Apache problem ?

[Lu Zuckerman]

Please excuse the excessive use of the servers

memory.

Here is some of the history of the Apache and its’ design evolution as well as explaining its’ poor performance in the field:

Even though the AAH-64 was a better design than the Bell AAH-63 Hughes should never have received the contract because they were incapable of designing and supporting the helicopter. There was minimal talent in the engineering department to fully flesh out the design and this resulted in the farming out of the design and construction of the major elements of the helicopter to include the fuselage. The gearboxes were designed and built by Litton Gear Systems. The hydraulic system was designed and built by Parker Bertea. The landing gear was designed and built by Menasco. Contract engineers at Hughes did the Basic design of the fuselage and Ryan Aeronautical finalized the design and Ryan also built the fuselage.

. .. .Hughes AAH-64 Design manager: Claim to fame was the design of the skid gear for the model 269.

. .. .Hughes AAH-64 Hydraulics design manager: Claim to fame was the design of the shock absorber on the 269-skid gear and he monitored the hydraulic servos in the tail of the Spruce Goose.

. .. .Product support was having a difficult time in supporting the LOACHs in Vietnam and the support for the civil 269s and the 500 was also minimal. And, the ramp up to support the AH-64 was a very steep curve, which required the hiring of additional personnel to include technical writers and technical illustrators on a contract basis.. .. .The support concept required by the US Army was based on a concept developed by the USAF. The Army did not want to invest a lot of technical schooling on a first term enlistee so the first term enlistee was sent to a basic aircraft maintenance school that taught helicopter basics and equipped the man to use tools. When the enlistee finished his first hitch and he re-upped he would then be sent to a factory school on the AH-64. The concept required that the first time enlistee would work under the guidance of an experienced mechanic and use the technical manuals developed to support the Apache. The manuals addressed the first echelon maintenance on every component on the helicopter. If the newbie was directed to remove a specific part he went to the tech manual and looked at the picture of that unit. The instructions were highly simplified telling the man to use the green screwdriver and insert it in a specific screw and he was told to turn the screw counter clockwise until it came out. Next to those instructions was a picture of a clock and counter clockwise was illustrated. These books cost about $5000.00 per copy and because of that they could not be brought out onto the flightline so Hughes had to put all of the manuals on either microfiche or on microfilm so that they could be printed out. The technical manuals and the additional rewrite cost over $16,000,000. The tech manuals were like old medical manuals that showed the different levels of the internal workings by peeling back the individual pages.. .. .

What was eventually demonstrated was that the Apache was too complex for US Army mechanics and contract mechanics had to be hired to perform the first and second level maintenance.. .. .

Regarding the poor reliability and maintainability of the Apache, these concepts were totally alien to Hughes and they were totally ignored. As senior maintainability engineer I identified 27 different problems that impacted Maintainability and availability. It was within my purview to send this material directly to the Army R&M engineers in St. Louis, Missouri. Somehow it got sent to the assistant chief engineer and he refused to allow it to go out because I had used the term shall instead of will. By the time I had located an Army writing style manual to justify the use of shall as opposed to will it was too late as the material; was time sensitive and the design was frozen. Almost every one of those 27 items manifested themselves and many were included in the GAO report referenced above.. .. .

The manager of R&M was a quality engineer with no background in R&M. The Reliability manager was a statistics engineer with no experience in Reliability or helicopters and the manager of maintainability was a former records clerk on the OH-6 program and he had no experience in maintainability. The design manager would not let the R&M engineers talk to the designer or the vendors and he would not let us review the design drawings. What he did do was to gather up several hundred drawings and call us in and he gave us an hour to review and sign off the drawings or to possibly reject them. If we didn’t finish the job in that one-hour the engineering department would sign them off for us. It would normally take an hour to review the average drawing and this was followed up with a discussion with the designer of that part or system. Naturally, we could not review the drawings for impact on Reliability and Maintainability and what was bad was incorporated into the design with no over sight.. .. .

I could go on-and-on but I think you get the point.. .. .

One other thing, the Apache was originally bid at 6 Million per unit (A Model). That eventually went up to 16 Million and now with the added equipment (D-Model) I can’t count that high.. .. .

When MacDac took over the major part of the engineering management staff was let go. Most of them ended up at Hiller and they drove the FH 1100 program into the ground in one year.. . . . <small>

[ 29 March 2002, 03:21: Message edited by: Lu Zuckerman ]</small>