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Is the attack helicopter dead?

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Re: Is the attack helicopter dead?

#321

Post by Retric »

bhickey wrote: post #147
Retric wrote: post #131

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Lightly modified FPVs with grenades are a major concern for soldiers, but so are mortars and artillery shells etc. There’s a lot of low cost long range weapons vs infantry, but a drone with a grenade isn’t really effective vs tanks etc. A fleet of cheap drones just don’t do anything if bomber aircraft can simply fly higher than they can reach. Leave the realm of mass production and you can build drones that would be,…

> but a drone with a grenade isn’t really effective vs tanks You may be thinking of AP grenades, but broadly speaking this isn't true. UA has been dropping RKG-3 anti-tank grenades since early in the invasion. Any drone with a 3 pound lift capacity can knock out armor. https://www.rferl.org/a/ukraine-cheap-grenades-expensive-tan...

Can a RKG-3 in the right situation knock out some armor, definitely. But they don’t seem to be that effective vs amor designed to deal with shaped charges such as you’d see with a peer adversary.

Re: Is the attack helicopter dead?

#322

Post by bryanrasmussen »

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.

since the waiting drone is a camera drone wouldn't it just activate the camera and have some object detection as well as the sound detection? turn enough to see where noise is coming from, anything the size of a helicopter, wait until next sound source?

on edit: ah, I understand a later comment better now, but I mean, detecting the waiting drone is probably going to involve that waiting drone doing lots of movement - not turning its camera to look at noise source.

Maybe helicopter moving should just have an increasing number of little anti-drones flying with it, increasing further the cost and complexity of helicopters.

Re: Is the attack helicopter dead?

#323

Post by rjurney »

Teever wrote: post #88
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.

When we'll reach this inflection point with jet fighters? I remain skeptical that the F-35 will prove to be a prudent expenditure of resources both financial and in terms of R&D.

Oh they will. They are the sensor-fused quarterbacks of drone warfare.

Re: Is the attack helicopter dead?

#324

Post by bigfatkitten »

JohnBooty wrote: post #265
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?

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 miss…

And without the ability to operate in EMCON like an F-35 or F-22, unless it's fully autonomous.

Re: Is the attack helicopter dead?

#325

Post by Demiurge »

energy123 wrote: post #123
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. There are many steps on the escalation ladder before a nuclear exchange.

How many steps would you guess are left between US and Russia?

Re: Is the attack helicopter dead?

#326

Post by swagasaurus-rex »

nostrademons wrote: post #260
richardw wrote: post #245

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

The french designed a plane in the late 1950s that would take off vertically, and its wings were a tube.

https://interestingengineering.com/videos/this-bizarre-plane...

There were a few drawbacks. It required a seat that pivoted 90° forward, so that when pilots could see when taking off and when landing.

Unpowered landings would inevitably result in damage to the airframe.

Powered landings looked like space-x rockets, and were at the time difficult to pull off, as their instrumentation and and flight systems weren't developed enough to reliably land vertically.

They noted the airframe would have a habit of spinning when hovering vertically.

It was cancelled after a failed test flight, but with modern technology I think one could be built flightworthy.

The plane does look cool, and would fulfill a critical role of a jet aircraft that can be launched without a runway.

Re: Is the attack helicopter dead?

#327

Post by ajb »

nradov wrote: post #282
nostrademons wrote: post #134

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

The fact that recent engagements have been within easy drone range is an accident of geography. The same situation won't necessarily obtain in the Western Pacific. The quantity of drones you can produce won't matter if the launching platform can't survive long enough to get within range of the target.

Yeah, although given the number of TEU shipped from China to the US, I would not count out a significant number of drones having been prepositioned in US territory.

Re: Is the attack helicopter dead?

#328

Post by YZF »

thenaturalist wrote: post #25
bhouston wrote: post #2

I think most manned war vehicles are dead now. We are definitely entering into the era of drone-vs-human warfare. Drones are cheap and deadly and can be remotely operated, and soon probably operated by AI.

I highly doubt that such a general presumption holds. As seen in the case of Russia’s super drone being downed by their own this week after presumably loosing control, only relying on unmanned vehicles en mass leads to a single point of failure. Disrupt or corrupt signals, disrupt the entire force. The US is the force it is because it can do combined arms like nobody else. Unique capabilities don’t matter if your opp…

Precision ICBMs are not low tech. They're 1-3M$ a pop. Not sure if that's what you were trying to say (that arrow/david sling/iron dome have been saturated to some large advantage by Iran).

Defense against ICBMs attack definitely matters, even if they can be saturated it's not that easy, you need launchers and you need to keep them capable of launching. The ICBM defense isn't just about knocking some of those missiles (and you can selectively do that by priority) it's also about early warning. The combination of these capabilities makes a huge difference.

Germany launched 1400 V2 1-ton warhead ICBMs on London and that didn't stop the British fighting.

Both in Israel and in Ukraine those missiles and UAVs are not really a huge factor.

Definitely combined arms is where it's at today, and today attack helicopters have a huge role to play within that scenario, what the future looks like with more sophisticated autonomous machines is hard to predict. Maybe an autonomous bi-pedal robot combined with a UAV combined with an autonomous tank combined with an autonomous jet...

Re: Is the attack helicopter dead?

#329

Post by pclmulqdq »

rjurney wrote: post #319
pclmulqdq wrote: post #302

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Unless you're counting a lot of definitions of "indirect involvement" (eg including things Israel does on its own and any proxy wars the Saudis start), you're going to have a hard time counting to 1 million civilians with any authoritative sources. Most of the civilian deaths in the US's "war on terror" were to IEDs and other devices set up to kill Americans. People who create studies suggesting those wars killed 5 m…

When you topple a foreign government, destroy all the infrastructure for pointless "shock and awe" and then send the ethnic majority but recently oppressed armed forces home... you bear responsibility for the millions of extra deaths that follow when traumatic civil war rocks the nation. You are the exact example of the delusional American he means.

You are the exact kind of person to demonstrate why the US builds the best precision weapons in the world and doesn't kill civilians if at all possible. If you are going to blame every single death in a conflict, including indirect deaths (eg excess heart attacks) and deaths at the hands of the other party (IEDs laid by the other side), on the US, there's no reason to give you any more ammunition or make your argument seem rational.

Re: Is the attack helicopter dead?

#330

Post by hajile »

bluGill wrote: post #211
nine_k wrote: post #199

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The Israel's "Iron Dome" is supposed to include lasers, and they did use lasers to shoot down incoming rockets. In a stationary setting, like a factory or a bridge, lasers can be hard to overload, with their fast targeting, straight-line shooting, and the cost of a shot measured in single dollars. Small / cheap / slow drones with 1-2 kg payload would be an easy target. Tanks / APCs / IMVs / other armored devices that…

Tanks and the other things you list do much better when used by well trained troops in ways that the trainers tell you to. russia isn't doing that so they look bad but that is russia not the concept

You're talking about a year ago. Today, Russia has the largest and most experienced infantry on the planet.

Ukraine tried NATO tactics in last year's offensive and got slaughtered. If they'd tried to bunch up even closer (as some NATO generals were pushing for), the losses would have been far worse inside of those kill boxes. It's not training. Tanks are trivial for spotter drones to find at which point they can die to stuff like drones dropping RPG shells onto the weak upper armor (even the most modern Abrams tanks can be penetrated easily) or even just calling in an artillery strike. The best case for either of these attacks is very often a mission kill and the worst case is a complete loss.

Tanks made to fight other tanks are a dead end. The future is pure infantry support. You want something with more armor than a Bradley so it can't be taken out without specialized weapons and with enough firepower to be a must-answer threat, so a bigger cannon than the one on the Bradley is needed. Rifled barrels should probably make an appearance again because they offer better accuracy and HESH rounds are great for infantry support and fortification busting. It also needs to haul troops because you can't afford an extra vehicle that can't hold troops. Merkava shows a path in that direction.

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