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McDonnell Douglas Helicopters AH-64 Apache, QuickTime movie, 1.4Mb, 260x195.
| | McDonnell Douglas Helicopters AH-64A Apache
AH-64A Apache: First flown in September 1975 after development as the Hughes Model 77, the Apache is the US Army's most important battlefield helicopter. The concept of the armed helicopter was far from new when the Model 77 was schemed, for armament schemes had been planned for the first operational helicopters in World War II (1939-45), the French had made extensive used of armed helicopters in the North African campaigns that ended in the early 1960s, and in 1965 the Bell AH-1 HueyCobra was about to enter service as the US Army's first rotary-wing warplane. What worried the planners of the US Army, however, was the fact that the HueyCobra resembled its predecessors in lacking all-weather flight and weapon-delivery capabilities, and in defensive terms was limited to light armor sufficient to provide protection only against small arms fire.
The most important task faced by the US Army at that time, however, was spearheading the NATO defense of Western Europe against the threat of communist aggression by the Soviet-dominated forces of the Warsaw Pact. Any such aggression would certainly exploit any tactical advantage offered by poor weather and night, and would use the very latest in heavily armored battlefield vehicles. As adverse-weather operation and the defeat heavy armor both lay beyond the HueyCobra's capabilities, it was clear that a more capable battlefield helicopter was needed. This had to possess the ability to fly and acquire targets under all weather and light conditions, to carry weapons capable of defeating the heaviest armor, and had to be fitted with the means of avoiding or surviving the attentions of modern battlefield anti-aircraft weapons. | |  |
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