Is the attack helicopter dead?

FWIW there's a response from The Chieftain in the comments which has sparked a good discussion:

> Sorry, mate, but I really think you missed the point of the attack helicopter concept, at least in the modern Western concept. I can't speak as to either how the Russians think they should be using their helicopters in doctrine, or how they actually are using their helicopters in doctrine, but you seem to have completely ignored where the attack helicopter fits in as far as we in the West are concerned. The days of using attack helicopters in a troop support role to aid ground forces are long gone, except in cases of extreme emergency or very permissive environments. Instead, they are used as the division and corps commander's maneuver asset. MG Isenhower last week publicly described an evolution during an NTC rotation for a corps-level mission, the 1AD CAB sending both battalions from Fort Irwin to a target area over 250km away, (Conducted with incorporation into a Red Flag exercise to replicate the air and SEAD problem) and this sort of operation pretty much matches what I've seen helicopters be used for over the past four years' worth of division and corps level exercises. You can imagine the level of havoc which can be wreaked by one battalion, let alone two in the division and corps deep areas, by a unit capable of identifying and engaging its own targets in real-time from (relatively speaking) close range, whilst itself emitting a rather limited EM signature, and, of course, being entirely unjammable unlike long-range loitering munitions.

This seems to be the takehome. The helicopter has to be a drone operator and behave very defensively, with effective active measures.

> Given the right network integration and the right weapons, you could inflict a deal of pain in a fairly basic helicopter while staying well out of the way of any air defence. You still have to protect yourself against chance encounters – partisans or special forces with shoulder-launched weapons, for example. This appears easier said than done.

Most of these counter-drones would start out dumber rather than leaping to the end state.

A megaphone is pretty loud and doesn’t require kilowatts. Sure it’s directional, but it would be good enough in a sweep pattern to trigger sleeper drones. That would necessitate triangulation and counter-countermeasures.

Welcome to the arms race! Lockheed Martin is hiring!

In fairness, the Abrams in the Ukraine are ancient export-version M1A1s. The current US standard is A2v4. Other than basic shape, the technology is completely different and several decades apart, the armor bears almost no relation. A lot of the old export Abrams had armor similar to the Israeli Merkava tanks, it didn’t have a lot of similarity to what the US used.

Something that gets lost in these discussions is that the US does continuous “Ship of Theseus” upgrades to their systems and they mostly don’t export the state-of-the-art. Abrams armor in US systems is regularly completely replaced with new tech but the details are classified and not exported.

"Just close enough" is doing a lot of heavy lifting there.

It doesn't matter if the decoy can match frequency if it can't match amplitude because it's trivial to triangulate the position and eliminate anything that's too quiet. Any helicopter that sounds "farther away" than its actual position is obviously a decoy. Measuring the time of flight on reflections eliminates directional speakers.

These aren't even hacks, this is something an Alexa smart home speaker is equipped to do today. Add a rudimentary radar and the decoy now has to have the same radar cross section as a big metal helicopter. Chaff isn't going to work when sensor fusion includes computer vision.

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

Once it's dispatched, how is it going to target and intercept a small drone with a tiny radar cross section that has thrust vectoring? That's a job for static CIWS/AA, not a cheap counter drone dispatched from a decoy.

My point is that attackers have the technological and cost advantage here, possibly forever. Civilian quadcopters can't easily take down a 150 knot helicopter now but the technology to make 200+ mph military drones is already here, it just hasn't been combined into a weapon yet. No imagination needed, it's practically inevitable.