Army goes to war with National Guard, seizes Apache attack helicopters

HomerinNC
Funny, just saw 3 Apaches flying over my house about 10 mins ago...

Do ya think they're being hidden ... or sold to the highest bidder?

reply to post by freakjive


This exact thing happened to my friends unit in like 1998.....They took their trucks and made them a "air assault" unit in exchange although 10 years later no one was air assault certified. Just my 2 cents.

reply to post by minusinfinity


Well, to be fair, a title like, "National Guard's fleet of Apaches replaced with Blackhawks." Just doesn't have the same shock and awe value. I only read the thread because I thought the US Army was in a shootin' war with the National Guard and then I was concerned that the POTUS was disarming the National Guard because of his evil plans.

Then, I read the article and realized none of it was true.

Got to love ATS. The Apaches in NG go to the Army in exchange for Blackhawks and its OMG Obama do not trust the National Guard. If the Apaches were beeing transfered to the NG and Blackhawks out people would be saying OMG Obama is putting the Apaches in the NG because they are the ones that will be used for martial law. The military changes the types of units among the Active, NG and Reseve units on a regular basis. When the NG was being used at the federal level for ops in Iraq and Afganistan then Apaches made sense. Now that NG is returing to its more traditional state disaster reponse then of course Blackhawks make more sense.

I actually applaud this decision as it does fit with the National Guards domestic mission set. I did a double take back in the eighties when the Army disbanded or reorganized all Reserve combat arms units into support units and gave that capability over to the Guard. It didn't make sense then and it really doesn't now.

Why would the National Guard need attack helicopters ?


To destroy an invading army and tanks that just beat up the worlds largest and most powerful navy on the planet ?


Highly highly highly unlikely


Just seems like better management and use of assets to me, they now get black hawks which far better suits there role


It's like an infantry solider having a sniper rifle and a sniper using a sight on a LMG and getting them to switch


Poor old Obama yet again on the receiving end lol, or does this come under the fearporn Marshall law conspiracy ?

reply to post by TritonTaranis


After over thirty years in the Army, both Reserve and Active, I have asked this question many times of senior leadership (O-7 & above).

"Why did the Army transfer it's Reserve Combat Arms capabilities to the National Guard and revert to a support role? Shouldn't it be the other way around?"

Only one General replied in a honest manner I think. His answer?

"It's all in the funding Sergeant. Funding drives the mission."

That was a BIG wake up call for this young (at the time) Soldier.

w8tn4it
reply to post by freakjive

 

Seems like Obama is gearing up for martial law. You know, one of those executive orders he like to throw around just to bypass Congress. What a deuce!

Why do people act as if Obama is circumventing the system by using executive orders? Let's see...

Obama: 172 executive orders.

Previous presidents?

Bush: 291
Clinton: 364
George H. Bush: 166
Reagan: 381
Carter: 320

.. and so on. Hell, Roosevelt passed 3,522, and Truman had a solid 907. Stop spouting that ridiculous comment unless you can back it up with something substantial.

I wonder when they will trade in all their bradleys, tanks, and strykers for more 7 tons and school buses and ambulances? I mean those are better for domestic missions and all that. (End sarcasm)

reply to post by MrSpad

Got to love ATS.

Sometimes, denying ignorance is just too tiring. Adding to the conspiracy can be a hoot!!

en.wikipedia.org...

Dan Quayle is the reason the National Guard gets deployed since George H. W. Bush was in office. The media made such an issue of him not going to Vietnam by being in the National Guard, good ole George decided to prove a point during Desert Storm by deploying them. Someone forgot along the way to stop proving the point.

Most people seem to forget the National Guard has been called up to serve overseas for every conflict since WW1.
There has always been Combat units within the Guard. My old guard unit was the equivalent of a Brigade combat team.
Meaning we had out our own Artillery units, M1 Tanks, Scouts and Apache attack helicopters.
Removing the attack helicopters comprises the mission the unit was set up to do.
My old Guard unit already had Blackhawk helicopters.
There is no way an Blackhawk can do the same mission as the Apache.

The Guard has always had problems getting gear form the Department of the Army.
I really think this is just about a Washington bean counter trying to save as much money as they can.

You people do realize the guard has plenty of troop moving rescue capable helicopters right? Taking away the Apache is taking away their ability to fight in combat effectively. Next will come the fighter planes and then boom here comes an invasion or martial law. The Governors of all the states need to stand up and say hell no you don't, you have them so we need to have them for state defense. Either that or load a lot of Black Hawks with Mini-Guns and Hell fire missiles mounted on outside pods. Obama and his cronies will use any excuse to disarm the states.

Patriotsrevenge
You people do realize the guard has plenty of troop moving rescue capable helicopters right? Taking away the Apache is taking away their ability to fight in combat effectively. Next will come the fighter planes and then boom here comes an invasion or martial law. The Governors of all the states need to stand up and say hell no you don't, you have them so we need to have them for state defense. Either that or load a lot of Black Hawks with Mini-Guns and Hell fire missiles mounted on outside pods. Obama and his cronies will use any excuse to disarm the states.

This makes no sense. The NG would be the first people called out during matial law and of course with matial law the NG would be placed under federal control. And combat missions for the Guard have always come from them being federalised and sent off to combat. You seem completely confused about what the NG even is.

reply to post by freakjive


Just a question... with all the noise these days about intellectual property rights, does the US government have to pay royalties to the Apache to use their name on a helicopter? If they aren't, shouldn't they be? This is simply a "fly in the ointment" moment ;-)

Cheers - Dave

reply to post by mash3d

The Guard has always had problems getting gear form the Department of the Army. I really think this is just about a Washington bean counter trying to save as much money as they can.

That has been the exact tone of discussions (on-going for months now) up in the Ivory Towers. All this is is a final series of discussions on decisions that have already been made. The Army took the hardest hit on the big board and they're doing the political talk thingy to avoid an even bigger cut next go-round. Advocates for the Guard (and Reserve) would do well to shut mouth and happily keep their manpower ... and that's exactly what they're gonna do. Spade.

So, the Second American Civil War in its embryonic stage. Technically the egg for the revolution was fertilized with Occupy Wall Street, I know it didn't really show any sort of development beyond this stage until recent events, but it was definitely the start of something, as is this. S+F

Patriotsrevenge
You people do realize the guard has plenty of troop moving rescue capable helicopters right? Taking away the Apache is taking away their ability to fight in combat effectively. Next will come the fighter planes and then boom here comes an invasion or martial law. The Governors of all the states need to stand up and say hell no you don't, you have them so we need to have them for state defense. Either that or load a lot of Black Hawks with Mini-Guns and Hell fire missiles mounted on outside pods. Obama and his cronies will use any excuse to disarm the states.

Slight problem. Not all guard units are combat units. A lot of them are simple stuff like Medical, transportation, public affairs, maintenance etc. Most of the combat units may not even have their own equipment anymore. Some of it may have been sent overseas to Iraq or kept at larger army posts. That saves on the costs of transporting the stuff down there when you need to do annual training.
Or they may have the equipment listed on the units Table of organization but only get it handed to them when they get called up by the Department of the Army.

This may help put things into perspective, Read the entire article there's a lot of info here.

breakingdefense.com...

"To be honest, we feel betrayed.”

That’s what one National Guard gunship pilot told me when I asked him about the Army’s plan to strip the Guard of all its AH-64 Apache attack helicopters. That plan — still awaiting approval by President Obama before he includes it in his budget request for fiscal year 2015 — is just one part of a radical overhaul that includes complex downsizing and reshuffling of the Army’s entire helicopter force.

All told, the Army is losing 898 helicopters, 215 of them (24 percent) from the Guard. Driven by the cold realities of budget cuts, the plan has stirred fiery emotions that push the Army leadership and the National Guard community closer to all-out political war.

“Here’s the issue: The Army has to pay a $79 billon bill over the next five years,” Army Chief of Staff, Gen. Ray Odierno said this morning. “I can’t afford all the fleets of aircraft I have right now. We can’t afford them.…It is impossible under the budget that we’ve been given.”

Speaking at an Association of the US Army breakfast, the visibly agitated Odierno was taking his second “Guard vs. Army” question in a row — “The National Guard is the Army,” he’d hotly told the first reporter to ask — and the normally good-natured general cut me off mid-question to give the impassioned response above.

“This is about affordability,” Odierno went on. “That’s the issue. People want to make it into something that it isn’t,” he went on. “This is about not having the money to sustain the fleets we have now, so we have to make some tough decisions…. That doesn’t mean we think it’s the right way necessarily but it’s the best way forward” — the best way, in other words, that the Army can afford.

The Army wants to move the Guard’s Apaches to active-duty scout squadrons to replace the helicopters those units are losing, the OH-58 Kiowas. Lighter, nimbler, and cheaper to operate than the Apache, the beloved Kiowa is also much more vulnerable because of its lighter armament and armor. It entered first service in 1968, almost half a century ago and Army officials have decided they cannot afford either to keep upgrading the Kiowa or to develop a replacement, so they want to retire it completely over the next five years. (The Army move is similar to one that the Air Force is considering, retiring the entire A-10 Warthog fleet to save an estimated $3.7 billion. That move has attracted furious opposition as well for different reasons.)

“It was going to be putting new shoes on an old horse for $10 billion,” said Army Lt. Gen. Kevin Mangum of the Kiowa upgrade plan. “By the way, we don’t have that ten billion dollars.” As for replacing the Kiowa with a new Armed Aerial Scout — just one of the high-priority Army programs now put on indefinite hold — “that would be a $16 billion bill.”

So the Army decided on a radical measure: replace Kiowas altogether with a mix of the most advanced Apache model, the AH-6E Guardian, coordinating via wireless networks with Grey Eagle drones. In fact, a 2010 Army study said this “manned-unmanned teaming” was the best way to do reconnaissance without building an all-new scout helicopter: Apache plus drones meets 80 percent of the requirements, Mangum said, while an upgraded Kiowa meets only 50 percent and the current Kiowa less than 20 percent.

“If we left it up purely to the budgeteers, it would really be ugly,” said Mangum, speaking to AUSA’s annual aviation symposium last week. Under the default plan, he said, “we were going to keep old aircraft and give up new.” Instead of being passive “victims” of cuts that took a proportional “salami slice” out of every program, he said, the Army “seized the opportunity” to reshape the force by retiring its oldest aircraft en masse."

I for one am happy this move is taking place. In Kentucky the Air National Guard fly these things looking for illegal weeds and do untold damage when they hover over people's livestock and cause stampedes. (Racehorse owners in Lexington got this stopped when they had horses injured, but for us in western Kentucky---not enough political pull.) Not to mention the heart-stopping sensation of having one hover over your back yard for minutes at a time while they check out your veggie garden. All for the War on Drugs.
A couple of years ago one had to make an emergency landing on the local soccer field after it almost crashed into a shopping center due to a mechanical problem. Weed warriors indeed! The commandant of the KY NG has stated on several occasions to local sheriffs that his ships can't be used for search and rescue because they are dedicated to the War on Drugs.

Sounds to me like they are trying to gear up in a hurry in preparation for a conflict in the near future, maybe WW3, maybe not...

Gee I hope not because I may be too old for the draft but have nephews and other relatives and friends who are not.