Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Is the attack helicopter dead?

hushkit.net

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

361–370 of 650 posts

Re: Is the attack helicopter dead?

#361

Post by chipdart »

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…

> The single use drones that operate like kamikaze vehicles may throw a winkle into the mix, but a helo flying at 150knots is going to be very challenging to hit for one of those.

All you're seeing is makeshift COTS drones picking targets of opportunity. If you know that MANPADS can easily take down a helicopter then you are already aware that there is decades-old technology already quite able to take down helicopters, and the only difference between the drones you're seeing today and those that can be easily produced today is the product design requirements.

Re: Is the attack helicopter dead?

#362

Post by pclmulqdq »

jychang wrote: post #360
pclmulqdq wrote: post #329

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 argumen…

> 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. Wait is that a good thing or a bad thing?

No value judgment, but he's a good demonstration of why the US does the thing he's accusing the US of not doing.

The US goes out of its way to minimize collateral damage because it gets accused of causing all collateral damage in the first place.

Re: Is the attack helicopter dead?

#363

Post by MarkMarine »

warner25 wrote: post #311
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…

I'm a former Army helicopter pilot (but Black Hawks, not Apaches) and I think this is an interesting observation. By 2011, when I went to war, the main thing we'd learned was to fly high up above small arms range: above 1,000 feet AGL. Only our Kiowas were generally allowed to operate below that, flying exactly the way you describe Marine helicopters operating; that was part of the Kiowa's nature as scouts relying mo…

I was in Iraq in 2003, so like you said very different. We did take small arms fire all the time, pretty ineffective though. We had one Cobra come back looking like Swiss cheese but it did manage to fly back to the fob.

Re: Is the attack helicopter dead?

#364

Post by EVa5I7bHFq9mnYK »

thaumasiotes wrote: post #132
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.

> 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. Sanity check: 80% success is an 80% success rate; 3 shots at 30% success is a 66% rate, which is much, much worse. You need 5 cheap 30% drones to beat an 80% success rate, still a major savings at the prices you gi…

Both 80% and 30% are imaginary numbers, nobody measured it, so all the math is pointless. I've read that it takes 10 to 15 FPV drones to finish off a "turtle tank".

Re: Is the attack helicopter dead?

#365

Post by jabl »

tomjen3 wrote: post #335
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.

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.

OTOH current day Russia doesn't have the yoke of communism around their neck. Is the level of corruption worse than the economic inefficiency of communism? I don't know, possibly?

As for nukes, nuclear saber rattling seems to be one of the few remaining reasons the rest of the world gives a f*ck about whatever Putin and his cronies are saying. Without nukes, the West would have massively stepped up support for Ukraine, and the Russian army would be nothing but a breadcrumb of smoldering wrecks all the way to Siberia. So I'd think that Putin has a huge incentive to keep his nuclear deterrent functional, no matter how corrupt and inept the rest of his armed forces are.

Re: Is the attack helicopter dead?

#366

Post by littlestymaar »

sgc wrote: post #197
littlestymaar wrote: post #76

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Collateral damage is much less relevant in symmetric conflicts. Nobody is using either a Switchblade or an FPV in the middle of civilian areas in Ukraine right now.

Russia is using FPVs to kill civilians on their bicycles or buying fruit, and posting the videos on telegram to laugh about it. This happens every day, it is not a few isolated incidents. It is not boredom, but a chosen tactic.

I hadn't heard of that before, but it really isn't a counter argument to what I'm saying: when you're targeting civilians themselves, you don't have “collateral damage”.

Re: Is the attack helicopter dead?

#367

Post by lazide »

zmgsabst wrote: post #299
jandrewrogers wrote: post #120

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 p…

Haha, since when is Ukraine even close to defeat?

Defeated enemies aren’t making regular incursions into the ‘victors’ land which the ‘victor’ can’t stop, or launching attacks agains the ‘victors’ capital.

This just reads like Russian delusion/cope.

Re: Is the attack helicopter dead?

#368

Post by pclmulqdq »

guappa wrote: post #355
pclmulqdq wrote: post #329

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 argumen…

I mean, USA could stop doing wars everywhere in the world no? It's not like iraq had tanks by the USA border, ready to roll in no? It also didn't have any of the terrible weapons that USA claimed they had.

When you are the world police and you stop "doing wars everywhere," everywhere starts doing wars with you (usually through your weaker/looser allies). Hence Ukraine, Hong Kong, the Mexican cartels, Iran's proxy wars, and let's not forget 9/11.

In all cases, the US has demonstrated a level of weakness on the foreign stage, and terrible people have come to exploit that. Like it or not, those little wars in Iraq were the long arm of the Pax Americana, which is ending now, to the tune of the first land war in Europe in quite some time. And one of the bloodiest conflicts in recent history.

This is what happens when you are a world-spanning empire. An empire, by the way, that Europe, India, China, and the rest of the civilized world has benefitted massively from in the form of free security and safe transport of goods. When there is no dominant empire, the world gets messy.

Re: Is the attack helicopter dead?

#369

Post by Log_out_ »

nradov wrote: post #277
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…

Attack helicopters might still have a limited role in some theaters. But the Marine Corps seems to realigning to fight China in the Western Pacific where, regardless of survivability, regular attack helicopters lack the range and speed necessary to be relevant. They might also face a threat from manned fighters which are potentially very dangerous to helicopters, even those flying evasively at low altitude. Thus the…

not true sub launched drone variations include helicopter like platforms .

Re: Is the attack helicopter dead?

#370

Post by guappa »

pclmulqdq wrote: post #368
guappa wrote: post #355

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I mean, USA could stop doing wars everywhere in the world no? It's not like iraq had tanks by the USA border, ready to roll in no? It also didn't have any of the terrible weapons that USA claimed they had.

When you are the world police and you stop "doing wars everywhere," everywhere starts doing wars with you (usually through your weaker/looser allies). Hence Ukraine, Hong Kong, the Mexican cartels, Iran's proxy wars, and let's not forget 9/11. In all cases, the US has demonstrated a level of weakness on the foreign stage, and terrible people have come to exploit that. Like it or not, those little wars in Iraq were th…

This needs a very large "citation needed" banner.
Post reply on HN