1969 & 2019


LAYING THE FOUNDATION


To look back 50 years at Army aviation is, in some ways, to look ahead a decade.


B


ack in 1969, in the thick of the Vietnam War and at the height of the Cold War, Army aviation had a relatively small part in America’s thinking about how to defeat the Soviet Union should armed conflict


develop. Back then, the focus of Army aviation was on Vietnam, and its mainstays were the UH-1 Iroquois, popularly known as the Huey, the CH-47 Chinook transport and AH-1 Cobra attack helicopters. Te Army’s Aviation Branch would not even come into existence until 1983.


But in Vietnam, where all three of those helicopters saw extensive use, the Army was finding that there was much to learn about their capabilities and limitations. Helicopters did heavy duty in transport, reconnaissance, strike and medevac missions. Could they carry more? Fly farther? Strike harder? “See” more?


Fifty years ago, the Army began laying the foundation for a more robust and diversified helicopter fleet that could play a decisive role in a possible war against the Eastern Bloc. Today, the Army is laying the foundation for a more versatile, lethal and survivable fleet of aircraft that will support U.S. overmatch on a battlefield that is far more complex than in 1969, encompassing the multi- ple domains of land, air, sea, cyber and space.


Some of the same questions asked in 1969 are driving the current modernization of Army aircraft, captured in the U.S. Army Futures Command’s Future Vertical Lift initiative, with a target delivery date of 2028 to 2030.


150


NEW WORKHORSE Te lead story in the February 1969 issue of Army Research and Development, the precursor to Army AL&T magazine, laid out the aviation and other priorities contained in DOD’s annual posture statement, “Te 1970 Defense Budget and Defense Program for Fiscal Year 1970-74.”


In it, Secretary of Defense Clark M. Clifford, who by then had been succeeded by Melvin R. Laird, outlined a plan to initiate the design of a new Army Utility Tactical Transport Aircraft System (UTTAS), capable of carrying “about double the number of troops (plus a crew of three) currently carried in the UH-1 Huey helicopter, the workhorse of the U.S. Army in Vietnam.”


(Indeed, a short staff-written article on Page 35 of that issue reported that medevac statistics released by the Army’s Office of Te Surgeon General for the first 10 months of 1968 in Vietnam reflected “almost a doubling of the workload of helicopter and medical crews, compared to 1967 statistics. … Army Medical Department helicopters transported more than 170,000 patients in 1968, as compared to 94,000 during the same period in 1967.”)


Te lead article, also staff-written, continued, “Te Huey was designed to carry 11 troops with a crew of two, but additional protective armor and the need for two side-door gunners reduced the payload to between six and eight men.


Army AL&T Magazine


Fall 2019


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