Cobra Gold: The US Army’s Smart Retirement Program

USFS Fire Cobra(click to view full) What do you do with 469 attack helicopters, once you’ve decided to phase them out of service? That was the question facing America, after the Army decided to retire its AH-1P/S/F Cobra attack helicopter fleet in 1999, and the National Guard followed suit in 2001. In 2000, Redstone Arsenal’s Scout-Attack Helicopter Program manager kicked off a Cobra retirement program at Fort Drum, NY. The helicopters wound up at Fort Drum’s Foreign Military Sales shop, near Wheeler-Sack Army Airfield. Instead of focusing on dismantling them, the program looked for ways to give them a new lease on life. A number of countries still fly AH-1 Cobra attack helicopters, so some were gutted for parts, then used as military training targets. The US Marine Corps, for instance, still flies a different set of AH-1 models. They bought $75 million worth of those parts. Most of the Cobras, however, ended up going through a 5,500 man-hour, $1 million refurbishment, before being sold to military customers overseas, or to American federal and state forestery departments. Instead of costing money, the AH-1 fleet’s retirement has turned out to be a profitable process for the Army. Still, as the saying […]