Speed is not important if you plan to hide behind trees. Nap of Earth flying at 900km/h would be fatal. At 900km/h with a full load the F-16 will be flying straight and not have good manouver capability. At medium altitude he will be a sitting duck for longer range weapons that sit further back from the front line but will have their maximum range capability against targets flying at 10,000m.

I don’t plan to hide behind trees, the point was that an F-16 operating at a MUCH farther distance can carry a load over a range much faster than any Apache with that other load.

As for SAMs, I’d still rather face of against medium/high altitude longer ranged SAMs that go down low and face all the low level trashfire. AAA/MANPADS/RPGs/SHORADS are much more lethal low than medium/high altitude SAMs are at a higher altitude.

For targets at medium altitude you don’t need medium range and long range SAMs on the front line. An SA-5 has a range of about 300km… 150km behind the front lines protecting an airbase it can engage targets over the front line too… but only if they are at medium altitude… if they are at low level it won’t see them.

SA-5 is an older SAM, something like S-300 or Aster 30 or BUK, etc. Only Russia basically has it, how many other countries rely on protecting their armoured columns from medium/high altitude threats via high altitude SAMs like those mentioned above instead of fighters? Now compare that to how many armies have their armoured assets protected by AAA/MANPADS/SHORADS.

Even the cheapest UAV has very expensive “payloads” of TI cameras and synthetic apature radars worth millions of dollars. Losing a dozen a day will mount up… low flying UAVs in an environment where armoured helos are not safe would be more expensive than using helos…

Garry, do you not see what I am talking about or you just ignore it. How about higher altitude UAVs like the Predator and Heron and such.

The Swedish commented on that was the reason they chose it over the Apache… it certainly couldnt’ have been the sophistication… the Mi-28A they tested is a daylight only helo… compared to an AH-64D!!!.

It’s still a beast, and it’s hug on top of that too. I think they chose it because it was also like 2-3 times cheaper.

The radar and other avionics is why the Apache costs so much… The Apache needs a redesign to make it more maintainence friendly… it was a maintainence nightmare before the D upgrade and it still is now, so it isn’t the radar or the new generation TI that is the problem. The Mi-28N is a new “system” so there might be teething problems with the avionics but the basic aircraft is apparantly simple and easy to maintain. It was based on experience with the Hind in Afghanistan and some extensive experience with other helos in a wide range of environments.

Now, don’t go off topic and tell me something I did not ask, the reason I was using the Apache as an example instead of the Zulu Cobra because it’s in widerspread service, and on top of all it has the Longbow radar, now does the Zulu Cobra have anything of that sort?

Are you not listening Srbin? When you are landing troops at an opposed LZ you need to be able to not just go around and kill a few soldiers here and there. This isn’t rambo… they won’t step out into the open and blaze away with an M60. The will be firing from cover and they will be aiming at both your transports and your gunships. With a PKM even I could put bullets through the canopy of an AH-6 and kill the crew quicker than he could spot my position and do anything to me. If it was a Hind I’d know that 23mm cannon won’t penetrate the front windscreens and that that 50 cal gatling can spray an area and get high enough bullet densities to have a really goo chance of hitting me… not to mention the four rocket pods with up to 128 x 57mm rockets each with almost 1kg of HE and fragments or 80 x 80mm rockets each with 4-8kgs or more of HE and fragments depending upon the model. A lucky side shot at the canopy might kill the pilot… but considering he will not come down close enough for me to guarantee such a hit and will standoff with HMG and rockets I’ll probably leave as quick as I can because the ground troops they are bringing will be very dangerous in a few minutes when they get off those helos.

I get what you’re saying, and in no way can an AH-6J compete with any larger Attack Helicopter in terms of firepower. It has two hardpoints, but can’t you arm those with even bigger rocket pods than it already carries?

You mean like the fast movers that took out that column of white painted landrovers at the start of the invasion of Iraq when they were looking for a single tank?
The reality is that there is a bit of a problem with fighter bombers. Against ground targets they can hit better than they can see. The Helo has the opposite capability it can see further than most of its weapons (except ATGMs) can reach. I know which one I prefer. The Israelis know this all too well… they could send in F-16s to bomb targets in built up areas but more often than not they send in Helos with ATGMs to take out rooms or individual vehicles rather than apartment blocks. They do sometimes send in F-16s but the F-16s never do as good a job as the helos.

Things have greatly improved in surveillance since Desert Storm.

BTW, all they have used their helos in lately is COIN operations, not escort their own transports or destroy tanks.

And they suppresed the Somalis so well they named the movie what? I believe it was “Blackhawk down”. If they were so good at suppressing the somalis why was it armoured vehicles that were sent in to rescue the Americans trapped there? Why not just send in a few more Blackhawks? They had Little Birds protecting them afterall. Except the Little Birds weren’t able to protect those transports. Not suggesting the Apaches would have been hugely more successful, but I think they could have killed rather more Somalis than the Little Birds did and perhaps operate a little more out in the open and with their 30mm cannnon with 1200 rounds their fire support even ignoring their unguided rockets would have been of much more benefit.

You said it your self, “Not suggesting the Apaches would have been hugely more successful”. The job was to protect the transports, which neither might’ve done well enough in this case

Why are you fixating on slow? Snipers are slow… should they all be replaced with Machinegunners?

Sniper and Machine gunners are two totally different things for two different jobs, Attack Helicopters and Fixed Wing Interdictors are two different things for the same job, ie destroy armoured tank columns.

Having VSTOL carriers instead of fixed wing carriers is cheaper… which do you think the British NAVY would have preferred in the Falklands?

Where did this come from, whats your point?

When you commit yourself to that then the enemy will switch to SAMs that kill planes at that altitude… which is a very good altitude for SAMs BTW too. They can see you at max range and hit you at max range.

The Arabs had MANPADs and Shilkas at low level and SA-6s for medium level work. They complimented each other very well… until the Israeli pilots had effective jamming equipment the SA-6s shot down quite a few aircraft… the manouver to avoid the SA-6s involved a dive which more often than not led the plane to enter the engagement altitude of the Shilkas and MANPADS.

If you are suggesting the MANPADS and small arms fire have made the low
altitudes unsafe don’t think medium altitudes have suddenly been abandoned by SAM makers… Most light systems that operate at low level just need a rocket booster to get to medium and even high altitudes. IR seekers work better at higher altitudes where everything except jet engines are cold and there is no ground clutter like hot rocks or sun reflected off the water.

No I do think that the medium altitude is SAFER, and it is. Allied Force 99 was a prime example. Even if Serbs had a few S300s, I think NATO would’ve still probably stayed at a higher altitude because they would’ve suffered many more losses down low than at higher altitude. Bu they didnt, and not many countries have S-300s or capable modern higher altitude SAMs. Not only this, but how many actually have protecting their armoured columns?

Anti Tank. If they have Manpads to fight your helos then they will likely also have anti tank weapons that will challange your ground forces too.

Looking back from the previous comments you made, how does that help your arguement in anyway in terms of making medium altitude aircraft any more vulnerable?

Mi-17s have armour but no where near as much as even a Hind let alone a more modern attack chopper.

Regardless of how many they have, I don’t think any of them would have such an easy time surviving MANPADS. Mi-24s and Su-25s did have a lot in Afghanistan, yet many were downed.

And for the cost of an L-159A I can probably get 10,000 AKs… but that doens’t help me much when I need a real CAS aircraft. You keep talking about saving money… do you know how much Brimstone costs?

Apperantly requiring to destroy armoured columns doesnt require “real CAS aircraft” to get down low and do it like the Apache or A-10.

At the start of Desert Storm a few Apaches were used for long range missions to take out radar stations. I have never heard of anyone using Jet trainers for anything like that or anything you are suggesting. Enemy airfields, bases, command depots??? etc etc will be defended targets. How do you propose a jet trainer perform those roles?

I can understand you reaction to the increasing cost of aircraft but they have gotten expensive and complicated for a reason… air defences are complicated and sophisticated too. Having a cheap radarless aircraft less capable than an early model mig-21 is NOT the answer. It is a great answer to the problem of where can we get a cheap jet trainer, but not a good answer to the other problems you have mentioned. Otherwise a transport aircraft like a C-5 galaxy would be solution number 1… can drop paratroops from above trashfire altitude, It can drop SDBs by the thousands out its rear ramp just before the paratroops go… it could carry more Brimstones than the enemy has tanks, you could have a jammer version with a jammer so powerful and big that it could fry and egg at 400km, you could fit a tactical air borne laser that could shoot down any SAM or AAM fired at the flight of C-5s.

But that is just silly. A C-5 is a strategic transport.

You cannot really compare the L-159A to a supersonic fighter like the Mig-21 which was designed for a different role. The L-159A is a single seat, single engined light attack aircraft, with a radar that can also guide BVRAAMs and AshMs.

As for Apaches, wow they were used to destroy a few radar stations, what else can they do?

Once again, your arguement is just dumb.

Except on long transits armour will not often travel in columns… especially when the enemy has air superiority. Such a role is reserved for deep missions in the enemies rear and have little to do with CAS. CAS is the support of your troops in actual combat.

And thats something fixed wing aircraft can do regardless of what altitude and they can also do deep missions behind enemies’ rear, something Attack Helicopters can never dream of doing

Why do you think ARMY helos should go wandering around looking for targets? Should the army also send out individual tanks looking for something to kill too? This makes no sense at all. The Russians never send out Hinds to look for enemy vehcles or hardpoints like command centres or ammo depots.

They dont, because they just cannot do it. They are very role limited in what they can do, and thats basically COIN, escorting and CAS, and some can even do some limited SEAD missions.

No Army attack choppers because there were no ground troops. Not rocket science. I think if you had SAMs with a bit more sophistication that they would probably have used cruise missiles and very low very high speed flight profiles. It is only logical that in a scenario where the opposition has MANPADs and small arms and air defence light cannon but no medium or high altitude SAMs that you can’t jam or deal with electronically that you take advantage of that and fly at medium heights. Obviously from the targetting and target ID perspective flying lower to identify the targets before they attacked would have been nice but they chose to put the lives of their pilots ahead of the lives of the Albanians on tractors that they accidently killed.

But they did deploy Apaches in Albania, which never got there in time. The point is not facing Serbia and it’s SAMs, but armoured columns.

NATO tactics were to send in Spec ops to lead bands of KLA to do just that.
It is amusing that you assume that the helo gunship is dead because of its cost. Only the US and NATO combined could guarantee the air superiority needed to be able to fly at medium to high altitudes safely as an alternative to lower level flights.

Air Superiority counts for both low and high altitude, even if they didnt have Air Superiority, it doesnt guarantee Attack helicopter’s survival in any way if it’d have attack enemy’s armoured assets and such.

An Ah-6 is a civilian jet range helo is it not? What sort of protection does it carry? Can it even stop AK fire?

it is not, it was developed from teh OH-6 Cayuse.

If you have an airforce powerful enough to guarantee air superiority whay are you using L-159s?

Interdiction. But the L-159A example was of what an Army could buy instead of heavy Attack Helicopters like Apache.

But much less well armoured. Considering the Mi-8 can carry 6 rocket pods each with 32 rockets and with a nose mounted 50 cal HMG and up to 6 ATGMs you’d wonder why the Hind was developed from the mi-8 in the first place… but it was… and is still being used.

My point is that it’s not very cost effective, but if countries have plenty of money to waste, then they can go ahead and buy lots of Attack Helicopters like Apache. The Apache was very well armoured, yet it didn’t do so well against small arms fire either.

Yet the US army and many other armed forces around the world actually buy and operate them… Even the british… who are well known for spending way too much on their troops… NOT.

Look back on what was said previously about this comment. Do this for every other one do see what is the point before going on and making another totally different point.

I am tired of arguing,