The Commanche suffered cancellation due to a variety of
reasons.
Basically, the Commanche helicopter was conceived as an Armed
Scout. It's main purpose was to conduct reece into hostile
territory and pick off targets of opportunity. It was never meant
to be an Attack helicopter to replace the Apache. However, midway
through the programme, for political and other non-military
reasons, designers were asked to change concept from an Armed Scout
to an Attack Helicopter. This led to a whole lot of problems and
eventually when they realised it would be impossible, they tried to
change concept again back to Armed Scout... in the end, due to
excessive costs incurred, the programme was cancelled.
The main reason they couldn't change the Commanche's mission was
simple and it brings us back to why an all stealth force is quite
unrealistic at the moment. To be completely stealthy, all payload
has to be carried internally, inside the aircraft. This limits the
amount of weaponry you can carry. For the Commanche to be
successful as an Attack heli, it had to be able to cram all the
stuff on the Apache's wings inside it's body. This was quite
impractical. So, the Apache will thus remain for decades to
come.
The other less complicated reason why the Commanche programme was
cancelled was due to experience gained during, the peacekeeping
mission to Somalia (rem Black Hawk Down?) and the wars in
Afghanistan & Iraq. In these conflicts, helis were shot down
using small arms, RPGs and man-portable SAMs. Basically, stealth is
useless when the weapons your enemy is using are guided visually
instead of by RADAR...
