www.youtube.com/?v=oU889uwynoI

The solution is for us to create a COMBAT COLLEGE, where what equipments and weapons can and cannot do via myriad tactics, techniques and procedures (TTP) are demonstrated and tried by ALL young officers in a Discovery Channel "Myth Busters" kind of way, so ALL our leaders get to take part in basic experimentation so they can have a FUNDAMENTALLY CORRECT understanding of modern war to include proprietary advantages only defense companies know and otherwise keep to themselves fostering general (literally and figuratively) ignorance. The Combat College would last for 6 months and cover every aspect of land combat and would not be yet another harassment package where officers have to absorb information by rote and spit-it-back on tests--lest they get bad grades and ruin their careers. They will be taught to THINK and to justify their opinions based on DEMONSTRATED FACTS which they can draw from their experiments which will be videotaped and archived as well as CLASSIFIED weapons effects databases. Key areas covered are:

Understanding Modern Warfare With a Correct Framework

Transformation under Fire

How to Ascertain the Pattern of War

The Pattern of War

High Explosives and Kinetic Energy (KE) weaponry

High Explosives

Ground Vehicle Mobility Parameters

Wheels vs. Tracks

For ALL enlisted Soldiers, they should go through a "mini-Combat College" during their basic training called Objective Warfighting laboratory (OWL) described in the web page below:

One of the areas that Combat College should cover in detail is what military aviation can and cannot do. That everyone has to become a pilot to learn this is a pile of crap because we have thousands of pilots in the Army and marines today who are clueless despite their equipment operation skills that are tied directly into their narcissistic egos. Narcissism is the uber brain cell killer on any issue. Its no surprise then that as the helicopter burteaucracy grew during the 1960s that rotorheads squeezed STOL fixed-wing aviation out of both the Army and marines to everyone's detriment. No one called them in on their bullshit; no one fact-checked them and forced a "reality check". So as budgets grew, the ability of Army and marine aircraft to remain overhead to support our troops evaporated. Its therefore no surprise that the unmanned air vehicle (UAV) as a knee-jerk reaction and panacea savior to pilots refusing to fly slower-than-jets but much faster-than-helicopter STOL fixed-wing "Grasshoppers".

Simple board war games with die-cast metal aircraft, tanks and troops and computer simulations can and should be conducted to show that helicopters cannot remain over the battlefield long enough to render Maneuver Air Support (MAS) and their logistical factors can be brought into the war game to show how much its costing us in fuel and repairs. Show the impacts of this on the Army's annual budgets. There are already similar strategy games available on the civilian market that grognard civilians play and have a better grasp of force structure and tactics than the weak-ego military narcissist who knows no context except his rote memorization operator skills as a "first person shooter" video game in real life. Combat College students could be brought to a helicopter maintenance facility and see first-hand how ALL helicopters have to be RE-BUILT after x amount of flight hours lest they malfunction, crash and burn.

The upshot of providing such a "reality check" on military ground force aviation would be that the rotorheads would realize they need to get off their asses and make their helicopters fly faster (Piasecki VTDP) and with more stealth (NOTAR) and with effective sky camouflage not the ridiculous dark green-in-blue-skies paint schemes. They will realize the need and stop having their egos stand in the way of the Army having fixed-wing STOL aircraft for long-range, long loiter time missions that point A-to-B helicopters are ill-suited for. The need to make all Army aircraft ground-mobile and not needed Air Force-style pampered air bases (by whatever name we want to call them; FireBase, FOB etc.) to avoid enemy HE targeting would be realized. In a word, we would have what we lack now:

Progress.