If my memory of watching a History Channel (or was it discovery?) documentary about this serves me right, the cheyenne wasn't adopted because it had an unhealthy habit of crashing unexpectedly.

Besides just look at it, its UGLY!

The cheyane was designed to fly like a fighter plane making high speed attack runs, basicly is was concieved before shoulder launched sams namely the SA-7 appeared. The AH-64 was designed to fight in condition where such threats are commonplace ie the modern battlefield.

To me, its looks like you could down it with a 9mm.

As I remember from the same program, the Cheyenne did have remarkably good attack performance, but was scratched "officially" because of complexity with the fire control linkages (having 2 separate gun stations that had to operate independently) and the propulsion system, (the pusher prop was claimed to be problematic).

There are likely 2 other explainations that were not forthcoming... First was that the Cheyenne was too dissimilar to the normal helicopter... Although performance may have been there, and even assuming the same reliability, traditional military commanders wanted something that looked like a normal helicopter, because that is what they had all along.

Also, I would say that politics played a role in it somewhere. The manufacturers of the Apache likely offered a state rep more than those of the Cheyenne....

...As Dragon said and the fact that we do not need a new attack helo in the near future....we will in time, since warfare is becoming more close in orientation.

Unfortunately, I think the standoff weapons will rule the day in the next major war with Naval carriers, bombers, battleships and JSTARs running the show............