The Army March 27 defended its aviation restructuring plan that includes moving AH-64 Apache attack helicopters from the National Guard to the active component before the House Appropriations Committee panel on defense (HAC-D).
Under the aviation restructure plan proposed in the president’s $120.5 billion budget request for the Army, the service would move all 192 Apaches from the Army National Guard to the active component to fulfill attack and reconnaissance roles. In exchange, the Guard would receive more UH-60 Black Hawk helicopters.
This and other aspects of the aviation restructure remain a “contentious issue,” HAC-D Chairman Rep. Rodney Frelinghuysen, (R-N.J.) said in his opening remarks.
Rep. Steve Womak (R-Ark.) said he couldn’t argue with the logic that the Black Hawk could better serve some statewide missions the Guard conducts. One concern is that taking the attack aviation piece completely out of the National Guard creates debate between active and guard components.
Additionally, “I think its flawed in the sense that we have taken some of our strategic depth out of the reserve component that we believe is a very important component of our ability to prosecute missions around the world,” he said.
Why make such a “drastic” change, Womak questioned.
“It’s about the budget,” Army Chief of Staff Gen. Raymond Odierno said. “We can no longer afford to sustain the amount of aircraft we have.”
The Army has to eliminate obsolete aircraft–and it’s centered around the OH-58 Kiowa Warrior.
This proposal has a cost avoidance of almost $12 billion, Odierno said, in part because $10 billion of that $12 billion cost would have to go to modernize the OH-58s for them to perform the mission. “We can’t buy enough Apaches” to have them do the missions both in the active component and the National Guard.
What the Army is trying to do is to respond to threats with the active component while still keeping structure in the reserve component. In the active force, three Combat Aviation Brigades would be eliminated under the plan, because the service can’t afford to keep them. The Army is not eliminating any aviation brigades in the Guard.
“If we kept attack capability in the guard we’d have to eliminate three to four (aviation) brigades out of the Guard in order to do that,” Odierno said.
Other concerns feeding the Army’s decision to move Apaches comes from the complexity of air-ground integration. Training for this “just frankly takes a long time to do,” he said. “We will not in the future have the training time to sustain the right level of the integration that’s necessary to do it in the Guard. We do have the time necessary in the active component.”
As appropriators well know, the budget is a zero-sum operation. And Army Secretary John McHugh said, “The money’s gone. So if we’re not allowed to do this, if that’s the judgement of Congress, obviously, we will follow that. We’ll have to find that $12 billion somewhere else–out of hide. That’s a lot of money. That’s a lot of end strength, that’s a lot of readiness.”
The National Guard Association of the United States also has weighed in on the issue, saying under the Army initiative the Guard would lose all attack and reconnaissance capabilities and affect all the states. The move is “shortsighted,” the association said.
NGAUS said in a statement: “Using the large, heavily armed AH-64 Apache as a ‘scout’ is like using an Abrams tank to scout for a ground force.”
Appropriators repeatedly expressed concern over the financial
- Apache Longbow
Photo: Boeing
challenges facing the Army, such as readiness in light of current events in Ukraine and nations bordering Russia, as well as potential NATO actions.
As he has said in the past, McHugh told panel members with a restricted budget and the threat of sequestration returning in 2016, “the time for action is now.” And as he has told other committees, it is the time for “protection and predictability, not politics.”
Wrapping up, Frelinghuysen told the two top Army officials the committee wanted “verifiable and defensible line item data” for a projected Overseas Contingency Operations measure as quickly as possible to replace the $80 billion placeholder.