WASHINGTON, March 23 (UPI) -- The U.S. Army has lost 130 helicopters in Iraq and Afghanistan and is only now getting replacements, a top official said Friday.
"I'm down a combat aviation brigades worth of helicopters," said Brig. Gen. Stephen D. Mundt, director of Army aviation told reporters.
About a third of the helicopters were shot down in direct contact with enemy forces in both conflicts. The others crashed because of low visibility, pilot error or catastrophic failure of a part. None crashed because of a maintenance problem, he said.
The slow pace of replacement is less a problem of money than it is industrial capacity. It takes two years for a helicopter to be built from the time it is ordered, Mundt said. While the military is on war footing, the nation's industrial base and economy is not, he said.
The general said the most effective insurgent method of shooting down helicopters in Iraq was with large caliber machine guns mounted on the backs of trucks. However, insurgents and U.S. forces both adapted their tactics change in response to each other, he said.
In recent weeks, "a number of those weapons were taken out by U.S. and Iraqi forces," Mundt said. He said that the numbers of U.S. helicopters shot down had dropped following those successes.
