Joint Attack Helicopter Instrumented Evaluation
The Ansbach Tests suggested this could be a force of a few hundred attack helicopters, which could be purchased and deployed for a fraction of the cost of an equivalent tank fleet.
In the years following the tests, the Army began converting their Cobras to the eight-TOW AH-1S model and changing their role to be primarily anti-tank vehicles.
In April 1962, Robert McNamara sent a directive to the Army to broaden its thinking about air operations and try to avoid inventing yet-another logistics vehicle.
The tests also demonstrated that the helicopters were much less useful against tanks in defensive positions with their engines turned off, making them very difficult to spot from the air.
Given the WTO's 3-to-1 superiority in tanks, NATO would lose a ground war with or without the use of tactical nuclear weapons, and that only the "macabre option" of a strategic exchange might save it.
[2] Given increasing fiscal restraint, the Army simply could not purchase enough tanks to offset this imbalance,[2] and the attack helicopter appeared to be an alternative that was "a relatively cheap, flexible and highly potent weapons system".
[8] Between February and April 1971, the US and South Vietnamese Army of the Republic of Vietnam (ARVN) carried out Operation Lam Son 719, the invasion of Laos, in an effort to disrupt the Ho Chi Minh Trail.
[11] After shakedown and crew training, they entered combat on 4 May and on their first mission killed four M41 Walker Bulldog tanks, a 2.5 ton truck, and a 105 mm howitzer, all US-supplied equipment that had been captured from ARVN earlier in the campaign.
[10] In 1969, Pierre Trudeau's Cabinet of Canada called into question the Canadian Army's force structure in Europe, which was an expensive contingent to maintain given its low expected lifetime in combat.
[13] Considering the options, General Jean Victor Allard proposed a light force focused on anti-tank combat that could be rapidly deployed across Germany in order to stop WTO armored breakouts.
The force was equipped mainly with M113s for mobility and armed with TOW and M47 Dragon missiles, as well as six Cobras and a number of to-be-determined Direct Fire Support Vehicles.
[14] This led the Army to consider becoming a completely airmobile force, adding more attack helicopters to the mix, and using the hunter/killer structure developed in Vietnam.
The United States Army Europe began forming plans for extensive tests of helicopter combat for early 1972, with German and Canadian participation.
The WTO forces would be made up from Bundeswehr Leopard tanks and US M163 VADS playing the part of the ZSU-23-4 Shilka, which had no direct counterpart in NATO.
It was not clear this was suitable in an armor-heavy battle expected in Europe, it might be the case that there were so many targets that sending out aircraft with no weapons would reduce the total force effectiveness when those pilots could be in additional Cobras instead.
[21] The takeaway results of the tests were twofold: The inclusion of scout helicopters in the antiarmor team is essential and noticeably enhances the survivability of the missile firing aircraft.
This was bolstered by the events in the Yom Kippur War of 1973, where the Israel Defense Forces (IDF) "utterly defeated combined armies equal in strength to NATO Europe" and suggested that it was "obvious that armor is battlefield-decisive so long as it is used wisely.
"[24] Looking to gain further clarity as the debate about the Ansbach results, the US Army commissioned BDM International, now part of Northrop Grumman, to prepare a follow-up theoretical study.
The -1S retained the Cobra's direct-fire capabilities with rockets and guns, but shifted its primary mission to anti-tank, carrying eight TOW missiles.
An additional factor in the Canadian decision was the advocacy of Major Norman Shackleton, who wrote a series of influential and widely quoted pro-tank articles throughout this period.
