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StandardVC10 posted:I think it's possible for attack helicopters to mount air-to-air missiles. The only place I've heard of helicopter-versus-helicopter combat was the Iran-Iraq war though. 3 US helicopters can carry stinger missiles.   
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Feb 3, 2014 16:43
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Aren't those sidewinders on the Cobra?
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Feb 3, 2014 16:48
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Smiling Jack posted:Aren't those sidewinders on the Cobra? They are.
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Feb 3, 2014 16:50
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evil_bunnY posted:I can't wait to see that idea literally go down in flames. What's the plan, snipe them with the chin gun? Yes, actually, though I wouldn't use the term "snipe". Counter-air proximity-fused shells for the Apache's 30mm gun are being tested right now with some relatively impressive results, and the Hellfire has been employed successfully against tactical UAS-sized targets already. The "counter-air package" for Apache (or its successor) will likely wind up being an enhanced software kit for the -78 (focused on detecting/tracking small aerial targets), enhanced Hellfire (or the JAGM, if it survives), the prox fused 30mm, and then possibly some sort of mothership arrangement where the helicopter controls or influences UAS of its own. An example might be a ground station launching something like a Switchblade, then the helicopter controlling it on a "patrol" until designating a target and engaging. Why exactly do you think this concept will "literally go down in flames"?
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Feb 3, 2014 17:03
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bewbies posted:Yes, actually, though I wouldn't use the term "snipe". Counter-air proximity-fused shells for the Apache's 30mm gun are being tested right now with some relatively impressive results, and the Hellfire has been employed successfully against tactical UAS-sized targets already.
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Feb 3, 2014 17:15
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bewbies posted:Why exactly do you think this concept will "literally go down in flames"?
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Feb 3, 2014 17:52
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evil_bunnY posted:Why are they mounting all this poo poo on slow moving, high-RCS, short loiter manned airframes is more what I'm wondering. Maybe because "everyone else" is.
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Feb 3, 2014 18:10
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grover posted:Is that using similar tech to the XM-25/XM-307, or is it a completely different? evil_bunnY posted:Why are they mounting all this poo poo on slow moving, high-RCS, short loiter manned airframes is more what I'm wondering. If you have some alternative suggestions I and every military on the planet are all ears.
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Feb 3, 2014 18:11
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The Echo model Apaches just coming off the line now also have the ability to control UAVs. As a sidenote, I suppose that serves as an excellent replacement for the Kiowa/Apache hunter killer team; the Apache can scout for itself with a disposable RC airplane, and target its missiles from behind a hill. Or something like that. edit: Akion posted:Don't kinkshame, bro. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aFkcAH-m9W0&t=2m13s Mortabis fucked around with this message at 18:25 on Feb 3, 2014 |
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Feb 3, 2014 18:17
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As a note: attack helicopters might have an enormous RCS, but they operate down in the weeds, and can more easily use ground contours, terrain features, buildings, etc, to shield them from sensors and threats. Exposure time to MANPADS and AAA can also be greatly reduced. It's not fool-proof, but it's a luxury fast-movers and fixed-wing UAVs simply don't have.
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Feb 3, 2014 18:18
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The XM-25's projectiles explode after a programmed number of rotations. Basically the projectile spins at a pretty uniform rate (same type of ammo, same gun) so they can reliably judge distance traveled with that metric. The primary benefit is simply that the fuse/projectile are cheaper and relatively uncomplicated. Edit: So the question is who's gonna stick a stinger and FCS package on one of amazon's delivery quad-copters to make the first drone-killer-drone. Warbadger fucked around with this message at 18:26 on Feb 3, 2014 |
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Feb 3, 2014 18:24
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Swarms of tiny drones that "eat" unfriendly drones using the materials to create more tiny drones. How could this go wrong!?
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Feb 3, 2014 18:30
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priznat posted:Swarms of tiny drones that "eat" unfriendly drones using the materials to create more tiny drones. If grey goo ever becomes a real thing, I really hope that LockMart at leasts puts a rule in that causes the goo to form their logo where Washington DC used to be.
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Feb 3, 2014 18:33
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Warbadger posted:The XM-25's projectiles explode after a programmed number of rotations. Basically the projectile spins at a pretty uniform rate (same type of ammo, same gun) so they can reliably judge distance traveled with that metric. The primary benefit is simply that the fuse/projectile are cheaper and relatively uncomplicated. overstock.com
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Feb 3, 2014 18:33
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priznat posted:Swarms of tiny drones that "eat" unfriendly drones using the materials to create more tiny drones. Conservation of mass. RIP Michael Crichton
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Feb 3, 2014 18:35
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bewbies posted:If you have some alternative suggestions I and every military on the planet are all ears. If you'll refer to Proposal A12347, mounting anti-UAV weapons on an M113, I believe you'll find the most tactically superior option includes
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Feb 3, 2014 18:56
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Psion posted:If you'll refer to Proposal A12347, mounting anti-UAV weapons on an M113, I believe you'll find the most tactically superior option includes ...resurrecting PIVADS! Combat Reform now! 
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Feb 3, 2014 18:59
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Psion posted:If you'll refer to Proposal A12347, mounting anti-UAV weapons on an M113, I believe you'll find the most tactically superior option includes "Gavins"  Flying Gavins that shoot paratroopers out their butt
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Feb 3, 2014 19:29
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Mike-o posted:Remotely piloted Flying Gavins that shoot paratroopers out their butt Fixed. They can't work out how to get a Gavin to the paratrooper once they're on the ground though.
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Feb 3, 2014 20:07
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MrYenko posted:As a note: attack helicopters might have an enormous RCS, but they operate down in the weeds, and can more easily use ground contours, terrain features, buildings, etc, to shield them from sensors and threats. Exposure time to MANPADS and AAA can also be greatly reduced. Not disagreeing with you, but historically operating like this incurs vicious losses from running into power lines, unseen hills etc etc even in peacetime training. In the Syrian helicopter kill vids (and the recent Egyptian one and I imagine others) the helicopters being shot down are almost all at a few thousand feet; avoiding small arms fire and maintaining general visibility are I assume factors in this, but so is not running into poo poo.
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Feb 3, 2014 22:12
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The fact that helicopters are still vulnerable doesn't make them worthless. The US military is incredibly casualty-adverse due to domestic political considerations, but if you're in a situation where you straight don't give a gently caress if you take losses as long as they aren't so severe as to be unsustainable they have a lot to offer and are pretty unpleasant for the other guy to have over-head.
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Feb 3, 2014 22:22
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There's another major reason attack helicopters, or at the very least utility helicopters with serious modular attack capability, aren't going away any time soon. US forces are not going to give up the mobility and resupply capability that helicopters give to land forces. As long as there are transport choppers maneuvering around the battlefield full of troops, those helicopters will require escort, and not the kind of escort fixed-wing aircraft can give them. A lone transport is an easy target for even one MANPADS operator. The presence of an escort helicopter or two makes the MANPADS operator think twice, as MANPADS tends to leave one hell of an obvious trail back to whoever fired the SAM. Now, if you have a well trained enemy conducting coordinated sambushes, they may be confident in attacking several helicopters all at once, but one or two insurgents with MANPADS have a very serious risk of death if they knock out one helicopter in a flight and there are attack helicopters or attack-capable helicopters on station. If it gets to the point somehow that attack choppers are legitimately obsolete, that means our air mobility is in a very, very serious bind as far as moving troops and supplies around the battlefield. Looking at OIF/OEF, we certainly lost a number of RW aircraft to MANPADS, but that number pales in comparison to the utility gained and lives saved by using RW assets.
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Feb 4, 2014 00:12
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mlmp08 posted:There's another major reason attack helicopters, or at the very least utility helicopters with serious modular attack capability, aren't going away any time soon. US forces are not going to give up the mobility and resupply capability that helicopters give to land forces. As long as there are transport choppers maneuvering around the battlefield full of troops, those helicopters will require escort, and not the kind of escort fixed-wing aircraft can give them. A lone transport is an easy target for even one MANPADS operator. The presence of an escort helicopter or two makes the MANPADS operator think twice, as MANPADS tends to leave one hell of an obvious trail back to whoever fired the SAM. Now, if you have a well trained enemy conducting coordinated sambushes, they may be confident in attacking several helicopters all at once, but one or two insurgents with MANPADS have a very serious risk of death if they knock out one helicopter in a flight and there are attack helicopters or attack-capable helicopters on station. It is indeed the case that launcher survivability is difficult in that situation. So how hard would it be to set up autonomous emplaced MANPAD-class missiles in camouflaged single-launcher arrays, essentially as minefields under likely flight routes? Think of the conceptual bastard of a Stinger and a CAPTOR sea mine. Not as a tactical spear-blunting thing but as an attrition tool after the war has shifted into an insurgency/anti-colonial mode. Airmobility is great, until you have to have grunts walk over every square foot of the terrain anyway to de-mine it. How much vertical reach do EFPs have, and how easily do they hang off of trees near ridgelines?
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Feb 4, 2014 00:43
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As I understand it the engagement envelope for stuff like a Stinger, especially against fixed-wing, is extremely narrow and/or dependent on the route the target is taking (oblique angles probably bad) and a lot of operator judgment and the like. Given that you said autonomous, that gets pretty sophisticated pretty fast - needing some sort of external sensor system to cue the launcher so it can aim on-target and hold it there, being able to determine what type of target it's looking at and whether or not it should take the shot based on programmed parameters, and then successfully acquiring and launching. also I can just see something like reflected mirrors on a mountain or flares or something resulting in a shitload of false launches leading to amusement as a bunch of Stingers pop off and attempt to destroy a rock. someone else here knows a hell of a lot more about this than I do, mlmp08 maybe? they should post. e: haha or you put a microphone on a stick, but that thing requires getting very close to a runway people probably don't want you getting close to - so we're still down to requiring sophistication, just of another sort. Psion fucked around with this message at 00:50 on Feb 4, 2014 |
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Feb 4, 2014 00:46
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Frozen Horse posted:It is indeed the case that launcher survivability is difficult in that situation. So how hard would it be to set up autonomous emplaced MANPAD-class missiles in camouflaged single-launcher arrays, essentially as minefields under likely flight routes? Think of the conceptual bastard of a Stinger and a CAPTOR sea mine. Not as a tactical spear-blunting thing but as an attrition tool after the war has shifted into an insurgency/anti-colonial mode. Airmobility is great, until you have to have grunts walk over every square foot of the terrain anyway to de-mine it. How much vertical reach do EFPs have, and how easily do they hang off of trees near ridgelines? The Soviet Spetsnaz troops were allegedly equipped with these. A strela missile with a microphone. You stick it in the ground in front of a runway, and it listens for when a plane is just passing overhead. As soon as it hears that the plane is moving away from the launcher (thus the heat-emanating engine nozzle is facing the seeker), it launches the missile. Psion posted:e: haha or you put a microphone on a stick, but that thing requires getting very close to a runway people probably don't want you getting close to - so we're still down to requiring sophistication, just of another sort. My SMI in ROTC was an Air Defense guy; he told me that the best spot to watch for helicopters was on saddle points in the terrain, so you could stick them on those and possibly get similar effects I think. Mortabis fucked around with this message at 00:57 on Feb 4, 2014 |
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Feb 4, 2014 00:49
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mlmp08 posted:There's another major reason attack helicopters, or at the very least utility helicopters with serious modular attack capability, aren't going away any time soon. US forces are not going to give up the mobility and resupply capability that helicopters give to land forces. As long as there are transport choppers maneuvering around the battlefield full of troops, those helicopters will require escort, and not the kind of escort fixed-wing aircraft can give them. Is there anyone who employs air cavalry (for lack of a better term) to the degree the US does?
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Feb 4, 2014 01:15
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Enemy choppers are going to be a thing of the past once we get that Twin-40 mounted on an M48 chassis.
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Feb 4, 2014 03:42
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Snowdens Secret posted:Is there anyone who employs air cavalry (for lack of a better term) to the degree the US does? No, but the same could be said of literally any air platform. There are no other nations who match the USA in air superiority fighters, deep strike platforms, UAS, ISR, naval fighters, transport helos, etc. So basically the answer is no, but I'm not sure what you're getting at. The US is the undisputed most prolific user of air power on Earth.
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Feb 4, 2014 04:03
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Dead Reckoning posted:Actually last time I checked the F-16 line is still open due to the huge number of export customers. Countries are still buying new build Block 50/60 airframes. The USAF isn't, and I don't think we replace losses. The idea is that the fleet will be replaced before the law of averages gets to them. To expand on this, we factor in attrition reserve aircraft when we do the original buy. So really over simplifying things here, when they were figuring out how many F-16s to buy back in the '70s they took whatever the total number of combat coded aircraft was, multiplied that by the expected attrition rate over the planned lifespan of the aircraft for CC coded aircraft, took the total number of test/training/etc aircraft, multiplied that by the expected attrition rate for aircraft in those uses over the planned lifespan of the aircraft, and added everything up to get the total amount they needed to buy. AR calculations generally include both attrition from peacetime accidents as well as combat. There typically won't be AR aircraft just sitting on the tarmac or in the boneyard waiting to break open in case of crashes or a war (although this does happen occasionally in really unique cases). More typically, AR is factored into the total overall fleet numbers but no aircraft is explicitly identified as such. For example, if a given fighter squadron has a PAA (Primary Aircraft Authorized) of 24 aircraft, they will always have at least one bird in PDM (Programmed Depot Maintenance) at any given time. If the AF only bought enough aircraft to have 24 to allocate to that squadron at all times, their PAI (Primary Aircraft Inventory) would never be at their PAA, because of that depot bird. If there's AR built into the overall program, there's more slop in the system and the likelihood of keeping your PAI at your PAA is higher. I'm way oversimplifying here (for example, I'm completely leaving out the idea of BAA/BAI) but that's the general idea. Also I guess we're calling aircraft "Aerospace Vehicles" now so if you want to sound official (and really dumb) use that when you're discussing PAA/PAI/etc. This whole thing is (one of the reasons) why curtailing the F-22 buy at 187 tails was such a big deal. Forget that a non-zero portion of those are early Block 10s that will never be combat coded because their hardware renders them incapable of being upgraded past the Block 20 standard, of the combat coded tails there is zero AR built in to the overall program when you compare how many combat coded tails we own vs how many combat coded squadrons we're supposed to be maintaining. That was a risk undertaken by Gates & Co when they made the decision to curtail the Raptor buy when they did. As I mentioned above, building AR into a program also has the nice side benefit of giving you more flexibility when it comes to stuff like depot. We don't have that with the Raptor...here's a short decent piece David Axe did on the subject, includes a quote from an ACC dude explicitly saying there is zero AR built into the F-22 program. And yeah, the F-16 line is still open but the US stopped buying them (at least for the USAF...FMS is a different story) several years ago. I think the newest F-16 in USAF service was delivered in the 2004 timeframe. evil_bunnY posted:I can't wait to see that idea literally go down in flames. What's the plan, snipe them with the chin gun? To be fair, it's not like current RPAs are particularly capable at A2A: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tAneAliAG88 Related: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=t8-kNPKNCtg That said, GA was making some noise last year about putting AIM-9Xs, AGM-88s, and possibly even AIM-120s on Reapers so maybe I'll be eating my words in a couple of years.
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Feb 4, 2014 04:10
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Didn't they make some really big deal about how they were recording/preserving the processes used to build the F-22 even after the last one rolled out? So that, with an ungodly amount of money and political will, it would be possible to make more of them.
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Feb 4, 2014 04:14
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StandardVC10 posted:Didn't they make some really big deal about how they were recording/preserving the processes used to build the F-22 even after the last one rolled out? So that, with an ungodly amount of money and political will, it would be possible to make more of them. Even if they did there's still the not insignificant issue of training a workforce in those methods. Not to say that it wouldn't be impossible to do that training, but oh holy poo poo would it be expensive and IMMENSELY wasteful compared to keeping that knowledge "alive" in the heads of a working production staff, even one that was scaled down to a skeleton crew to just pump out a trickle of parts and airframes.
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Feb 4, 2014 04:28
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StandardVC10 posted:Didn't they make some really big deal about how they were recording/preserving the processes used to build the F-22 even after the last one rolled out? So that, with an ungodly amount of money and political will, it would be possible to make more of them. They also preserved the tooling and jigs for the B-2. 
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Feb 4, 2014 04:29
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StandardVC10 posted:Didn't they make some really big deal about how they were recording/preserving the processes used to build the F-22 even after the last one rolled out? So that, with an ungodly amount of money and political will, it would be possible to make more of them. They did save every single piece of tooling as well as recording the processes used in assembly. But the reason they did that isn't so much to make more of them (although it would be theoretically possible), it's that with zero AR every single aircraft will have to stay in service for as long as we've got Raptors in service. So barring a complete hull loss (i.e., plane pancakes into the ground going supersonic and all that's left is tiny little pieces), we're gonna be repairing damaged/crashed F-22s to get them back into service. This is in contract to legacy fighters, where past a certain point an airframe is typically written off even if it is physically intact (e.g., the F-15Cs with the longeron problems). So with the Raptors we are going to need to be able to do some pretty extensive repairs that we might not have attempted with legacy fighters...something that will be made much easier by having the original tooling and techniques/procedures on hand. It also goes without saying that in another decade there is probably going to be a massive SLEP for the Raptor, something that will go a lot easier with having that stuff around. Basically the tooling thing is attempting to get some insurance against the risk that we accepted by not buying any AR tails. e: Cyrano4747 posted:Even if they did there's still the not insignificant issue of training a workforce in those methods. Not to say that it wouldn't be impossible to do that training, but oh holy poo poo would it be expensive and IMMENSELY wasteful compared to keeping that knowledge "alive" in the heads of a working production staff, even one that was scaled down to a skeleton crew to just pump out a trickle of parts and airframes. Good point against restarting the whole production line. That said, the depot/manufacturer personnel who would be involved in the theoretical repairs and/or SLEP I mentioned above would be very experienced in those methods, which like I said is kind of the point. iyaayas01 fucked around with this message at 04:39 on Feb 4, 2014 |
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Feb 4, 2014 04:35
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Slo-Tek posted:They also preserved the tooling and jigs for the B-2. I finally made it down to the boneyard about 6 weeks ago, and it is cool as gently caress to see B-2 tooling in the flesh.
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Feb 4, 2014 04:39
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Cyrano4747 posted:Even if they did there's still the not insignificant issue of training a workforce in those methods. Not to say that it wouldn't be impossible to do that training, but oh holy poo poo would it be expensive and IMMENSELY wasteful compared to keeping that knowledge "alive" in the heads of a working production staff, even one that was scaled down to a skeleton crew to just pump out a trickle of parts and airframes. Take everyone working on the F-35 and retrain and tool them to build more Raptors. Cancel the F-35. Profit  Now per the article just linked by iyayayayayay the F-22 was cut short due to budget reasons but can anyone give me a good article or summary that goes more in depth on the topic? I know I read about it at the time but not well enough to remember.
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Feb 4, 2014 04:47
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Totally TWISTED posted:Take everyone working on the F-35 and retrain and tool them to build more Raptors. Cancel the F-35. Profit USAF says "381 is our bare bottom floor in order to meet the requirement of being prepared to simultaneously fight two major wars." Gates says "gently caress your 381, you're gonna get 187 and like it, we'll make up the difference with F-35s and btw be on the look out for a change to the two major war construct because we're gonna change it to 1+, also I fired your last leadership for butting heads with me on this so think long and hard about how much of a stink you want to cause here." Basically Gates got fed and believed a line of lies that the F-35 would be just as capable and cost much less than the Raptor. Also the USAF is too good at its job because everyone takes air supremacy for granted so when we say we need a pretty expensive something in order to be able to guarantee that into the future everyone (outside of the evil MIC) just rolls their eyes and goes "lol MIC quit wasting taxpayer dollars."
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Feb 4, 2014 04:56
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iyaayas01 posted:USAF says "381 is our bare bottom floor in order to meet the requirement of being prepared to simultaneously fight two major wars." Sec Gates is Grover. Gotcha. I secretly love laser posts and like pretending Dale Brown's writing will come true (in a military hardware sense)
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Feb 4, 2014 05:00
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iyaayas01 posted:USAF says "381 is our bare bottom floor in order to meet the requirement of being prepared to simultaneously fight two major wars." I like that the F-35 unit cost ballooned the MOMENT the ink was on paper for the Raptor line closure contract. Almost like someone planned it that way... 
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Feb 4, 2014 05:02
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mlmp08 posted:No, but the same could be said of literally any air platform. There are no other nations who match the USA in air superiority fighters, deep strike platforms, UAS, ISR, naval fighters, transport helos, etc. Not to get off on a  circlejerk or anything, but I was thinking about this the other day as I was reading about Super Bowl prop bets. What do you think is a good over/under on the number of years before the US loses a jet aircraft as a result of air-to-air combat? Not that they aren't capable of being shot down today, but just in looking at the geopolitical picture and the insane US lead in airpower, how long until a US jet aircraft is destroyed in air combat? 10 years? 25?
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Feb 4, 2014 05:33
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Is there any scenario in which a Raptor would mount AMRAAMs on the wings? e: if this isn't opsec Mortabis fucked around with this message at 06:28 on Feb 4, 2014 |
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Feb 4, 2014 06:17
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