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Is the attack helicopter dead?

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Re: Is the attack helicopter dead?

#371

Post by warner25 »

rjurney wrote: post #196

> There were about 11,846 U.S helicopters that served in the Vietnam War. The U.S records show 5,607 helicopter losses. Are 310 helicopter losses in Ukraine that high? I don't think so. Russia has lost =~ 3K tanks. That's a 10:1 ratio for tank:helicopter, is that high? Helicopters' role may change. They would be ideal drone operator platforms - they already have a weapons operator in a back seat. The right cannon / l…

Today's US Army is dwarfed by the size of the Vietnam-era Army. I love putting this into perspective for people who don't know the history. Those 5,500+ losses would be more than the Army's entire helicopter fleet today; active and reserve components combined. 300+ losses would be huge, like half of the current Apache fleet. I'm not sure that we ever had more than 300 helicopters in Iraq or Afghanistan, even at the peak of the 2007-2010 surges.

The co-pilot/gunner actually sits in the front seat of the Apache, by the way.

Re: Is the attack helicopter dead?

#372

Post by usrusr »

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.

"Look at how much pain we can inflict, you want to be friends with us, that's the only logical conclusion".

That seems to be the explicit strategy here, and I've come to believe that they genuinely think that this is how it should be, that there can't be a different world. Perhaps some linguistic quirk that makes the difference between friendship (that's not based on a power gradient) and allegiance (unite with the strongest, even when they're monsters, in particular when they're monsters) different to express and think about, perhaps it's a long term effect of socialist ideology having co-opted all concepts of friendship based on equality for a system that never was. But the pattern seems to go all the way through society, from the infamous prison hierarchies to imbalanced spousal relationships to the KGB state to the relationship between state power and its barons (who are commonly called oligarchs, but they are the exact opposite, powerless pawns on the political floor that are allowed to hold a fief until they aren't)

Re: Is the attack helicopter dead?

#373

Post by ldargin »

shiroiushi wrote: post #162
OliveMate wrote: post #105

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>All weapon systems that consist of an expensive vehicle and an expensive-to-train crew are being re-evaluated against drones right now. Worth mentioning that this already happened to an attack helicopter 20 years ago! The Comanche[0] was a revolutionary recon/attack helicopter with some mental stealth engineering behind it - everything from limiting sound profile via blade design & fenestron, a radar presence a frac…

Yeah, that was an amazing helicopter, and it's really too bad it was cut, but as you say, it just didn't make economic sense any more when UAVs were invented. I guess it's something like the Japanese battleship Yamato, with the largest guns ever installed on a warship. It was amazing, but easily sunk by airplanes flown from aircraft carriers, so it was already obsolete when it was launched.

I worked with a former army officer / test pilot who was formerly involved with the Comanche project, when the news came out that it got cancelled. He was quite disappointed with that, and disagreed with what was said about it's survivability. He said if they can't see you, they can't shoot you.

Re: Is the attack helicopter dead?

#374

Post by jojobas »

kspacewalk2 wrote: post #262
Daz1 wrote: post #179

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Not related to the 'meat wave' myth I hope

Myth? It's a well-documented Russian tactic. They basically have a two-tier military at this point: competent professionals, and untrained expendable cannon fodder. Professionals are used to operate weaponry that's more sophisticated than your basic AK, machine gun and 70s-era armour. They are valuable because of their training and (at this point) a lot of experience. The second tier is used to conduct the kind of at…

This dates back to WW2. The "special echelon" made up of penal units (i.e. former convicts and soldiers being punished), the only difference is that during WW2 you were excused from the penal units if you were wounded (and happened to survived).

And of course it wouldn't work if the commanders didn't have informal authority to put their soldiers into pits or summarily execute them - also well documented.

Re: Is the attack helicopter dead?

#375

Post by moi2388 »

hajile wrote: post #336
aspenmayer wrote: post #20

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Not really. I find he’s pretty darn accurate. He also usually gives multiple potential outcomes depending on decisions being made

Re: Is the attack helicopter dead?

#376

Post by loopdoend »

throwup238 wrote: post #309
ahmeneeroe-v2 wrote: post #298

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

"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, t…

Swarms of autonomous AI-targeting high speed death squads are inevitable, the technology is even open source already.

Re: Is the attack helicopter dead?

#377

Post by moi2388 »

Remember when the Ukrainian counter offensive failed, in part due to the Russian helicopters coming in and absolutely annihilating the offensive?

I do. The helicopter isn’t dead, neither is the tank.

But their tactics might change, and they might become optionally manned, because why not?

But if you need quick reaction, massive firepower, or troop transport either quickly or in difficult to reach places, good luck doing it with drones or wheeled vehicles.

Re: Is the attack helicopter dead?

#378

Post by TeMPOraL »

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.

How much would it cost to slap some plywood on an old/scrapped heli engine and make a remote-controlled decoy that just looks and sounds a bit like an attack chopper?

Drones don't need to be small, and big doesn't always mean expensive.

Re: Is the attack helicopter dead?

#379

Post by torginus »

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…

Those FPV drones (either of the bombing or suicide variant) seem to be precise enough - there's plenty of footage of them hitting moving vehicles in weak spots like engines/hatches, individual soldiers etc.

As for AI features when the comms are jammed, Russian lancet drones, which have some autonomous capability, seem to be running on Nvidia Jetson boards, and those things cost like $200.

Re: Is the attack helicopter dead?

#380

Post by keyle »

debo_ wrote: post #274
alisonatwork wrote: post #243

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If you remember LHX fondly, there's a new game out with similar aesthetic: https://store.steampowered.com/app/1906230/Thunder_Helix/ Still EA for now, but it looks promising.

Wow, it looks almost exactly like LHX. You weren't kidding. But can I watch from the viewpoint of my TOW missile camera, I wonder... Thanks for the link.

That guy has been very active on twitter since the start of the development of the game. I don't have his account anymore since I stopped caring about twitter but ... he's probably still there journaling!

-- edit: I don't like half assed comments so I went and dig him up https://x.com/HiddenAsbestos

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