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Is the attack helicopter dead?

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Re: Is the attack helicopter dead?

#331

Post by hajile »

jvanderbot wrote: post #178
Animats wrote: post #50

The US Army is cutting back in this area. The Future Attack Reconnaissance Aircraft, which was a small attack helicopter, has been cancelled.[1] If it flies low and slow over the enemy, it's going to be shot down. Better to send many drones and lose some of them. The concept of tactical air superiority is now questionable. The USAF used to boast that American troops have not had to fight under a hostile sky since 195…

Dumb question: Why are 12ga shotguns, possibly on small auto-targeting platforms, not a thing yet? Like a CWIS/CRAM but tiny and for close-in engagements?

Look around and you can find tons of Russian and Ukrainian soldiers skeet shooting drones with various levels of success.

There are issues though. Skeet guns are 28-34" barrels which is super-long. These guns are also heavy. Once you have ammo loaded up, you're talking 11+ pounds. These guns size and weight make them almost unusable for anything outside of drones. Carrying around an extra gun and heavy ammo is a big commitment both physically and logistically.

Re: Is the attack helicopter dead?

#332

Post by YZF »

bhouston wrote: post #95
jdietrich wrote: post #93

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Interception comes with risks - the debris from that missile has to land somewhere. The only person confirmed to have been killed in the recent Iranian attack was a man in the West Bank who was crushed by part of a destroyed missile. It's clear that at least some of the missiles that got through were deliberately ignored because they were on target to hit open ground.

The best analysis I've seen is this Washington Post analysis that said that +24 Iranian missiles hit Israeli military/intelligence targets or were close misses: https://x.com/catebrown12/status/1842167731547721788 If there was 180 missiles were fired and 24 got through to targets, that is a penetration rate of 13%.

I would say that's a pretty incredible intercept ratio.

We don't know if they were let through because their predicted targets or because there weren't enough interceptors or some other reason.

Air bases are pretty hardened targets. Most important stuff is kept in bunkers. They're also huge. The design assumption of an air base is that it's the prime target for rocket/missile/air raid attacks (and Israel airbases have been attacked by rockets in past wars, e.g. in the Yom Kippur war).

I've seen someone review satellite photos from Nevatim that seemed to indicate one or two hits to some structure. As far as we know nothing of value was hit and no one was hurt.

All that said, I wouldn't want to be around when these volleys of ICBMs are fired at you. Definitely not fun. But not a war winner either as long as they're conventional warheads.

Re: Is the attack helicopter dead?

#333

Post by hajile »

exabrial wrote: post #246

The way Russians use them is obsolete… just like Russian tanks. Combined arms maneuvering is what they _should_ be doing. In fact Russia reorganized to theoretically be setup for this sort of maneuvering; they organized into BTGs (battalion tactical groups) which contain basically everything: air defense (area denial and SHORAD), logistics (refuel, resupply, rearm, repair), infantry, armor, air attack, engineering, a…

How do you do combined arms into a minefield? It's a WW1-style mess where combined arms simply don't work.

Ukraine tried NATO tactics summer of last year and suffered a catastrophic defeat. Going across minefields requires convoys. Russian helicopters outside of MANPADS range (and too low to be visible to SAM site radar) take out the minesweeper and rear vehicles. Now you've got a bunch of sitting ducks. If it looks like escape is possible, artillery remote-mines the path the minesweeper cleared.

Try your luck in the minefield and you get destroyed. Get out to fight and the anti-personnel mines take everyone out. Stay in place and the regular artillery takes out all the troops. At night, you get grenade and RPG-dropping drones with IR cameras so you can't even hide.

I ask again, what is your combined arms solution to this mess?

Re: Is the attack helicopter dead?

#334

Post by ls612 »

tetromino_ wrote: post #159
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.

Precision guided artillery looked like it could be a game changer for about a month or two, then Russia figured out how to spoof and jam it, making guided artillery worse than useless. Ukraine is back to using good old dumb artillery, which isn't too accurate but at least cannot be jammed. Source: https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/2024/05/24/russia-jammi...

There is high variance in the ECCM capability of US weapons supplied thus far. JDAM and GLSDB have fallen flat while ATACMS and GMLRS have done well for themselves.

Re: Is the attack helicopter dead?

#335

Post by tomjen3 »

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.

russia is completely corrupt. Nuke upkeep is expensive and is an obvious area for corruption (you will only know at the end of the world). There is zero reason that more than a handful has actually been maintained.

Not to mention that their recent launch was a bit - eh.

The Soviet Union was evil, but it was somewhat competent. The russian regime is not.

Re: Is the attack helicopter dead?

#336

Post by hajile »

aspenmayer wrote: post #20
verdverm wrote: post #4

Better discussion by Perun https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qnoKpXvj41A (there is a saying or word for titles as questions, and the answer is always no)

Perun seems to know his stuff. That said, I’d be curious to know more about his research process, as well as that of other Russia-Ukraine war mappers/vloggers. Determining whether grainy drone footage is current or past alone seems difficult to me as an outsider and fan of their work, though I wish it weren’t necessary and that the war were over.

Perun took a side. A major result is that he often either downplays or outright ignores things that don't agree with his world view. Look at his deductions then see how things actually went. There's almost always a massive discrepancy vs the actual outcome.

Re: Is the attack helicopter dead?

#337

Post by HKH2 »

bee_rider wrote: post #252
HKH2 wrote: post #240

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 w…

> I didn’t say they should be considered peers now

You implied it.

> 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.

America clearly wasn't using anywhere near all of the power it had. Neither is Russia now.

Re: Is the attack helicopter dead?

#338

Post by tomjen3 »

hajile wrote: post #333
exabrial wrote: post #246

The way Russians use them is obsolete… just like Russian tanks. Combined arms maneuvering is what they _should_ be doing. In fact Russia reorganized to theoretically be setup for this sort of maneuvering; they organized into BTGs (battalion tactical groups) which contain basically everything: air defense (area denial and SHORAD), logistics (refuel, resupply, rearm, repair), infantry, armor, air attack, engineering, a…

How do you do combined arms into a minefield? It's a WW1-style mess where combined arms simply don't work. Ukraine tried NATO tactics summer of last year and suffered a catastrophic defeat. Going across minefields requires convoys. Russian helicopters outside of MANPADS range (and too low to be visible to SAM site radar) take out the minesweeper and rear vehicles. Now you've got a bunch of sitting ducks. If it looks…

Do what Ukraine did: attack in another place.

But it is like asking what is the healthy thing to do when you are 300 pounds and can run because you have heart issues: the answer is to never be in that position in the first place.

Anyway I assume the US has some sort of remote detonation mine plan for if shit gets hot with NK.

Re: Is the attack helicopter dead?

#339

Post by hajile »

jandrewrogers wrote: post #190
epolanski wrote: post #183

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

FWIW, the US has been sending obsolete or intentionally degraded systems. There is a re-fit process if it comes from US stocks to remove sensitive tech or capabilities. It would be an error to assume that what happens in Ukraine represents the capabilities of US systems despite having the same name. This isn't unique to Ukraine, most US weapon exports are selectively degraded or have capabilities removed. Despite thi…

In the case of HIMARS, we've seen what the Ukrainian version can do when there isn't jamming, so I don't see nerfing being a valid excuse.

Re: Is the attack helicopter dead?

#340

Post by swagasaurus-rex »

JohnBooty wrote: post #235
epolanski wrote: post #177

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Right, but when is the last time they detonated one? What is the current status of their stockpile and the infrastructure required to launch it and strike a target thousands of miles away? Nuclear missiles have a lot of stuff that degrades over time. The plutonium. The conventional chemical explosives. The electronics. Were their nukes even designed to be serviced 25, 50 years in the future? Russia went through quite…

Safe to say they probably got more than one functional nuke, which is more than enough for concern.
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