As lawmakers wait to hear if the Army wants to develop a new Armed Aerial Scout helicopter or invest in further improvements to the OH-58 Kiowa Warrior, a service official said yesterday it could “accept some risk” with existing scout choppers.
Maj. Gen. William Crosby, program executive officer for Army aviation, told a House panel he is focused on developing a medium-lift attack-utility helicopter. That’s the “one that we are likely to go after first, with the best return on investment,” he said.
“In a limited budget environment, that means we’re going to have to take some risk in some other areas in our portfolio,” Crosby told the House Armed Services Tactical Air and Land Forces subcommittee. “So in our mission sustainment and our mission upgrades, we’re going to have to focus on balancing those scout areas where we’re going to accept some risk in…(and) we’ll accept some risk in those areas to focus on that long-range investment to get a medium-lift variant.”
His comments come as Army officials are promising to make a decision soon on whether to continue upgrading the aging OH-58D Kiowa Warrior, the service’s existing armed-reconnaissance helicopter, or try again at a replacement scout aircraft. The Army canceled the RAH-66 Comanche and Armed Reconnaissance Helicopters in 2004 and 2008, respectively.
The Army is currently supporting a program to upgrade Kiowa Warrior cockpits and sensors, to keep the aircraft in use through at least fiscal year 2025. However, “should we make a decision to go to a different platform, we’d ask that that money be switched over,” Army Secretary John McHugh told the Senate Armed Services Committee (SASC) on March 8.
The Army expects to complete an analysis of alternatives (AoA) for the new potential Armed Aerial Scout helicopter later this year, after which the service will decide whether to develop that new chopper or continue upgrading the Kiowa Warriors, Army Chief of Staff Gen. Raymond Odierno told the Senate Appropriations Defense subcommittee on March 21.
Odierno told the SASC “the Kiowa Warrior has been an incredible, valuable capability but there’s ways for us to improve it.”
“They can gain more standoff, a bit more power and…then improve the cockpit,” he said March 8. “So there’s things we can do, so that’s a decision that the (Army) secretary and I will make probably sometime in the next year, year and a half or so.”