4 Regiment Army Air Corps have been flying with their French counterparts in the Alps.

In their own words, the Army Air Corps use Army aircraft, such as the Apache attack helicopter, to deliver “hard-hitting and effective support to ground forces during the key stages of battle”.

The AAC’s role also includes reconnaissance. From high above the action, they observe enemy forces and pass information to troops on the ground.

The UK is also procuring the upgraded AH-64E variant of the Apache, you can read more about that here.

George Allison
George Allison
George has a degree in Cyber Security from Glasgow Caledonian University and has a keen interest in naval and cyber security matters and has appeared on national radio and television to discuss current events. George is on Twitter at @geoallison
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29 COMMENTS

  1. Just wondering when the naming culture of the US Army regards Helicopters (Apache, Black Hawk, Kiowa, Lakota, Comanche) will be targeted by the woke brigade’s social justice warriors under the banner of cultural appropriation, to that end I dread to think what these champions of free speech (and free tampons) would deem as appropriate

  2. Great machines these, I’m glad to see that we are continuing to invest in them. I’d be interested to learn about any proposed successors to this and wonder too if a suitably modified Apache might be of use at sea.

    • There may be a specific replacement for Apache in future under the US Future Vertical Lift program. However, in the short term the very high priority focus of that program is on the Future Attack Reconnaissance Aircraft (FARA) and the Future Long-Range Assault Aircraft (FLRAA). The capabilities of these two aircraft are likely to be significantly longer range, higher speed and longer endurance than conventional helicopters. Their avionics are likely to be a sea change over current systems too.

      Both of these aircraft may be armed and capable of attack roles, but their primary roles are Scout and Medium Lift respectively. In US service the FARA replaces the Apaches used in the Scout role, as the latter have apparently proved expensive to operate and not a wise decision in replacing the original Kiowa Scout aircraft. The FLRAA replaces the Black Hawk.

      There’s a good chance the UK will purchase both FARA and FLRAA. The FARA might replace both Gazelle and the Wildcat in its Army Air Corps surveillance role, while FLRAA would replace Puma. Availability of FARA and FLRAA might be an issue though unless the UK either further extends Gazelle and Puma life or gaps.

      One very speculative possible outcome for the UK might be that the Army transfers its Wildcats to the Navy in the 2030’s where some might be retained in AH1 configuration while others might be converted to the HMA2 variant, since naval use is where we really get our monies worth from Wildcat. Such a transfer might align well with more helicopter capable ships in the fleet by then. Army light transport/utility role might then be picked up by H145M as an example.

      UK interest in FARA and FLRAA – https://breakingdefense.com/2020/07/us-uk-ink-pact-on-next-gen-aircraft-precision-weapons/

      • We’ve debated Wildcat for the army so often here. British product yes, but what a cost – 1 billion plus for 34 machines. The extra SF versions never materialized either.

        Meanwhile we could have got many more Blackhawks for a fraction of the price and the army could have got proper lift. I recall 300 million? Does the army actually want a recc helicopter when you have the sensors on Apache and UAVs?

        I know about the politics concerning the RAF and helicopter sizes.

        Home build – keeps people in work, all good. MoD pays the price again.
        There needs to be a better balance.

        • I agree that we have to be more circumspect about which UK defence industries get investment, especially if it costs the forces’ capability and numbers. In general I am a strong proponent for UK aerospace as a high value industry in terms of taxable revenue, intellectual property development, exports and quality jobs. The Tempest program for high end, fixed wing, manned, optionally manned and UAV capabilities with a lot of technology spin-off makes sense in this context. I am not seeing that for the UK’s rotary wing capability out of Leonardo, not even in terms of significant Wildcat exports that one might have thought likely after Lynx’s earlier success. Not perhaps unreasonably, Leonardo don’t appear to have anything that parallels the FVL program capabilities in development. UK govt. and MoD seem to have been signaling this lack for a while, most recently with the UK-US agreement I previously linked and prior to that in a House of Commons debate on UK future rotary strategy. Leonardo might do a license build of whatever wins the FARA competition, but then we are back to inflated MoD costs unless something changes from past adventures in this area.

          We’ll have to see if FARA fits with army aspirations, I presume so given the UK agreement expressing interest. If the US considers Apache unsuitable for recce roles with operating expense being given as at least one reason, then hard to see the UK thinking otherwise. It doesn’t preclude still tapping data from Apache collected during its missions though and fusing that into the overall battlefield picture. Not sure if the UK will want to arm FARA up for light attack, but it might be considered useful to expand the rotary attack capability. FARA is planned to be optionally manned so in effect can be a UAV, this also means that when manned it will off load pilot burden to allow concentration on other tasks. It is planned for it to be able to launch its own small UAVs to scout out ahead.

          • To quote out of context Robin Williams, “lower than a snake’s ass in a wagon rut” low perhaps 😉

          • On a tangent regarding the arming of helicopters, I understand that there is a cost associated with arming anything, but brushing that aside for the sake of debate….Would our forces enjoy more flexibility if we tended towards arming as many of our types of vehicles and vessels rather than, it sees to me, not arming as a point of principle. Is it time to dismiss the fear of the overlapping capability?

          • I tend to push back against some of the uparming arguments, especially on naval platforms. However, it does seem to make sense to expand arming on our army helicopter fleet, especially if we go down the FARA/FLRAA path and also our vehicle fleets, specifically Boxer. Not just with weapons like CTA40 but also mortars, ATGM and perhaps ground launched Brimstone.

            Even if we end up keeping all our different variants of armed tracked vehicles after the upcoming review, albeit in lower updated/modernized numbers, we do need a more mobile and rapidly deployable wheeled capability IMV. In the dispersed battlefield of the future it seems much more likely such wheeled vehicles may encounter opposing forces and will need more firepower even if they intend to withdraw. Though, we need to be careful not to overload smaller vehicles such as JLTV, pushing them into roles they weren’t intended for.

          • I know that the AW609 maybe isn’t the right size for military applications, and we may be wanting to avoid the complicated tilt rotor concept entirely, but Leonardo are at least looking into the technology. Surely other European countries are considering the need for these aircraft too, the market can’tsimply be the US and UK?!

          • I don’t think the UK is necessarily looking to avoid tilt rotor, at least in the form of the Bell V-280 Valor where the blades tilt but the engines don’t, assuming that wins the US FLRAA competition. The UK have already signed an agreement with the US expressing interest in the FLRAA and FARA programs.

            The AW609 uses technology licensed from Bell where the engines tilt as well as the rotors, i.e. similar to V-22. Unless it changes, Leonardo are only licensed for commercial applications that stretch to surveillance but not military applications. So they can’t directly offer a FLRAA like solution using the technology.

            Its very likely other European nations are looking at FLRAA and FARA and considering what capabilities they might want in the 2030’s and beyond since these platforms will be significantly more advanced than conventional helicopter platforms, not just in airspeed and endurance/range but also in automation. But there is no European program now. Which means no estimated demand, which means a huge gamble to speculatively build such platforms – its not unreasonable that neither Leonardo nor Airbus would take such commercial risks. Even sanctioned, funded programs like A-400M and more relevantly NH-90 and the Tiger attack helicopter have been fraught with issues, resulting in long development timelines. However, the UK doesn’t have time on its side. Both Puma and Gazelle OSD is planned for 2025, while FLRAA and FARA are more like 2030 introduction, so we may even need to extend in service life for both another 5 or so years or gap the capability.

            As I said before its possible Leonardo could license build the winners of FLRAA and FARA, especially if Bell wins, since they have a relationship already. But in the past this has led to significantly more expensive aircraft for UK forces, reducing overall aircraft numbers. Do we want that?

        • We need a much broader base of defence manufacturers right across the board. Enough to produce some healthy competition. But they would need to get work to support employment and skills. If we approached this in the same way we approach HS2 (I pass no comments on the appropriateness of HS2), briefly put the cost to the Treasury is minimal overall due to feedback and economic stimulation, cost to the nation will be less of an issue. What would need to be factored in for day to day, year to year budgets would be the cost of maintaining the new assets, and paying the new service personnel. I’ve kept this brief because the mods here routine delete my posts of an economic nature.

        • Hi Daniele,
          I’m afraid I’m not all that up on Wildcat and the helicopter size politics that you mention. Why was it so exensive, and why was such a relatively large and expensive helicopter selected for battlefield reconaissance?
          I get what you mean about domestic build vs international purchase, I’d always try and go for domestic where posible, but our budget is small. Until we get a better way of running acquisition programmes and realising/recognising the economic benefits of domestic producation on the balance sheet, we’ll be hobbled compared to the US and other Euro countries (don’t let anyone tell you that the US doesn’t subsidise their industry).
          All that said, I believe the Norwegians have been buying Merlin/AW101 from UK production, I think the Poles are doing the same, and did SK buy their Wildcats from us?
          For me, Merlin + Wildcat for RN, AW149 to replace Puma (manufactured at Yeovil). Development of Leonardo/AW’s tilt rotor or hybrid rotary wing aircraft to produce a medium lift replacement for all three, also to be built in Yeovil. It’s all domestic, creates manufacturing and design jobs, keeps us at the cutting edge of science and development, and reduces the numbers of different types in service long term.
          Of course, none of this is affordable or possible if the previous steps regarding the support of our domestic industry and how Treasury treats expenditure are changed. To be fair to Treasury, this likely also won’t be affordable unless the MOD start running their projects better… They could both do with a bit of a shake up.

          • AW149 while fine for what it is, is a legacy platform compared to FLRAA and to a future 30-40 year lifetime. UK govt. already made the point that they didn’t want to buy into a legacy platform earlier this year in a House of Commons meeting discussing UK rotary wing strategy. To illustrate: V-280 cruise speed 280kn, AW149 max cruise speed 155kn; V-280 combat range 500-800 nmi, AW149 max range 517nmi.

            Leonardo doesn’t have a license from Bell to use their tilt-rotor technology for military aircraft.

      • Excellent idea GHF, I fully agree, an idea I’ve considered for a while now.

        The Wildcats have limited utility to the Army and in reality were forced upon them as a politically driven procurement.

        With little chance of more Merlin for the Navy, transfer of the Army Wildcats and conversion of some to HMA2 makes a ton of sense.

        The H145M makes for a much more useful Army asset.

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