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Is the attack helicopter dead?

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Re: Is the attack helicopter dead?

#201

Post by dsv3099i »

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?

Apparently they are a thing. https://www.forbes.com/sites/davidhambling/2024/05/09/shotgu...

If attack drones can move like racing drones, that’s going to be a hard shot to pull off though

Re: Is the attack helicopter dead?

#202

Post by nradov »

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

That only works in areas like Europe and the Middle East where targets are relatively close. For drones to be relevant in the Pacific fight they'll have to be much larger, faster, and smarter; and thus more expensive.

Re: Is the attack helicopter dead?

#203

Post by ceejayoz »

nostrademons wrote: post #188
ceejayoz wrote: post #175

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Without the launch codes they still had highly enriched weapons grade nuclear material. That’s the tough part. Making it go bang we figured out in the 1940s. We also saw with DVD encryption that physical access to the device makes it tough to fully protect. Nuclear codes are protected significantly by “no one gets to tinker with the device without rapid lead poisoning”.

Enriching uranium is within the capability of a nation-state the size of Ukraine. If Iran and North Korea can do it, Ukraine certainly can. Hell, even today, in the midst of a war, they have 8 operational reactors at 3 power plants, plus 2 under construction, one damaged and recently repaired, 6 at the Zaporizhzhia power plant in contested territory, and 4 in the decommissioned Chernobyl plant. Physical access to a n…

> Enriching uranium is within the capability of a nation-state the size of Ukraine.

Sure. But standing up a program makes you an international pariah. “We’re keeping this” would have had a bit less uproar.

> Physical access to a nuke does not let you disable the PAL. They are constructed so that they are embedded within the device, and cannot be disabled or altered without deconstructing significant parts of the warhead.

People say this sort of thing, but it comes out that the US arsenal was set to 00000000 in fear that they couldn’t be used. I have… severe doubts on the uncrackable nature of Soviet nuclear cryptography.

Re: Is the attack helicopter dead?

#204

Post by nradov »

torginus wrote: post #51
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.

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.

FPV drones can only work at short ranges (line of sight) or in permissive EW environments. So, not as relevant to a future conflict with China.

Re: Is the attack helicopter dead?

#205

Post by vFunct »

navbaker wrote: post #154
OliveMate wrote: post #105

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>All weapon systems that consist of an expensive vehicle and an expensive-to-train crew are being re-evaluated against drones right now. Worth mentioning that this already happened to an attack helicopter 20 years ago! The Comanche[0] was a revolutionary recon/attack helicopter with some mental stealth engineering behind it - everything from limiting sound profile via blade design & fenestron, a radar presence a frac…

I spent tons of hours as a kid playing Comanche on our old 486!

My game of choice was Gunship on the Commodore 64, the AH-64 Apache attack helicopter simulator from Microprose. Spent YEARS playing that.

Best part was the instruction manual that came with it that was basically a guide of all the military equipment of the Soviet Union that you could target in the game.

Re: Is the attack helicopter dead?

#206

Post by bluGill »

shiroiushi wrote: post #162
OliveMate wrote: post #105

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>All weapon systems that consist of an expensive vehicle and an expensive-to-train crew are being re-evaluated against drones right now. Worth mentioning that this already happened to an attack helicopter 20 years ago! The Comanche[0] was a revolutionary recon/attack helicopter with some mental stealth engineering behind it - everything from limiting sound profile via blade design & fenestron, a radar presence a frac…

Yeah, that was an amazing helicopter, and it's really too bad it was cut, but as you say, it just didn't make economic sense any more when UAVs were invented. I guess it's something like the Japanese battleship Yamato, with the largest guns ever installed on a warship. It was amazing, but easily sunk by airplanes flown from aircraft carriers, so it was already obsolete when it was launched.

aircraft carriers are even more vulnerable. battleships are obsolete not because they are easy to sink but because airplanes are more versitle for most purposes. When doing a shore assult a battleship is more useful than airplanes but that is not enough to be worth the cost of running them.

Re: Is the attack helicopter dead?

#207

Post by taneq »

paulddraper wrote: post #6

I'm surprise the article didn't mention the US military history. The US Army has not had a evolution of its attack helicopter since the 1970s. I remember because one of my favorite childhood games was Comanche 3. [1] Control a helicopter, not crash, not get shot down, neutralize enemies, and achieve mission objectives -- it was cutting-edge for 1997. The Comanche program was scrapped after more than a decade of devel…

That voxel heightfield engine was amazing for its time.

Re: Is the attack helicopter dead?

#208

Post by bluGill »

sgc wrote: post #195
pclmulqdq wrote: post #173

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

they use it to hearten the folks back home. Civillian deaths mostly make civillians want to support the war and so is not a good idea. In turn this is why the us doesn't

Re: Is the attack helicopter dead?

#209

Post by xbar »

vFunct wrote: post #205
navbaker wrote: post #154

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I spent tons of hours as a kid playing Comanche on our old 486!

My game of choice was Gunship on the Commodore 64, the AH-64 Apache attack helicopter simulator from Microprose. Spent YEARS playing that. Best part was the instruction manual that came with it that was basically a guide of all the military equipment of the Soviet Union that you could target in the game.

Thank you for mentioning it. It was a revelation.

Re: Is the attack helicopter dead?

#210

Post by m463 »

sneed_chucker wrote: post #5

Part of a broader pattern in military technology right now. All weapon systems that consist of an expensive vehicle and an expensive-to-train crew are being re-evaluated against drones right now. If you're fighting a highly asymmetric conflict where your enemies can barely touch your expensive toys then it's less of a concern. If you're fighting near-peer it's a different story.

I wonder if the end result will ubiquitous grey goo, excluding humans from living on contested territory.
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