In an urban environment against troops wearing no uniforms it must be hard for an AH crew to engage an target from 1500ft. Maybe (my speculation) the Apache crews take larger risks because of the higher survivability of their machines. So the higher losses of Apaches are because of more AH-64 than AH-1 around and (maybe) different tactics. Does anybody know if the Army and Marines doctrines are different?
Crash review team
The team conducting the comprehensive review of all downings was headed by Col. Stephen Dwyer, a brigade commander at the Army Aviation Center at Fort Rucker, Ala., and it included about a dozen forensic and weapons experts, crash analysts and helicopter specialists. The team spent about four weeks in Iraq visiting each crash site, taking soil samples for forensic analysis and talking to aviators.
"They went over to look at Army aviation, make an assessment and make recommendations on how to improve it," said Lt. Col. James Bullinger, a spokesman for the Army Aviation Center.
Bullinger said that even before the team started its work, the Army was adopting lessons from Iraq, teaching pilots to fire their weapons while "running and diving," instead of hovering, when a helicopter is more vulnerable to an attack.
Senior Army commanders said the assessment team provided several valuable insights for pilots in Iraq, and for the fresh crews preparing to rotate into the country.
"This is a case of our Army coming through quickly with the right expertise at the right place," said Maj. Gen. David H. Petraeus, commander of the 101st Airborne Division.
American intelligence analysts have said that during Saddam Hussein's rule, Iraq stockpiled at least 5,000 shoulder-fired missiles of all types, and that fewer than a third have been recovered.
From the Jan. 18, 2004 editions of the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel