In the late 90’s as a young man going through Army flight school, I wanted to fly ‘Guns’ and chose Apache’s.
The old guys teaching us said that we’d wind up our careers in either the Longbow or the Comanche. Heck there were even computer flight sim games built around the Comanche where you could sneak into enemy territory low level and fling ‘pew pellets’ and hellfires at bad guys. It was a sure thing.

Almost 25 years later, the only Comanche I sat in was a prototype in the museum. Really cool and it woulda been a sweet ride. As soon as that program was shut down, the amount of money that rolled into the existing airframes was astounding in EW/Threat detection, new and very improved FLIRs, better hellfires…. Even a new off the shelf (COTS) airframe to replace Huey’s and Kiowa’s. I was shocked at the $$$$’s that program siphoned away.
And if any of the program managers on this tanker program came from the Army, I’d like to offer my heartfelt apologies.