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Is the attack helicopter dead?

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Re: Is the attack helicopter dead?

#431

Post by hnbad »

phs318u wrote: post #87
OrigamiPastrami wrote: post #71

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Your analysis assumes collateral damage is irrelevant.

It’s not that collateral damage is irrelevant. It’s that the calculation as to whether collateral damage is “worth it” in the context of the specific goal/target is usually relative and calculated unemotionally. Some may say inhumanly.

Of course it's also worth pointing out that this question hinges on the perceived cost of collateral damage.

For countries like the US which at least ostensibly claim to care about human life indiscriminately and to fight for "liberty and peace" and all that, there is a considerable cost to collateral damage, although of course that also depends on who the victims are and the cost can be higher for a Democrat leader than a Republican.

Putin's Russia infamously responded to a hostage crisis in Moscow by killing not only all hostage takers but also more than three times as many hostages and injuring most of the survivors. That alone should make it easy to extrapolate what the cost of collateral damage in Ukraine might be in Russia's calculations. Israel similarly seems to use a much lower cost than the US although in Palestine this is also shaped by the perception that anyone who isn't a militant or supports the militant is eventually going to turn out that way anyway (e.g. the child who died would have grown up to become a threat anyway).

Re: Is the attack helicopter dead?

#432

Post by pas »

efitz wrote: post #416
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.

> All weapon systems that consist of an expensive vehicle and an expensive-to-train crew are being re-evaluated against drones right now. I don’t think that drones are necessarily the only answer to the “expensive weapons with expensive to train crews” problem. Expensive weapons lead to cost boondoggles and economic asymmetry, eg $10k in modified COTS drones can defeat $MM in conventional armored vehicles. We should…

the Navy already has a problem with command and control (training, corruption, scandals, collisions, accountability - from delivering ships on time to the starlink wifi situation)

adding more things to control will cause more problems .... especially in peace time

Re: Is the attack helicopter dead?

#433

Post by oneshtein »

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.

Yep, but thos ICBM's are developed by Ukraine and need regular (every 10 years) maintenance to be performed in Dnipro, Ukraine.

Re: Is the attack helicopter dead?

#434

Post by InDubioProRubio »

nine_k wrote: post #232
SR2Z wrote: post #140

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> This "precision versus quantity" argument played out to greatly favor precision in Ukraine. Yes, but the defining attribute of the Ukraine war seems to be CHEAP precision - the ability of drones to respond and attack car-sized targets in real time is what has turned this war into a slog. The American-made stuff is great, but I've seen multiple examples of Ukrainian missile crews reacting contemptuously to the idea…

OTOH the highly precise HIMARS played a crucial role many times. Regular artillery has to shoot dozens of shells before it hits the exact high-value target. This betrays the position of the cannon; if it's close enough it will be fired at. HIMARS is precise so it can pack up and leave before the projectiles even reach the target. FPV drones are precise because they're remotely piloted by experienced pilots. This allo…

FPV-drones can also be precise post-mortem. You record the flight as command-inputs in sim from start location.

Then you deploy the drone from some carrying vehicle, land and loiter, listening for a trigger. Trigger comes, the drone flies only gets a connection for a lineup if any and flies through the "line up" trajectory.

Pilot involvement can be optional.

Re: Is the attack helicopter dead?

#435

Post by oneshtein »

ceejayoz wrote: post #203
nostrademons wrote: post #188

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Enriching uranium is within the capability of a nation-state the size of Ukraine. If Iran and North Korea can do it, Ukraine certainly can. Hell, even today, in the midst of a war, they have 8 operational reactors at 3 power plants, plus 2 under construction, one damaged and recently repaired, 6 at the Zaporizhzhia power plant in contested territory, and 4 in the decommissioned Chernobyl plant. Physical access to a n…

> Enriching uranium is within the capability of a nation-state the size of Ukraine. Sure. But standing up a program makes you an international pariah. “We’re keeping this” would have had a bit less uproar. > Physical access to a nuke does not let you disable the PAL. They are constructed so that they are embedded within the device, and cannot be disabled or altered without deconstructing significant parts of the warh…

Ukraine is free to develop nukes for self-defence because it's attacked by nuclear country.

Re: Is the attack helicopter dead?

#436

Post by pferde »

the_af wrote: post #224
vFunct wrote: post #205

Earlier quoted context omitted.

My game of choice was Gunship on the Commodore 64, the AH-64 Apache attack helicopter simulator from Microprose. Spent YEARS playing that. Best part was the instruction manual that came with it that was basically a guide of all the military equipment of the Soviet Union that you could target in the game.

Gunship 2000 here! I loved that it had a dynamic campaign where the frontline moved according to how well you did. Before that, I also enjoyed LHX. > Best part was the instruction manual that came with it that was basically a guide of all the military equipment of the Soviet Union that you could target in the game. Do you remember what the copy protection was for MicroProse's F-19 Stealth Fighter? It was the silhouet…

I only learned like 4-5 of those shapes, and kept restarting the game until I got one of those. :)

Re: Is the attack helicopter dead?

#437

Post by pas »

bnralt wrote: post #239
adgjlsfhk1 wrote: post #97

Earlier quoted context omitted.

the biggest tick against helicopters is that they are much more expensive, and poorly armored than a tank, and their speed advantage for delivery matters a lot for special ops type jobs, but is pretty irrelevant for army type jobs.

KA-52 helicopters were considered to be a one of the big obstacles that Ukraine faced during their 2023 counteroffensive. "Military briefing: Russian ‘Alligators’ menace Ukraine’s counteroffensive"[1]: > Justin Bronk, senior research fellow at the Royal United Services Institute, a London-based think-tank, said Russian helicopters fitted with anti-tank guided missiles “were always going to be a much greater threat to…

without air superiority both sides have extreme artillery dependence

Re: Is the attack helicopter dead?

#438

Post by d1sxeyes »

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.

While this is inevitable, I wrote a blog post once upon a time about the trend this generates and why I'm worried about it.

In principle, wars between armies are proxy wars between nations/governments/etc.

A long time ago (Sumeria maybe), soldiers started to fight soldiers, and civilians could get on with civilian life while fighting continued (farming, production, etc.). Now obviously that doesn't mean that no war has ever had civilian casualties, or that armies have never targeted civilian populations, but it made warfare a fairly symmetric endeavour. Rather than having your farmers hacking at each other with hoes until there are no farmers left, you can pit some of your strongest and best trained men against your enemy's strongest and best trained men, and accept the results of that to avoid total annihilation of your whole populace.

But that only works because both sides have skin in the game, and people are dying on both sides.

If we move to a model where a stronger power can fight a war remotely with no risk to real people, then the only way to take the war to the enemy will be to target civilians. Terrorism, asymmetrical warfare, etc. will be the only way to respond to drone strikes and the like.

I don't know what the answer is, but it worries me.

Re: Is the attack helicopter dead?

#439

Post by okwhateverdude »

JohnBooty wrote: post #284
jvanderbot wrote: post #231

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I hear you, and a prox shell would be ideal, but I have a hard time seeing the comparisons. The scale of attack drones is so small and fast and close, and the drones are very fragile. Perhaps the hand grenade "bomber" types can be far enough up, but the FPV impactor types are right up in your face and have to fly at you to be effective.

I would be surprised if we didn't eventually see something like you describe. I could see it protecting bases, trenches, encampments, etc. But I think an open question is if it could be made portable enough to tote around on the battlefield.

4-legged robot mule with ordinance. I mean, they are already putting rifles on the robot dogs.

Re: Is the attack helicopter dead?

#440

Post by michaelt »

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…

> 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.

I'm not sure that follows.

Military drones like the Predator have been around for 30 years - at a cost of $30 million a drone. US military contractors are many things, but they're never cheap. And at that price, you don't have many and so they're never where they need to be.

The battlefield impact in Ukraine has been because for $500 you can strap a grenade to a DJI Mavic and you've got 60,000 times as many of them. And sure it's got much less range and inferior sensors and less jamming resistance and so on - but the price lets it be it's in the right place at the right time.

Defence contractors aren't famous for their cost-effective practices, so I'm not sure they can improve on the most important aspect of these drones.

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