Helicopters in Ukraine

[Bill]

Having been in many "engineering" meetings with Boeing over the years, I know exactly what you mean....

They have some extremely talented engineers, but their corporate culture is awful.

I made a number of components for Boeing over my career, FAIRs, source inspects, and dealing with their procurement people was always a CF.

OTOH, my dealings with multiple LM sites on multiple programs over the years always went fairly smoothly. LM seemed to treat their suppliers as true partners and team members vs being subservients.

 

[Half Fast]

I made a number of components for Boeing over my career, FAIRs, source inspects, and dealing with their procurement people was always a CF.

OTOH, my dealings with multiple LM sites on multiple programs over the years always went fairly smoothly. LM seemed to treat their suppliers as true partners and team members vs being subservients.

Very different corporate cultures.

Did you work with LM divisions other than MFC?

 

[Pi1otguy]

I know Russia has multiple times in the 80s and 90s. No idea about more recently.

Interesting. I figured it would have been a big news story with the talking heads fomenting outrage.

 

[Bill]

Very different corporate cultures.

Did you work with LM divisions other than MFC?

I did a number of programs with the SBF folks in Goleta. But also with uncle Ray in the same location as well.

 

[Half Fast]

I did a number of programs with the SBF folks in Goleta. But also with uncle Ray in the same location as well.

Yep, SBF is part of MFC. Spent a lot of time working with those folks.

 

[wanttaja]

Thank you for your genuine and exceptional service to our national defense. Never a quarrel with LM. Boeing, on the other hand, used to send as many lawyers as tech people to their meetings, lol.

~35 years at Boeing, all on the Government products side, new product development and acquisition. Never saw a lawyer, ours or theirs.

Oddly enough, the Government never granted Boeing lawyers clearances to our programs.

Will admit, our situation was different. Skunk-works-like operation.

Actually, I'll take that back. Developed a computer flight simulator for the VIC-20 in the '80s. Boeing lawyer tried to tell me that, since Boeing was in the flight simulation business, they actually owned my game. I just laughed.

Ron Wanttaja

 

[Half Fast]

Actually, I'll take that back. Developed a computer flight simulator for the VIC-20 in the '80s. Boeing lawyer tried to tell me that, since Boeing was in the flight simulation business, they actually owned my game. I just laughed

Ah! Now that sounds like the Boeing we all know so well.

 

[Warmi]

Dam, my google fu is failing.
There was a really interesting article/academic paper I read within the past few months. It dealt with US engagement in the world, and how history has shown us repeatedly the costs to not engage. It was really a fascinating look at many dictators, and oligarchs based regimes that have effectively poked and prodded the international order over the past two hundred years since the early founding of the USA.

How in every case, the USA had two choices, largely ignore the adversarial regime usually saying we had no interest that part of the world, or stand up to the regime. When the USA stood up to the regime and made them pay a very heavy price now, it always was significantly cheaper than doing it later. Another aspect of the article; was that was extremely difficult to predict when the USA would engage. What was the event which was the "line in the sand"; often there were many politicians giving speeches for what was the red line. However, which one was the actual caused the USA to engage, was rarely the one discussed by the politicians.

It was a really awesome history lesson.

Tim

Yes , we like to bring up Korea , Germany and Japan as often as we can but let’s not forget about Vietnam, Haiti, Grenada, Cuba, Somalia, Lebanon, Iran, Iraq, Afghanistan, Libya , Panama … we made or at least attempted to make “them” pay very heavy price at one time or another in all of these places … and in the end we have nothing to show for it.

 

[Albany Tom]

Having trouble following the logic. We shouldn't assist a country defending against an invasion from Russia, because we successfully kept Cuba from expanding into Grenada 40 years ago?

 

[Ed Haywood]

That's because there is no logic to follow.

 

[Warmi]

Having trouble following the logic. We shouldn't assist a country defending against an invasion from Russia, because we successfully kept Cuba from expanding into Grenada 40 years ago?

Try to use some logic then and see how it works out for you.

If you do try ( and it does kick in for you ) then you will notice that my response had nothing to do with the current situation in Ukraine but rather was directed at a study cited in another post claiming that standing up to dictators and regimes always results in some kind of net positive, which clearly does not seem to be the case.

 

[Velocity173]

We stood up to Russia during the Cuban Missile Crisis and the net positive was that nukes were removed from Cuba. Can’t compare Cuba to NATO expansion though. Nukes on your front door vs a pact between countries that’s defensive in nature are two very different things. Putin knows NATO isn’t a threat to his country. He’s either delusional and is having a temper tantrum or he wants to start a wider war with NATO.

 

[squincher]

These words are not a fantastical exaggeration, yet I truly hope they will not come. Think of our children!

They may not be "fantastical exaggeration," but they are right out of the Russian propaganda machine.

 

[tspear]

Did you do any reading about Neville Chamberlain?

Some, but not much. Besides being known for appeasement which failed to work, is there something specific you are asking about it?

Tim

 

[Ed Haywood]

They may not be "fantastical exaggeration," but they are right out of the Russian propaganda machine.

And sadly propagated by certain outlets and commenters who ought to know better.

Reagan would be rolling over in his grave.

 

[Half Fast]

Some, but not much. Besides being known for appeasement which failed to work, is there something specific you are asking about it?

Tim

No, just wondering whether your armchair expertise (as you put it) accounts for his failed approach.

 

[tspear]

Interesting. I figured it would have been a big news story with the talking heads fomenting outrage.

Talking heads and fermenting outrage really came in the 2000s. It took a long time from the end of the fairness doctrine for entertainment and business aspects to overwhelm the news division. Until the end of the fairness doctrine, (could be coincidence, causation, I do not know), news was not treated as a profit/loss; it was treated like a required duty of media companies. As a result, feigning outrage and many other extremes never had a chance because driving viewership for money was never a reigning concern.

Tim

 

[tspear]

Yes , we like to bring up Korea , Germany and Japan as often as we can but let’s not forget about Vietnam, Haiti, Grenada, Cuba, Somalia, Lebanon, Iran, Iraq, Afghanistan, Libya , Panama … we made or at least attempted to make “them” pay very heavy price at one time or another in all of these places … and in the end we have nothing to show for it.

The USA lost a significant amount of moral authority for the invasions of Iraq and Afghanistan. Depending on how you want to spin it, you could consider 9/11 an act of war and justify the war on Afghanistan. The WMD justification for Iraq never existed; and we never should have been there. In terms of Afghanistan, we failed to conquer and could never conquer such a country without changing some critical beliefs (exporting democracy).

I am not following your argument for the other countries.

Tim

 

[tspear]

No, just wondering whether your armchair expertise (as you put it) accounts for his failed approach.

I think Nevelle Chamberlain's approach is just one example.

Tim

 

[Piperonca]

I retired from Lockheed Martin - Missiles & Fire Control.

Bit of thread drift, but I have a cherished copy of Augustine's Laws. With a CEO like that, your LM culture would have to be great. Highly recommend the book to anybody in the military industrial complex.

 

[Piperonca]

We are not going to war with Russia. The war has been going on for a full year without us being drawn in. Both sides have clearly communicated their red lines and those lines are being given wide berth.

How do you assess China's involvement?

 

[Half Fast]

Bit of thread drift, but I have a cherished copy of Augustine's Laws. With a CEO like that, your LM culture would have to be great. Highly recommend the book to anybody in the military industrial complex.

Excellent book! My last assignment before retirement was managing the chief engineer department ("chief of chiefs") and I bought copies for all the department members. Required reading.

Norm was an outstanding CEO, and we had several very good ones after him, too. I developed tremendous respect for Bob Stevens during his tenure.

 

[UngaWunga]

How do you assess China's involvement?

Currently the US is laying a lot of that information bare to the public, which seems to be guiding China towards the direction we'd prefer, which is to not provide ammo or weapons to Russia. Turkey and India are treading a fine line as well, but it was good to see Lavrov heckled in India when he tried to play off the war as Ukraine invading Russia....

 

[Ed Haywood]

How do you assess China's involvement?

I think the whole thing is a freebie for them. The parallels to Taiwan are obvious, so they'll be interested in what precedent the outcome sets, but I doubt they are looking to get involved in any significant way.

 

[Piperonca]

Currently the US is laying a lot of that information bare to the public, which seems to be guiding China towards the direction we'd prefer, which is to not provide ammo or weapons to Russia. Turkey and India are treading a fine line as well, but it was good to see Lavrov heckled in India when he tried to play off the war as Ukraine invading Russia....

Zelensky is using media as a force multiplier, also. I think he learned from the US about getting facts out and added his personal gravitas (from a comedian!). History will study him.

 

[Albany Tom]

Try to use some logic then and see how it works out for you.

If you do try ( and it does kick in for you ) then you will notice that my response had nothing to do with the current situation in Ukraine but rather was directed at a study cited in another post claiming that standing up to dictators and regimes always results in some kind of net positive, which clearly does not seem to be the case.

Your post mentioned more than a dozen countries, none of which were mentioned in the post you quoted. The claim wasn't that standing up to dictators always worked. It was that in the case of the examples in the study - which weren't listed in the post - worked. It's kind of tough to disprove that without knowing what the list was, and Grenada was just one example from your list where it was a pretty good plan. I'd argue Panama was, too. So it really wasn't relevant to the quote, or Ukraine, or helicopters, or stealth fighters, or... I thought I was pretty polite in pointing it out, but perhaps not.

War is a terrible thing. It's rarely a good idea to initiate one. It's often a good idea to support the good side when they find themselves invaded, though. We don't get that right all the time, but often we do.

 

[Albany Tom]

I think the whole thing is a freebie for them. The parallels to Taiwan are obvious, so they'll be interested in what precedent the outcome sets, but I doubt they are looking to get involved in any significant way.

I have an image of the leadership of China eating a lot of popcorn.

 

[3393RP]

Aside from the war aspect of the discussion, the posts about helicopter armaments and operations from former combat pilots along with those from weapons engineers are captivating and appreciated. Thanks.

 

[SFDukie]

The US military has over 100 military installations OCONUS. NATO bases encircle the Russian Federation. The US would never tolerate that level of provocation from an adversary. We didn't in 1962.

We tolerated thousands of Soviet, and subsequently Russian, troops in Cuba, for decades. Yes, the Soviets removed their land based missiles. But Russian subs- Echos and Golfs-carrying nukes visited Cuba regularly. We tolerated those, too.

A map of Russia a shows a long arctic sea border, borders with China, the central Asian stans, Mongolia, Georgia, etc. but those military superpowers, Latvia, Lithuania, and Estonia- now there’s an invasion threat! That’s encirclement.



There’s a reason why Russia’s threatened neighbors want to join NATO- because otherwise Russia has even more power to coerce their behavior. And of course a history of nvasion.

Do we believe that all men are created equal, endowed with inalienable rights, believe in consent of the governed?

This war is a rare confluence of an unambiguous chance to stand for our founding principles, and a cost effective way to deter the only existential threat to us.

 

[Bacho]

10% for the big guy.

 

[Velocity173]

All the armor in the world won’t defend against a Mach 2.5 MANPAD. We used to joke about actions in contact for surface to air missiles. There’s no time to react. Enough time to say “Oh ****!” It’s either gonna hit ya or your aircraft survivability equipment did its job and you live to fight another day.

 

[Piperonca]

All the armor in the world won’t defend against a Mach 2.5 MANPAD. We used to joke about actions in contact for surface to air missiles. There’s no time to react. Enough time to say “Oh ****!” It’s either gonna hit ya or your aircraft survivability equipment did its job and you live to fight another day.

That’s ugly.

 

[Albany Tom]

This thread is giving me a much better understanding and respect for attack helicopters. It hasn't changed my opinion that the guys that fly them are nuts.

Never thought of helicopters as dismounted infantry. That's a great insight. What I'm kinda seeing them as now, though, is like a 100 mph tank that has effectively close to zero armor. With almost no ability to hide and fight at the same time, but an ability to cross just about any terrain.

I'm now wondering if anyone has paired drones with full sized helicopters. To get long range and carry effective weapons, and helicopter needs to be big. But a drone should be able to be little and still have an effective long range viewing capability. If there were places to hide the helicopter behind terrain, the drone could pop up or fly forward to find targets, and the helicopter could shorten the time it needs to pop up and launch. I know...the drone could spot for artillery, but that's ground based. This could extend the range of artillery to the range of the helicopter, more or less.

 

[Piperonca]

You might think of helicopters as mounted ‘cavalry’. My combat flying experience included UH-1C gunship time in Vietnam circa 1969-70. Back then rockets were mean, but dumb. A decade later I found myself employed with a brand new engineering degree at Bell Helicopter. They put me to work on integrating the Hellfire missile on Marine AH-1 Cobras. At that time the Army already had the AH-64 Apache armed with them. The neat thing about Hellfire seekers is that you can put laser designators on just about anything, including the aircraft itself. @Half Fast can give you the unclas details. Basically the weapons system becomes smart, and a destroyer of the enemy.

 

[Bell206]

Never thought of helicopters as dismounted infantry

If you ever want to learn how the doctrine of airmobility came to be look up the 11th Air Assault Division (Test). Between 1962-65 it proved the concept with the 11th being rebranded the "1st Air Cav" and deployed in 65. Another interesting read is the politics behind the airmobility move by googling "Rogers Board" and "Howze Board". Know/knew a number of people who flew those early days to include the original UTTH flights in-country with the first armed UH-1As. Its a neat story to see how helicopter airmobility has grown from then to now and almost never came to be. Very similar to the same battle the original air corps fought against the Navy in the early 1900s.

 

[Velocity173]

This thread is giving me a much better understanding and respect for attack helicopters. It hasn't changed my opinion that the guys that fly them are nuts.

Never thought of helicopters as dismounted infantry. That's a great insight. What I'm kinda seeing them as now, though, is like a 100 mph tank that has effectively close to zero armor. With almost no ability to hide and fight at the same time, but an ability to cross just about any terrain.

I'm now wondering if anyone has paired drones with full sized helicopters. To get long range and carry effective weapons, and helicopter needs to be big. But a drone should be able to be little and still have an effective long range viewing capability. If there were places to hide the helicopter behind terrain, the drone could pop up or fly forward to find targets, and the helicopter could shorten the time it needs to pop up and launch. I know...the drone could spot for artillery, but that's ground based. This could extend the range of artillery to the range of the helicopter, more or less.

The Army employs that tactic with their Apaches working with Grey Eagle / Shadow UAVs. Certain C2 Black Hawks have the ability to see a UAV feed as well. I’d bet anything that the Russians haven’t integrated their systems in that way yet. What @Warlock stated earlier can’t be overemphasized. We do well in war because of combined arms integration. Without it, you’re a sitting duck.

Simple route tactics would reduce Russian losses by half. Unfortunately, without good intel on where the enemy is, it’s difficult to plan a route around the threat. But that’s not new to warfare though and we experienced lack of intel in OEF / OIF as well. Prior to OIF2 we studied all the shoot downs from OIF1 (2003-2004) I won’t go into specific altitude and airspeed details but we determined they were way too high and way too slow. We tailored our flight profile and our IRCM (ALQ-144) to what believed to be the biggest threat (MANPADS / RPGs). While we were shot at, we were the first battalion not to lose an aircraft to enemy fire. Tactics matter.

 

[Piperonca]

All the armor in the world won’t defend against a Mach 2.5 MANPAD. We used to joke about actions in contact for surface to air missiles. There’s no time to react. Enough time to say “Oh ****!” It’s either gonna hit ya or your aircraft survivability equipment did its job and you live to fight another day.

Yes, about that shoot down I immediately said to myself ‘too high, too slow’. Age old lesson. Russians slow to learn.

 

[Velocity173]

Yes, about that shoot down I immediately said to myself ‘too high, too slow’. Age old lesson. Russians slow to learn.

Perfect example is the now Senator Tammy Duckworth shoot down. That happened when I was there. Used to talk to her on the phone about once a month for flight ops reasons. Anyway, I won’t go into her specific flight profile but there’s not a chance in hell I’d be in that area at that altitude and airspeed. I flew (in the back) in her NG unit a couple of times and I was uneasy the whole time.

 

[Ed Haywood]

Attack helos with ATGMs make a fantastic defensive anti-armor weapon. Hover behind friendly lines, engage with standoff, use terrain masking for protection. Pop up, shoot, duck. Leverage speed and range to respond to advances over a wide area. Infantry, tanks, and engineers stop the attack in a planned engagement area, then arty, CAS, and attack helos do the killing. That was the plan for the Fulda Gap back in the cold war, and the fight the Apache (and A-10) were built for.

Too bad the Ukrainians don't have a similar capability. Really tailor made for their situation. Wonder if anyone is working on retrofitting TOW missiles to a Hind D or Hip?

 

[Piperonca]

Perfect example is the now Senator Tammy Duckworth shoot down. That happened when I was there. Used to talk to her on the phone about once a month for flight ops reasons. Anyway, I won’t go into her specific flight profile but there’s not a chance in hell I’d be in that area at that altitude and airspeed. I flew (in the back) in her NG unit a couple of times and I was uneasy the whole time.

Buddy of mine was in the air that day, told me about it. That was many moons ago. I'll have to call him up and refresh my memory of what she was doing at the time. Main thing I remember was that she was his company commander.

Inevitable fact about the utility mission is there are times you are just flat going to be vulnerable. Resupply to field units might be one. Although I don't know if that was going on much in OIF or OEF, or even today in Ukraine. Hasty medevac is another. You have to slow down and hang in the air for a few ticks of the clock to get airspeed down and flare for an approach. Then bad guys have a nice target. That part never changes. Your generation has onboard nav so I would think low and fast is the order of the day. Less popping up and looking around to find your LZ. Oh, and NVG too. Different world from the age of biplanes.