For speed, lethality and decisive influence on the battlefield, U.S. Army aviation is the service’s crown jewel. Its principal platforms—the AH-64E Apache attack helicopter, the UH-60M Black Hawk assault helicopter and the CH-47F Chinook heavy-lift helicopter—are proven, reliable and effective, able to operate day or night, and in all weather.

Army divisions today each include a combat aviation brigade with 48 Apaches, 30 Black Hawks and 12 Chinooks. Each brigade also fields eight UH-60s modified as command-and-control aircraft and 15 HH-60 medevac aircraft, as well as 12 RQ-7 Shadow and 12 MQ-1C Gray Eagle unmanned aircraft vehicles.

Given the decline in field artillery since the end of the Cold War, and the fact that many of the Army’s combat brigades are light infantry with limited firepower, Army attack aviation is the most powerful striking weapon available to division commanders. A division’s 48 Apaches can launch up to 768 fire-and-forget anti-tank missiles, each with a range of 8 kilometers. Operating at standoff ranges, the Apaches are survivable and, with cruise speeds of 172 mph, they can be rapidly repositioned to engage and destroy massed enemy armor. The Apache also can integrate with and control the MQ-1C, which also can be armed.

Be More Lethal

These capabilities are impressive, but Army aviation can and should be more lethal. Though currently equipped with only two 7.62 mm door guns, the UH-60 platform was designed to accommodate a full complement of anti-tank missiles and rockets. Up to 16 Hellfires can be externally loaded, with another 16 carried internally, while both the GAU-19 .50 caliber or the M134 7.62 mm minigun also can be mounted. The aircraft also can be configured with 2.75-inch rockets and the Stinger antiair missile. (The MH-60L Black Hawk aircraft flown by the 160th Special Operations Aviation Regiment are configured with the Hellfire, as are the MH-60R helicopters flown by the Navy.)

These changes would dramatically improve the combat power available to division commanders, enabling them to mass lethal fires more quickly than with ground maneuver units, while also retaining the capability to conduct troop carrier operations when needed.

In the 1980s, the Army Aviation Center, now known as the U.S. Army Aviation Center of Excellence, experimented with an air-to-air capability for the attack helicopter, but the initiative faltered as the Cold War drew down. Today, both Russia and China field advanced attack helicopters with a demonstrated air-to-air capability. Both the Chinese Z-10 medium attack helicopter and the Z-19 light attack helicopter are equipped with the TY-90 air-to-air missile. The Russian Mi-28 Havoc can be armed with the R-73 air-to-air missile, while the smaller Ka-50 Hokum uses the AA-11 antiair missile.

To defend against enemy helicopters, the U.S. Army should move quickly to provide an air-to-air capability for its attack and assault helicopters.

Fixed-Wing Arm Needed

A more controversial proposal, but one that clearly merits serious consideration, is to provide the Army with its own fixed-wing close air support. Though considered by many to be a radical proposition, it’s not. The Army needs its own fixed-wing air arm for the same reason the Navy and Marine Corps do. The Army has its own unique needs, vital to its success in ground campaigns, that aren’t met by sister services or by appealing for more “jointness.” These needs do not encompass air dominance, long-range interdiction or strategic bombing, classic Air Force missions.           

Long before the Air Force separated from the Army, the Navy and Marine Corps established their own air arms, specialized for their own needs and missions. They retain them to this day. As long as the Army Air Forces were subordinated to the Army, its requirements for tactical air power also were met, even as an increasingly independent strategic air force evolved.

This changed when the U.S. Air Force was created in 1947. The essence of an independent Air Force is the “strategic” application of air power. Accordingly, close air support has enjoyed the lowest priority in the Air Force for generations. As Rand Corp. analyst Carl Builder noted in his 1989 classic The Masks of War: American Military Styles in Strategy and Analysis, “losing the freedom to apply air power independently to decisive ends is to lose that which pilots have striven so hard to achieve for much of the history of the airplane. Thus, close air support will always be an unwanted stepchild of the Air Force.”

Transfer the A-10

Despite its representations to the contrary, the Air Force possesses only one platform optimized for the close air support mission, the A-10 Thunderbolt. Armed with the formidable GAU-8 30 mm chain gun and up to 16,000 pounds of ordnance, the A-10 packs a fearsome punch and can be employed in close proximity to friendly ground troops. The Air Force repeatedly has attempted to retire the A-10 or, when faced with congressional opposition, push it into the reserves. In 2023, it finally achieved congressional approval, with the last A-10s to be retired in 2029. There are 260 A-10s in service.

A reasonable proposal is to transfer the A-10—an aircraft the Air Force doesn’t want, for a mission it doesn’t like—to the Army. The current inventory would support a squadron of 18 aircraft in each division, leaving 80 for training and spares. Alternatively, a wing of three squadrons could support each Army corps. Army forward observers would assume the mission of controlling close air support. Army pilots could serve in Army maneuver battalions and brigades as forward air controllers, as in the Marine Corps.

Can the A-10 survive on the modern battlefield? In recent years, strong congressional support has seen the A-10 receive multiple upgrades in avionics and flight controls, refurbished wings, standoff weapons, cockpit improvements and other enhancements. In the 1980s, and today, the operational concept for employment of the A-10 called for achieving air supremacy and suppression of enemy air defenses. This translates into effective joint operations combining Army field artillery and air defense as well as Air Force (and potentially Navy and Marine Corps) air power to reduce or eliminate the enemy’s air-to-air threat and degrade the opponent’s integrated air defense system.

More Capable

Able to operate from austere forward airfields, well-armored and able to fly at low level using terrain masking, the A-10 can be both survivable and effective when these conditions are met. Faster than the Army’s AH-64D/E attack helicopters, and better protected, the A-10 is significantly more capable than Army attack aviation, a critical capability the Army relies upon. With its high mission-availability rate, prodigious weapons load, strong electronic countermeasures and night, all-weather capability, the A-10 remains by far the best close air support platform in the world. Employed properly, the A-10 can and will survive.

Though the Army’s attack helicopter community is vital, the A-10 is superior to the AH-64 in many ways, being more survivable, longer ranged and faster, with a mighty weapons load. So equipped, the Army could be its own primary provider for close air support.

An objective analysis should conclude the time is right to make this move. The Army will gain flexible, rapid combat power it badly needs. The Air Force will be relieved of a platform it has been trying to jettison for years. Interservice rivalry will be eased, and effective joint operations will be enhanced.

These upgrades will go far to strengthen the Army’s punch and provide commanders with fast, agile combat power at the point of decision. The time is right to empower Army aviation. Let’s move now.

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Col. R.D. Hooker Jr., U.S. Army retired, commanded a parachute infantry battalion in Kosovo and the Sinai, and a parachute brigade in Baghdad. His latest book is The High Ground: Leading in Peace and War.