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

311–320 of 650 posts

Re: Is the attack helicopter dead?

#311

Post by warner25 »

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 mostly on the pilots' eyes (and sometimes their M4 rifles pointed out the door). The aircraft (Kiowas, but also Apaches and Black Hawks when in support of troops-in-contact) that got chewed up were invariably operating down below that.

By that time, Apaches were also mostly a deterrent. The point was for them to be seen. That kept the enemy in hiding under cover while we did whatever else needed to be done. Before firing a shot, they'd circle for 30+ minutes recording video and talking into the tape recorder to establish positive identification of targets and explicitly go through all the steps that the lawyers came up with to mitigate civilian casualties. It was all very unlike e.g. Iraq in 1991 or 2003, to my knowledge, or present-day Ukraine. Not at all stealthy or fast. And there has been an effort in recent years to unlearn all of this, and get back to the tactics that would be needed in a fight like Ukraine's.

Re: Is the attack helicopter dead?

#312

Post by rjurney »

Sephr wrote: post #234
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 imagine that moderately sized autonomous VTOL jets will eventually become cheap enough to completely displace attack helicopters for most use cases.

They stall and aren't maneuverable at the speeds you need.

Re: Is the attack helicopter dead?

#313

Post by hajile »

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…

Russia's use is more similar to the use you describe in the marines. Come in fast and low, pop up the nose and fire off the ordinance while popping flares then get out before the MANPADS can take a shot. The problem is that this limits them to very expensive portable artillery and the accuracy suffers a lot when you can't stick around.

The big use for helicopters is defense. Russia showed the potential during last year's failure of a counter-offensive by Ukraine. They'd pop up just over the treelines to shoot their TOW equivalent from outside of MANPADS range (can't do this on offense because you can't be sure that the front line didn't accidentally bypass a MANPADS somewhere). The helicopters would target the minesweeper and rear vehicle to stall the convoy then the chopper's remaining missiles along with artillery and whatever else would finish off the vehicles in the middle (or they'd try their luck in the minefield which always ended badly).

Re: Is the attack helicopter dead?

#314

Post by rjurney »

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…

Well, actually helicopters are already critical in both anti-submarine and anti-ship warfare. They can extend range and distribute shots of anti-ship missiles to make concurrent salvos from multiple directions more deadly.

Re: Is the attack helicopter dead?

#315

Post by rjurney »

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!

Flying down canyons was so much fun, like a trench run.

Re: Is the attack helicopter dead?

#316

Post by ls612 »

grotorea wrote: post #182
szvsw wrote: post #126

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Am I the only person who is shocked to realize that this is the same Perun who does strategy gaming YouTube tutorials on a related channel!? I had seen a bunch of his Terra Invicta content… had no idea he also did actual military analysis? Is that what he does professionally in some capacity or is he just an amateur interested in this stuff with a fairly well researched YouTube channel?

He actually started with strategy gaming, then when Russia invaded he started his slideshows on the main channel and ended up with another channel for gaming.

Importantly he correctly predicted the entire broad course of the evolution of the war in the past two years in his first video on like day 10 of the conflict. I’m always impressed by his analysis each week, definitely a channel worth following and binge watching.

Re: Is the attack helicopter dead?

#317

Post by SJC_Hacker »

decafninja wrote: post #60
nordsieck wrote: post #28

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I think most manned war vehicles are dead now. IMO, submarines - especially nuclear subs probably have decades of life left at a minimum. But yeah - everything else is starting to look very vulnerable.

What’s to stop development of unmanned drone SSNs? Including ones that act as motherships for underwater drone swarms to boot.

They would have to be completely autonomous.

Not much radio range under 500m of water.

Re: Is the attack helicopter dead?

#318

Post by ls612 »

matusp wrote: post #103
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.

Tbh Perun often just takes a report released by RUSI, ISW, or other war think tank and does some narration over it. On top of that, he often extrapolates from very small or noisy data.

His real talent is to find a bunch of these OSINT reports on a topic, combine them, and then apply his knowledge of economics and game theory and military history and theory to explain what it all means. As a PhD economist I can clearly tell he understands economics and has a talent for teaching it I only wish I did.

Re: Is the attack helicopter dead?

#319

Post by rjurney »

pclmulqdq wrote: post #302
bitkrieg wrote: post #242

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What the US public opinion is and what the US government does are two different things. Americans are hilariously self-delusional in that regard. Just compare the civilian death tolls between the first two years of the invasion of Iraq and the first two years of the invasion of Ukraine. For the last twenty years in the Middle East alone, the number of civilian deaths in which the US is either directly or indirectly i…

Unless you're counting a lot of definitions of "indirect involvement" (eg including things Israel does on its own and any proxy wars the Saudis start), you're going to have a hard time counting to 1 million civilians with any authoritative sources. Most of the civilian deaths in the US's "war on terror" were to IEDs and other devices set up to kill Americans. People who create studies suggesting those wars killed 5 m…

When you topple a foreign government, destroy all the infrastructure for pointless "shock and awe" and then send the ethnic majority but recently oppressed armed forces home... you bear responsibility for the millions of extra deaths that follow when traumatic civil war rocks the nation. You are the exact example of the delusional American he means.

Re: Is the attack helicopter dead?

#320

Post by aguaviva »

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…

It's one thing to make a speculative assessment, or a prediction. But the use of the implied past tense in reference to a situation that has many variables and which in any case is far from decided is definitely quite pretentious.
Post reply on HN