The U.S. Army Wants to Replace Its Helicopters With These
Defense contractors are taking very different approaches to fixing America’s broken-down bird problem.
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The popular view of U.S. Army aviation owes a lot to Hollywood. Think of an Army helicopter, and the below is probably what comes to mind—courtesy of dozens of films such as Platoon, Apocalypse Now, and even Good Morning, Vietnam.
The Bell UH-1 “Huey” helicopter was a U.S. staple in Vietnam, while the 1980s-era Boeing Co. AH-64 Apache attack chopper was the first combat aircraft to fire a shot in the 1991 invasion of Iraq. Sikorsky’s UH-60 Black Hawk, the Army’s Huey replacement, has been a workhorse for troop transport and American special operations missions, including an unconfirmed stealthy version used in the 2011 raid that killed Osama bin Laden.