Splitting off the Wingnuttery...

Quote Originally Posted by Stickman View Post
Why does the Army fly Apaches and the USMC flies a Super Cobra and Viper variants? Two completely different airframes for the same mission.
Quote Originally Posted by Diamondback View Post
At the risk of taking a tangent, Stick, my understanding re Apache vs Cobra is that the Cobra is more conducive to maritime/amphib/shipboard ops than the Apache--they both kill bad guys and blow up their shit, but a lot of it goes back to operational differences like the luxury of a spread out land base vs the tight quarters of a ship, or the Cobra being more easy to beat back into shape with lower-level tools--llike A-10 vs F-16 in CAS.

Objectively, in the battlefield the Apache is the better weapons system; operationally the difference is in the forward-deployment basing getting TO the battlefield and going home after.

At least, that's as I understand it from a lifetime around aircraft and the aviation industry, I probably don't have the entire picture. Then again, give me a blank-check budget to build any helo I want and I'm building the AH-53 "Super Stallion rebuilt into a Hind from Hell" that a buddy who was an engineer at Sikorsky and I cooked up... imagine a VTOL Hog that can both lift the troops into battle then immediately pivot right into their topcover.
Another difference to note is "Light Attack" vs "Heavy Attack"--the Cobra packs less punch but is faster and more agile, and would have been even more so had the 249 (four-blade rotor) and 309 KingCobra models been fully developed.

There is another reason to maintain two systems filling the same role: Single Point of Failure. If one is benched the other allows SOME retained operational capacity, unlike the V-22 Osprey being our sole Medium Vertol platform where standardizing one platform across all services then grounding the fleet means we presently have ZERO Medium Vertol capability anywhere.