NASHVILLE, Tenn. — The U.S. Army’s aviation branch is reaching a critical inflection point where it’ll need to find out how and when to start retiring its aircraft fleet — while also keeping a few of them flying for a long time because it adopts recent piloted and unmanned vertical lift platforms together with launched effects.
Maj. Gen. Mac McCurry, who runs the Army Aviation Center of Excellence at Fort Novosel, Alabama, is playing a key role in leading that process.
The Army plans to field a Future Long Range Assault Aircraft (FLRAA) and a Future Attack Reconnaissance Aircraft (FARA), in addition to a wide range of tactical drones and launched effects to help crewed aircraft, giving pilots greater standoff from enemy threats.
However the Army must also modernize its fleet of AH-64 Apache attack helicopters, UH-60 Black Hawk utility helicopters and CH-47 Chinook cargo helicopters to maintain them flying at the least two more a long time, albeit some will remain within the fleet considerably longer.
At the identical time, McCurry can be focused on ensuring aviation training keeps up with the service’s newer, complex missions expected in the long run.
Defense News sat down for an exclusive interview with McCurry on the Army Aviation Association of America’s annual symposium on April 26 to discuss how the service is preparing for a brand new era of aviation. This interview was edited for length and clarity.
The U.S. Army selected the Bell-made V-280 Valor tiltrotor for its FLRAA effort, and that is the primary the Army will fly a tiltrotor aircraft. How are the Army Aviation Center of Excellence and Fort Novosel preparing for training with the aircraft and its integration into the fleet?
The team has began working with the Capabilities Development Integration Directorate and the U.S. Army Aviation Center of Excellence, working together to refine all of those things that wrap around a materiel thing to create a capability so you’ve gotten the trained people at the fitting time, you’ve gotten the doctrine at the fitting time, we now have leaders in a position to employ the system and understand how we would like to try this doctrinally, and we now have the facilities and things available.
As we have a look at it, facilities are clearly the longest lead time.
The excellent news is the models that were downselected have an inexpensive correlation to our aircraft today. It’s a bigger aircraft, slightly bit, but from a height, width, and the way it could stack in a hangar perspective, it’s very close. We don’t see quite a lot of blossoming needs there.
We’re working on the force design update, and we’re working on the allocation. The premise of issue might be circuitously one-for-one for a Black Hawk. With an increased capability, you most likely don’t need the identical amount in each formation, so we’re looking and doing the modeling [to determine] what number of do you would like.
On facilities specifically, everyone seems to gravitate to hangars. Most of our aircraft live outside. Once you go by an Army airfield, we don’t have all of the aircraft parked within the hangar; many of the aircraft live out on the ramp. When it’s worthwhile to take them into the hangar to do certain things, whether it’s overhead lift capability or something else, then we try this.
As we have a look at increased speed and range, then we start to take a look at how we’re going to conduct training, and that’s really where our focus will largely be. We’ve got gone out to each installation and done assessments, and the Army G-3/5/7 ultimately decides prioritizations for fielding. Once we get further in this system where we now have a Milestone B, and we’re within the [engineering and manufacturing development] phase, and we’re working toward a Milestone C, then a few of those things will fall into place, but I’d expect them to follow the opposite Army priorities for the divisions.
The excellent news is, it’s not the primary tiltrotor within the Defense Department, and we now have sister services, so we’re relying heavily on what the Marines and the Air Force have done and the way they use their platforms. Then we’re going to do individual training, so some form of individual qualification may have to occur. My focus can be on the way you construct a cadre of folks that know the right way to fly that. Then from there, it’s almost like once we first brought the AH-64 into the Army, we had a collective training opportunity where we formed those units, and we did one-station collective training before they landed at an installation. We’ll have a look at models like that in the long run.
LUH-72A Lakotas became the Army’s basic trainer about seven years ago replacing TH-67s. That took the fleet from a single-engine to a dual-engine aircraft, amongst other changes. How has that worked out?
We picked at the moment when aviation restructure was being worked. We form of picked it because we had it, right? It’s not like we went out and said: “That is the purpose-built thing.” We said, “We own them,” and Congress was very gracious and gave us more to create the training base.
It’s been an efficient trainer. My daughter and my son-in-law are each aviators, and considered one of them trained within the TH-67, and considered one of them trained within the LUH, so I got firsthand feedback from my kids — and my kids will at all times let you know how it truly is.
[The digital cockpit features in an LUH made for an easier transition to more advanced aircraft with similar cockpits]. Among the more tactile flight skills is perhaps more developed in TH-67. [The Lakota] has been an efficient trainer. It probably has quite a lot of things on it that you simply wouldn’t necessarily just exit and placed on a purpose-built trainer, however it’s worked.
Do you see the LUH-72A because the trainer for a few years to return, or is there an appetite inside the Army to take a look at more purpose-built trainers as you modernize?
It’s something we’re at all times assessing and considering, and positively as we start to take a look at future platforms we’ll proceed to evaluate the training fleet and what’s right. But again, we even have a top line, and you’ve gotten to be sustainable.
How are you taking a look at modernizing Black Hawks and Apaches? What upgrades have to happen for these systems in the event that they are to fly for a pair more a long time and sustain with the long run vertical lift fleet?
You may at all times do a spread of things from nothing to a brand new aircraft, and so we’re obviously not going to do nothing. The subsequent step could be safety enhancements only; we’re doing greater than that. And so we fall into this “targeted modernization” term, and twice a 12 months we get along with product managers within the [Program Executive Office Aviation], with our capability managers, with the branch chief, and we go soup to nuts through each platform.
In the course of the 12 months things emerge — whether it’s the generators on AH-64 that we’re taking a look at — so we keep a running list of the things so as of priority from “have to do” to “very nice to do” on each platform that we form of continually modulate. When you have a look at Apache, as an example, on this 12 months’s fiscal 2024 request, Apache mods went up 30% — about $27.3 million. That’s specifically focused on giving us some additional capabilities with Link 16. Moreover it’s focused on going from metal to composite most important rotor blades on the portion of the fleet that was still metal. That’s form of how we go about it.
Once we say “targeted modernization,” we’re awaiting those things which can be either emerging obsolescence, as within the case of the rotor blades, or some form of safety or emerging quality problem that we will work along with our [original equipment manufacturers] on. We’re doing that across each of those fleets.
A apart from that, it’s not only the platform — you’ve got the aircraft survivability equipment, you’ve got the [Improved Turbine Engine Program], [degraded visual environment] capabilities that we’re also working on to proceed to maintain these current capabilities viable as we transition to the long run.
There have been a few aviation accidents with the National Guard in recent history. What’s the service learning from these most up-to-date accidents, including March’s Black Hawk collision that continues to be under investigation?
For the last three years, we’ve had the safest three years in history — never had one other three-year period below one accident per 100,000 [flight hours]. And we were well below that. Last 12 months it was 0.5 per 100,000. And last 12 months we didn’t lose a single crew member in an aviation accident. So from that perspective, we’re pleased with the record.
Now, each time we lose a soldier, aviation or otherwise, it’s a tragic occurrence. It’s anyone’s father, mother, sister, brother, son or daughter on the market, and so we would like to take all of them seriously. We’re working with the [Combat Readiness Center], we’re waiting on the final result of the most recent investigation.
I talked with everybody within the Army National Guard, state aviation officers, aviation support facility commanders which can be here, and we talked specifically about how across the force — not component specific but component agnostic — we now have to proceed to use the identical rigid standardization that the branch was built on. That’s from initial mission-approval authority through mission briefing officers, mitigating risk, to final mission-approval authority, after which the crews executing the mission. All of us are focused on that. The good thing is, once we get together and have our [virtual meetings], we’ve got the director of National Guard aviation [attending] each week, and we freely flow into. There’s no component compartmentalization on any of this.
We’ll work through it, I feel that we are going to stabilize. But because the branch chief, I keep a keen concentrate on what are the causal aspects, so once they arrive out we’ll give you the option to see if there’s something we’d like to alter.
In recent times, have helicopter-related incidents more often involved user errors or technical issues?
Historically, we now have more accidents due to human error.
There are a pair things to take into consideration as we transition from heel-to-toe rotations for 20 years, where your average chief warrant officer two had two combat tours under his belt and was getting almost 1,000 hours a tour. Now, some will argue those hours were all the identical, however it’s experience in an aircraft to assist you to cope with things in extremis.
We’ve got definitely seen a lack of flight experience across the force with less heel-to-toe rotations. And with retirements and people of us which can be around my age retiring out of the force, we’ve seen this decrement in experience. At the identical time, we’re asking them to do some complex tasks in large-scale combat operations; more tasks focused on combined arms maneuver and operating in larger elements. Those things bring additional risk. That’s why my focus because the branch chief is on standardization.
Without deployment experience in a wartime environment, how are you training and preparing pilots? How much may very well be simulated training versus actual flight hours?
We’ve never equated one simulator hour to at least one live flight hour. I don’t know what that calculus is, however it’s not 1-to-1. Emergency procedures of a few of our most extreme emergencies must be trained in simulation. Also, in some instances, response to threats may be trained in simulation.
We’ve got to give you the option to collectively maneuver platoons and firms in that simulation, in order that’s where our focus is. We’ll proceed to leverage that to the utmost extent in each institutional training at Fort Novosel and within the operational force.
We’re not going to fly the variety of hours we flew downrange, definitely, but we now have been adequately and well-funded by Congress to present us the opportunities to fly.
Jen Judson is an award-winning journalist covering land warfare for Defense News. She has also worked for Politico and Inside Defense. She holds a Master of Science degree in journalism from Boston University and a Bachelor of Arts degree from Kenyon College.