Wondering if we can get an in depth discussion over the modern day effectiveness of both air assault operations in general and the use of attack helicopters. The viability of these tactics, the strengths and weaknesses on the modern battlefields for these vehicles and tactics, and the future outlook of said vehicles and tactics.
>>62140932Works great at removing insurgents and concert going qt3.14's according to the Israelis. It's pretty good against infantry with no MANPADS, but it pretty shit against anyone with a couple stingers/starstreaks.
>>62140932That's a Sea Knight, not a Chinook.
>>62140932the attack helicopter role has never made any sense, it has no real-world mission with a proven track record, there's no scenario where an air cav force has engaged an enemy armored battalion.we have attack helicopters because they're really cool and easy to sell to credulous politicians who are eager to look the other way when public funds are diverted to the defense industry, because there is an infinitesimal chance that they might randomly become relevant to modern battlefields through some permutation of innovation, and because having attack helicopters causes our foreign adversaries to develop their own, shittier, less useful attack helicopters that they bill as wunderwaffe to their own politicians and vassal states thus undermining the combat effectiveness and ability to make war of all of our foes simultaneously.tl;dr it was a psyop
>>62141143I'm convinced the Hind was designed in collaboration with Hollywood execs, it's such an intimidating, perfect "bad guy" helicopter
>>62141143I mean, against purely infantry forces, whether insurgents or professional light infantry, I feel gunships would be a monster to them. Even with manpad threats, they would be limited in terms of the amount of missiles they would have and said missiles can still be defeated with countermeasures, especially from a distance. I feel even against an enemy armored/mechanized force, the issue with anti air threats would be similar to that of having anti armor threats for your own IFV's and tanks. Sure you wont be able to just drop infantry off literally on the objective. But still being able to rapidly deploy platoons worth from out of nowhere and still give them support from above, especially once AA threats begin to be suppressed or destroyed, the more of a threat the gunships become. The Soviets even viewed the Hind as a sort of flying IFV rather than just a pure gunship. Essentially a flying BMP. Yeah shit like manpads are a massive fuck you, but so are ATGM's and fire and forget launchers such as Javelins to armor, doesn't mean armor has no place anymore. A tank is still a fucking tank. And a flying death machine is still a flying death machine. Things you really don't want to fuck with and things that require specific weapons and units to have to deal with, said weapons and units if suppressed or killed off, means you are about to have a really bad fucking day.
I think a major issue with air assault comes down to combined arms integration. It's not like a mechanized infantry platoon with Bradleys organic to said platoon, or the company mortars being called in by a platoon leader. Organizing an air assault operation seems more like an operational level plan, dealing with assets at division level. Trying to get something like a platoon air assaulted over to the next ridgeline would be the equivalent to a platoon leader in a Cold War gone hot scenario being in direct contact with a division commander requesting a tactical nuclear strike on the Soviet infantry platoon he's having a particularly difficult time dealing with. It's just not happening.Combined arms seems like such a simple concept but to actually apply it in real life, even in organizations such as mechanized infantry, where the IFV's are apart of the platoon and the tanks are frequently used alongside them, it's pretty difficult to implement combined arms without blue on blueing entire platoons out of existence, especially once you through in artillery which that alone usually requires either higher command or dedicated units to call them in. So doing all of that with what is essentially division level assets at such a low level with things like helicopters just isn't gonna happen.
>>62141354>Trying to get something like a platoon air assaulted over to the next ridgelineyou can get a picture of how this all works out by reading accounts of vietnam. specifically forward air controllers, helicopter pilots, recon/special forces, and CAS jet pilots. pretty astonishing, just not astonishing enough to win a war against superior logistical acumen and infinite fanatics armed with AKs and IEDs.
>>62141418What I'm saying though is I think in the modern US army, I'm pretty sure only the 101st still has a heavy integration of infantry and helicopters. Everyone else, helicopters are a brigade/division level asset. The amount of coordination to be done just to reserve the helicopters for a platoon would probably take days or more, let alone plan a mission out for them to be used.
>>62141435in practice that's not how it's done. infantry units in contact - regardless of who they are- liaise with a loitering aircraft designated for that purpose (FAC/forward air controller) who coordinates the whole shitshow in realtime with anyone and everyone who might be useful to the action or who might be available to take part on short notice.
>>62141075Even a .50 cal is a really bad time for a helicopter. It will just Swiss cheese it.
>>62141249>I mean, against purely infantry forces, whether insurgents or professional light infantry, I feel gunships would be a monster to them.African bush wars for sure.
>>62141578Ground fire like that would only be a concern when landing or extracting at an LZ or during the approach. In general, helicopters will fly hundreds of meters above the ground and will fly in speeds around 90-120 mph+ which make them insanely difficult to hit with anything that doesn't have lock-on guidance/radar assist. Even for hot LZ's, often times you'll have a gunship orbiting that will instantly light the fuck up any position that starts firing at a helicopter on approach or landing, along with the fact that most transport helicopters have door gunners ranging from medium machine guns to absolute fuck you/off miniguns. So ambushing helicopters on landing is a sort of strike the king, best not miss kind of situation. There's always potential for shit to go south very quickly, but you can say that with just about everything else on the battlefield. Again, even with tanks and IFV's, you might feel good seeing the suspected enemy positions in front of you getting blown to shit by heavy artillery barrages, just to get side shotted by a jackass with an RPG hiding in a bush off the road in a forward position. Shit happens.
>>62141143>it has no real-world mission with a proven track recordDon't make me tap the sign>Nearly half of all U.S. Apaches were deployed to Saudi Arabia following Iraq's invasion of Kuwait in 1990. During Operation Desert Storm on 17 January 1991, eight AH-64As guided by four MH-53 Pave Low IIIs destroyed part of Iraq's radar network in the operation's first attack, allowing the attack aircraft to evade detection. Each Apache carried an asymmetric load of Hydra 70 rockets, Hellfires, and one auxiliary fuel tank. During the 100-hour ground war, a total of 277 AH-64s took part, destroying 278 tanks, numerous armored personnel carriers and other Iraqi vehicles, for a total of over 500 kills. One AH-64 was lost in the war, crashing after a close range rocket-propelled grenade (RPG) hit; the crew survived.Inb4>b-but unarmed goat farmers!The Iraqis had no shortage of MANPADS, SHORAD systems, or anti-aircraft cannons in 1991.
>>62141903They had the manpads and shorad. But did they have the IQ to use them?
>>62141931They were designed to be used by Russian conscripts, so yes.
>>62141143>anything I don't understand is MIC corruption
>>62142014He is wrong, but that is a good assumption to have.
>tfw ywn be a Kiowa pilot committing drive-by's on enemy infantry via shooting them with your M4 and chucking frag grenades at themIt's not fair.
>>62141143>>62141903The modern attack helicopter is a combination of separate developments which were a flying TOW carrier and flying gunship. The west invested heavily in flying TOW carriers in the '60s and '70s as a novel way to stop the Soviet armored hordes (part of assault breaker iirc). The other development comes from Vietnam and Afghanistan where tactics like rocket attacks and gun runs were used to harass light troops on the ground. The aerial gunship role always exposed the aircraft to ground fire, nowadays it's suicidal against MANPADS armed troops. Against troops that don't have missiles or can't use them because of lack of NODs at night or whatever helicopters are practically an I win button.The flying TOW carrier role will remain relevant as modern AT missiles fired from a helicopter outrange all current MANPADS, even Russians managed to demonstrate this in the Ukie summer offensive when they shot ATGMs at Ukie tanks trying to breach the minefield (inb4 vatnik)
>>62141846literally every ifv from like 2000 onwards can track moving air targets with its main gun and most have proxy rounds
>>62141846a 50 cal fired from the ground can hit a flyer up to like 2km away, just one is not super likely but there will probably be dozens of tank mounted mgs firing at you
>>62141903there's no reason to use helicopters for this job when you have stealth bombers and multi role fighters, plus, browns gonna brown
>>62142444>>62142445>mask movement with terrain>land outside of rangeThis is also assuming you don't have a gunship with you which would be able to single handedly wipe out an entire company worth of IFV's all by itself both outside the range of the autocannons and the range of most MANPADs. You also have the magical thing known as combined arms via suppressing/harassing the enemy position(s) with artillery; both HE/DPICM and smoke to obscure them from you. Helicopters are just like anything else on the battlefield. You don't just use them in isolation, you utilize them within a larger combined arms framework to get the job done.
Do BCT's/divisions designate specific infantry units to be prioritized/designated to conduct air assault? Or is it just random any platoon across the board can be put into the role of air assault?
>>62142463>muh combined arms copeyeah this works for everything you realise? All weaknesses can be covered up with combined arms
>>62141241>intimidating, perfect "bad guy" helicopterYou rang?
>>62142499No shit. That's kind of how all of warfare works since WWI. There is no "one thing" that can just dominate everything else unless you go to the extremes (air supremacy with targets in open desert, nuclear strikes, etc). If we were having a conversation about tanks, you would be the one saying that tanks are obsolete because ATGM's exist. As if recoilless rifles haven't been a tank killer since Korea. Air assault isn't some magical tactic that negates everything the enemy can do to protect themselves from you. You work it in to the larger scheme of maneuver to get the job done. And just like how you could be fighting in a city or mountainous terrain which would severely impact things like armored forces, maybe flying air assault missions into heavy enemy AD isn't the smartest move. But the same can be said about mounting a conventional armored thrust at the enemy in tank country to conduct a breakthrough just to get all of your tanks and IFV's blown the fuck up because you didn't suppress the enemy positions and key terrain with artillery. Combined arms is the only way, there is no vacuum/isolation in the real world. That only exists in field manuals to teach soldiers the basics ABC's 123's of specific tasks. The real world will always have multiple threats that requires multiple supporting arms to deal with them. This is why when retard countries like in the middle east or in Eastern Europe have pissing contests, they usually grind down into brutal trench warfare, because neither side can support, maintain, and coordinate a successful breach; so both sides usually then resort to attrition warfare.
>>62142468Only soldiers trained in air assault do air assaults. The average infantryman is not trained to conduct air assaults.
>>62142540Too fat and goofy, not intimidating
>>62142687So I don't get that then. If you have like an ABCT or SBCT, you just have a couple platoons filled with 11b's that have gone to air assault school?
>>62142540>*Wargame: Red Dragon PTSD intensifies*
>>62142707If they have that capability, yes.
>>62142730Don't all divisions have a helicopter brigade attached to do air assaults?
>>62141143It is to mollify the US Army who seethed after losing organic CAS to the Air Force. The USAF didn't help by turning up their noses at ground pounding and preferring to hunt soviet bombers. The Army tried to reinstate fixed wing aviation (A-10) but the USAF screeched and reeeeeeeed. So, as a consolation prize, the Army got attack helicopters.
>>62142898>*Huey gunship exists*>*Cobra aka slim Huey gunship exists*Your entire argument is pure shit
>>62142894No.
>>62142951Army divisions have combat aviation brigade assigned, with a mix of attack, utility, and heavy transport choppers. With the exception of the 101st Airborne Division (Air Assault), they are no there expressly for air assaults, but they do practice for it and can do it in a pinch.
Helicopters are great for medical evacuation of wounded personnel. A transport helicopter crew going in for a medi vac pick up likes having an attack helicopter over the LZ suppressing threats. OP said "air assault" but if you expand the idea helicopters are useful for assault support operations. Bringing in supplies to patrolling forces, reinforcements and medivac.
