QUANTICO, Va. -- No U.S. Marine Corps attack helicopters was shot down during Operation Iraqi Freedom (OIF), but the fleet was so heavily damaged in combat that service officials are expressing doubt about two fundamental wartime roles for rotor-wing aircraft, a senior commander said July 29.

Echoing recent concerns by some U.S. Army officials, Maj. Gen. James F. Amos, commander of the 3rd Marine Aircraft Wing, said current tactics that allow attack helicopter crews to penetrate deep behind enemy lines on long-range strike missions and hover above cities to provide close air support are ill-advised.

Although the crews piloting 58 AH-1 Cobras and UH-1 Hueys fought bravely, their relatively low-speed and low-altitude flights may have provided an easy target for Iraqi gunners, said Amos, addressing a seminar on here.

"I didn't have any shot out of the sky -- like blown up out of the sky," Amos said, "but I had 49 of them shot up and I ended up with various states of depot-level repair. I'm telling you we can't afford that."

Amos blamed the heavy toll on current tactics that permit attack helicopters to rove far into enemy territory, sometimes dozens of miles in advance of friendly ground units.

"The bad news is that we've developed a set of tactics - and it's our fault -- that takes our tactical attack rotary aviation out to the leading edge of the normal maneuver elements," Amos said, "and, then, out there even more forward than that, and leave them alone out there where the enemy is."

Amos cited the case of a Cobra pilot who was awarded the Distinguished Flying Cross (DFC) during the war for launching attacks 45 miles inside enemy territory.

"I wasn't sure if I should have given him a DFC or given him a letter of reprimand," he said, half-jokingly. "I'm not saying they shouldn't be out there, but if they're going to be out there, we've got to at least have the advantage, and right now we're floating around out there with Delta corridor tactics."

Another example of bad tactics is using attack helicopters for urban close air support.

During the war, the Marines recognized that the Iraqis had heeded the lessons of previous urban battles, such as Mogadishu, that posed heavy risks for helicopters, he said. Just before the allied assault on Baghdad in early-April, the Marines restricted attack helicopters from the battlespace, he said.

The Marines also discovered a critical need for a battle damage assessment system during the campaign, Amos said. The service cobbled together a system based on the AV-8B Harrier's Advanced Targeting Forward-Looking Infra-Red (AT-FLIR) pod data and aerial imagery, he said.

The makeshift system provided a 70 percent solution for the problem, but the marines want something better.

"We're going to have to come up with something that says, 'We've killed this many tanks, and that many vehicles,'" Amos said.