So nice for the US Army to make all those cheap ZU/ZPU guns and DShK heavies have an air-to-air role again. Also nice to give the bad guys equipped with MANPADS some thing to do as well.
Let's also pretend the Russians and Chinese are too stupid to figure out electronic warfare against drones including jamming operations:
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The article itself mentions the failed use of AH-64s in independent ops in Iraq. It doesn't mention how in Iraq, Ah-64 has the highest loss rate to hostile fire of all aircraft (15 lost to enemy fire). The mission is hard and dangerous even in low intensity COIN, let alone peer conflict.
IMO an attack helo is a great asset for use in conjunction with a combined arms force but I am not sold on it as a long range interdictor.
The Spec Ops experience is somewhat irrelevant – these aren't flying against heavily defended areas. And indeed when they have, they too have suffered losses (eg Operation Anaconda against Taliban they lost a couple of MH-47s).
The other thing is spec ops units ala 160th SOAR are the creme of the crop. There are probably no better helicopter pilots in the world.
Now they're expecting large numbers of regiments to be flying at tree top at 200 miles per hour in heavily defended combat zones whilst absorbing and coordinating huge amounts of information.
The workloads for the gunner will be massive!
They're really going to have to ramp up their recruitment, retention and training.