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    Russia Arms Expo 2013

    collegeboy16
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    Post  collegeboy16 Fri Oct 11, 2013 10:36 am

    GarryB wrote:
    I think you are over estimating the potential of enemy helos... at 2km range a tank can hit a very small target and the very short flight time of the round means that even moving targets can be engaged accurately. With laser beam riding missiles its effective range is dramatically increased... with modern optics modern tanks are less vulnerable to helos than they are to enemy ground troops in anything but the flattest and most open terrain.
    Exactly,attack helos, even Russian ones, are still too thin skinned to take anything more than 23mm cannon fire at decent ranges and fly away, and afaik only the best russian attack helos can do so even HMG is dangerous to other attack helos. Oh, and attack helos will get in range of these weapons, thats for sure, since standoff weapons are quite expensive and getting close is the job of the helo anyway.
    Also, attack helos will mostly use HEAT based anti-armor weapons, which are quite slow and would be swatted by APS meant for APFSDS.
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    Post  Regular Fri Oct 11, 2013 12:59 pm

    collegeboy16 wrote:
    GarryB wrote:
    I think you are over estimating the potential of enemy helos... at 2km range a tank can hit a very small target and the very short flight time of the round means that even moving targets can be engaged accurately. With laser beam riding missiles its effective range is dramatically increased... with modern optics modern tanks are less vulnerable to helos than they are to enemy ground troops in anything but the flattest and most open terrain.
    Exactly,attack helos, even Russian ones, are still too thin skinned to take anything more than 23mm cannon fire at decent ranges and fly away, and afaik only the best russian attack helos can do so even HMG is dangerous to other attack helos. Oh, and attack helos will get in range of these weapons, thats for sure, since standoff weapons are quite expensive and getting close is the job of the helo anyway.
    Also, attack helos will mostly use HEAT based anti-armor weapons, which are quite slow and would be swatted by APS meant for APFSDS.
    With sensor suitse new helicopters have there is no point to get in range and risk expensive helicopter. Except if You are engaging rag tag militans or already softened positions. Stand off weapons might be expensive, but so are targets they are designed to take care of. There is not much tank can do against Vikhr or Ataka flying his way. I really wouldn't trust my life to APS when attacked from the air. If You want thunder runs against tanks, use CAS. Even with MANPAD it would be hard to lock on fast flyer that only does a run or two and flies low. Like SU-25 did in Georgia.
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    Post  collegeboy16 Fri Oct 11, 2013 1:37 pm

    Regular wrote:
    With sensor suitse new helicopters have there is no point to get in range and risk expensive helicopter. Except if You are engaging rag tag militans or already softened positions. Stand off weapons might be expensive, but so are targets they are designed to take care of. There is not much tank can do against Vikhr or Ataka flying his way. I really wouldn't trust my life to APS when attacked from the air. If You want thunder runs against tanks, use CAS. Even with MANPAD it would be hard to lock on fast flyer that only does a run or two and flies low. Like SU-25 did in Georgia.  
    Even with the best thermals, helos can only detect infantry at what, 3-4km, 5 if the weather is nice, and barely even identify them. AFVs camouflaged and behind cover dont show up that clearly on radar, if at all. Helos on the other hand, could be heard from miles and seen on thermals from 10 km, and could be detected on most radar, so going to fire from standoff ranges wouldnt work that good for them. The helos weapons are also relatively slow, and being mostly HEAT, Im sure modern composite armor can deal with it, provided it does hit the strong part of the armor. Also, I really think that APS with Arena's reaction time can intercept ATAKAs and vikhrs, read from somewhere that RPG-7s fired from closer range actually require faster reaction time compared to tank shells fired from 2km(HEAT or HE afaik)
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    Post  Viktor Fri Oct 11, 2013 2:22 pm

    More excellent pictures from Nizhny Tagil - 2013 thumbsup 

    http://saidpvo.livejournal.com/218026.html
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    Post  GarryB Sat Oct 12, 2013 9:49 am

    Also, attack helos will mostly use HEAT based anti-armor weapons, which are quite slow and would be swatted by APS meant for APFSDS.
    Many air launched ATGMs are not that slow, but the key is stand off range...

    A well used helicopter is a very capable system but there are situations like flat open terrain where the enemy has good air defence systems where Helicopters would struggle.

    An enemy well equipped with decent modern MANPADS in forested terrain would be a constant threat to all air power below 3,000 metres in any conditions... the key is who is using the equipment... are the helos being used poorly against well defended targets where the element of surprise is expected to win the day... also what sort of defenders do you have... hardened professionals... or a rag tag group of amateurs that will run at the first setback.

    I really wouldn't trust my life to APS when attacked from the air.
    The sensible use of terrain and good tactics can help or hinder... park your tank in the middle of a main road and you might find it becomes a missile magnet. Put a dummy vehicle there and have your local AD unit monitor where the missiles come from and the Helos might have problems in the near future.

    At 8-10km range a tank will not be able to do much to an enemy helo attacking him, but with the use of camouflage and the use of natural cover those helos might not see that tank till they are much much closer... if at all.

    It is a game of cat and mouse and it continues.

    The helos weapons are also relatively slow, and being mostly HEAT, Im sure modern composite armor can deal with it, provided it does hit the strong part of the armor.
    Vikhr moves at about 610m/s on average, while Ataka moves at about 420m/s... not exactly slow... and as long as the helo fires from near max range then at 10-8km range it should be relatively safe from the tanks it is firing on... of course against Tunguska it wont be safe at that range and of course any undetected units closer will also be a serious threat too.

    Helos will not spot all ground targets at extended ranges, but will be able to spot moving armour from extended distances with radar.

    More excellent pictures from Nizhny Tagil - 2013
    Nice... Vena, BMP-3M, Sprut, BMD-4M... even BTR-MDM... awesome.
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    Post  Mindstorm Sun Oct 13, 2013 3:03 pm

    Attempting even only to argue on the effective chance of survival of attack helicopters (in theirs intended CONOP)  against a first class enemy Army , is totally moot.

    As a matter of fact also today helicopters , even in "heavenly" environments, where them enjoy crushing ISR and ancillary support advantage and fighting against regional enemies immeasurably inferior under a technological and training point of view, are exposed to enemy fire (often totally unguided ! ) on a daily basis.


    The four most notable elements in deciding attack helicopter's survivability (in theirs intended CONOP of tactical deep strike/counter-armored spearhead missions) are :

    1) Average expected survivability's time of friendly ISR assets.

    2) Enemy fire power's composition ,concentration and capability to change position in the targeted "kill box" and in the corridors of intrusion.

    3) Average responsiveness of enemy active and passive sensors network .

    4) Quality of enemy field and self-defense ECM systems and of its masking assets.


    In the past conventional wars point 1-3 and 4 never represented even only a concern for western Army planners;
    1) The critical EC-130H Compass Call and E-8 Joint STARS was never put one time under real risk to be downed by part of the antediluvian SAM composing the enemy IAD or Air Force interceptors.
    3) The level and area coverage of Iraqi and Serbian ELS, divisional and field radar and IR and acoustic sensors varied from abysmal to not-existent and vulnerability to NATO jamming (for the active elements ) was very high for the clear technical obsolescence of radar design and basis components
    4) Excluding some exceptions (often product of personal initiative by part of field operators)  neither Iraqi or Serbian Army possessed any ECM mean to negate or ,better, corrupt the sensor data's chain necessary to western commanders to plan and guide SEAD and CAS missions, among which attack helicopter's employment while in the coverage and masking proficiency , instead , the level of performances between Iraqi and Serbian Army was very pronounced , and even only that difference was capable to produce enormous differences in the level of attrition of ground vehicles and field assets between the two Armies.  

    How anyone can easily infer, even minimum variations in the level of the operators training and in the technical performances of the assets linked to point 1, 3 and 4 would have generated an huge, disproportionate increase in the level of attrition among western CAS assets ,with a progressively faster level of attritions, degradation of theirs operational capabilities and chances of single mission success. ( when each of those asset cost ,on average, from 20 to 30 times more than the ground vehicles it is intended to engage and any loss become invariably a not-recoverable loss the situation degrade, in a progressively compressed time frame, toward the effective impossibility to conduct any mission against the enemy ground forces of a first level enemy).



    The unique factor ,among those previosuly cited , that played a role in attack helicopter operations was enemy ground fire density and composition in the area of the operation in Iraq (in Kosovo no active employment is recorded) .

    Usually the AH-64 was employed in area of Iraqi Army ground formation confirmed by ISR assets as not covered by the few Iraqi mobile 9K33 and 9K35 batteries and ZSU-23-4 Shilka SPAAA ; therefore the only real menace to AH-64 "Apache" was represented by Iraqi unguided small caliber fire , few medium caliber towed cannons - the bulk of which was ZPU-2 14.5 mm with few ZU-23-2 23 mm cannons - and the occasional Strela MANPADS all employed  in strictly fixed and scarcely camouflaged fire positions.
    Moreover no Iraqi tank or IFV had any capability to employ gun launched missiles neither theirs vastly outdated FCS or ammunitions allowed to aim and engage hovering enemy helicopters in the time window necessary to them for complete the missile targeting sequence.

    As confirmed by CENTCOM coverage of the events, the great majority of AH-64 in return from theirs missions showed signs of small caliber fire (usually infantry 7.62 mm and tanks 12.7 machine guns, shot from outside theirs maximum effective engegement range) hitting them in the transient approach phase to the mission's quadrant or during the fire sequence.

    In spite of what just said, the areas of Iraqi formations characterized merely by a relatively high density of ground fire (with a similar composition !) was sufficient to be considered out-limit for AH-64 operations as confirmed ,for example by the same Major Regional General Buford G. Blount, Commander of the Third Infantry Division :

    " I ordered attack helicopters to remain West of Euphrates after the abortive attack by the 11th Aviation Regiment.
    The area west of the river was too heavily build-up and there was too much potential ground fire. We don't risk to take the added risk of operating attack helicopters in this environment"  

    Anyone with even only a limited knowledge of the typical area control and consolidation operations foreseen in the highly  mobile combined arms doctrine of the Soviet and Russian ground forces can easily realize as even a sector occupied by a motorized or armored brigade , for some strange reason even completely outside of Army Air Defense and Air Force's coverage, would have represented a true meat-grinder for enemy attack helicopters.
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    Post  Regular Sun Oct 13, 2013 3:33 pm

    Thanks for post Mindstorm. Interesting read.
    Most people assume that helicopters are acting alone. Since start of WW2 armies with real conventional fighting capability moved towards combined operations. Blitzkrieg or later Soviet OMG wasn't just simple tank rush.
    Don't know why people are underestimating them here. Helicopters if used right fit perfectly into battlefield. Existence of KA-50/52 helicopters show that not only NATO, but Russians where interested in Hunter Killer concept too. And personally I think KA-50/52 is more specialised than any western helicopter.
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    Post  Mindstorm Sun Oct 13, 2013 11:02 pm

    Regular wrote:Most people assume that helicopters are acting alone. Since start of WW2 armies with real conventional fighting capability moved towards combined operations. Blitzkrieg or later Soviet OMG wasn't just simple tank rush.
    Don't know why people are underestimating them here. Helicopters if used right fit perfectly into battlefield. Existence of KA-50/52 helicopters show that not only NATO, but Russians where interested in Hunter Killer concept too. And personally I think KA-50/52 is more specialised than any western helicopter.
    Yes Regular, it is surely true that military thinking about weapon systems concept of operation, proceeded very quickly , since end of WWII ,from a particularistic to a more holistic approach  (for domestic Doctrine that was evident at least since half of '50 years).

    The problem here is not to wrongly consider a single weapon completely insulated from its systemic position in the overall military structure, but ascertain what was the real operational roles (outside of very easy ,as clearly wronged, oversimplifications) committed for that weapon system.

    Combat attack helicopters doctrine was conceived in the West , in particular since half of '70 years, as a mean mostly useful at :

    1) Slow down first echelon of Soviet motorized and armored divisions deep penetration ,adding the erratic variable of theirs possible engagement from vectors of attacks not easily computable by Soviet planners before the start of the operations .

    2) Create quickly shifting lines of "stress" for Soviet logistical tail in the intra-echelon space, so to prevent the prompt exploitation of a breakthrough of NATO defense and the saturation of the deep area by part of Soviet second echelon.

    3) Offer an ancillary and flexible response to the Soviet motorized division's superior cross-country and amphibious capabilities, menacing to generate, just few hours from beginning of the offensive, wide zones characterized by huge force concentration overmatch in Soviet favor.

    The NOE anti-tanks operations executed by AH-64 in Gulf War was, in some measure, an adaption from the basis CONOP purposely developed for the peculiar "benign" conditions of that conflict ; naturally the same kind of operations would have represented a true suicide against Soviet Army even twenty years before GW.

    The Soviet practice since '70 years to widely place camouflaged air observers , MANPAD squads (lately delivered on the spot through Mi-24 and Mi-8 helicopters) and IR SAM batteries in positions with FOV directly open on morphological elements exploitable by the enemy for terrain masking and the common employment of luring IR and radar emitting decoys to ,possibly, even "channel" enemy attack helicopters and CAS Aircraft toward those positions, would have rendered the CONOP for attack helicopters ,usually present in common imaginary, nothing more than a comical suicide.

    Combat helicopters are deep operation support CAS assets, conceived for very short "taxing attacks" ,before a rapid egression from the area, on insulated segments of enemy advancing divisions, the strategic role to attempt to stop conventionally the Soviet armored breakthrough in Europe (and representing the unique real conventional concern for Soviet planners of those years) was committed to TOW ATGM teams, not to the AH-64 , A-10 , F-15E etc... Very Happy
    collegeboy16
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    Post  collegeboy16 Tue Oct 15, 2013 6:39 am

    Yeah, Ka-52 is very kickass, IMO if they just took the effort to make the radar every bit as sophisticated as the Longbow radar with all its party tricks maybe the indians would have
    went russian. Anyway, I think the future of attack helos would be wolfpacks, ie Ka-52s with
    their neat radars and slave UAV would hunt for targets while Mi-28s would kill those targets.
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    Post  GarryB Tue Oct 15, 2013 7:17 am

    Yeah, Ka-52 is very kickass, IMO if they just took the effort to make the radar every bit as sophisticated as the Longbow radar with all its party tricks maybe the indians would have
    went russian.
    The Indians didn't go Apache because the radar is better on the Apache, they went Apache because the Apache is in service, operational and has operational deployment and combat experience.

    The radar on the Ka-52 has two features that make it better than Longbow... first is that it has better range, and the second is that it will be fitted to all Ka-52s... unlike the Longbow, which is not fitted to all Apaches.

    Forget the radars from computer games... just putting a radar on a helo does not automatically mean any threats and targets for the helo will suddenly appear on its radar screen in front of them waiting to be picked off at the helos leisure.
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    Post  Viktor Tue Oct 15, 2013 2:21 pm

    More excellent pictures from saidpvo thumbsup 


    Russia Arms Expo 2013 - Page 7 AJabFPC



    http://saidpvo.livejournal.com/220154.html
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    Post  collegeboy16 Wed Oct 16, 2013 9:37 am

    GarryB wrote:
    The Indians didn't go Apache because the radar is better on the Apache, they went Apache because the Apache is in service, operational and has operational deployment and combat experience.

    The radar on the Ka-52 has two features that make it better than Longbow... first is that it has better range, and the second is that it will be fitted to all Ka-52s... unlike the Longbow, which is not fitted to all Apaches.

    Forget the radars from computer games... just putting a radar on a helo does not automatically mean any threats and targets for the helo will suddenly appear on its radar screen in front of them waiting to be picked off at the helos leisure.
    No disrespect intended but if I were in charge I would have waited for a few more years, besides what could 22 helos do? 12 of them are Longbow but can they integrate whatever that radar sees with the rest of their forces? Are they even gonna be allowed to shoot their missiles against their most likely enemy?
    imo they would be better served by Ka-52s, even if they would have to wait for it, and even though they would get less than 22 helos, the radar and Hermes alone are worth it.
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    Post  Viktor Wed Oct 16, 2013 11:53 am

    More pictures from saidpvo

    Russia Arms Expo 2013 - Page 7 97uv29P

    http://saidpvo.livejournal.com/220593.html
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    Post  GarryB Wed Oct 16, 2013 12:55 pm

    They clearly felt they could not wait... which is fair enough... quite often if you don't spend money in the budget you don't keep getting more... spend it or lose it.

    The Apache is not a bad helo, but I think the Mi-28M would be worth waiting for...
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    Post  Viktor Fri Oct 18, 2013 12:36 am

    More pictures from saidpvo thumbsup 

    Russia Arms Expo 2013 - Page 7 K0HsLEQ

    http://saidpvo.livejournal.com/221162.html
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    Post  GarryB Fri Oct 18, 2013 10:18 am

    Would add that Iraq likely had the choice of Apache or Mi-28N and they seem to have gone with the Russian helo...
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    Post  AlfaT8 Fri Oct 18, 2013 1:47 pm

    GarryB wrote:Would add that Iraq likely had the choice of Apache or Mi-28N and they seem to have gone with the Russian helo...
    Price maybe or genuine dislike.

    What were the Iraqi requirements for said helo??
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    Post  Regular Fri Oct 18, 2013 1:49 pm

    It's good that Iraq has chance of sourcing equipment from other countries too.
    These attack helicopters must be more or less equal in performance. Only difference that Apache went through the test of fire before. But Mi-28 is not made by amateurs and it's based on old and tested Mi-8. Price, logistical support and training is something we don't know, but I presume Russians offered better deal.
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    Post  GarryB Sat Oct 19, 2013 11:11 am

    The Iraqi purchase has pretty much been a bit of a surprise, but I suspect the Mi-28N will be easier to operate and maintain and will be more familiar to most of the Iraqi military.

    I also suspect they are in the same place the Russians were in the late 2000s where a purchase of Mi-28s and an upgrade of existing Mi-24s makes a lot of economic sense... an Mi-35M2 has many of the capabilities of a modern attack helo but also many most others don't have and for a fraction of the price.

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