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The vastness of the Pacific, modern air defenses, advances in drone technology, and lessons learned in Ukraine left a shrinking case for FARA.

The news that the U.S. Army is cancelling one of its highest profile aviation programs, the Future Attack Reconnaissance Aircraft (FARA), with two competing prototypes already constructed, was a shock to many, but it really shouldn't have been. As the Pentagon is stacking its chips on the possibility of a high-end fight in the Pacific, and seeing the results of helicopter combat operations in Ukraine, the relevance of the FARA program had to be deeply questioned, and the assumptions of future aerial warfare it was based on needed serious re-examination too.

Simply put, moving forward would have been a wasteful endeavor, and cancelling it now, before it gets deep into flight testing, was the right call.

Procuring hundreds of highly complex helicopters with relatively short-range capabilities — even those that are uniquely optimized for more range and speed than their predecessors — at great cost makes no sense when it comes to a fight in the Pacific. The opportunity cost of the dollars that would be spent on FARA instead of more relevant priorities and emerging technologies is just far too large for what the Army would be getting in return.

In a Pacific fight, for the vast majority of use cases, FARA, even with its enhanced range, will not be able to get from anything resembling a feasibly secure basing location to where they can have a major impact and survive to do so repeatedly. The most likely outcome is that these aircraft would have little to do during such a conflict, not because they are not highly capable, but because they simply can't get to the areas where the fight is occurring and the odds of returning home alive would be questionable even if they could.

Ukraine has shown just how vulnerable helicopters are when operating on a modern battlefield — even one that is traditionally far better suited to their limitations than the Pacific. Operating among a layered air defense overlay massively degrades the utility of rotary-wings, and especially that of the attack and reconnaissance variety. Survivability realities and the need to get within engagement range of their targets is just increasingly out of sync for attack helicopters and many other platform options are far more suitable for executing standoff attacks.

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Originally posted by nhracecraft:
'Hunter-Killers' are coming...

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Originally posted by nhracecraft:
'Hunter-Killers' are coming...

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Originally posted by bryan11:
Drone based 'fireworks' shows with thousands of drones all perfectly coordinated really make the point. If this is available to the public, the game changes into who has the best strategy and AI.