Indeed.



Looks like the Navy got it right at least.

I dont understand the concept behind it with the blackhawk. Its already a big bird, and not the most agile.
I can see rockets on a uh1 be a use they are so much lighter and point able.
Not to mention who the hell needs anything when you have a few AH64 longbows circling above like vultures.

This makes my head hurt.  
A blackhawk is just a few feet larger in each dimension than a huey and is vastly more maneuverable and has much better handling qualities.  They're not even remotely comparable in terms of handling qualities.
A huey/cobra has an underslung rotor(except for the USMC Y/Z) and is vastly inferior in terms of pitch controllability(ie. what you need for accurately delivering ordnance during diving fire). There's a reason hueys and cobras were replaced by blackhawks and apaches starting in 1979.  ie. over 35 years ago. There's also a reason no foreign designs (ie. not a single one) use an underslung rotor.  

The reasons the USMC still use them have been clearly stated in this thread.  Posts like yours are 100% inaccurate and only serve to help make the internet a wasteland full of disinformation.

Yeah, USAF seems to like internal aux tanks.

From what it seems to me, the USMC operates the AH-1/UH-1 like the Army used to operate the UH-1/OH-6/OH-58/OH-13/AH-1 pink and purple teams in Vietnam.

No, not really at all....at least, I'm think of the manner where the OH type would go low and look for someone that the UH/AH could shoot at.  We operate as sections, and conduct CAS just the same whether or not we are a mixed or pure section (minus some attack setup stuff/sensor usage).  In the end, we work together using supportive tactics, and crew chiefs in the UH allow extra SA for the section when working with guys on the deck and when conducting attacks.   With a mixed section, you can't bring as much ass to the fight, but extra sets of eyes can be really helpful sometimes.





 

SILLY JARHEAD-SKIDS ARE FOR KIDS!!!!!!

At one time the Marines WERE going to get Blackhawks.....I think it was the late 90's ?? Anyways they were going to call them KNIGHTHAWKS if I remember the articles I read at the time. But the effort to have commonality with the upgraded Cobra won out. Hind sight being forsight I also think the cost savings wasn't as great as they hoped with all the money that had to be spent on the effort and the commonality not as much as hoped for. As a former Army Blackhawk crew chief/doorgunner I was jealous though, of the Marines being able to mount a wide variety of weapons on their Hueys. Having an M60D (yeah-I'm that old) was just plain ridiculous. I had an ESSS bird with two 230 gallon fuel tanks on the outer mounts and it was a PAIN to try to manuever the '60 with that thing out there. Plus the tanks had a habit of inducing fore/aft oscillations that resulted in cracks right where the ESSS mounts to the airframe. The ESSS were originally designed to be stockpiled on the east coast CONUS and if the ballon went up and the Soviets crossed the Gap, the Army was supposed to mount the ESSS with tanks and mass deploy Blackhawks and Apaches over to Europe!!! Anyways the Robinson tanks that mount inside the aft wall or the high "X-wing" single mount is the way to go-less airframe stress. The Huey iIS way easier to mount a door gunners weapon because of the gunners "well" as opposed to the restrictive - "knee-busting" area the Blackhawk gunners have. I think the way the Marines arm their Hueys, the commonality with the Cobra, and how they employ them makes the Huey a better choice. Now if I was getting shot at as a door gunner though I would take a Blackhawk-composite armor up the sides and underneath is a much better place to be than an the wide open like the Huey gunners are.

Thank you for clarifying that.

the UH-60A birds in the first few years 1979 and on did not have the ESSS mounting system.
I know the 1979 models we had at Lewis did not have the mounts and the 1983 models we had at Humpreys in ROK did have them,

Marines will stick with the Cobra/Huey Team because Infantry Marines want it that way.

Also because it would take more than a decade to get a training pipeline set up that would prepare pilots for war.