiowas operate in street battles much the same way as in the Israeli military: rocketing single cars or buildings sheltering insurgents.

“You try to shoot them in an alleyway or shoot one car that’s moving along a street,” said Capt. Ryan Welch, 29, an Apache pilot with the 4th Brigade. “It’s not something we used to train for.”

The urban fighting puts big decisions into the hand of a 20-something flier.

When a 1st Cavalry Apache team fired on a disabled Bradley armored vehicle in August, among those killed was an Al-Arabiya television reporter who was broadcasting live. The widely viewed carnage brought criticism on the U.S. military. McConville said his pilots are well aware of their potential for instant infamy.

The Army relies so heavily on its helicopters that some are being flown at rates beyond military recommendations.

Lt. Col. Mike Lundy, commander of the 1st Cavalry’s Kiowa regiment, said each of his armed Kiowas flies around 105 hours per month, well over the recommended 65 hours.

Major overhauls normally done every two years are now needed every six months, said Agor, the maintenance chief. In the case of the Apache, the interval between complete overhauls been pushed back from once every 250 hours to once every 500 hours, said Agor.

[Headhunter]

Being a Blackhawk mechanic, I can say that those maintenance folks are really pushing the evelope to keep those birds in the air...