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Is the attack helicopter dead?

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Re: Is the attack helicopter dead?

#291

Post by throwup238 »

ahmeneeroe-v2 wrote: post #270
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.

How? A helicopter is on the order of 75-80 decibels at 1000 feet. That’s the equivalent of a giant flying stadium speaker consuming kilowatts of power, that has to catch a much smaller 200mph drone while being just as cheap.

The attack drone can just move and triangulate the sound, eliminating anything that’s trying to mimic a helicopter without outputting enough decibels.

Re: Is the attack helicopter dead?

#292

Post by Teever »

JohnBooty wrote: post #275
jandrewrogers wrote: post #263

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

An air-to-air missile is essentially a single-use drone Yeah. And barring some big advance, an air-to-air missile can't be any smaller than it is currently. It needs to carry enough explosive to damage the target aircraft, and it needs enough fuel to travel at supersonic speeds for a long enough distance to actually intercept the target.

But can it be cheaper?

That's the lesson from drones vs tanks.

Re: Is the attack helicopter dead?

#293

Post by Teever »

HeWhoLurksLate wrote: post #238
Teever wrote: post #213

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm interested to know more about this. Can you provide more details?

TSMC is building significant, cutting-edge fab capacity in the US at present

Is it cost effective or logistically scalable to have the kinds of ICs that are used in current cheap FPV drones to be made on the latest fabs?

Re: Is the attack helicopter dead?

#294

Post by Teever »

rgmerk wrote: post #249
Teever wrote: post #215

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

Because small, cheap drones can’t fly at supersonic speeds at long enough range to matter. Drones that can do that are called “anti-aircraft missiles”.

What are the speeds and the distances required to take down a jet like an F-35?

Are you absolutely certain that there's no other way to take down modern fighter aircraft?

Like isn't that the lesson from the Ukraine war w.r.t. tanks? That there are cheaper, more effective tools out there to take out state of the art equipment.

Re: Is the attack helicopter dead?

#295

Post by kayodelycaon »

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…

It could be done. We have autonomous underwater drones that can map the seafloor.

There are a lot of problems.

Technically, you need the resources of a nation-state to make stealthy ones that can operate at depth. There are no off the shelf systems you can strap together. Salt water and pressure destroys things very quickly. It wouldn’t take long for non-moving propellers to get fouled with debris. If you want a mine that launches a torpedo, I think that already exists. If you don’t need to operate at depth, a surface drone would be sufficient. If you’re attacking ships, aerial drones or missiles are better.

If you’re not a nation-state, diesel-electric submarines have been around for more than a century. They are easier to build and will be for a long time.

Even once you have drones, what are they attacking? The US has less than a hundred submarines.

In my opinion, this is an advanced technology weapon as part of a combined arms strategy. Basically a more sophisticated torpedo.

Re: Is the attack helicopter dead?

#296

Post by ericmay »

anonylizard wrote: post #228
wisty wrote: post #198

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 likel…

Soldiers exist, but expensive western soldiers are basically a different species compared to the cheap militia of the third world. All the strategic decisions of western militaries is based on the sheer expensiveness of their foot soldiers, which means reluctance to fight ground wars, extreme aversion to casualties etc. It also meant advanced militaries generally shrunk massively in terms of soldier count, ending con…

I’d say western militaries will avoid extreme casualties if they can, but read a bit about the Second Battle of Faluja - the U.S. for example has no problem sending troops into hardcore combat.

In fact, I would argue that the U.S., U.K., Israel, and now Ukraine and Russia are the only countries today that have demonstrated the capability to engage in extremely fierce fighting.

We’ve also become a lot better at keeping troops alive, which I wouldn’t mistake for a reluctance to engage in heavy fighting.

It’s important to remember, and Russia in particular has learned this lesson again most recently, that you need to exercise your military to work out cobwebs and operational problems, and while you can conduct training exercises, nothing resembles the experience from fighting a war. The number of countries with this institutional knowledge and experience continues to dwindle.

Re: Is the attack helicopter dead?

#297

Post by JumpCrisscross »

metaphor wrote: post #192
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...

I did not know it was based on a short story!

Re: Is the attack helicopter dead?

#298

Post by ahmeneeroe-v2 »

throwup238 wrote: post #291
ahmeneeroe-v2 wrote: post #270

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>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.

How? A helicopter is on the order of 75-80 decibels at 1000 feet. That’s the equivalent of a giant flying stadium speaker consuming kilowatts of power, that has to catch a much smaller 200mph drone while being just as cheap. The attack drone can just move and triangulate the sound, eliminating anything that’s trying to mimic a helicopter without outputting enough decibels.

Use your imagination. The counter-drone doesn't have to output the exact same energy profile as an attack helicopter, just close enough to trigger the anti-helo-drone's activation.

Examples: the counter-drone outputs only a specific frequency (the anti-helo drone isn't running a whole sound analysis, just a narrow range). It outputs that at much lower decibels (the anti-helo-drone just thinks the helo is farther away). It outputs that sound in bursts and directionally (the anti-helo-drone is only listening in a specific place).

Once found, the counter-drone dispatches a kill drone which can match the anti-helo drone's speed.

Sure all of these "hacks" will be countered by future versions of the anti-helo-drones, but that's kinda my whole point.

Re: Is the attack helicopter dead?

#299

Post by zmgsabst »

jandrewrogers wrote: post #120
SJC_Hacker wrote: post #62

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

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…

> Additionally, precision weapons typically have a much smaller logistical footprint, and logistics can make or break military campaigns.

Only if you exclude manufacturing.

> This "precision versus quantity" argument played out to greatly favor precision in Ukraine.

Until the allies of Ukraine fell behind on artillery manufacturing — allowing Russia to gain dominance and grind down the Ukrainian military.

That mass produced artillery out sustained precision munitions is a major lesson in Ukraine’s defeat.

Re: Is the attack helicopter dead?

#300

Post by dragonwriter »

JumpCrisscross wrote: post #297
metaphor wrote: post #192

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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...

I did not know it was based on a short story!

It wasn't based on the short story, the short story is a piece of trans literature that took the transphobic meme (which was around first) and turned it into a powerful work of art (for which fhe creator was literally hounded out of public exposure and into a major mental health crisis largely because of people's kneejerk reaction judging the work by its title.
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