The Core USMC Air Assets: The Attack Helicopter and Its Role

04/13/2025
By Robbin Laird

I concluded the first part of my discussion regarding the role of Marine Corps Air and its role in shaping the mobile operational capability of the Marine Corps and the joint force with this statement:

“In my view, the air arm provides the backbone for the insertion force and its ability to deliver distributed maritime effects. They are evolving in part with upgrades in terms of the platforms, but more rapidly and notably in terms of the payloads they can carry and work with. This is where key enablers come in, notably in terms of distributed C2 and ISR and evolving tactics for reducing the signature of the force to enable it to move as a more survivable and lethal force.

“In the following articles, I will address each aircraft and examine how they are evolving and how they might evolve as payloads change under the influence of technological development.”

Let me start with what is often considered the odd man out for the force, namely, the light attack helicopter capability.

This is how the DCA’s Aviation Plan discusses the aircraft:

“H-1’s are the MAGTF’s multi-tool. Marine Light Attack Helicopter Squadrons (HMLA) are manned, trained and equipped to fight from the sea into austere environments and confined littoral spaces. The AH-1Z “Viper” and UH-1Y “Venom” provide attack and utility capability, working in concert with Naval and Joint Force capabilities, to sense, shoot, survive, and sustain inside the Weapon Engagement Zone (WEZ).

“As a kill web enabler and effector, H-1s expand depth, range, and communication to the MAGTF, providing lethal and non-lethal options to the commander. They are essential to narrowing service gaps in low-altitude attack, strike, and utility capabilities, and are critical to enable a seamless transition to the H-1 Next in the 2040s.”

The report then identifies the way ahead regarding modernization of this aircraft as follows:

“The H-1 program’s modernization plan over the next ten years presents a lethal, survivable, and versatile tool for the MAGTF and Joint Force to combat peer-adversary malign behavior across the range of military operations in any clime and place. The modernization plan is oriented around four principal priorities: digital interoperability, survivability, lethality, and Structural Improvement and Electrical Power Upgrade (SIEPU) which provides greater electrical power capacity to accommodate modern warfighting capabilities.

“Every investment in H-1s over the next two FYDPs is essential to maintaining a ready crisis response force, pivotal to reduce risk in the development H-1 Next, and critical to bridge the gap for the MAGTF as it transforms into a fully modernized fleet.”

And what are those upgrade priorities according to the DCA modernization plan?

  • Digital interoperability
  • Survivability – DAIRCM w/ dual lasers, APR-39D(V)2, common carriage
  • Lethality: Kinetic and non-kinetic effects
  • Structural Improvement and Electrical Power Upgrade
  • Position, Navigation, and Timing (PNT)/All-weather navigation

Let us now connect the modernization priorities with the role of the light attack helicopter “as a kill web enabler and effector.”

As one of the inventors of the kill web concept of operations, I find the approach not widely understood and why a legacy, but evolving platform can find its role altered when given the communications and upgrade capabilities designed to enable it to plug-into a “combat cluster” operating as a kill web.

As Ed Timperlake and I described in our book: A Maritime Kill Web Force in the Making: Deterrence and Warfighting in the 21st Century:

“The focus of a kill web is upon how force packages are configured, and how they are empowered to leverage ISR and fire capabilities at the point of interest, and to both contribute to and leverage capabilities resident in other force packages available to deliver the desired combat or crisis management effect.

“Kill webs rely on networks, wave forms, connectivity, distributed C2, and platforms which can leverage all of the former.

“Platforms are the time-space entities which enable the force; integrability allows a distributed force to deliver the desired combat effect.

“The kill web is about networks of sensors that can provide assessment data for shooters operating over an extended battle space. The kill web provides enhanced resilience and more capability to respond deliberately as needed.”

And by being able to devolve the relationship among sensors and shooters, the force can shift from legacy MAGTF or Naval task force concepts to operating as “combat clusters.”

This is how we described “combat clusters” in our book:

“Force packages or combat clusters are deployed under mission command with enough organic C2 and ISR to monitor their situations and integrate the platforms that are part of that combat cluster and to operate effectively at a point of interest. Within that combat cluster, the C2 and ISR systems allow for reachback to non-organic combat assets which are then conjoined operational for a period of time to that combat cluster and becomes part of an expanded modular task force.”

Applying this concept to a modernized light attack helicopter a number of the modernization priorities stand out.

The digital interoperability piece allows the platform to become part of a kill web force and work interactively with a key asset such as the F-35.

With its power upgrades, the attack helicopter can operate more missiles as its contribution to the distributed sensor-shooter kill web force.

And its time-space capabilities of being able to operate at altitudes and with attack profiles very different from other USMC air assets, the light attack helicopter provides a unique role enhancing the overall lethality and survivability of the deployed USMC force.

In my next piece, I will discuss the light attack helicopter and its modernization trajectory with an experienced retired USMC officer who provides further understanding with regard to the modernization path and how to understand it.

Featured image: An AH-1Z Viper sits on the Marine Corps Air Station Futenma flight line in Okinawa, Japan, Dec. 2, 2016. Marine Light Attack Helicopter Squadron 267 conducted aerial live-fire training utilizing the AH-1Z Viper for the first time in Okinawa. The Marines are with HMLA-267, assigned to Marine Aircraft Group 36, 1st Marine Aircraft Wing, III Marine Expeditionary Force. (U.S. Marine Corps photo by Lance Cpl. Nelson Duenas).