{"id":70513,"date":"2025-05-20T20:38:35","date_gmt":"2025-05-20T20:38:35","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/one.sightlinemg.com\/defensenews\/uncategorized\/2025\/05\/20\/army-aviation-charts-new-course-as-it-grapples-with-surprise-cuts\/"},"modified":"2026-08-08T01:22:52","modified_gmt":"2026-08-08T01:22:52","slug":"army-aviation-charts-new-course-as-it-grapples-with-surprise-cuts","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/one.sightlinemg.com\/defensenews\/land\/2025\/05\/20\/army-aviation-charts-new-course-as-it-grapples-with-surprise-cuts\/","title":{"rendered":"Army aviation charts new course as it grapples with surprise cuts"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">Army aviation leaders were caught off guard by some of the <a href=\"https:\/\/www.defensenews.com\/land\/2025\/05\/01\/secdef-wields-axe-to-brass-hqs-formations-to-fashion-leaner-army\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"\" title=\"https:\/\/www.defensenews.com\/land\/2025\/05\/01\/secdef-wields-axe-to-brass-hqs-formations-to-fashion-leaner-army\/\">sweeping changes to the service\u2019s overall force structure<\/a> and are now scrambling to align plans with the top brass\u2019 shifting vision, which includes abrupt moves to cancel or scale back key programs <a href=\"https:\/\/www.defensenews.com\/land\/2025\/05\/16\/new-us-army-helo-engine-lifts-off-but-may-be-headed-for-cancellation\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"\" title=\"https:\/\/www.defensenews.com\/land\/2025\/05\/16\/new-us-army-helo-engine-lifts-off-but-may-be-headed-for-cancellation\/\">like a modernized aircraft engine<\/a>, spy planes and <a href=\"https:\/\/www.defensenews.com\/land\/2019\/09\/05\/jumping-into-algorithmic-warfare-army-aviation-tightens-kill-chain-with-networked-architecture\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"\" title=\"https:\/\/www.defensenews.com\/land\/2019\/09\/05\/jumping-into-algorithmic-warfare-army-aviation-tightens-kill-chain-with-networked-architecture\/\">larger runway-dependent unmanned aircraft<\/a>.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth and Army Secretary Dan Driscoll issued memos within a day of each other earlier this month announcing major changes to command structure and formations and changes to acquisition and modernization efforts, including canceling programs while boosting others.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">But, despite the surprise, leaders across the aviation branch said they are embracing change and working to shape the role aviation will play in future operations. <\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">The announcement from the top \u201cwas a little abrupt,\u201d Maj. Gen. Clair Gill, commander of the Army\u2019s Aviation Center of Excellence at Fort Novosel, Alabama, told reporters at the Army Aviation Association of America\u2019s annual conference in Nashville, Tennessee, last week.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">\u201cSome of the decisions that were made were not exactly what we had proposed, but they were decisions in the context of the folks in the Pentagon who are looking at the entirety of the Army budget, the priority systems which are not all aviation-centric,\u201d Gill said. <\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">\u201cI would even argue that we\u2019re not the Army\u2019s priority. We\u2019re looking at air-and-missile defense, counter-[unmanned aircraft systems], UAS protection,\u201d he said, adding that with a fixed budget, decisions on what to prioritize are tougher.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">\u201cIt\u2019s no surprise that the Army made some tough cuts. Some of them were just maybe deeper than we thought they were going to be,\u201d Gill said.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">Some portions of the restructuring effort demonstrate how the Army is looking to transform its aviation capability, which begins with divesting old equipment. The service was already deep into that effort, Gill noted.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">Toward the end of 2023, the Army decided to <a href=\"https:\/\/www.defensenews.com\/land\/2023\/12\/20\/us-army-to-trim-black-hawk-helicopter-fleet\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"\" title=\"https:\/\/www.defensenews.com\/land\/2023\/12\/20\/us-army-to-trim-black-hawk-helicopter-fleet\/\">trim its UH-60 Black Hawk utility helicopter fleet by 8%<\/a>. Months later, it <a href=\"https:\/\/www.defensenews.com\/air\/2024\/02\/08\/us-army-spent-billions-on-a-new-helicopter-that-now-will-never-fly\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"\" title=\"https:\/\/www.defensenews.com\/air\/2024\/02\/08\/us-army-spent-billions-on-a-new-helicopter-that-now-will-never-fly\/\">canceled its Future Attack Reconnaissance Aircraft <\/a>competition before selecting a winner to build prototypes. It also divested its Lima and Victor model UH-60s in favor of modernizing the service\u2019s most capable variant, the Mike model. <\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">The service was already working on ways to end the AH-64 Delta-model Apache attack helicopter fleet and move over to a pure fleet of the most modernized version, the Echo-model.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">\u201cAll the Army Transformation Initiative did was accelerate,\u201d Gill said. \u201cThey made some very clear decisions that sort of answered a bunch of [requests for information] that we had.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">As part of the new cuts, the Army has decided to end procurement of the Gray Eagle UAS for the active force, cancel a competitive effort to replace the Shadow UAS <a href=\"https:\/\/www.defensenews.com\/land\/2025\/05\/16\/army-halts-tactical-uas-competition-without-clear-plan-forward\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"\" title=\"https:\/\/www.defensenews.com\/land\/2025\/05\/16\/army-halts-tactical-uas-competition-without-clear-plan-forward\/\">with a new Future Tactical UAS<\/a> and halve the number of new spy planes it planned to buy as part of the <a href=\"https:\/\/www.defensenews.com\/land\/2025\/05\/15\/army-halves-spy-plane-fleet-before-first-takeoff\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"\" title=\"https:\/\/www.defensenews.com\/land\/2025\/05\/15\/army-halves-spy-plane-fleet-before-first-takeoff\/\">High Accuracy Detection and Exploitation System, or HADES, program<\/a>.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">The Army also said it plans to cease developing the Improved Turbine Engine Program, a decades-long effort to replace the engines in Black Hawks and Apaches. The ITEP engine powered a Black Hawk in a hover for the first time last week.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">The Army also plans to inactivate one air cavalry squadron per combat aviation brigade in the active component and said it would cancel the planned activation of the 12th CAB, according to an Army execution order obtained by Defense News.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">Aviation leadership had \u201cteed up a number of options\u201d related to equipment and formations and had already shared them with Army leadership, Gill said. The branch was supposed to head into an Army Requirements Oversight Council meeting this month with some of those proposals.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">\u201cI think with some of those proposals, all this did was accelerate a whole bunch of staff churn and just say, \u2018Hey, here\u2019s where we are,\u2019\u201d he said.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">Even so, Gill noted, \u201cWe only got this two weeks ago, and so we don\u2019t know all the details of it.\u201d <\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">\u201cI think our job, collectively, as is the case for the rest of the Army, is to do mission analysis on what we were told to do and then provide options to senior leaders, and in some cases, it\u2019ll be ways that we can execute exactly what they told us to do. And it might be even like, you know, saying, \u2018Hey, here are all the consequences. Is that still the order?\u2019\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">While some decisions may have been surprising, Army aviation leaders said they acknowledge the need for change across the service. <\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">\u201cWe need to divest faster, and we need to iterate and procure and probably continue to iterate and procure on newer technologies that we think are emerging, given the context of the operating environment that we see both east and west of us,\u201d Gill said.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">One of the newer priorities for the Army within the aviation portfolio is to accelerate the service\u2019s planned procurement of a <a href=\"https:\/\/www.defensenews.com\/land\/2025\/05\/16\/army-targets-2028-to-deliver-future-assault-aircraft-to-soldiers\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"\" title=\"https:\/\/www.defensenews.com\/land\/2025\/05\/16\/army-targets-2028-to-deliver-future-assault-aircraft-to-soldiers\/\">Future Long-Range Assault Aircraft<\/a>, which Textron\u2019s Bell is building in the prototyping phase. The goal now is to try to deliver some production-level platforms to soldiers by 2028 instead of in 2031.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">The Army is also planning to focus on developing and rapidly fielding UAS and launched effects across the force to operate at different echelons and across a wide variety of mission sets. <\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">As Army aviation becomes a more complex array of manned, unmanned and uncrewed systems, branch leadership is working to design a force that relies more heavily on sending drones forward on the battlefield rather than manned aircraft to do some of the missions manned aircraft used to do, like armed reconnaissance.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">As part of an <a href=\"https:\/\/www.defensenews.com\/land\/2024\/10\/15\/how-the-armys-chief-of-staff-plans-to-modernize-the-service\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"\" title=\"https:\/\/www.defensenews.com\/land\/2024\/10\/15\/how-the-armys-chief-of-staff-plans-to-modernize-the-service\/\">initiative begun by Army Chief of Staff Gen. Randy George<\/a> over a year ago, the service started a \u201ctransformation in contact\u201d initiative where units were given new capabilities and free rein to use them extensively during exercises to see what works and what doesn\u2019t and how new equipment might work in various formations. A large focus of the effort was on bringing UAS into the fold at the brigade level.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">George also pushed for a new, <a href=\"https:\/\/www.defensenews.com\/smr\/defense-news-conference\/2024\/09\/06\/us-armys-next-budget-invests-heavily-in-drones-and-electronic-warfare\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"\" title=\"https:\/\/www.defensenews.com\/smr\/defense-news-conference\/2024\/09\/06\/us-armys-next-budget-invests-heavily-in-drones-and-electronic-warfare\/\">more flexible way to fund UAS procurement <\/a>rapidly and more often. <\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">The aviation branch is \u201cabsolutely changing the ways we\u2019ve been doing business,\u201d Brig. Gen. David Phillips, the Army\u2019s program executive officer for aviation, said at the Army Aviation Association of America conference last week. <\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">\u201cWe\u2019re executing in ways that we haven\u2019t before by building these tranches of capability a lot faster and that\u2019s in every level of UAS space today,\u201d Phillips said.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">\u201cWe always joke that two things change the outcome of programs \u2026 elections and wars,\u201d Brig. Gen. Matthew Braman, the Army\u2019s G-3\/5\/7 aviation director, said. \u201cWe just had an election and we\u2019ll have another in four years and we\u2019ll have a change of Congress in two years. All of those things impact \u2026 our ability to do what the Army wants to do and we have to work within that constraint,\u201d he added.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">\u201cI think you\u2019ll see some of that play out here over the next few months,\u201d Braman noted. <\/p>\n\n\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Army aviation leaders are working on options to transform the force within budget constraints and in line with recent Army and Pentagon directives.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":7,"featured_media":119048,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"_yoast_wpseo_meta-robots-noindex":"","_yoast_wpseo_meta-robots-nofollow":"","_yoast_wpseo_canonical":"","_acf":"","_yoast_wpseo_primary_category":14,"_jetpack_feature_clip_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","_smg_distribution_targets":[]},"categories":[72,160,29,14,36],"tags":[],"coauthors":[3330],"class_list":["post-70513","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-aaaa","category-daily-news-roundup","category-digital-show-dailies","category-land","category-newsletters"],"acf":{"subheadline":"","legacy_arc_id":"JYNKQQCYKNA7NJH455HUPTQMFE","arc_canonical_url":"\/land\/2025\/05\/20\/army-aviation-charts-new-course-as-it-grapples-with-surprise-cuts\/","remove_feature_photo":false,"is_sponsored":false,"subtype":"","redirect_url":"","disable_inline_ads":false,"native_logo_pretext":"Presented By:"},"yoast_head":"<!-- This site is optimized with the Yoast SEO Premium plugin v26.0 (Yoast SEO v28.1) - https:\/\/yoast.com\/product\/yoast-seo-premium-wordpress\/ -->\n<title>Army aviation charts new course as it grapples with surprise cuts - Defense News<\/title>\n<meta name=\"description\" content=\"Army aviation leaders are working on options to transform the force within budget constraints and in line with recent Army and Pentagon directives.\" \/>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"noindex, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"Army aviation charts new course as it grapples with surprise cuts\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"Army aviation leaders are working on options to transform the force within budget constraints and in line with recent Army and Pentagon directives.\" \/>\n<meta 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