I'd need someone to confirm this for me but a friend of mine who works for MDS was telling me that Canada used to operate the OH-6.
From what I've been getting through the mainstream news media it looks like Canada is currently somewhat under equipped in certain areas for our current Afgan ops. I've also noted we've been making frequent/heavy use of American helicopter gunship support. I'm going to go out on a limb here (I'm sure some people will argue against this) but I think given Canada's lack of a MBT we are in a situation where having our own helicopter gunships is a nessessity.
I know cost/size/weight and logistical support are major issues for us, but could we not support 20-30 OH-6/AH-6's? We could outfit them for each mission according to the requirements. They can carrying a light load of any of the following: 50 cals, miniguns, rockets and hellfires. And because their small and fairly cheap to operate (compared to heavy gunships) for the more intense missions would could assign 3 or 4 of them to make up for their light payload capacity and just use a single one for things like convoy escorts.
I beleive they could also be broken down and carried in C-130's and should be possible to land on our frigates. Any thoughts on this?
From what I've been getting through the mainstream news media it looks like Canada is currently somewhat under equipped in certain areas for our current Afgan ops. I've also noted we've been making frequent/heavy use of American helicopter gunship support. I'm going to go out on a limb here (I'm sure some people will argue against this) but I think given Canada's lack of a MBT we are in a situation where having our own helicopter gunships is a nessessity.
I know cost/size/weight and logistical support are major issues for us, but could we not support 20-30 OH-6/AH-6's? We could outfit them for each mission according to the requirements. They can carrying a light load of any of the following: 50 cals, miniguns, rockets and hellfires. And because their small and fairly cheap to operate (compared to heavy gunships) for the more intense missions would could assign 3 or 4 of them to make up for their light payload capacity and just use a single one for things like convoy escorts.
I beleive they could also be broken down and carried in C-130's and should be possible to land on our frigates. Any thoughts on this?
