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Is the attack helicopter dead?

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Re: Is the attack helicopter dead?

#391

Post by picture »

jabl wrote: post #357
bluGill wrote: post #206

Earlier quoted context omitted.

aircraft carriers are even more vulnerable. battleships are obsolete not because they are easy to sink but because airplanes are more versitle for most purposes. When doing a shore assult a battleship is more useful than airplanes but that is not enough to be worth the cost of running them.

> battleships are obsolete not because they are easy to sink but because airplanes are more versitle for most purposes. The main reason really is range. A battleship can obliterate a target within about 25 km (yes, I know the guns can shoot longer than that, but practical accuracy against a moving target such as another ship..) whereas an aircraft carrier can launch strikes from hundreds of km away. Further, the carr…

Agreed. Super pedantic comment: it's Battle off Samar.

Re: Is the attack helicopter dead?

#392

Post by animal531 »

navbaker wrote: post #154
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…

I spent tons of hours as a kid playing Comanche on our old 486!

Today its graphics look so outdated, but back then it was amazing how you could fly through valleys to get to targets.

There were a few games like Comanche, X-Wing, Magic Carpet and Descent that felt like they really pushed the technology while trying to show how we could utilize 3d in a different way from the other titles of the time (which were usually all FPS games).

Re: Is the attack helicopter dead?

#393

Post by dgoldstein0 »

gorgoiler wrote: post #94
siliconc0w wrote: post #32

Whoever can most cost effectively put explosives on target wins. The future will be annihilation at a distance with cheap standoff weapons followed by swarms of cheap drones loitering over battlefields to clean up.

Drones for reconnaissance and kill verification too, in combination with regular artillery. Archer has a 40km range (SF to San Jose) and can fire off three rounds in 20 seconds before hitting the road at 40mph. “Sniper” artillery apparently: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Archer_artillery_system

SF to San Jose is 50 miles, 40km is about half that.

Re: Is the attack helicopter dead?

#394

Post by Animats »

swagasaurus-rex wrote: post #346
jvanderbot wrote: post #178

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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?

I'm imagining a shoulder mounted auto-targeting pistol. 9mm rounds go 1500 ft per second, so probably within 300 meters a drone wouldn't have the reaction time to dodge a bullet with precise aim. It could also be mounted on a dog, real or robotic. Actually building this thing though might be a science fiction dream.

> I'm imagining a shoulder mounted auto-targeting pistol.

About a decade ago, DARPA developed a .50 caliber gun round that has onboard guidance.[1] They were thinking snipers, not anti-drone, but maybe the concept can be adapted.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/EXACTO

Re: Is the attack helicopter dead?

#395

Post by ponector »

murkt wrote: post #163
ponector wrote: post #101

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That is true, not every drone hits the target. But the same with any other weapon. How many 155 shells are needed to actually hit the target? A moving target? And one regular 155mm shell is 5x more expensive than FPV drone.

155mm shells are $3k-10k per piece. So it’s more like 5-20x than FPV drone.

Drone prices everyone mentioning are without warheads. And depends on capabilities. Mainly how far it flies and how heavy payload is. I would say kamikadze drone manufactured in Ukraine costs 300-1000$

Re: Is the attack helicopter dead?

#396

Post by dgoldstein0 »

nostrademons wrote: post #288
meiraleal wrote: post #161

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Drones can't occupy land (yet).

Are you sure? It seems that the obvious way for drones to "occupy" land is to embed an IFF transponder in every human that is authorized to be in the area, and then program your drone swarm to kill every living thing that is not identified as friendly. The reason this hasn't happened yet is that nobody ruthless enough has yet gained control of a drone swarm. But this is a social, not technical obstacle, and one that…

That's quite a dark thought. And I doubt we'll get there - in that case you'd be one failed chip away from death at all times. Nothing like redefining the reign of terror.

Re: Is the attack helicopter dead?

#397

Post by animal531 »

mdaniel wrote: post #281
debo_ wrote: post #271

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Comanche, LHX Attack Chopper, Gunboat and Wolfpack. A handful of military sims meant hundreds of pages of specs to sift through -- best copy protection I ever had to deal with. I probably spent more time reading the manuals than I did playing the games.

Same fond memories about LHX and F117A. While searching, I was shocked how much my recollection of that experience vastly differed from its actual graphics: https://www.myabandonware.com/game/lhx-attack-chopper-xo#scr... I don't recall having played Comanche in order to compare the two. The other game I spent innumerable hours in was F117A [1] - partially because -- again, my recollection -- one had to damn near real…

I played F-117A, but my favourite by far was definitely F15 Strike Eagle II: https://www.myabandonware.com/game/f-15-strike-eagle-ii-n6

Around the time of F-117A I discovered Jetfighter II which felt a lot smoother handling wise, it was great to just fly around doing stunts to be honest. I spent a lot of time just doing carrier take-offs with an immediate 360 and back into landing.

https://www.myabandonware.com/game/jetfighter-ii-advanced-ta...

Re: Is the attack helicopter dead?

#398

Post by preisschild »

sidewndr46 wrote: post #92
HPsquared wrote: post #10

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Efficiency starts to matter in a near-peer conflict.

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.

Not necessarily. Loosing a war is probably preferential to loosing your entire country, because mutually assured destruction using nukes is still a thing.

Re: Is the attack helicopter dead?

#399

Post by ponector »

paganel wrote: post #352
ponector wrote: post #124

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That counter attack was more than a year ago. Now Ukrainians have drones capable of intercepting slow air targets like drones or helicopters. And they are ten times cheaper than manpads.

They don’t, plus Russia’s EW capabilities are now so good that stuff like HIMARS has now only a 10% chance of hitting its target (from a recent Western article on the issue), so there’s no chance in hell they’ll let some drones fight their attack helicopters and them (the Russians) not doing anything about it. Which is to say that these delusions won’t help the Ukrainians one bit, nor any other Eastern European army…

They don't? Stinger costs $100+k, high speed drone around 1k.

There are no viable ways to EW counter man-operated drone capable of locking the target with autopilot.

The biggest issue in such approach is opportunity cost: you can quickly fire another manpad, but not a drone.

Re: Is the attack helicopter dead?

#400

Post by torginus »

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…

Honestly I don't want to sound like a smartass and second-guess you, but the main problem with attack helicopters imo is that they are expensive to buy and operate, going comfortably into lower-end jet fighter territory, so to justify their existence, they need to possess some indispensable qualities.

I'm not sure what those are, but I think they probably have to do with the ablity to hover in place/land anywhere, a capability probably much more meaningful in transport helicopters.

And it seems the US has decided to choose the V-280 Valor, which is a tiltrotor rather than a helicopter.

I don't follow the space closely, but it seems to me there's no active program in the US that's developing a combat helicopter that's likely to enter service, so I don't think the US military considers them to be worth investing in that much.

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