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Is the attack helicopter dead?

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Re: Is the attack helicopter dead?

#191

Post by decafninja »

kayodelycaon wrote: post #117
decafninja wrote: post #60

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What’s to stop development of unmanned drone SSNs? Including ones that act as motherships for underwater drone swarms to boot.

Communication and detection underwater is a major issue. Radio is not effective at any range. Audio datalinks are short-ranged, low-bandwidth, unreliable, easily jammed, and give away your position. Active sonar gives away your position. High speed both gives away your position and makes passive sonar useless. Torpedoes are forced to use physical wires for remote guidance because nothing else works. It would be prett…

Most of what you listed would not be necessary for an autonomous SSN without a “man in the loop” no? Order it to perform a patrol or sit on the seabed, periodically sending up an antennae to listen for updates to orders. If it receives a kill order, it starts hunting. Preposition them at strategic locations if necessary.

To be fair, I’m (partly) playing devil’s advocate, but I don’t think the tech to create a fully or nearly fully autonomous attack sub is that far out. Key point is that you would have to be willing to give it more autonomy than the current crop of UAVs.

Re: Is the attack helicopter dead?

#192

Post by metaphor »

Dwedit wrote: post #35

I've been so overexposed to the meme about criticizing gender identity that I've forgotten that attack helicopters are actual military vehicles.

Wiki entry[1] and archived short story[2] for anyone else reading the parent's remark and wondering how does one coherently map attack helicopters to gender identity meme.

Wow, now I can't unsee it.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/I_Sexually_Identify_as_an_Atta...

[2] https://archive.ph/20200101232918/http://clarkesworldmagazin...

Re: Is the attack helicopter dead?

#193

Post by sgc »

SJC_Hacker wrote: post #62
torginus wrote: post #51

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think it's more complex than that. The US made Switchblade drones which cost tens of thousands of dollars were outperformed with lightly modified FPVs with grenades, which came in under a thousand.

We don't know if they underperfomed so much as weren't cost effective. If the switchblade costing $10k results in a kill 80% of the time, while the $1k drone is 30% of the time, you just get 3 times as many $1k drones, average about the same kill rate, and save 70% to boot. Or spend the same amount and get about 3x the kill rate.

Since they are ramping up to build switchblades in Ukraine [1], I would say they are a quiet success. They were just extremely overhyped before they got there.

[1] https://kyivindependent.com/us-company-aerovironment-plans-t...

Re: Is the attack helicopter dead?

#194

Post by epolanski »

jandrewrogers wrote: post #190
epolanski wrote: post #183

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You're out of loop, HIMARS hasn't been effective for quite some time, since the Russians figured how to remotely jam the GPS and make them miss. That's not to say they are useless as you need extensive coverage over a large front, but it's largely worthless right now. This is by the way why most NATO countries don't love the idea of sharing the latest weapons with Ukraine, they give opposition intelligence on how to…

FWIW, the US has been sending obsolete or intentionally degraded systems. There is a re-fit process if it comes from US stocks to remove sensitive tech or capabilities. It would be an error to assume that what happens in Ukraine represents the capabilities of US systems despite having the same name. This isn't unique to Ukraine, most US weapon exports are selectively degraded or have capabilities removed. Despite thi…

> It would be an error to assume that what happens in Ukraine represents the capabilities of US systems despite having the same name.

It's speculation, at best, to assume the opposite.

Of course we know that there are export versions, but those are given in general different labels, and we don't have any intel on the specific system version used in Ukraine.

Assuming that even non-export versions could not be jammed is thus just speculation.

Re: Is the attack helicopter dead?

#195

Post by sgc »

pclmulqdq wrote: post #173
OrigamiPastrami wrote: post #71

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Your analysis assumes collateral damage is irrelevant.

Russian military doctrine favors collateral damage. I think part of the US's love of precision weapons comes from the fact that they media will go nuts if the US kills non-targets. 20 civilians dying in Iraq to a helicopter that thought their camera was a gun was a national embarrassment. For Russia, 100 civilians dying in a mass artillery bombardment is a normal workday.

> For Russia, 100 civilians dying in a mass artillery bombardment is a normal workday.

More specifically, it is a success to them. They clearly use civilian casualty and the terror it brings as a tactic to dishearten their victims.

Re: Is the attack helicopter dead?

#196

Post by rjurney »

> There were about 11,846 U.S helicopters that served in the Vietnam War. The U.S records show 5,607 helicopter losses.

Are 310 helicopter losses in Ukraine that high? I don't think so. Russia has lost =~ 3K tanks. That's a 10:1 ratio for tank:helicopter, is that high?

Helicopters' role may change. They would be ideal drone operator platforms - they already have a weapons operator in a back seat. The right cannon / loadout could take out small drones. Collaborative Combat Aircraft (CCA) style wingmen would work with quadcopters for helicopters. They could expand the sensory capability to avoid surface to air threats.

Re: Is the attack helicopter dead?

#197

Post by sgc »

littlestymaar wrote: post #76
OrigamiPastrami wrote: post #71

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Your analysis assumes collateral damage is irrelevant.

Collateral damage is much less relevant in symmetric conflicts. Nobody is using either a Switchblade or an FPV in the middle of civilian areas in Ukraine right now.

Russia is using FPVs to kill civilians on their bicycles or buying fruit, and posting the videos on telegram to laugh about it. This happens every day, it is not a few isolated incidents. It is not boredom, but a chosen tactic.

Re: Is the attack helicopter dead?

#198

Post by wisty »

It's always worth remembering that a soldier who costs a million dollars to train can be killed by a 20 cent bullet. But soldiers still exist.

Everything in a war will involve losses that appear asymmetric if you consider losses in isolation. War is a horrible affair.

Helicopters won't disappear because they can be shot down, but if UAV, communications, plus artillery can replace them. Communication is the most likely weak link due to countermeasures.

All IMO of course.

Re: Is the attack helicopter dead?

#199

Post by nine_k »

wongarsu wrote: post #171
Retric wrote: post #19

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Near-peer conflicts have more meaningful targets which favors these kinds of expensive weapons platforms. A drone that can do meaningful damage to a factory 500+ miles from a front line is either an easy target or it starts to look a lot like a missile with all the associated costs from that.

Currently most air-defense systems heavily depend on rockets, so you can just send more of those cheap easy targets than the enemy air defense has loaded rockets. Of course everyone sees this happening in Russia right now and is adapting their next generation, if they weren't already doing so. But that will only shift the sweet-spot for saturation attacks, not eliminating them

The Israel's "Iron Dome" is supposed to include lasers, and they did use lasers to shoot down incoming rockets. In a stationary setting, like a factory or a bridge, lasers can be hard to overload, with their fast targeting, straight-line shooting, and the cost of a shot measured in single dollars. Small / cheap / slow drones with 1-2 kg payload would be an easy target.

Tanks / APCs / IMVs / other armored devices that go close to the front line seem like having much more of an existential crisis.

Re: Is the attack helicopter dead?

#200

Post by drawnwren »

jvanderbot wrote: post #178
Animats wrote: post #50

The US Army is cutting back in this area. The Future Attack Reconnaissance Aircraft, which was a small attack helicopter, has been cancelled.[1] If it flies low and slow over the enemy, it's going to be shot down. Better to send many drones and lose some of them. The concept of tactical air superiority is now questionable. The USAF used to boast that American troops have not had to fight under a hostile sky since 195…

Dumb question: Why are 12ga shotguns, possibly on small auto-targeting platforms, not a thing yet? Like a CWIS/CRAM but tiny and for close-in engagements?

The problem with shotguns is that you either have a small number of pellets (12ga) or a small amount of mass to do damage (bird shot). So with 12ga specifically, while it's more effective than a rifle round -- the pellets spread quickly enough that it's only a huge advantage when the drone is in the terminal phase. This is why in WW2, they would put timed fuses inside the AA shells so that they didn't have to hit the aircraft directly with the shell but the round didn't spread so far that it was useless.
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