-Caveat Lector-
U.S. calls its copters and pilots not ready in Kosovo
June 19, 1999
George C. Wilson
Pilots sent to fly Apache helicopters against Serb forces were
undertrained and underequipped to fight the war they never fought
in Kosovo, the Army itself acknowledged in an internal memo.
"We are placing them and their unit at risk when we have to ramp
up for a real world crisis" because of the shortcomings in
aviation training, Army Brig. Gen. Dick Cody recently told Gen.
Eric Shinseki, incoming Army chief of staff, in the internal
memo.
"We are not growing our young aviation leaders well enough in the
first three years after flight school," Cody wrote, listing
lessons learned from deploying Apache helicopters to Albania.
"The results are young captains emerging from the Advanced Course
of helicopter training with little experience and little aviation
savvy on what right looks like."
Gen. Wesley Clark, commander of NATO'S war against Yugoslav
President Slobodan Milosevic, requested the 24 Apache helicopters
to deploy against Serbian troops and tanks in Kosovo, a province
of Serbia, Yugoslavia's dominant republic.
But when the Apaches arrived April 21 in Tirana, Albania, their
crews and equipment were deemed not ready for combat. The crews
underwent training exercises in which two helicopters crashed,
killing two aviators. Without the training in Albania, Cody said,
there would have been even worse accidents.
"Over 65 percent of the assigned aviators had less than 500
hours" of flying time in the Apaches, and no one was qualified to
fly certain missions wearing night-vision goggles, he said.
Cody decried the lack of proper equipment on the Apaches and
other shortcomings in Army aviation, including these findings:
The helicopters' radios had inadequate range for "deep raids and
attacks."
Using only FLIR - forward looking infrared radar, which senses
heat and etches its source, such as a soldier or a tank, on the
cockpit console - was inadequate, Cody said. FLIR could be better
used when combined with night-vision devices.
To fly long distances and cross Kosovo's high mountains, the
Apaches would have had to have Hellfire missiles from one of
their two wing mounts removed to make room for auxiliary fuel
tanks. Cody recommended that the Army buy a 150-gallon tank that
could be hung from the helicopter's belly, where it would not
replace firepower.
A primary worry - one that likely kept Clark from sending the
Apaches into action - was that Serbian gunners would shoot down
the expensive, high-tech helicopters. Apaches rely heavily on
maneuver and jamming equipment to foil enemy gunners, but "the
current suite of aircraft-survivability equipment is not reliable
enough and sometimes ineffective," Cody said.
"Most of our adversaries" have developed air-defense systems "to
defeat our helicopters," he said, calling for modernization of
jamming gear.
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Kaddish, Kaddish, Kaddish, YHVH, TZEVAOT
FROM THE DESK OF: <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
*Mike Spitzer* <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
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The Best Way To Destroy Enemies Is To Change Them To Friends
Shalom, A Salaam Aleikum, and to all, A Good Day.
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