Flew Apaches for 10 years. Return to Target (RTT) is not an approved maneuver. Stealth using terrain is the preferred technique. What makes the aircraft different from others is its stand off capability.
10 years? What'd get, like 100 hours?
I kid, I kid. Attack guys never got the time when I was there.
I was an RL3 WOJG in the F model when the Apache was fielded. True story:
DES came to town to brief on the Apache. Bottom line was that you would need some kind of high time as a Cobra IP to get into the Q course. Had to be a gun flying god is how one of them put it. Us newbies left the briefing assuming we were out of contention with those kind of standards.
Flash forward 8 months or so. Rucker has a team at our operation and every pilot, gun, scout or huey, was required to have his head measured (Not examined even though that would have probably been a good idea). So we all trot over to ops where we sat in a chair and had an honest to god flight surgeon take a tape measure and record the diameter of our brain buckets.
It turned out that there was an oversupply of a helmet size or maybe a shortage of a helmet size or some such thing at Rucker and as such, they were going to fill the course with guys whose head would fit the helmets they had in stock! We lost not a single gun guy, but three 58 pilots and the HQ huey pilot. As I had the "largest head in the battalion", I was once again not fit for the seat!
I'm sure things have changed over the last 20-25 years (for example the 64 OR rate might now be acceptable) but I will never forget this example of Army Life as I came to know it. Just can't make this stuff up.
By the way, I flew the Cobra for 8 years and witnessed many an RTT. The Vietnam era guys valued the manuever based on their experience. But as we were equipped and trained to fight armor, the move just didn't have any real value. And targeting systems such as ours made the thing obsolete. Stand off is your friend. The Hellfire was a godsend (TOF on a TOW compared to a tank mainround?). Drones are even better.