After two decades, six program restructurings and approximately $8 billion spent, the U.S. Army has decided to cancel the RAH-66 Comanche reconnaissance/attack helicopter program and instead purchase a variety of new aircraft and recapitalize hundreds of others, Army officials announced Feb. 23.

The Comanche is the casualty of a comprehensive review of Army aviation ordered last year by Army Chief of Staff Gen. Peter Schoomaker.

Originally conceived in the early 1980s, the Comanche now is "no longer consistent with the changed operational environment," acting secretary of the Army Les Brownlee said at a Pentagon briefing Feb. 23.

The Comanche recently entered its engineering and manufacturing development (EMD) phase, with manufacturers Boeing and Sikorsky constructing the first four EMD aircraft at company facilities in Pennsylvania and Connecticut (DAILY, July 17, 2003). The first EMD helicopter was scheduled to enter flight tests next year.

The Army plans to submit a budget amendment to Congress for fiscal 2005 that would reallocate approximately $14.6 billion that was earmarked for Comanche from FY' 04-FY '11 to restructure and revitalize Army aviation.

Rather than buy Comanche, the Army plans to purchase an additional 796 new aircraft from FY '04 to FY '11, including 368 new armed reconnaissance helicopters, 303 new light utility helicopters and additional UH-60 Black Hawk and CH-47 Chinook helicopters.

All the money saved from the cancellation of Comanche will remain within Army aviation, according to Schoomaker.

"This is an Army initiative. It's about fixing Army aviation," Schoomaker said at the briefing.

Army officials said the Block 3 AH-64 Apache will have almost all the capabilities of the Comanche.

Following the 2002 restructuring, the planned Comanche buy was reduced from 1,213 aircraft to 650 (DAILY, Oct. 21, 2002). The decision to proceed with low-rate initial production had been scheduled for 2007, with the first Comanches to be delivered to the Army in 2009 followed by full-rate production in 2010.

"It's tough to kill a program once you get that magic procurement line item" in the budget, said Richard Aboulafia, senior aircraft analyst at the Teal Group. "And now is the time to do it - just a year or two before it was going to get that. ... If you get into the procurement phase, it becomes a bloody battle."

The Apache actually may be better suited to perform some of the Comanche's reconnaissance missions, according to Bob McDaniels of Analytic and Engineering Services of Alexandria, Va., a former Army officer and veteran of various Army aviation and missile programs.

"The Apache, without any external fuel, can either go out there farther or stay out there longer than the Comanche," McDaniels told The DAILY. "In theory, you can put external fuel tanks on Comanche too, but it's already way overweight."

The Comanche program was trying to shed roughly 200 pounds from future production aircraft (DAILY, Oct. 8, 2003), although past history leaves little hope that such an effort could have been successful, according to McDaniels. "[In] the whole history of the last 50 years of all aircraft, they all get heavier," he said. "You can't name any one that got lighter as it went along."