Australia doubles down on army choppers despite warnings they are ‘obsolete’

The federal government is pushing ahead with plans to spend over $5 billion on army attack helicopters despite the United States scrapping a major helicopter program in favour of drones.

Military experts said the Ukraine war had shown that helicopters were increasingly vulnerable to missile and drone attacks, with some warning that Australia was investing significant resources in technology that could soon be largely redundant.

The Australian Army is acquiring a fleet of Apache attack helicopters.Credit: Getty Images

The US Army announced on Friday that after a “sober assessment of the modern battlefield”, it would abandon its Future Attack Reconnaissance Aircraft helicopter program despite billions of investment, and instead increase spending on uncrewed aircraft.

“We are learning from the battlefield – especially Ukraine – that aerial reconnaissance has fundamentally changed,” Army Chief General Randy George said, explaining one of the US Army’s most significant changes in direction in recent years.

“Sensors and weapons mounted on a variety of unmanned systems and in space are more ubiquitous, further reaching and more inexpensive than ever before.”

The Morrison government announced in 2022 that it would spend $5.5 billion to acquire 29 new Boeing Apache attack helicopters to replace the Tiger armed reconnaissance helicopter, with delivery expected in 2025.

Marcus Hellyer, a former senior public servant in the Defence Department, said the Apache helicopter fleet should be at the top of Australia’s list to scrap as it looked to free up funding for other priorities.

“If the US doesn’t think that this capacity is relevant, why do we?” he asked. “What real role is there for them? They are overkill against an unsophisticated adversary, and not survivable against sophisticated adversaries.”

“We are spending $5 billion on something that seems on the way to becoming truly obsolete in a value-for-money sense.”

Japan announced its intention to retire its attack helicopters in favour of uncrewed systems last year, according to a major five-year defence plan that said the aircraft would soon be “obsolete”.

Hellyer said attack helicopters – designed to penetrate enemy lines and scout for possible targets – had proved vulnerable to simple machine gun attacks in Iraq and Afghanistan, and advances in armed drone technology had left them even more exposed in Ukraine.

“Neither side is really using them anywhere near the front line,” he said.

He stressed that helicopters used for attack and reconnaissance missions like the Apache were different from the Black Hawk helicopters that Australia was acquiring largely for logistical operations.

A Defence spokeswoman said: “Crewed attack helicopters will remain an essential part of the Australian Defence Force’s capability mix to support land force operations across a range of operational scenarios.”

The spokeswoman said the AH-64E Apache “carries a range of sensors, munitions and weapons well beyond that of an uncrewed platform, and provides the critical step change in capability to enable the teaming of crewed-uncrewed aerial systems”.

The US is still expected to operate Apache, Black Hawk and Chinook helicopters into the 2050s.

The government announced last week that it had awarded a $306 million contract to Boeing to deliver maintenance, engineering, training and logistics services for the Apache fleet.

Fergus McLachlan, a retired army major-general, said armed drone technology would probably be so advanced within five to 10 years that attack helicopters could be virtually unusable in a conflict.

“In a perfect world, this is not what you’d do,” he said of the Apache purchase.

“The battlefield is becoming an increasingly lethal place for helicopters, as Ukraine has shown.”

Malcolm Davis, a senior analyst at the Australian Strategic Policy Institute, said: “Ukraine has shown that crewed helicopters are just not usable in many respects in a modern battlefield scenario.”

But he added that it would be “political suicide” for the government to cancel the Apache program given it was already under fire for failing to invest in defence.

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