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Is the attack helicopter dead?

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Re: Is the attack helicopter dead?

#251

Post by anonylizard »

karaterobot wrote: post #152
siliconc0w wrote: post #32

Whoever can most cost effectively put explosives on target wins. The future will be annihilation at a distance with cheap standoff weapons followed by swarms of cheap drones loitering over battlefields to clean up.

Due to the nature of their deployment (ad hoc, improvised, crowd-sourced) swarms of quads in Ukraine didn't have much of a counter. Nobody had thought enough about it yet. All the work had gone into developing really sophisticated, cheap drones for consumer use, and strapping a bomb on them was all it took to weaponize that consumer technology. Nobody had spent a similar amount of time developing an equally sophistic…

There were no counters to cavalry for like 1000 years. The only generalized countermeasure to cavalry was cavalry of your own. This led to the dramatic territorial and genetic expansion of nomadic peoples, such as the Arabs and Turks.

There are specific 'counters' like pikes, fortifications etc, but they only trade effectively against head on charges. Cavalry still held the advantage of tactical mobility, which meant they dominated reconnaissance, can pursue and annihilate defeated enemies, can retreat gracefully etc.

There may be no counters to drones except for more drones. Or the counter may have to be highly strategical, such as devastating hack-based attacks that may involve use of advanced and dangerous AIs (Cyberpunk Blackwall...).

Artilleries also had no counter for like 50 years. And completely reshaped military doctrine and strategy, made WW1 into a slog etc. WWII found a way to 'beat' artillery by armored thrusts to get behind them, but that is not easily achievable.

Re: Is the attack helicopter dead?

#252

Post by bee_rider »

HKH2 wrote: post #240
bee_rider wrote: post #151

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Ukraine was not considered to be a near peer to Russia before the war. It seems likely that they thought they’d have a quick win. Possibly, whatever it is they are after, it isn’t worth the pariah status using nuclear weapons would produce. (Or maybe they still think they can get it done conventionally).

America lost the Vietnam war. Do you think Vietnam is America's near peer? Also, if you're not sure what they're after: Russia has been systematically driving Ukraine forces out of the Donbas because the Donbas has been shelled indiscriminately by Ukrainian forces since 2014. You can argue there's more to it than that, but that's their perspective.

> America lost the Vietnam war. Do you think Vietnam is America's near peer?

I was responding to somebody who said Ukraine was Russian’s near-peer. I didn’t say they should be considered peers now, just that they certainly weren’t when the choice was made to go to war.

The Vietnam War was like 50 years ago. Who cares, sure, I don’t have any investment in whether or not the US and Vietnam were peers decades before I was born. Vietnam certainly has an impressive record.

> Also, if you're not sure what they're after: Russia has been systematically driving Ukraine forces out of the Donbas because the Donbas has been shelled indiscriminately by Ukrainian forces since 2014. You can argue there's more to it than that, but that's their perspective.

They also seem to be trying to get entrenched in Crimea, and IIRC brought up the idea of some promise that Ukraine wouldn’t ever going NATO, although don’t remember if that was a serious proposal or what.

Re: Is the attack helicopter dead?

#253

Post by kspacewalk2 »

cjbgkagh wrote: post #146
marginalia_nu wrote: post #136

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Worth noting that Russia has nuclear weapons, yet elects not to use them against their near peer Ukraine.

The old ‘Russia will not use nukes because they have not used nukes’ routine so people can feel safer about poking the bear. There is always a first time and I’m very thankful that it hasn’t happed yet. To me a near peer implies that either side has a good chance of losing the war. It’s my opinion that Russia has not yet been at a real risk of losing this war and thus has not yet had a need to use nuclear weapons. I’…

Both the US and the USSR lost major wars during the Cold War without resorting to nuking their opponent when they felt they were "at a real risk of losing a war". In Vietnam and Korea, the Soviet involvement was considerably more than the current Western involvement in countering the Ukraine invasion. Soviet pilots on Soviet planes killed Americans in American planes. Soviet operators of Soviet-made SAM sites shut down American planes as well.

The reality is that nuclear weapons are a deterrent against existential threats, and all else is a bluff. So it's not a risk of losing this war that will push Russia to commit such murder-suicide, but an existential threat to its own survival as a nation.

Re: Is the attack helicopter dead?

#254

Post by throwup238 »

We’re still in the very early stage of drone development for warfare and Ukraine is using a lot of civilian gear. Now the armed forces of the world are plowing their funding into R&D I expect them to develop quickly. For example, aluminum air batteries are perfect for this use case but havent been developed because until now single use batteries haven’t seen any demand. Those will at least double or triple the range for armed drones. High end solar panels can allow them to sit and wait for a trigger to attack.

Combine that with the tech behind the Redbull F1 camera drone [1] that can fly at 200mph and drones become much deadlier to attack helicopters. Slap a rocket motor on it for final approach, even a sub-M civilian model rocket motor, and it’s over. Imagine the drone just sitting there listening for a helicopter to get close enough - humans wouldn’t even need to be involved except to place it strategically.

[1] https://youtu.be/NDUcoNlgPrk

Re: Is the attack helicopter dead?

#255

Post by [deleted] »

Sephr wrote: post #234
MarkMarine wrote: post #218

In the war I fought in, there was a markedly different approach to combat air ops between even just the different service branches. The Army tended to use the Apache like it was a flying tank, hovering and delivering ordinance; the Marines (which is where I fought) flew as low and as quickly as possible even while sending rounds and hellfire missiles downrange. The marines were not losing aircraft in anywhere close t…

I imagine that moderately sized autonomous VTOL jets will eventually become cheap enough to completely displace attack helicopters for most use cases.

[deleted]

Re: Is the attack helicopter dead?

#256

Post by ethbr1 »

bluGill wrote: post #206
shiroiushi wrote: post #162

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

One reason airplanes are more versatile is because they're modular.

You can swap a carrier air wing to 2 years newer planes.

You can't swap a battleship to 2 years newer tech.

Re: Is the attack helicopter dead?

#257

Post by aguaviva »

epolanski wrote: post #183
nl wrote: post #110

People in this discussion are concentrating on the drones (which are a big factor) but the massively effective HIMARS and ATACMS is worth noting too. Precision guided artillery has been a game-changer in Ukraine.

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…

The "HIMARS is ineffective" soundbite seems to rest on a single quote from an unnamed Ukrainian official. Which we have no reason to doubt, but it doesn't specify what they meant it to be ineffective at (for example, what kinds of targets and with which type of munitions).

Meanwhile, in the very same WaPo article whence that quote derives, just an inch or two down, we have the statement "Kyiv still considers HIMARS to be effective". And in Wikipedia we have attestations of its continued use and effect, post-dating the popular "HIMARS is ineffective" quote:

  HIMARS has also been used to strike Russian troop concentrations in hard cover, with a HIMARS strike on a Russian base in Makiivka killing 89 Russian soldiers on the admission of the Russian government, although BBC News Russian could confirm at least 139 dead Russian soldiers [July 2024]

  On 9 August 2024, HIMARS destroyed a convoy of Russian troops in the Kursk Oblast of Russia in what Russian milbloggers described as one of the bloodiest attacks of the entire war.
So it would seem "HIMARS has become less effective" would be a more suitable description of the current situation.

Re: Is the attack helicopter dead?

#258

Post by ethbr1 »

nostrademons wrote: post #134
jandrewrogers wrote: post #120

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It is not just production cost, the average latency between target detection and target destruction has a large impact on battlefield dynamics. More precise weapons can destroy most of the capability of less precise weapons before they are ever used. Additionally, precision weapons typically have a much smaller logistical footprint, and logistics can make or break military campaigns. Much of the US focus on precision…

The reason drones are kicking butt right now is because you get both precision and quantity. Advances in electronics, software, communication links, and sensor technology mean that you can make guidance systems as a hobbyist that would be a million dollar missile from a specialized defense contractor just 15 years ago. You lose range, but urbanized warfare of the 21st century seems to be a very different battlefield…

Also small drones, which is to say smart grenades, are a counter to trench warfare.

Re: Is the attack helicopter dead?

#259

Post by closewith »

lumost wrote: post #237
sidewndr46 wrote: post #92

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I live in the US. A near-peer conflict involves a nuclear exchange. The world will change in ways forever that none of us can ever foresee at that point.

This assumes that any party to a conflict chooses to use their nuclear arsenal. In WW2, both sides had chemical weapons but chose not to use them due to concerns of reciprocal strikes coupled with a perceived limited utility. We could be entering a world where there is always a military alternative to nuclear weapons, leaving nukes in a state where their only utility is as a deterrent against another nuclear power us…

Or more importantly, refrained from use of chemical weapons against those who could retaliate in kind. Japan used chemical and biological weapons in China.

Re: Is the attack helicopter dead?

#260

Post by nostrademons »

richardw wrote: post #245
Sephr wrote: post #234

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I imagine that moderately sized autonomous VTOL jets will eventually become cheap enough to completely displace attack helicopters for most use cases.

I’d think a variation (vary size, shape to suit task) of this with weapons would do well, since it’ll already be replacing the black hawk. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bell_V-280_Valor

It's interesting to look at the design of FPV racing drones today:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9pEqyr_uT-k

When they fly, they basically turn horizontal, relying on body lift + vectored thrust. They're small enough, with high enough power/weight ratios, that that's enough. Apparently there's no need for a tilt-rotor, because the whole airplane becomes a tilt-rotor.

Similar principal as cruise missiles, which have short stubby wings to augment body lift + vectored thrust. When the airframe gets light enough, you don't need much in the way of wings.

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