The congressionally chartered National Commission on the Future of the Army recommends splitting the difference between the regular Army and the National Guard in a bitterly polarizing dispute over AH-64 Apache attack helicopters. That’s the most politically high-profile recommendation out of dozens, many of them aimed at strengthening Army deterrence against North Korea and Russia.

The Apache compromise, however, would cost hundreds of millions more than current Army budgets allow, although the commission proposed offsetting cuts to UH-60 Black Hawk helicopters. The commission also urges the Army to retain 11 Combat Aviation Brigades, one of them permanently based in South Korea, rather than cut down to 10 and rotate units through Korea as is the current plan. Again, this would add to Army costs. The permanent basing in Korea would cost just $40 million annually, but retaining the 11th CAB would add $450 million a year in operating costs plus $1.9 billion to buy 48 new Apaches.

Why would the Army would need to buy more Apaches just to keep the 11 CABs it already has? The root cause is the decision to retire the venerable OH-58 Kiowa scout without buying a new scout helicopter to replace it, which the Army couldn’t afford. Instead, Apaches — augmented by Grey Eagle drones — will take on the Kiowa’s scout role as well as their original attack mission, which requires more of them.

So, as the central piece of a complex cost-cutting plan called the Aviation Restructure Initiative (ARI), Army leadership had proposed consolidating all Apaches in 20 active-duty battalions, leaving zero gunships in the Guard. The National Guard Bureau, an independent Pentagon entity, had countered with a plan to keep all six existing Guard Apache battalions. The Army Commission’s final report, out today, offers a compromise that slightly favors the Guard: 20 active-duty battalions of 24 Apaches each and four Guard battalions of 18 gunships each.

The smaller Guard battalions are a pure cost-cutting expedient, “You need 24 to fight so what you would do during mobilization is borrow helicopters from another unit” that wasn’t going to war, said commissioner Bob Hale, the former Pentagon comptroller, in a public briefing this afternoon.

Even with budget-sized battalions, filling out this force would require upgrading an additional 24 D-model Apaches to the latest AH-64E Guardian variant for roughly $420 million. Having a larger Apache fleet than the ARI envisioned would also add about $165 million a year to Army operating costs.

To offset these costs, the commission would halve the number of new UH-60 Black Hawk battalions being added to the Guard from four to two, and it would reduce the Black Hawk buy by five to 10 aircraft each year. The UH-60 utility helicopters are in high demand for both federal missions abroad and for state disaster relief at home, the commission report acknowledges, but the Apaches are even more critical.

“[UH-60s] are very important to the Army’s warfighting capability but it is a big fleet so you could reduce slightly the size of that,” said Hale. That has its disadvantages, but “we felt they were outweighed by the advantages of keeping some apaches in the guard.”

Overall, “the commission option provides more wartime capacity than the ARI; it also provides some surge capacity [i.e. Guard units to mobilize when needed; it does add to costs,” Hale said. The commission’s aim is not to reject ARI but to “modify” it, he said: “We kept most of it.”

The modification to ARI — add Apaches, subtract Black Hawks, and make a few other tweaks around the edges — is actually cost-neutral, Hale told reporters after the public briefing. But when you add all the other improvements the commission wants to make to Army aviation — especially the 11th CAB — and other areas, “you’ve got a big bill,” he said. “We are candid in the report in saying, if you’re going to do all of those, and especially if you’re also going to fix short-range air defense and missile defense and some of the shortfalls in combat enablers, the Army’s gonna need more money.”…

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