Since the Chief of Staff of the Army, General Eric K. Shinseki, announced to the Army that it would transform or become irrelevant, there has been much discussion and debate as to what direction this transformation should head. The initial tumult focused primarily on what some viewed as a radical departure in the means the Army would utilize to fight and win the nation's wars. A slow epiphany began to creep through the ranks as the weight of General Shinseki's plan started to reverberate. Many realized that transformation was not about the hardware, although that aspect will be the most visible outward manifestation of the change. Transformation is about fundamentally changing how the Army thinks about fighting. The hardware is simply the new set of tools that the Army will use to employ new concepts.

This paper examines the currently proposed composition of the Aviation Detachment, twelve Comanches and eight TUAVs, and attempts to evaluate this mix of platforms to determine if it will provide the Unit of Action commander with the right tools to shape his fight. In order to make this evaluation, empirical data from Aviation and Troop Command / Joint Combat And Tactical Simulation (ATCOM / JCATS) was analyzed to determine the operational performance, survivability, and sustainability of the detachment. The scenario replicated within the simulation was a high intensity, early entry scenario, a scenario in which the entire UA is supposed to be able to conduct autonomous operations for seventy-two hours.Based on the established criteria, this paper concludes that an appropriate fusion of manned and unmanned platforms for this scenario is a two-one mix, and that with reservation, the twelve RAH-66 and eight TUAV mix did provide the commander the tools needed to accomplish his mission. The reservation is based on a potential operational gap that manifested itself during the research. With a requirement for all of the Aviation Detachment's assets to be conducting simultaneous operations for the entire seventy-two hours, a realistic possibility, a two-hour gap would appear in every eight hour cycle with no Comanches available to fill it. In order to compensate for this break in coverage, and to provide the commander with the optimal mix, the author recommends that an additional Comanche be given to each of the two troops within the detachment, and that no degradation be made to the quantity of TUAVs.

ADA 416207 Approved for public release; Distribution is unlimited. The opinions and conclusions expressed herein are those of the student-authors and do not necessarily represent the views of the U.S. Army Command and General Staff College or any other governmental agency. (References to these studies should include the foregoing statement.)