The future of helicopters in combat

Welcome to Flight Global Focus, the essential podcast for trusted aviation insight. I'm Ryan Finnerty, Flight Global's America's Defense Reporter, and on today's show, the future of helicopters in combat. Rotary Wing Aviation has been a ubiquitous part of warfare since the United States protracted conflict in Vietnam, which saw thousands of combat troops, generals, and even reporters zipping around the country in Bell's iconic UH-1 Huey's. In the 1990s, Boeing's AH-64 Apache attack helicopter played a decisive role in the destruction of Iraq's army during the Persian Gulf War. Iconic films like Apocalypse Now and Black Hawk Down solidified the helicopter as a military instrument in the minds of the public. Russia's full-scale invasion of Ukraine in 2022 showed another side of the helicopter. Vulnerability Russia suffered significant rotary wing losses during the intense early battles of the war's opening months. In more recent years, a grinding stalemate on the ground and skies saturated with "lethally armed" precision drones has led to a drop-off in helicopter operations. Units from the Ukraine War caused the US Army to cancel plans for a new armed scout helicopter in 2024, leading some armchair generals to pronounce the end of the helicopter as an effective battlefield tool. Defying those claims, the Ukrainian government in October expressed an interest in buying new build helicopters from Bell, including the latest AH-1Z attack and UH-1Y utility types. Joining me today to discuss the future of helicopters in combat are Flake Global's managing editor for Defense Greg Waldron based in Singapore and our European Defense Editor Craig Hoel and London. Hey guys, good to speak with you both again. Hey Ryan, great to be back. Hi everybody. Okay, so before we get into the discussion, we're going to hear from an expert on the matter of military rotary wing aviation. Jeff Schlosser is a retired two-star general with the US Army. He started his career as a combat engineer before retraining as a pilot and rising to command a battalion in the Army's elite 160th Special Operations Aviation Regiment. Jeff later commanded the 101st Airborne Division, which now specializes in large-scale helicopter operations and then became the director of aviation for the entire US Army. He's now the senior vice president of strategic pursuits at Bell, which is building the new MV-75 tilt rotor for the US Army, so he's obviously not someone who thinks the helicopters best days are behind it. In fact, when we spoke, Jeff strongly pushed back on the idea that the Ukraine war is proof of the helicopters demise. He says Ukraine's ability to effectively use rotary wing assets is limited by its small outdated fleet of Soviet aircraft while Russia has simply employed bad tactics and failed to adapt. There's absolutely a reality of Russian aircraft being shot down, seeing you see their aircraft flying information in the middle of the day at an altitude that is a perfect box for both surface air missiles as well as small arms fire and essentially just continuing on. I mean lines of aircraft flying and having, you know, chalk two, chalk four, five, or whatever shot down and then just continuing the mission. The Russians, because of what I just described, using really outdated tactics and techniques and procedures during the initial parts of the war, suffered huge amounts of rotary wing casualties. And I think that became the perception throughout much of the world. There was this kind of thought process that drone warfare had absolutely changed how warfare was going to be conducted, which I just don't believe is true. You know, I've thought three wars. I mean, the account costable air wars, one of them, but what I saw was, is in Ukraine, as you saw in Russia and Ukraine, try to apply power against each other is, is that they were either using older aircraft or just lack of aircraft in the Ukrainian context or the Russians were using tactics, techniques, and procedures that were really prior to 1980. I mean, that would have been totally recognizable, you know, in other locations well prior to the onset of night vision goggles, well prior to the onset of very sophisticated AC aircraft survivability equipment, which we have. And so it took a very long time, I think, for them to change that out. And the perception was, is that it really hasn't changed, and that rotary wing air, you know, warfare and tanks are a thing of the past. And I really don't believe either of those are the case. It is the willingness to use, you know, modern day tactics and techniques in the cockpit combined with a broader operational maneuver concept that has to be done at the higher headquarters that says, I'm going to employ rotary wing and fixed fast wing, other aircraft, you know, for an example, and in our case might also include the MB 75 in the future. I'm going to employ them in ways that allow indirect approaches, in other words, not, you know, just force on, I'm going to go take out those drones and then I'm going to take out the surface deer missiles right behind them and then I'm going to go ahead and penetrate. But you use disaggregated outfits, I mean, you know, just first on the battlefield, in many cases, not close to where those drones can actually get to because they have very limited range, as you well know, and lack certain amount of precision in the first, and those that have longer range, such as the Shaheed. But you disperse on the battlefield, you come together for real reasons that are basically combined with other capabilities. So for an example, if the intent, I never operated, for example, as an Army aviator as a commander or as a commander of infantry troops, with significant aviation and other and artillery and stuff, such as when I had the 101st Airborne Division, I never operated them separately. I always combine the efforts on the battlefield for maximum, you know, maximum effect. And that's what's going to be required to change the calculus there on the battlefield. So it's not just new aircraft, it's not, you know, and it's also just not great aviator that can fly at night or fly low enough at speed. It's going to require this broader concept. The biggest thing I don't see on that in Ukraine is that latter part. I mean, as I said, we've talked about the Russians actually do have some fairly sophisticated rotary wing aircraft. They've lost a lot of them, so it's hard for them to mass. The Ukrainians don't have those capabilities. But the Ukrainians actually have something that Russians don't, which is this willingness to try to combine from, you know, combine arms effects on the battlefield. They don't have the capability at this point, but they have the willingness that that's what they need to do. And so I think in the future, you're going to see more of that from the Ukrainian side. I can't speak about the Russians. They seem to be very much locked into a very direct approach, and they suffer huge amounts of battlefield casualties. And the drones that they have been using have been a very effective disruption. But they are not effective in really destroying the capability of the Ukrainian armed forces. Nor have they been able to penetrate, go deep, or a real military target. They're a hugely irritant, and it's absolutely, I think, you know, illegal, the kind of warfare they're using some of those shaheeds and others for a counter-city approach or counter civilians. But for military effect, they've not been very effective, so far. Is that why you feel that the kind of narrative around a paradigm shift around drone warfare is exaggerated or overblown, or is that specific to a more narrow aviation context? No. I think it's brought much better. It cuts across all combined arms maneuver. I mean, if I had my tongue in check, I would just say what you see on the battlefield there predominantly is this trench warfare that would have been very familiar to World War I combatants, overlaid what the fairly sophisticated but limited duration or limited range drone technology and then counter drone technology, which is not very sophisticated from what we've been able to see other than the jamming. The electronic warfare has come back into its own and you do see some fairly effective jamming. But then it's been defeated in a way that I would have found when I was a combat engineer on the full line in 1977, I would have found it just as easy to understand how they defeated it. They used fiber optic cable, I remember our exercises there, we never did go fight the Soviets at the time, but our exercises had toe missile control wires everywhere. They were all over the power lines, they were everywhere, and that's how they used fiber optic cable to defeat the electronic warfare. But back to the point. I think what I would say is is that while the drone warfare and the small drones and stuff like that have been effective for disruption and they've been effective in locking the line so that they cannot maneuver beyond these kind of like trench warfare, except in very limited cases, and again, the distances they go are right out of World War I. I mean, you know, it's a celebration if they are able to achieve a five kilometer penetration and many cases they can't hold it because they get counterattack. This is all strictly right out of World War I. The drones really haven't significantly changed that. I mean, you know, what you've seen is drones replacing the large part of what you would say in World War I is battery warfare or artillery and then counter battery. So, you know, I think the change up and the way you're going to see this, if it plays out, if there's not a piece or an armistice or something like that, you're going to see which side ever is able to seize and get beyond that of drone warfare and actually use combined arms maneuver warfare to do very deep penetrations and then continue to disrupt the enemy behind their lines. I think that that's where you're going to see some change if it occurs over the next year of the two years in your crane. Bell is in discussions with Ukraine around a new potential sale of H1s, both attack and utility. One of those aircraft bring potentially, you know, if that goes forward in whatever form, what capability does aircraft bring to the Ukrainians that they don't currently have? Yeah, so both the Zulu and the Yankee, I mean, we just completed the last delivery of the Zulu to the US Marine Corps in 2022. So, about three years ago, really about two and a half years ago and just prior that with the Yankee and these are very sophisticated aircraft that have both the air to ground and air to air capability if it's the attack version of the Zulu and then also extraordinarily sophisticated capability for salt and arms assault. In other words, the Yankee actually is quite well armed and can still carry Marines and other troops as they do operations. They have very sophisticated ASE, you don't want to get into details about that, you know, that would be classified, but when I talked about the disaggregation in an expeditionary type of a concept, you know, where you're fixing stuff out in the mud, these aircraft are 85% common. So, one's an attack aircraft looks very different than the assault aircraft and yet they're 85% common. Same engines, I mean, I go up and down. Really, the only thing that's different is the cabin themselves in some cases, the armament. And so, when you're out in a battlefield where you can just mix and match your engines and a large part of your cockpit, you know, rotor blades, things of that nature, that allows you a very enhanced ability to basically maintain an operational readiness rate that's much higher. And so, that's really going to be critical, I think, for the Ukrainians, I think they've been drawn to one of the sophistication of the aircraft, the ability to also work air to air. And the Zulu is a very capable air-to-air platform and the US Marine Corps has demonstrated counter drone capabilities off that, in fact, it's on YouTube. And I think this other idea of being able to maintain the aircraft in a way that they believe they can do on a battlefield that they've seen now over the last three years can be complex, can be very dangerous if you're up real close. And so, you have to be disaggregated and you have to spend very little time on the ground as you get closer to capabilities. So, I think that's what's strong in the marine, or the Ukrainians do that. There's no doubt in my mind that they also want to, they see, they have a vision of the future that where their country is able to rebuild its defense capabilities and its defense industries. And so, in our discussions with them, that's one of the things that they've constantly talked about is, is, how can this play in a way that allows the Ukrainians a role in the future of the aircraft as well? Okay. We're back in the studio with Greg Waldron and Craig Hoyle. Craig, you've been covering European defense for a long time, well before the full-scale invasion of Ukraine in 2022. What changes have you seen in rotary-rowing aviation since 2022? And what did you think about Jeff Schlosser's analysis there? Yeah. I mean, I've been doing this so long, I've stopped doing this a bit after the first goal for actually. So, way, way, way before the Ukraine conflicts, yeah, I mean, Jeff's insights, really interesting and spot on in a lot of areas. And when you talk to people about what's happened in Ukraine since February 2022, a lot of it really comes down to, if it's an advocate of air power, they will say the entire reason we're in this sort of trench war, World War I style conflict now is because neither side got air superiority, and that was really, really showcased at the very start of the campaign where you had the, the army aviation side of Russia going in, almost minus the Wagner and right of the Valkyries, you know, just doing this mass helicopter assault across the country, completely in isolation, so no top cover from the Air Force to sort of protect them. And that led to a lot of losses, and it's kind of underscores you can have really good technology not that the Russian helicopters are particularly brilliant, particularly when you look at things like the MI-24s or MI-18s, MI-8s, they would be using there. But if you, you know, if you fly a formation of 30 aircraft, low and slow, all the same route, kind of, in spurs by a few minutes, you are really making yourself a huge target. So yeah, it's about you've got to operate smart, and I think what we've seen is that Devson reluctant to put the helicopters in harm's way since there, but really sort of looking back to when I started, so look back to go for one. That's where the Apache came on the scene, and you know, impressed everybody, led to lots of other nations buying it. And you, you know, you had the fish in a barrel quote where it was, they were picking off Iraqi armor from over the horizon, and nobody knew they were there. Then you scroll onto the second Gulf War, and there was an instant where a U.S. Apache got shot down, and it was allegedly by an Iraqi farmer who had like a blunderbuss, like shotgun thing. And it just shows if you don't operate in a smart way, if you may be patent forming, flying the same route, you're going to get caught out. I think on helicopters as a whole, this is sort of feel that Ukraine showed the helicopters not relevant anymore, and that's just absolutely not the case. I think this is what happened with the U.S. Army canceling the Farrah requirement is it's a requirement. I don't think they'd really got the head around, and this goes back decades to when they were trying to develop the Comanche, they came up something very over complicated, expensive, and then decided it's a bit too vulnerable. So what you'll find is something like that that's gone away, but instead of that, you can use an Apache in combination with uncrewed aerial systems, launch defects, it can sit further back from the danger area, put these systems forward so it knows what's going on situational awareness wise. In terms of the actual transports, if you didn't have helicopters, then what's your alternative? If you are, you're committed to moving all your stuff by road, or back to when I was young, when the Falklands happened, but one of the UK Chinooks got lost on the Atlantic conveyor, and that meant all the guys on the ground had to walk, so you're much more danger of getting engaged, ambushed, if it's vehicles, IEDs, so helicopters definitely have not gone away. What we've seen in Europe is most of the Apache operators have now upgraded to the E-model, so they're improving the aircraft, it's got better connectivity, better self-protection equipment. Germany, notably, is getting rid of its tigers in about eight years' time and going sort of lighter, lighter salt helicopter while it works out what it does, but they're probably one of the countries who are less likely to use an attack helicopter in anger, you would argue. So yeah, I think it's how you use the aircraft, and I definitely don't see the helicopters and the attack helicopters, it's day is not gone. Yeah, I think you're absolutely right, Craig, and some interesting examples you cited there, and I know from my time in the US Army, the Black Hawk Down incident in Somalia in 1993 really changed the way the Army operated helicopters, and some of it was kind of pattern-forming, like you mentioned, and not taking the same routes on every operation, and just some different tactics, and then in Iraq and Afghanistan, they ended up flying much higher to stay out a range of small arms. As you mentioned, that incident where the Apache was shot down, they obviously don't want to do that anymore. You can't fly low, slow, and high, you'd be very vulnerable, as Jeff kind of outlined. But I did note just recently the Pentagon kind of addressed this because there has been some downsizing or intent to downsize anyway, the US Army's aviation core, and that's been getting a lot of attention, and the Pentagon recently said that the US Army is not discarding helicopters, it is augmenting them, that's a quote, and they said that Apache Black Hawk and Chinook platforms remain indispensable to the force, and that aircraft are instead of being replaced or phased out, being augmented, and evolving was the word they used with unmanned aerial systems to kind of do a U-described crack to be able to increase standoff, and maybe make some of those first engagements with an unmanned system rather than a crude operator. Metal on metal is kind of the way to describe it, where the first contact would be between two unmanned systems, maybe rather than two crude helicopters. Greg, you've been listening to all of that and to Jeff's comments. What did you think about his analysis, particularly in the context of the Indo-Pacific, where you're based? Yeah, Jeff made some brilliant points about how the Russians really kind of failed to capitalize on their advantages going into Ukraine, but not here in the Asia-Pacific. People are still very much involved with helicopters. Australia is replacing its tigers in the 1990s with Apache's and UH-60s. Philippines is adding S-70s. Japan is getting UH-2s, which is a version of the UH-1, but a much advanced version that they bought a few years ago, so they're getting plenty of those. And then China is doing a lot of work with both the tech helicopters, transport helicopters. South Korea looks like they're about to buy CH-47F for special forces, and they're also buying Syrians, which is a locally produced helicopter, including a special attack version for the Marine Corps. The only wrinkle really in all that is that the Korean Army is put a pause on an order for 36 additional AH-64Es because they want to see how the battlefield is evolving, and nothing's been actually closed on that. And I think, like I said, people are still pretty committed to helicopters, but I think in some circles, there might be some concerns about survivability, but I think in all and all they have a role. Of course, you have that combat utility role, you know, getting guys around the battlefield, moving how it serves, you know, evacuating wounded. I really don't see any other platform that can do that as expeditiously as a helicopter. And I'd also add to, like in Asia and as well as in other regions, that helicopters don't just serve that point-to-the-spear kind of military mission. You know, during peacetime, they're critical for dealing with, you know, insurgencies, but also especially in Asia, there's a lot of natural disasters. So the Philippine Air Force is constantly, you know, using its helicopters to support people that are victims of hurricanes, earthquakes, you name it. So they have a really big role outside of, you know, the actual warfare. Fixed-wing aircraft just really can't fill the gap given the accessibility that rotor craft have. That said, I think survivability is always a concern with these aircraft. I mean, it's never been easy to be in a helicopter in a war. I mean, there's a lot of helicopters lost during the Vietnam War, for example. And of course, you know, helicopters will have to evolve to deal with new threats that are coming up. Yeah, I think that's a really interesting point about Vietnam, Greg, because that's when the United States Army and Marine Corps were kind of pioneering doctrine for helicopter operations, and they lost a lot of aircraft. They didn't have much in the way of survivability or countermeasures, and you can kind of see that in books on the conflict or films that were made about it. The famous memoir by Hal Moore that got turned into the movie We Were Soldiers as what springs to mind for me, and the book by the same name, and you can just see how there were a lot of helicopters being lost at that time. I guess our tolerance for those type of losses is a lot lower than it was during that conflict. But clearly, there's adaptation that happens. And I think one of the interesting things that Jeff mentioned that wasn't in the interview for time reasons, he sort of outlined his theory for how you would operate manned rotary wing aircraft safely, or safely as you can in a war, under these kind of new modern conditions. And it's similar to another topic that we've all discussed on the podcast, which is "Adrill Combat Employment" or "Ace", which is more of an Air Force fixed wing idea for spreading your aircraft out to many smaller bases that are widely dispersed and maybe farther removed from the front line and therefore harder to target and hit. And Jeff said that you would have to do something similar with rotary wing aircraft instead of having one giant, what's called a "farp" in the US Army doctrine, forward arming and refueling point. You might have many smaller of these kind of temporary austere bases where helicopters can get refueled and re-armed. And now of course you'd have to protect these with counter UAS and larger air defenses in a way that maybe we haven't had to in the past, but that was sort of Jeff's take on the matter, was that you can still operate in an effective way as he mentioned, you know, combining your various battlefield elements to mutually protect one another. And I think the big, maybe unknown in the equation from the US side is that the Pentagon and American defense companies are really pushing forward with uncrewed vertical take-off and landing aircraft that would be able to maybe take on some of the most dangerous missions. In some cases, these are brand new aircraft that are, you know, made for maybe doing resupply or casualty evacuation that have no cockpit whatsoever. In other cases, we have companies like Sikorsky and Airbus that are modifying some of their existing aircraft like the UH-72 for Airbus and the UH-60 Black Hawk for Sikorsky. Notifying them to be able to operate without a pilot. In the case of Sikorsky, it's actually, you can have a Black Hawk that can fly normally with two pilots or you can flip some switches metaphorically speaking and fly it with no pilots on board fully autonomously. And I think that really unlocks a lot of potential where, you know, there are instances in Iraq and Afghanistan where the US Army and Marine Corps commanders couldn't approve a casualty evacuation mission, for example, because a landing zone was too hot, there was too much enemy activity. That calculus changes when you're using an unmanned aircraft and you're not risking an air crew, maybe you're willing to send an aircraft in to pick someone up when there's less risk to an onboard crew and you could have the same thing for lethal missions. Sikorsky in particular is developing kind of a new generation and Boeing isn't at some as well of uncrewed armed rotorcraft that would kind of fill this loyal wingman role partnering with crude rotorcraft to maybe do some of the more dangerous missions or make first contact and protect those aircraft. So it does seem like there's still a lot of life left in helicopters on the battlefield. Like you, as we mentioned, have covered the defense space in this industry for a long time. Does this debate remind you of anything in the past where maybe the end of something was pronounced prematurely or analysts were saying, oh, this is a paradigm shift and then maybe it turned out to not be so much of that case. Yes. One of the bits I thought about when I was just right now and a few notes for this was thinking back to, so I was actually finishing at university when the first Gulf War happened. And back at that time, so the UK had the tornadoes and the basic attack strategy there was you would fly in at sort of sand, June height drop, JP 223, I think it was the anti runway denial weapon. So you basically drop essentially cluster bombs down the length of the runway crater and put it out of action. And at that point, they engaged Iraqi surface to our missiles and just ground fire lost the lot of aircraft either shot down or flying into the ground because of the low level and just having no visual references when they're flying. So at that point, it was, oh, well, this low level thing doesn't work. So we're going to have to go up to medium altitude and the minute we get to medium altitude we're in surface to our missile engagement zones and planes are going to get shot down. So yeah, I think that was one that struck me as a, oh, everybody thought, you know, well, is this the end of the fighter aircraft because it can't sit up there and not get shot down by missiles. And of course, tactics evolve, countermeasures evolve, long range weapons, precision weapons. So that never sort of turned into the end of fast jet combat. Now we're looking at things like the rise of the drone operations in Ukraine, looking at things like CCAs and ACPs. And now we're starting to get people saying, well, you know, this will be the last man fighter aircraft that somebody builds because everything's going to go unmanned. So I think in probably 30 years time, we'll look back and say, oh, yeah, CCAs didn't change the world. We thought they would or they've made man combat just better, more efficient. So there'll be more discussions like that in the future. But yeah, I think certainly get on to a different conflict and the helicopter is going to look like the, you know, the best thing ever again. It just depends where you fly. Helicopters in Afghanistan were absolutely brilliant because it was a, you know, it was a controlled, not exactly permissive, but it was a low risk environment. So you could, you could fly helicopters around without everybody thinking, gosh, these are, these are going to get shot down every time they take off. Greg, how about you? Does anything spring to mind? Does this debate remind you of anything that you've seen either in the past or maybe looking forward as credited? I think the, the issue that helicopters face is really the, you know, the evolution of their mission. And, you know, we've already seen that happening throughout the history of this technology. Like there's a great book about my favorite Vietnam War book about aviation is a book called Low Level Hell. And, you know, it's about 0h6 scout helicopters and basically these guys are flying around southern Vietnam with, you know, the doors off, flying up rivers, looking for the enemy. And, you know, they're really right in there with, you know, the Viet Cong and the NVA fighting. It's very intense. And you know, a lot of those guys got shot down, but it was a very sort of visceral way of fighting. And a big part of that mission was reconnaissance. I mean, they were doing some light attack stuff, but a lot of it was, you know, reconnaissance. And of course, a lot of that mission is now evolved to be done by UAVs and small drones. So I think that reconnaissance mission for the helicopter that we might have had in the Cold War is certainly retreated a bit. But you're still going to have that big mission for, you know, like there's nothing quite like an Apache, you know, 16 missiles, you know, big gun, lots of sensors, the ability to control other unmanned aircraft and really operate at a standoff distance from the battlefield. We'll continue to give it an edge. And then, of course, if you need to get 12 guys across the battlefield quickly, you know, to hit an objective or do this or avoid the roads, whatever, you know, there's nothing quite like a helicopter. But again, I think, you know, the evolution is also going to be continued to be driven by the countermeasures that are going to be coming against helicopters. Of course, you know, you've already got manpads, which have been a real menace to helicopters, place like, you know, Mogadishu, even just very basic shoulder-launched weapons. I think Craig mentioned the infamous, you know, Apache shoot down in Iraq. And again, it's, you know, getting into proximity with the enemy. And of course, the enemy is going to be able to start putting up a lot more firepower in the sense of like, you know, small drones that they can use to like counter other drones. But I got, I imagine which also could be used to counter helicopters. So I know that there is, you know, sort of research work going on about, you know, the swarms of drones that possibly could be used in an air defense type of format. When I see these drone light shows, they have one at the Dubai Air Show last week. And it's spectacular. There's these hundreds of drones flying around. It's all beautiful lights and people are really amazed by it. But when I look at that, I'm thinking like, wow, you know, if those, if you turn the lights out, you put a little explosive charge in each one of those things, you've got this huge like swarm of little explosive things that you could use to protect an area. Or maybe you put it between buildings or between a hill or in some tactical circumstance to protect against drones, but also equally against helicopters. So again, you know, I think the counter, the counter helicopter technology is improving. And of course, helicopters are just going to have to keep advancing as well. Yeah, I think that's right. I have a similar, similar thought whenever I see one of those drone light shows really kind of the chilling almost. Yeah, I, I, I fucking them really creepy. I, I can't say I'm a big fan. It gives me a bit of a chill looking at that. Everybody else loves it. But I'm like, hmm, I don't know about this. I, yeah, yeah. I feel similarly. And as you were mentioning that, Greg, I was thinking that, you know, you're based in the Asia Pacific and that theater is really defined by the tyranny of distance. As the phrase, everyone always kind of deploys. And I really don't see any way around the use of of rotary wing aircraft if there's going to be a conflict in that theater, particularly with the US Marine Corps is kind of trialing this new doctrine of deploying small teams to many small islands that will sort of act as kind of choke points with long range missiles and anti air and anti ship weapons to kind of prevent presumably China from operating in those areas and there's really no way you can resupply effectively and, and, and get people to those remote areas quickly without rotary wing aviation. And I don't think the resources really exist to do large scale amphibious operations all across the, the Western Pacific Ocean. Do you think that's a reasonable interpretation as well, specifically in that Indo-Pacific context? Yeah, it's interesting. I went to Okinawa a few years ago, it was actually, you know, a bell, bell media trip and, you know, talk about the AH-1Z and the UH-1Y, which Jeff mentioned. Now, it's talking to the Marines there and they're like, yeah, you know, we could put extra fuel on the AH-1 and they could actually fly to Taiwan, you know? So they still, you know, the islands are, there are some distances, but you can hop between islands with the helicopters. And I think, you know, in terms of the drone countermeasures against helicopters, I think if you were doing like kind of logistics work kind of away from the front line in a pacific conflict, I think the helicopter is still very viable because I think again to Jeff's point, a lot of the drones and things like that that you might use to strike a helicopter still would have fairly limited ranges, but I would see drone countermeasures really becoming more of an issue if like you have to send in a strike force to like, say you're gonna do like go after somebody like Osama bin Laden, like if they could put up drones around a site like that to help protect them or some other sensitive, you know, site, then you could have a, you know, real issue. But I give, of course, I'm not sure about how fast that technology is actually developing. Yeah. And that would require some kind of countermeasure, I suppose, you know, whether it's electronic warfare or some kind of physical weapon system to disperse them or as Jeff Schlosser kind of implied, there's always, there's tactical solutions as well. You change the way you operate as a threat like that evolves. So definitely, I think there'll be a lot of changes coming in the next few years. And as we've seen with Ukraine, you really just don't know the reality of what you're going to face until the conflict sets in. Okay. So before we go, guys, Greg mentioned his favorite book about the Vietnam War, which made me think of my own favorite Vietnam book, which is one called Dispatches by Michael Hur, who is actually a war correspondent wrote primarily for a few magazines in the US throughout a couple of years in Vietnam. And one of my favorite elements of that book, which is a great read, if anyone's looking for a book like that, is that when he was in Vietnam, journalists had free access to any, any helicopter in the country. They could just show up at an air base with their press credential. And if there was a seat available, they could get a spot and just go wherever that flight was going. And he did that. And the other reporters did that all over the country and occasionally got themselves into a bit of a tight spot because they'd go somewhere very remote and there wouldn't be a flight coming for days or even a few weeks. And Michael Hur ended up living through the siege of Kason because he hopped one of those flights and was deposited right as the battle was beginning and then was stuck there throughout the whole of the fighting and couldn't get out. So that, what that made me think of was I wanted to ask you both. If you have a favorite helicopter flight story from your time as a defense journalist, anything that comes to mind, hopefully nothing quite as harrowing as Michael Hur getting trapped in the siege of Kason. But any story that comes to mind that was memorable for you involving a helicopter flight. Sure. I'll jump in. And just on the book recommendations, remiss of me not to have mentioned any suggestions. But if you want a bit of Vietnam era helicopter literature, I think it's going to be chicken hawk by Robert Mason, which is just a brilliant read and not just the sort of air combat side of things, but the whole sort of experience of going in flying a very basic helicopter and getting in in it and it just going absolutely all over the place, which was my experience when I tried flying one of these things. So that'd be definitely my book review helicopter wise. Yeah, I had some good, had some good trips a few years back doing helicopter stuff. I remember going to, as we talked about, Black Hawk down earlier, we visited the base in Morocco where they filmed the helicopter sequence and that I forget the name of the base. But that was very entertaining because we arrived as a two ship and RF Chinook and Merlin touched down at the air base, was sitting on the ground with the rotors turning and a vehicle arrived and a guy gets on a marches the front of the Chinook and starts shouting at the pilots very aggressively. And I think the inference was that it was his base and he was not expecting them. So that was a good one and we beat a hasty retreat. Greg, how about you, anything that comes to mind? Yeah, just back to my book recommendation. Yeah, the book I looked it up while we were talking low level hell and it's by you mills and it's on Amazon. And I'll quote from the dust jacket. The outcasts, as they were known, flew low and slow, aerial eyes of the division and search of the enemy. Too often for longevity's sake, they found the Vietcong and the fight was on. So that's my one of my favorite books about the war. And chicken hawk, also brilliant reader, read it a long time ago and he needed to get another copy. My helicopters experience is nothing quite as dramatic as craigs. But a few years ago, I was in Bangkok and I was on an Airbus helicopters 145 and they were selling these helicopters to or trying to sell them to the police force in Thailand and it was quite interesting to sit up next to the pilot and look at some of the really kind of niche technology they have, they can press a button and it will just automatically circle a specific location so the pilot can take care of other tasks or look around and the actual helicopter will automatically circle on its own, really beautiful glass cockpit. And yeah, just kind of interesting to see how far that technology is advanced since the chicken hawk days when you're really kind of like balancing things, you got your collective, you got your stick and it's really a fight with the machine. Nowadays I think these are much more easy to fly than they used to be. Yeah, that is a really a stark contrast over the years, especially thinking about a Vietnam era helicopter. My own story is kind of a funny one sort of along the lines of craigs. This was a few years ago before I worked at flight, I was a radio reporter and I was in Hawaii covering the rim of the Pacific naval exercises which happens every two years and involves the US and a bunch of other countries from around the world, not just into Pacific countries. And the US Navy flew me out to one of their destroyers to observe some convoy live fire exercises. So the kind of thing a convoy of ships might do, maybe escorting logistics, resupply convoy across the ocean or something like that and they flew me out on an MH60R and I don't get airsick but I do get seasick from time to time and when I got onto the ship I felt fine and I was meeting with the commander and the exo and some of the other officers and crew and they all had been told that I used to be in the US Army as a way to sort of put them at ease a little bit and over the course of the day I was there for about 12 hours and started to feel seasick especially going down below the into the kind of the lower parts of the ship where there's diesel smell and oil and everything where the guns all move around and I knew my flight back to the island was coming and I was just like trying and trying and trying to breathe through it and not get sick because I knew that I would never hear the end of it if like the Army guy threw up on the on the Navy ship you know it would be like the stuff of legends for years to come so I was just like trying to breathe through it and the captain said oh you're your flights on its way back helicopters on its way here you know it'll be ready in about 30 minutes but we'll take you down to the the mess hall the officers mess hall to have dinner with everyone before you go and I was just green in the gills by this point and I think they knew it and just put a huge plate of food in front of me and I could barely pick at it just trying to hold it all back and I was counting the seconds before I got back on the Seahawk and lifted off and thankfully I made it didn't throw up and as soon as we were in the air I felt instantly better and it was a mission success from a reporting perspective and a ego perspective as well and then similar to Craig's story we landed back at Pearl Harbor and there had been some kind of miscommunication in the airfield we were supposed to land that had been closed so I was ended up being dropped off with my public affairs officer Minder on the another side of the island about an hour away from where we were supposed to be and had to get a taxi back so that's my most memorable helicopter story appreciate you guys sharing yours there's some good ones and I think unfortunately that's all the time we've got for today but it's great discussion and look forward to talking with you both again soon. Okay you've been listening to Flight Global Focus which is a production of Flight Global with audio editing by Lucy Johnson we publish episodes twice weekly join us every Friday for a concise briefing on the week's news and again on Monday for in-depth analysis covering important developments in airlines, defense and aerospace. If you want to be in touch with us or for commercial opportunities related to the podcast, please email [email protected]. Listen, rate, review and subscribe wherever you get your podcasts. I'm Ryan Finnerty and we'll see you next time for Flight Global Focus.