Even a dozen attack helos properly employed can make a huge difference in the sort of small front the rebels are attacking on right now @ Aleppo (not including the ISIS push to the south) IMO.

Since they failed to identify and stop the counteroffensive when the rebels were approaching in the open towards this 1070 apartments project at the start of the offensive, I don’t think they’ll be able to do much if the rebels manage to break out of it to the urban areas. The positive thing for the regime is that the projects seem somewhat isolated from the neighborhood areas (major highway to the north, military objects to the east) so they might be able to contain further advance given sufficient defensive lines and support.

This map shows several axis of attack south of Aleppo.

http://syria.liveuamap.com

So the primary advantage of Mi-28 is its protected againist 14,5 mm rounds plus 20mm HE-FRAG shells, instead of “just” 12,7mm in cockpit area (other vitals like engines are still protected againist 12,7mm IIRC). Hence my comment that Mi-28 brings a greater cockpit armor againist 14,5 mm rounds but the drawback is, non-armored (should have written insufficently armored) parts of the airframe are also more likely to get hit than a smaller helicopter.

Do you have any data to prove these claims about the significant increase in hit probability? The small difference in size seems completely insignificant at range, while the offset in sensors, payload and armor is significant to those air arms which can afford the heavier helicopters.

That thing looks too bulky to me to be useful for agile combat , In War for anti-terror operation it looks fine as they wont face any capable AD , Why dont they develop something along the lines of Cobra or LCH type chopper and keep the heavy role to Ka-52 ?

So, you’re saying that Cobras being more agile than Apaches should be noticeably more survivable against a capable AD? I guess the US Army didn’t get this memo. 🙂

But, seriously, I’d expect that a lighter, cheaper to operate and more agile helicopter would make more sense for anti-insurgency operations, rather than the other way around, IMHO.

Old news. It has been comapred right after so-called ‘888-war’ with Georgia. Of course, since that war some of Tu-22M3 recieved an upgrade of its targeting system, based on the same SVP system by Gefest, and it’s a great system, but it’s not like it can replace or even compete with PGMs when we’re tallking about combat effectiveness per sortie or weight of delivered munitions. But the main question here(at least for our RuAF) is a price and quantities of PGMs in service/arsenals.

I’m not saying it’s “news” per se, but I thought it might be nice to compare these recent videos since there were some posts in this thread regarding cost/performance of these unguided bombs vs. PGM’s.

E.g. in the Tu-22M3 videos, some of those target locations were not effectively struck (e.g. Arak, thanks TR1 for the analysis link) since apparently only one bomber was attacking that location.

Not so sure about that^^

Looks to me the Short range Mig-29 had its place in the Soviet Union Airforce.

The requirements supposedly asked for an 800 km range at low level and 2750 km range at high altitude, but for production 9.12 airplane, those values were 700 and 2100 km (according to the data in Y.Gordon’s book).

And of course it had a place in the SU Air Force otherwise it wouldn’t have been recommended for operational service. 🙂

Interestingly enough, the T-10-1 (the first Su-27 prototype) suffered from insufficient range as well (and some other issues IIRC) and had to be completely redesigned as T-10S.

Also oversimplification of “feeding one engine or two” is absurd. An F-16 with single GE-129 on full AB will easily consume more than twice the fuel of BOTH J-85 engines on F-5E. You can’t say F-5Es fuel consumption would be higher just because it has two engines.

It’s a simplification of course, but it’s only absurd if you want to make it that way by comparing the MiG-29 with a light fighter with two small turbojets from the late 50’s instead of its contemporaries. Not taking the SFC and thrust differences into account, the numbers from the Eagle’s post clearly show that other two engine fighters of the same or similar generation and class had roughly 50% more fuel.

the early su27 is comparable to the mig-23 in capability

Say what? Pretty much the only thing they have in common is being limited to SARH missiles only, so by that brilliant logic everything without active radar missiles is “comparable to the MiG-23”. And yes, the basic radar antenna design is similar to that used on late MiG-23’s, but since the antenna is much bigger and it has better computers, they’re not really on the same level at all.