Pentagon Heavy Airlift Chopper Designs

A cornerstone of military planning is figuring out how to position who and what is needed to win the fight. Logistics can often decide the outcome of a war. That is why military planners looking at future United States combat operations are fretting over their inability to move the Army around without the benefit of well-developed airfields. It is a question of air power, but not the kind measured in laser-guided bombs or rounds fired per minute. This fight is measured in miles traveled and tonnage delivered.

Later this year, both the Army and Air Force will seek Pentagon approval to proceed to the next stages of development for new aircraft meant to carry big loads, then land on poorly built, short runways -- or no runways at all. The Army and Air Force both want to fly demonstrators by 2015.

This would help inoculate the military from the need to convince other nations to host massing U.S. forces. In 2003, for instance, the Turkish Parliament denied permission for the United States to station troops near the country's Iraq border. Coalition leaders were forced to alter their battle plan for northern Iraq. Another lesson from Iraq: supply lines on the ground are vulnerable to attack. "There is a clear need to find ways to support Army maneuver forces without relying on vulnerable ground lines of communications, thousands of trucks and their escorts," says Peter Wilson, a researcher at the nonprofit RAND Corporation who studies the issue.

Army doctrine over the past 10 years has focused on positioning medium-size mechanized brigades (of about 1000 troops) deep in the rear or flanks of an enemy, where weak defenses and surprise favor the attacker. Humanitarian aid and disaster response also require access to undeveloped areas. Currently, though, this requires good airfields at both ends of the supply line.

Looking at the starting point of a mission, neither of the Air Force's heavy haulers, the C-130 Hercules and larger C-17 Globemaster III, operate from the deck of a ship. (The Globemaster needs 7600 ft. to take off and 3000 ft. to land, while the flight deck of even the Nimitz-class USS Ronald Reagan aircraft carrier is only 1100 ft.) That forces pilots to fly from distant air bases, relying on the airplanes' extremely long ranges. Transcontinental flights mean slower deliveries, more wear on the airplanes and high fuel costs.

Then, the planes also need a place to land, and in remote areas a good airstrip is often unavailable. The Army currently ferries troops and equipment to rugged locations using transport helicopters. But a 2007 Defense Science Board report researching the topic condemns helicopters as "the least suited to conduct mounted aerial maneuver objectives"; cursed by slow speeds, low altitudes, small hauling abilities and limited ranges. The heavy-lifting workhorse CH-47 Chinook helicopter can fly more than 325 nautical miles, but it only carries about 10 tons of cargo; the Army wants aircraft that can fly that far and handle far more weight. "The Future Combat Systems family of vehicles originally were to weigh between 16 and 18 tons," says Wilson, who rails against mounted aerial maneuver. "The armored fighting vehicles now weigh 30 tons, the weight of an M2/3 Bradley, because the lighter vehicles did not have sufficient survivability." In other words, Iraq's roadside bombs convinced the brass to plan for heavier forms of medium-size vehicles that could better stand up to explosives.

Such decisions have a ripple effect. Many of the Army's newest and planned vehicles don't fit in a C-130; the tedious work-around is to fly the parts in on two planes and then spend hours assembling the vehicle. The Army may want helicopters that can lift 30 tons, but no Navy ship could carry more than a couple of them. There are no easy answers, but military planners do have a number of proposals. The Pentagon says that decisions will be made by the end of 2008.

Heavy-Airlift Options

1. Massive Tilt-Rotor Aircraft
Powerful aircraft that fly like airplanes and land like helicopters would be a novel way to solve the heavy-lift problem. Such a craft would look like the V-22 Osprey, the trailblazing tilt rotor used by Marines and Special Forces, which carries 7.5 tons of cargo on external hooks dangling beneath the aircraft. Building a tilt rotor with four engines big enough to handle 20 more tons of cargo (plus the additional fuel needed to haul the stuff) would be a daunting technical challenge, though companies such as Boeing are trying their best with plans like the one above. And safely handling the extreme downwash of the prop blades would be difficult, too -- the air could approach hurricane-like speeds.

2. New Fixed-Wing Airplanes
If a standard-takeoff and landing airplane is chosen, a new undercarriage has to be developed to handle small, ratty landing sites. That's a proposition that requires plenty of cash for engineering and research. The Air Force is researching aircraft that can take off and land from short spaces, but these will compete against the Army's rotorcraft efforts.

3. Precision Airdrops
Since it's possible to drop bombs down specific chimneys, it should also be possible to drop supplies with GPS-guided, gliding parachutes. Joint Forces Command is spearheading a program to create an automated parachute system capable of placing 10,000 pounds of gear within yards of waiting troops. A 1-ton version has already been used in Iraq and Afghanistan. On the downside, the method requires a large number of sorties, and GPS jamming by the enemy could lead to the waste or theft of supplies and technologically advanced weapons.

4. Converted Container Ships
Building a new ship capable of fitting eight 30-ton haulers could cost about $5 billion per ship -- half the Navy's ship construction budget for a single year, the Defense Science Board report says. But existing commercial ships cross oceans laden with massive amounts of cargo. Give them a flight deck and the Navy could have a carrier for as cheap as $500 million. The downside would be the lack of protection; Navy ships are built to take battle damage. An armed escort would be needed to keep the ship safe from attack. And at the end of the day, the Army would still need new helicopters to carry heavy loads.

5. Aircraft with Folding Wings and Rotors
The Army can demand that its new aircraft be built to be stored in a cramped ship. This way, more heavy lifters could fit on fewer overall support ships. The tradeoff comes from the additional time it would take to pull the aircraft from storage and ready them for a mission, plus the additional cost of building the ability into the aircraft's design.

6. Blimps with a Mission
New designs in airships could allow for high-altitude airdrops of large quantities of materials. Lockheed Martin and other companies are marketing concepts for heavy haulers lofted by gases that are lighter than air. Combined with precision airdrop (and Allied air superiority) the airship could be a logistical hero. However, a fleet of new airships must be purchased, their operations codified and their fairly sluggish speed taken into account.