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Is the attack helicopter dead?

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Re: Is the attack helicopter dead?

#461

Post by simiones »

preisschild wrote: post #398
sidewndr46 wrote: post #92

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

There is no guarantee whatsoever that if Russia were to launch a nuke on Ukraine, the USA or any other country would launch one against Russia. If they launched one on the USA or a EU country, that would be a different matter.

Re: Is the attack helicopter dead?

#462

Post by don_esteban »

jandrewrogers wrote: post #186
booleandilemma wrote: post #160

I hope our military is thinking about drones, because when WW3 starts our enemies are going to have millions of tiny software-controlled drones and if we're still fighting like we're in WW2 it's all over for us.

The US military pioneered drones at every scale and price point, and has been deploying them operationally in very large numbers for decades. They have by far the most mature and diverse capability of any country at this point. Also, the drones being used in Ukraine by both sides would not survive in a more sophisticated electronic warfare environment.

I would challenge this view: a) every price point - definitely not the low end b) in very large numbers - definitely not 6 digit numbers we see in Ukraine c) Ukraine IS the most hostile EW environment, and various US weapon systems do not fare that great there

Yes, US were the first movers and invested a lot - but into expensive high-end systems (and not really tested in challenging EW environment), not ubiquitous low-end. Presumably they are catching-up. Maybe. They are not catching-up in building warships.

Re: Is the attack helicopter dead?

#463

Post by empiricus »

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.

I assume with 80% profit?

Re: Is the attack helicopter dead?

#464

Post by torginus »

virtue3 wrote: post #408
torginus wrote: post #400

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

the united states stopped investing in them because they're more of a near-peer type weapon. They are absolutely devastating to columns of tanks. And they help control the "z-axis" the the united states military is dependent on. Helicopters give you the ability to have air "presence" and keep situations in check with low-peer adversaries. When you start bringing in MANPADS or stingers the game changes. Oddly enough t…

The Russian Ka-52 has a soft-kill system that can blind the IR seekers of Soviet and US MANPADS the Ukrainians use. We've seen videos videos of it working... about 70% of the time, which means you have to shoot it 3 times instead of once, but it goes down just the same, and that's not saying anything about bullets, which you can do nothing about.

I think modern military doctrine dictates that you shouldn't even give a chance of an enemy to shoot at you.

I don't think they are a near peer weapon at all. Even small groups can have weapons that can hurt it, in contrast with an F-16, which, unless you have an air force of your own, or anti-aircraft batteries, you can do nothing about.

Re: Is the attack helicopter dead?

#465

Post by simiones »

Teever wrote: post #449
MindSpunk wrote: post #388

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Well your drone would need to fly faster than an f35 to catch up, maneuver more effectively than an f35 to hit a defending f35 and have a sufficiently complex sensor array to track and defeat the f35 autonomously. We have many drones much cheaper than an f35 that can do this already. They're called AIM-9, AIM-120, Meteor. Or if you're Russian they're called R77, or R73. These are, of course, anti-aircraft missiles.

Do you think it is plausible that we will see an incredibly cheap anti-aircraft missile that can destroy the latest fighter aircraft just like we've seen incredibly cheap drones that can destroy the latest tanks? Why or why not?

For one, because of physics: it's easy to hit a slow moving tank from a flying vehicle. It's impossible to hit a fast-moving flying vehicle from a slower moving one. And you can't make a cheap light rotor-based drone move as fast a jet-engine-powered plane no matter how hart you try.

For another, R&D: we've been working on fast autonomous flying vehicles to take down aircraft for decades: as the poster above keeps explaining, they're called AA missiles, and are extremely expensive, and even still have a hard time actually hitting a plain. Drones are an innovation in fighting tanks because they are much more maneuverable than traditional AT weapons and thus can more easily find chinks in the tank's armor. You could have always used the extreme maneuverability of AA rockets to hit those same chinks in the armor, but the cost was too high; drones were cheaper. AA rockets are extremely cost effective against plains though, as those jets are monumentally more expensive than a tank.

Re: Is the attack helicopter dead?

#466

Post by simiones »

Teever wrote: post #292
JohnBooty wrote: post #275

Earlier quoted context omitted.

An air-to-air missile is essentially a single-use drone Yeah. And barring some big advance, an air-to-air missile can't be any smaller than it is currently. It needs to carry enough explosive to damage the target aircraft, and it needs enough fuel to travel at supersonic speeds for a long enough distance to actually intercept the target.

But can it be cheaper? That's the lesson from drones vs tanks.

No, because all the things you got rid of to make drones cheap when fighting tanks are required when fighting fighters. You only need to be slightly faster and slightly more maneuverable than your target to take it down, while older AT weapons were much faster: so slower drones could still be just as effective. This is not true for fighter jets.

Re: Is the attack helicopter dead?

#467

Post by pjc50 »

michaelt wrote: post #440
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 t…

We're back to "is the purpose of a defence contractor to siphon public money, or is there a war currently on which might impact the personal lives of the C-suite of the defence contractor?"

Re: Is the attack helicopter dead?

#468

Post by littlestymaar »

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…

Yeah, attack helicopters means you have ATGMs with twice the range and very good optics for battlefield awareness. Sure manpads means it's difficult to use them over contested territory, but they are still very strong if you keep them on your side of the front.

Re: Is the attack helicopter dead?

#469

Post by pjc50 »

d1sxeyes wrote: post #438
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 h…

> 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.

This is hardly new, it's been the reason for the prevalence of suicide bombings in the Israel/Hamas war for decades.

Re: Is the attack helicopter dead?

#470

Post by decafninja »

paulddraper wrote: post #247
decafninja wrote: post #59

Earlier quoted context omitted.

My understanding is that the latest versions of the Apache and Cobra are very different from their original incarnations, despite looking similar, no?

The Cobra hasn't been in use since the late 90s. The Apache has been incrementally upgrade over the years, so yeah, it is much different.

I mean, it’s technically the “Super Cobra” of “Viper” now, but isn’t it still a direct line from the original Cobra?
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