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Is the attack helicopter dead?

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Re: Is the attack helicopter dead?

#261

Post by anonylizard »

decafninja wrote: post #191
kayodelycaon wrote: post #117

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 o…

How small are the autonomous attack subs? GPUs powerful enough to power autonomous decision making attack subs are going to consume a lot of energy, a lot more than what a car sized system powered by batteries can provide.

As such, only nuclear AI subs may be viable, since that gives the strategic advantage of a submarine that doesn't need to resurface for like years. But putting nuclear reactors in an autonomous AI system sounds like a terrible idea.

Human societies have spent millenia developing the infrastructure to produce reliable/trustworthy soldiers. AI is not nearly at that level in terms of trustworthiness/fault tolerance, even if they will quickly be as smart as soliders.

Re: Is the attack helicopter dead?

#262

Post by kspacewalk2 »

Daz1 wrote: post #179
jojobas wrote: post #168

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It seems like you also need to re-evaluate against pretty much suicide infantry.

Not related to the 'meat wave' myth I hope

Myth? It's a well-documented Russian tactic. They basically have a two-tier military at this point: competent professionals, and untrained expendable cannon fodder. Professionals are used to operate weaponry that's more sophisticated than your basic AK, machine gun and 70s-era armour. They are valuable because of their training and (at this point) a lot of experience. The second tier is used to conduct the kind of attritional warfare that requires far less training of individual soldiers or smaller-size units, and results in very high casualties. This type of offensive operation makes slow progress, the only real downside being the sky-high casualties, so recruitment and training adapted - take everyone regardless of health and age, and give them just enough training to accomplish something before dying. It's very effective if you don't care about the lives of these soldiers. The professional tier goes in to exploit a breach, mans the self-propelled artillery, flies the drones, etc.

Re: Is the attack helicopter dead?

#263

Post by jandrewrogers »

Teever wrote: post #215
CuriousCosmic wrote: post #143

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Idk how they wouldn't compete in terms of financials. They are in effect the specced-down mass production version of the F-22 and are comparable in terms of cost relative to similar fifth generation fighters (and even comparable to many fourth generation fights) but go toe to toe with or outperform the competition. This stacks the deck such that the F-35 will be a peer to or superior to any "opposition" aircraft or a…

Why can't small, cheap drones do to the modern fighters what they're doing to modern tanks?

Truly modern fighters have advanced defenses across the EM spectrum. Hardening a drone against those defenses makes them no longer “small” and “cheap”. Also, drones typically have much lower speed than a modern fighter. An air-to-air missile is essentially a single-use drone where a key property is that it is much faster than the fighter, but this makes it expensive.

Re: Is the attack helicopter dead?

#264

Post by aguaviva »

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.

That's their claimed perspective. Unfortunately Russia's current regime tends to lie a lot, and there's no reason to take anything it says at face value. "Indiscriminate shelling of the Donbas (by Ukrainian forces)" is one of its many talking points that lots of people like to repeat, but which no one seems to be able to substantiate. Meanwhile reports of shelling by Russian forces are quite ample.

In any case: No, that's not why they went into the Donbas, or why they're trying to hold onto it.

Re: Is the attack helicopter dead?

#265

Post by JohnBooty »

Teever wrote: post #215
CuriousCosmic wrote: post #143

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Idk how they wouldn't compete in terms of financials. They are in effect the specced-down mass production version of the F-22 and are comparable in terms of cost relative to similar fifth generation fighters (and even comparable to many fourth generation fights) but go toe to toe with or outperform the competition. This stacks the deck such that the F-35 will be a peer to or superior to any "opposition" aircraft or a…

Why can't small, cheap drones do to the modern fighters what they're doing to modern tanks?

Are you talking about cheap drones replacing modern fighters, or cheap drones shooting down modern fighters?

They will absolutely replace modern fighters to a degree and already have to an extent, like we've seen in Ukraine with drones serving as close infantry support etc. instead of manned aircraft.

There are still some things "cheap" drones won't be able to do.

Specifically, if you want to carry big bombs and missiles, you need a large aircraft even if it's unmanned. The drone is also presumably going to need to be able to survive enemy air defenses to some extent. So you wind up with a big expensive drone like the MQ-9 Reaper ($30mil plus, lol) that is approaching the size and complexity of a manned fighter.

Also, and I'm not sure if this is what you meant, but "small, cheap drones" are not likely to be shooting down modern fighters in the way that small cheap drones are currently killing tanks directly.

If you want an aircraft that can fly at mach 1.6+ and shoot missiles at other things (some of them stealthy) traveling at mach 1.6+, you are going to wind up with something fairly close to the size/cost/complexity of an F-35 even if you don't have a human being sitting inside.

Re: Is the attack helicopter dead?

#266

Post by ahmeneeroe-v2 »

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…

Everyone disagreeing with you is only assuming improvements to drones and not the counter-drones (or the counter-counters you mention).

Re: Is the attack helicopter dead?

#267

Post by malfist »

epolanski wrote: post #177
Spooky23 wrote: post #164

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Given the decay of Russia and their forces, it’s questionable whether they would work.

No I don't think it is. They have detonated more than 800 nukes in their history, ballistic ones from subs since 60 years ago, and have almost 2k warheads deployed. Don't confuse the fact that they tend to start and conduct wars poorly, until cornered, with complete ineptitude.

Sure, they might be inept now, but wait until they're desperate!

Re: Is the attack helicopter dead?

#268

Post by ruthmarx »

indymike wrote: post #236
paganel wrote: post #61

A BS article if I ever saw one. Take for example this: > Moreover, the threat is not the organic air defences of battlegroups or a Soviet Motor-Rifle Regiment or Brigade, but dispersed and well-hidden infantry and special forces units equipped with modern MANPADS missile systems. Furthermore, because the enemy forces are operating over the defenders’ own ground, the defence can be cued and alerted to approaching heli…

> These Anglo guys still live in the 1980s, What even is an "Anglo" guy? I don't think there's a culture left on the planet that identifies as that.

Anglosphere military I would guess. Somewhat of a shared culture unique to those veterans.

Re: Is the attack helicopter dead?

#269

Post by andrewflnr »

JohnBooty wrote: post #221
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.

A near-peer conflict involves a nuclear exchange Respectfully, I think you're misunderstanding the term. The term is meant to represent the level of resources and weapons each combatant is bringing to the theater of conflict. It does not mean that the two sides are necessarily using the most destructive possible weapons in their arsenals. A hypothetical US/China armed conflict over Taiwan (god forbid) would be "near-…

> Which is a very valid concern. If that's your point, I apologize.

It's a valid point to argue, but it does need to be argued, not assumed.

Re: Is the attack helicopter dead?

#270

Post by ahmeneeroe-v2 »

throwup238 wrote: post #254

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…

>Imagine the drone just sitting there listening for a helicopter to get close enough

Imagine a drone which outputs the signature of an attack helicopter to draw out that loitering drone and then destroy it, leaving the space open for an actual attack helicopter to swoop in and do its business.

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